I bought this a couple years ago at full retail, which was like $300. I've never regretted a minute of it. Selling points:
PalmOS handheld device. Lots and LOTS of software, quite a bit for free or cheap.
SLIM. Half an inch thick, maybe. Goes in my jeans pocket no problem. Easy to carry around.
Game oriented. Analog stick, six buttons, horizontal orientation by default. While the first-party games did suck a fair bit of ass, and second-party support (www.crimsonfire.com and a couple others) was sparse, this thing was BUILT FOR EMULATION. I have SNES, Genesis, NES, GB, GBC and all my legal copies of backup roms for all those systems. Everything from Double Dribble through Golden Axe and Chrono Trigger, and all put together they take up a quarter of the memory. Plus, the de rigeur card games, including a couple decent Hold 'Em games.
Media friendly. The screen has the wide (480x320) aspect, and built in picture and movie viewers and an OS-integrated MP3 player. It's not an iPod-killer by any stretch, but it does the job well.
The memory thing was a bit lame (I got the memory-heavy version), but it's got two SD slots to more than make up for it. I never missed wi-fi, as I find PDA surfing frustrating.
I got one, showed it to a guy I worked with (same demographic) and he bought one. It's not a bad device by any stretch. Serves the need I had: to put work and play on the same pocket-friendly device.
Locking down the extra Zodiac-ey features, specifically the analog stick, didn't help, but it wasn't what killed Tapwave.
The marketing is EXACTLY what went wrong. The Zodiac was marketed as a fancy-ass game platform. They looked like they were going for 12-25, but it was custom built for technophiles age 25-40 who want to play games without carrying around an extra gadget. It's hard to pass off that GBA at work, but my Zodiac passes muster as soon as I show the boss my to-do list, address book, calendar, and all the other standard Palm apps. Sitting in meetings, taking notes looks just like playing Hold 'Em if I can manage to keep from looking disappointed when I get busted out. I'm really surprised the Slashdot people didn't pick up on it more.
My next PDA will probably be much faster with a lot of whiz-bang features, but I will miss the Zodiac when it's gone. Hopefully Tapwave will release the application signing algorithm and we can use it for more while the device still has its developers available.
Consumer Reports doesn't accept outside advertising - it'd compromise their ability to do their job.
This is why you want your anti-spyware company making anti-spyware software and nothing else. Of all the software I've installed at one point or another, I remember Gator (along with later versions of Kazaa) being the worst about installing obnoxious unwanted software, not mentioning it, and then the software is a pain in the ass to remove. It clearly SHOULD be targeted by any software out there purporting to keep the user's best interests in mind, but Microsoft the Fox is, once again, guarding the henhouse that is your computer.
Anybody who puts their sole trust in a MS spyware-protector deserves what they get, especially when MS starts buying up spyware companies.
Just because you have a new version doesn't mean you're innovating. Countless industries crank out the same crap every year (auto, entertainment, etc.) There are no real innovations in the newest version that I'd need to have, so I'll save myself the time and expense of an OS upgrade.
If MS doesn't want customers complaining (not sure this is true, but...), they need but support useful products for as long as customers are willing to pay for them.
Re:Dvorak is very good
on
Advocating Dvorak
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I used to swap back to QWERTY for when I came online, IM'ing was tediously slow otherwise
That's interesting - I'd think that IMs would be the perfect way to learn Dvorak. I learned QWERTY by virtue of my extensive BBS use back in the day. In fact, I'm using/. to learn Dvorak today.:)
Coding might have to wait till I'm a bit more proficient. Copy & paste shortcuts are moved and I know that will cause no end of trouble.
Who, exactly, is Europe falling behind? North America, from what I've seen, isn't exactly booming with OSS. Everything I've heard about Asia leads me to believe that they're using jacked copies of MS products bought for a buck. I heard about Brazil threatening to go with Linux governmentally... but did they follow through or was that just the stick to beat the Windows price down? I don't think Africa or Antarctica will be technology leaders any time soon. How's OSS in the land of Oz?
Honestly, I have no clue. To whom is Europe losing the race?
People WILL give up biometric data for $20. People give up their passwords for chocolate readily, and they have some appreciation for what they're good for. I have no doubt that a black hat could take a stack of DVDs out with a fingerprint scanner, trade DVDs for names and thumbprints, and come home with more biometric data than you can shake a copy of the Patriot Act at.
Couch it in a "biometrics data" study on some college campus and you'll have kids LINING UP to give you biometric data, and probably more than that. They sign up for credit cards, giving name, address, income, and a ton more for a t-shirt. I've seen it happen. They run out of shirts before they run out of applicants.
Combine it with Avi Rubin's "get all the identity-theft information you can for $50" class and you've got a world-class identity theft scheme.
I thought the bit about no jurisdiction was a bit tinfoil-hat-esque, but then found this: (please pardon my karma-whoring)
SEC. 102. WAIVER OF LAWS NECESSARY FOR IMPROVEMENT OF BARRIERS AT BORDERS.
Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1103 note) is amended to read as follows:
`(c) Waiver-
`(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.
`(2) NO JUDICIAL REVIEW- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court, administrative agency, or other entity shall have jurisdiction--
`(A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or
`(B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.'.
If you actually look at the final scores, it was very close for the title - less than two points.
At some point, somehow, these kids DID get into MIT. Even the dregs at MIT had to prove themselves. I'm hoping (for their sake) that the MIT kids phoned in the tech writing and display - they could have won Overall on either of those.
The difference is this: MS products cost money, Google products do not. (I don't consider my browser rendering ads I don't read as "payment" - if you do, this isn't a very compelling argument.) You get what you pay for.
Had I paid $100 for Google95 and it crashed as much as Windows95, then it's a fair comparison. Or if GoogleOffice, on which I dropped $250, kept changing their document formats every version such that the default file format in GoogleOffice 5 is unreadable to a user of GoogleOffice 3, I'm right on board with you.
My perception of quality is exactly that: a perception, and value (quality/price) is directly dependent on that perception. A purchased product blows up in my face, I scowl and wonder why I spent my money on a product that doesn't work. A free product designated "Release" blows up in my face, I frown and say, "Well, that's a crappy product" and use a competitor. A free product designated "Beta" blows up in my face, and I shrug and hope they fix the bug soon. It's hard for me to get worked up over a free product not working because its value to me, unless it dorks up my OS or something, can never go below 0/0 (pretend this equals 1, math nerds) - I got exactly what I paid for it: nothing.
Watch out - as soon as you buy that expansion pack, you start paying monthly fees. According to the "*Conditions" on their website: "Should you wish to upgrade to any of the expansion packs monthly subscription and client fees will be added."
Rube Goldberg generally works pretty well for HS-aged teams. They reward smart engineering, creativity, and allow students to express themselves to a certain degree. There's a national contest that you could contact, but I don't know of any reason you couldn't run your own version on a smaller scale if that'd work better for you.
I'm working up a fire mage, so I can somewhat answer these.
You can't queue spells. It's Blizzard's response to macroing, I think. Despite this, I haven't ever been stuck waiting for my fireball to start casting and been slaughtered in the interim. What I do is spam the key for the next spell I want to cast as the first one is nearing completion. I get a few "You can't do that - you're already casting" messages, then my next spell starts. It works alright.
You are locked into your position while casting any non-instant. The spell timers for non-instants tend to go from 1.5 seconds for low-level direct damage spells to 6 seconds for higher level nukes. Other spells have really long timers (10-15 seconds) and it's blizzard's way of saying, "This is a non-combat spell." There are also "channel" spells that do n damage per second for as long as the spell goes on, up to x seconds. If you get hit while casting, you lose a bit off your progress bar, and that 3 second fireball will now take 3.3 seconds. Or 3.6 if you get hit again. Conversely, your magic missile that you channel for three seconds will only run for 2.7, or 2.4. You can have a spell interrupted if you're dazed or knocked down, and you'll have to start over and recast, but in any event, the mana isn't spent until the spell actually fires. Which is slick.
You'll also get talents that make spell y uninterruptible or reduce the cast or cooldown time on spell z. They're pretty well documented at wowvault.ign.com and similar sites.
Casting tactics is about managing casting times, cooldown times, and strategy is about managing mana drain. When you can balance those, you've got it.
As far as the rest of the character, you will still be very squishy, as mages can hope for no better than cloth armor. You'll get some armor boost spells, but don't expect to go toe-to-toe with anybody much bigger than a mangy wolf. Common practice is just to wear equipment that improves Intellect (mana pool size and magic critical hit rate) and Spirit (HP and mana regen rates), as you're better off keeping the bastard at range anyhow. You can freeze him to the ground and run or turn him to a sheep if things go poorly. Melee is a last-ditch, 5-hp-left sort of thing, and wands are widely regarded as a joke told in poor taste.
You will be able to conjure drink (improve mana recovery) for free, which is good, because you will need it. You burn through mana much faster than you recover it, so once you get to about level 10, you'll be drinking heavily (heh) after combat. You sit or kneel, drink your free water, and feel better in a minute. You can also conjure food, but if you're that low on HP, you did it wrong.
I'm told Mages don't PvP at all well, but I'm a carebear, and too low to need to PvP to have something to do, so I can't speak on that first hand.
There's no limitation currently, but I've heard that they're limiting Europeans to Euro servers and North Americans to NA servers. Not sure what they're doing with Oz and Korea.
I've heard from several sources that you can have FIFTY overall characters. This from people who got on early and wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be any other characters named "Bob" or whatever in their realm. Haven't pushed that far myself.
The first two or three days were frustrating. There was serious lag due to (as I understand it) Blizzard underestimating the number of queries to be thrown against its inventory database. Chat and movement were fine, but god help you if you had to buy or sell, loot or drop. Which was a lot. They seem to have that problem sorted out now, as I've not seen anything like that since those first couple days. The login screen is still a bit crippled (showing your character in their underwear instead of with their current equipment (which is a bit embarassing when your fiancee wants to know why your big scary hero is hanging about in his/her underwear)) but it doesn't affect gameplay.
The problem with reading Blizzard forums is that they're filled with people not playing the game. If they're not playing, and they're on the forums, they probably WANT to be playing. If they want to be playing, and aren't, and are an already-angst-ridden teenager (a disproportionate percentage), chances are they're gonna act out. WoW General Forum could just as easily be called Wow Bitching Forum. Happy players don't post in the forums - they're happy to play the game.
I started playing before the game officially went live - retail was to start midnight PST last tuesday and I was on at about 10:30 last Monday. Performance was great that night. Next day it was bad (frequent long lag spikes), day after was horrible (servers down for hours), the rest of the week was okay (occasional short lag spikes). Since then, I've sat in one queue and had no real lag issues, and I play between 5 and 9p, which is prime time, on two of the busiest servers. (The first few to come up were the ones to get the most overpopulated.)
The servers are, by and large, stable. Blizzard recommends new characters join underpopulated servers to avoid technical problems, but even the launch servers are in pretty good shape.
As rash generalizations go, this one's pretty good. There are a lot of stupid people, and a representative portion play WoW. I can think of a few people on my server who I'd like to strangle, and ignore lists go a long way towards that. That said, it's still a generalization, and is still subject to the caveats of any generalization, the most important of which is that it's not a rule.
Maybe I got lucky, or maybe it's more common than I think, but I found a guild in WoW of total strangers who speak in complete words, are generally friendly and willing to help a total stranger who just happened to help out by signing their guild charter.
What I did is bought a copy based on my experience in Beta (which beat the hell out of SWG, my only other MMORPG) and demoed it to a couple coworkers. "Here's a login and password, feel free to create yourself a character and tool around a bit." Obviously, we can't play at the same time, but what it does is give my friends (who I already know, like, and obviously trust with a login/pass) a free trial. If they like it, they can plunk down the 50+(13 to 15 a month), buy a copy and we can all adventure together. If not, they uninstall, recover the 4GB of disk space, and they're not out anything. Now I have my own hand-picked outside community for the cost of a couple hours of game time during which I couldn't play. You can take this same process to your local chapter of IEEE, ACM, Mensa, the AFL-CIO, or whoever else you want.
Sturgeon's Law is as true here as anywhere else, and the trick is finding the other 10%. Shop around for guilds/regular parties or bring them in from elsewhere.
They're not exactly mainstream, but there is a small following dedicated to their Zodiacs. http://www.tapland.com/ and http://www.zodiacgamer.com/ are the two big sites that I know of, though there is a lot of info repeated between the two.
Tapwave only recently started offering the Zodiacs retail - they were only available thru the Tapwave website for the first few months.
It's a PalmOS 5 device that happens to have a slightly different form factor. Or, at least, that's what I tell my boss when I get caught playing Bionic Commando in system architecture review meetings. Then I flip over to the built in memo pad before I show him that I'm actually diligently taking notes.
It's a really nice piece of hardware to have if you're a gamer/gadget geek who was forced to grow up and get a job. Half PDA, half classic game emulator, and it'll run any Palm software compatible with OS5 or earlier, so you can keep all those apps you've become reliant on. Just as soon as GBA emulation gets working, we'll be all set.
It might, but probably not. Zodiac has the widescreen Palm display that's only available (as far as I know) on the Zodiac and one of the PalmOne Tungsten models (the T? I forget.) It also has beefier sound, the ATi graphics processor mentioned in an earlier reply, and the analog stick. If the game or emulator's designed for those, it may have alternate controls for the Treo, but don't be surprised if it doesn't.
There are a bunch of games that were designed for "regular" Palm devices that don't work on the Zodiac because the buttons don't map correctly. I suspect things like this would work similarly the other direction.
There are already single-system emulators (some of the best of which come from http://www.crimsonfire.com/ and http://www.kalemsoft.com/). Their NesEm is pretty good, I haven't used the others personally. The big news here is that it's multisystem - NES, Genesis, GBC all in one emulator.
So while I think there's other issues as to why N64/PSX emulation wouldn't work on Zodiac, RAM isn't an issue.
Yes it is, but not because the chip isn't there. The OS (PalmOS 5.1T, if I remember right) only uses about 14MB for functions typically associated with RAM. (fast temporary storage, basically). The rest (18 or 114 MB, depending on the model of Zodiac) is analogous to hard drive space - long term storage. The thing is, Palm hardware, Tapwave included, uses physical RAM for both types of storage, so it looks on paper like it has plenty of RAM. In actuality, it only has a small portion of the total RAM that it can use in emulation.
This was a pretty big point of contention, and something I verified before I bought my Zodiac - there is no performance difference between the Zodiac1 and Zodiac2 because the "working" RAM is the same - the only difference is "storage" RAM.
And no love for System Shock 1? That was a -classic-. Just exactly as creepy a game that my weak self can play, problem solving, the odd puzzle, and the storyline of its day. Strongly recommended if you haven't played it.
When you get right down to it, this is probably what, copyright violation?
This is most directly covered by 18 U.S.C. 1030: electronic trespass, and does impose criminal liability for "whoever...intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access,". That the user likely falsely identified himself over a telecommunications device probably also makes it wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1343. Copying the software deprived Valve of the most important asset of a software company running a closed-source business model: the secrecy of its source code. It cost them whatever extra development costs they incurred, time lost tracking down the thieves, whatever. Sounds more like a civil suit than criminal, but I'm No Lawyer, so there might be something prosecutable there of which I'm not aware.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll pass on the "ahead of its time" thing.
I bought this a couple years ago at full retail, which was like $300. I've never regretted a minute of it. Selling points:
PalmOS handheld device. Lots and LOTS of software, quite a bit for free or cheap.
SLIM. Half an inch thick, maybe. Goes in my jeans pocket no problem. Easy to carry around.
Game oriented. Analog stick, six buttons, horizontal orientation by default. While the first-party games did suck a fair bit of ass, and second-party support (www.crimsonfire.com and a couple others) was sparse, this thing was BUILT FOR EMULATION. I have SNES, Genesis, NES, GB, GBC and all my legal copies of backup roms for all those systems. Everything from Double Dribble through Golden Axe and Chrono Trigger, and all put together they take up a quarter of the memory. Plus, the de rigeur card games, including a couple decent Hold 'Em games.
Media friendly. The screen has the wide (480x320) aspect, and built in picture and movie viewers and an OS-integrated MP3 player. It's not an iPod-killer by any stretch, but it does the job well.
The memory thing was a bit lame (I got the memory-heavy version), but it's got two SD slots to more than make up for it. I never missed wi-fi, as I find PDA surfing frustrating.
I got one, showed it to a guy I worked with (same demographic) and he bought one. It's not a bad device by any stretch. Serves the need I had: to put work and play on the same pocket-friendly device.
Locking down the extra Zodiac-ey features, specifically the analog stick, didn't help, but it wasn't what killed Tapwave.
The marketing is EXACTLY what went wrong. The Zodiac was marketed as a fancy-ass game platform. They looked like they were going for 12-25, but it was custom built for technophiles age 25-40 who want to play games without carrying around an extra gadget. It's hard to pass off that GBA at work, but my Zodiac passes muster as soon as I show the boss my to-do list, address book, calendar, and all the other standard Palm apps. Sitting in meetings, taking notes looks just like playing Hold 'Em if I can manage to keep from looking disappointed when I get busted out. I'm really surprised the Slashdot people didn't pick up on it more.
My next PDA will probably be much faster with a lot of whiz-bang features, but I will miss the Zodiac when it's gone. Hopefully Tapwave will release the application signing algorithm and we can use it for more while the device still has its developers available.
Consumer Reports doesn't accept outside advertising - it'd compromise their ability to do their job.
This is why you want your anti-spyware company making anti-spyware software and nothing else. Of all the software I've installed at one point or another, I remember Gator (along with later versions of Kazaa) being the worst about installing obnoxious unwanted software, not mentioning it, and then the software is a pain in the ass to remove. It clearly SHOULD be targeted by any software out there purporting to keep the user's best interests in mind, but Microsoft the Fox is, once again, guarding the henhouse that is your computer.
Anybody who puts their sole trust in a MS spyware-protector deserves what they get, especially when MS starts buying up spyware companies.
Can we pretty please title it "Read The Full Bill Act"? I just want senators hollering "RTFB!" at each other.
If government can't be effective, it might as well be entertaining.
Just because you have a new version doesn't mean you're innovating. Countless industries crank out the same crap every year (auto, entertainment, etc.) There are no real innovations in the newest version that I'd need to have, so I'll save myself the time and expense of an OS upgrade.
If MS doesn't want customers complaining (not sure this is true, but...), they need but support useful products for as long as customers are willing to pay for them.
I used to swap back to QWERTY for when I came online, IM'ing was tediously slow otherwise
/. to learn Dvorak today. :)
That's interesting - I'd think that IMs would be the perfect way to learn Dvorak. I learned QWERTY by virtue of my extensive BBS use back in the day. In fact, I'm using
Coding might have to wait till I'm a bit more proficient. Copy & paste shortcuts are moved and I know that will cause no end of trouble.
Who, exactly, is Europe falling behind? North America, from what I've seen, isn't exactly booming with OSS. Everything I've heard about Asia leads me to believe that they're using jacked copies of MS products bought for a buck. I heard about Brazil threatening to go with Linux governmentally... but did they follow through or was that just the stick to beat the Windows price down? I don't think Africa or Antarctica will be technology leaders any time soon. How's OSS in the land of Oz?
Honestly, I have no clue. To whom is Europe losing the race?
How many football fields is that?
(Is the metric standard of somewhat-long measure a football pitch, or is that sort of garbage reserved for us Merkuns?)
People WILL give up biometric data for $20. People give up their passwords for chocolate readily, and they have some appreciation for what they're good for. I have no doubt that a black hat could take a stack of DVDs out with a fingerprint scanner, trade DVDs for names and thumbprints, and come home with more biometric data than you can shake a copy of the Patriot Act at.
Couch it in a "biometrics data" study on some college campus and you'll have kids LINING UP to give you biometric data, and probably more than that. They sign up for credit cards, giving name, address, income, and a ton more for a t-shirt. I've seen it happen. They run out of shirts before they run out of applicants.
Combine it with Avi Rubin's "get all the identity-theft information you can for $50" class and you've got a world-class identity theft scheme.
Yeah, but wouldn't "Electric Bugaboo" fit a lot better?
(please pardon my karma-whoring)
Who watches the watchers?
If you actually look at the final scores, it was very close for the title - less than two points.
At some point, somehow, these kids DID get into MIT. Even the dregs at MIT had to prove themselves. I'm hoping (for their sake) that the MIT kids phoned in the tech writing and display - they could have won Overall on either of those.
The difference is this: MS products cost money, Google products do not. (I don't consider my browser rendering ads I don't read as "payment" - if you do, this isn't a very compelling argument.) You get what you pay for.
Had I paid $100 for Google95 and it crashed as much as Windows95, then it's a fair comparison. Or if GoogleOffice, on which I dropped $250, kept changing their document formats every version such that the default file format in GoogleOffice 5 is unreadable to a user of GoogleOffice 3, I'm right on board with you.
My perception of quality is exactly that: a perception, and value (quality/price) is directly dependent on that perception. A purchased product blows up in my face, I scowl and wonder why I spent my money on a product that doesn't work. A free product designated "Release" blows up in my face, I frown and say, "Well, that's a crappy product" and use a competitor. A free product designated "Beta" blows up in my face, and I shrug and hope they fix the bug soon. It's hard for me to get worked up over a free product not working because its value to me, unless it dorks up my OS or something, can never go below 0/0 (pretend this equals 1, math nerds) - I got exactly what I paid for it: nothing.
The actual scorecard itself is linked to the story posted just earlier, along with grading criteria, etc. Look for "2004 FISMA Scorecard".
Still, I think the people who write these laws should take a long, hard look at the realities of the situation.
I think that the assumption you're making, specifically that legislators understand what's going on and how it works, is false.
Watch out - as soon as you buy that expansion pack, you start paying monthly fees. According to the "*Conditions" on their website: "Should you wish to upgrade to any of the expansion packs monthly subscription and client fees will be added."
The first hit is always free.
Rube Goldberg generally works pretty well for HS-aged teams. They reward smart engineering, creativity, and allow students to express themselves to a certain degree. There's a national contest that you could contact, but I don't know of any reason you couldn't run your own version on a smaller scale if that'd work better for you.
I'm working up a fire mage, so I can somewhat answer these.
You can't queue spells. It's Blizzard's response to macroing, I think. Despite this, I haven't ever been stuck waiting for my fireball to start casting and been slaughtered in the interim. What I do is spam the key for the next spell I want to cast as the first one is nearing completion. I get a few "You can't do that - you're already casting" messages, then my next spell starts. It works alright.
You are locked into your position while casting any non-instant. The spell timers for non-instants tend to go from 1.5 seconds for low-level direct damage spells to 6 seconds for higher level nukes. Other spells have really long timers (10-15 seconds) and it's blizzard's way of saying, "This is a non-combat spell." There are also "channel" spells that do n damage per second for as long as the spell goes on, up to x seconds. If you get hit while casting, you lose a bit off your progress bar, and that 3 second fireball will now take 3.3 seconds. Or 3.6 if you get hit again. Conversely, your magic missile that you channel for three seconds will only run for 2.7, or 2.4. You can have a spell interrupted if you're dazed or knocked down, and you'll have to start over and recast, but in any event, the mana isn't spent until the spell actually fires. Which is slick.
You'll also get talents that make spell y uninterruptible or reduce the cast or cooldown time on spell z. They're pretty well documented at wowvault.ign.com and similar sites.
Casting tactics is about managing casting times, cooldown times, and strategy is about managing mana drain. When you can balance those, you've got it.
As far as the rest of the character, you will still be very squishy, as mages can hope for no better than cloth armor. You'll get some armor boost spells, but don't expect to go toe-to-toe with anybody much bigger than a mangy wolf. Common practice is just to wear equipment that improves Intellect (mana pool size and magic critical hit rate) and Spirit (HP and mana regen rates), as you're better off keeping the bastard at range anyhow. You can freeze him to the ground and run or turn him to a sheep if things go poorly. Melee is a last-ditch, 5-hp-left sort of thing, and wands are widely regarded as a joke told in poor taste.
You will be able to conjure drink (improve mana recovery) for free, which is good, because you will need it. You burn through mana much faster than you recover it, so once you get to about level 10, you'll be drinking heavily (heh) after combat. You sit or kneel, drink your free water, and feel better in a minute. You can also conjure food, but if you're that low on HP, you did it wrong.
I'm told Mages don't PvP at all well, but I'm a carebear, and too low to need to PvP to have something to do, so I can't speak on that first hand.
Hope that answers your questions.
There's no limitation currently, but I've heard that they're limiting Europeans to Euro servers and North Americans to NA servers. Not sure what they're doing with Oz and Korea.
I've heard from several sources that you can have FIFTY overall characters. This from people who got on early and wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be any other characters named "Bob" or whatever in their realm. Haven't pushed that far myself.
The first two or three days were frustrating. There was serious lag due to (as I understand it) Blizzard underestimating the number of queries to be thrown against its inventory database. Chat and movement were fine, but god help you if you had to buy or sell, loot or drop. Which was a lot. They seem to have that problem sorted out now, as I've not seen anything like that since those first couple days. The login screen is still a bit crippled (showing your character in their underwear instead of with their current equipment (which is a bit embarassing when your fiancee wants to know why your big scary hero is hanging about in his/her underwear)) but it doesn't affect gameplay.
The problem with reading Blizzard forums is that they're filled with people not playing the game. If they're not playing, and they're on the forums, they probably WANT to be playing. If they want to be playing, and aren't, and are an already-angst-ridden teenager (a disproportionate percentage), chances are they're gonna act out. WoW General Forum could just as easily be called Wow Bitching Forum. Happy players don't post in the forums - they're happy to play the game.
I started playing before the game officially went live - retail was to start midnight PST last tuesday and I was on at about 10:30 last Monday. Performance was great that night. Next day it was bad (frequent long lag spikes), day after was horrible (servers down for hours), the rest of the week was okay (occasional short lag spikes). Since then, I've sat in one queue and had no real lag issues, and I play between 5 and 9p, which is prime time, on two of the busiest servers. (The first few to come up were the ones to get the most overpopulated.)
The servers are, by and large, stable. Blizzard recommends new characters join underpopulated servers to avoid technical problems, but even the launch servers are in pretty good shape.
As rash generalizations go, this one's pretty good. There are a lot of stupid people, and a representative portion play WoW. I can think of a few people on my server who I'd like to strangle, and ignore lists go a long way towards that. That said, it's still a generalization, and is still subject to the caveats of any generalization, the most important of which is that it's not a rule.
Maybe I got lucky, or maybe it's more common than I think, but I found a guild in WoW of total strangers who speak in complete words, are generally friendly and willing to help a total stranger who just happened to help out by signing their guild charter.
What I did is bought a copy based on my experience in Beta (which beat the hell out of SWG, my only other MMORPG) and demoed it to a couple coworkers. "Here's a login and password, feel free to create yourself a character and tool around a bit." Obviously, we can't play at the same time, but what it does is give my friends (who I already know, like, and obviously trust with a login/pass) a free trial. If they like it, they can plunk down the 50+(13 to 15 a month), buy a copy and we can all adventure together. If not, they uninstall, recover the 4GB of disk space, and they're not out anything. Now I have my own hand-picked outside community for the cost of a couple hours of game time during which I couldn't play. You can take this same process to your local chapter of IEEE, ACM, Mensa, the AFL-CIO, or whoever else you want.
Sturgeon's Law is as true here as anywhere else, and the trick is finding the other 10%. Shop around for guilds/regular parties or bring them in from elsewhere.
They're not exactly mainstream, but there is a small following dedicated to their Zodiacs. http://www.tapland.com/ and http://www.zodiacgamer.com/ are the two big sites that I know of, though there is a lot of info repeated between the two.
Tapwave only recently started offering the Zodiacs retail - they were only available thru the Tapwave website for the first few months.
It's a PalmOS 5 device that happens to have a slightly different form factor. Or, at least, that's what I tell my boss when I get caught playing Bionic Commando in system architecture review meetings. Then I flip over to the built in memo pad before I show him that I'm actually diligently taking notes.
It's a really nice piece of hardware to have if you're a gamer/gadget geek who was forced to grow up and get a job. Half PDA, half classic game emulator, and it'll run any Palm software compatible with OS5 or earlier, so you can keep all those apps you've become reliant on. Just as soon as GBA emulation gets working, we'll be all set.
It might, but probably not. Zodiac has the widescreen Palm display that's only available (as far as I know) on the Zodiac and one of the PalmOne Tungsten models (the T? I forget.) It also has beefier sound, the ATi graphics processor mentioned in an earlier reply, and the analog stick. If the game or emulator's designed for those, it may have alternate controls for the Treo, but don't be surprised if it doesn't.
There are a bunch of games that were designed for "regular" Palm devices that don't work on the Zodiac because the buttons don't map correctly. I suspect things like this would work similarly the other direction.
There are already single-system emulators (some of the best of which come from http://www.crimsonfire.com/ and http://www.kalemsoft.com/). Their NesEm is pretty good, I haven't used the others personally. The big news here is that it's multisystem - NES, Genesis, GBC all in one emulator.
So while I think there's other issues as to why N64/PSX emulation wouldn't work on Zodiac, RAM isn't an issue.
Yes it is, but not because the chip isn't there. The OS (PalmOS 5.1T, if I remember right) only uses about 14MB for functions typically associated with RAM. (fast temporary storage, basically). The rest (18 or 114 MB, depending on the model of Zodiac) is analogous to hard drive space - long term storage. The thing is, Palm hardware, Tapwave included, uses physical RAM for both types of storage, so it looks on paper like it has plenty of RAM. In actuality, it only has a small portion of the total RAM that it can use in emulation.
This was a pretty big point of contention, and something I verified before I bought my Zodiac - there is no performance difference between the Zodiac1 and Zodiac2 because the "working" RAM is the same - the only difference is "storage" RAM.
And no love for System Shock 1? That was a -classic-. Just exactly as creepy a game that my weak self can play, problem solving, the odd puzzle, and the storyline of its day. Strongly recommended if you haven't played it.
When you get right down to it, this is probably what, copyright violation?
This is most directly covered by 18 U.S.C. 1030: electronic trespass, and does impose criminal liability for "whoever...intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access,". That the user likely falsely identified himself over a telecommunications device probably also makes it wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1343. Copying the software deprived Valve of the most important asset of a software company running a closed-source business model: the secrecy of its source code. It cost them whatever extra development costs they incurred, time lost tracking down the thieves, whatever. Sounds more like a civil suit than criminal, but I'm No Lawyer, so there might be something prosecutable there of which I'm not aware.