...as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
no one? really?
As a Vonage subscriber this deeply saddens me. Hopefully some resolution surfaces before all their customer base transfers to other carriers. That would suck.
I think a great analogy for this is the automotive industry: the people that design and build the engine are not the same people that design the dashboard/body/etc. The software created by the OS community are great engines. That's it.
While user testing is the best way to develop user friendly apps, there are known values and 'best practices' available to GUI designers that the hard core coder is not familiar with. Millions of dollars worth of university research is poured into understanding users and a lot of that info is freely available. Just using the basics can already improve many apps out there.
So, 2 things need to happen: 1- the OSS community needs to breed/recruit designers with a background in UI development. 2- Integration of the code and the UI needs to be easy to prototype and finish. As a designer, I know layout, but I don't know anything about windowing or developing in APIs. So I would need another piece of software (like VB or at the least the Design View of Access) where I can move around the widgets and components and graphics then mesh it all together later.
Considering most "viruses" exploit holes in Windows code, default settings or other circumstances common to a Windows box, I would be loath to entrust my anti-virus needs to the same people.
Symantec (Norton) existed well before the current virus plagued computing environment and I am fairly certain they will exist after MS releases their AV product.
Besides, if it's as useless as their malicious program remover - I don't think anyone has reason to worry about the future of AV providers.
As for integrating items with FireFox, I would be skeptical of a more "feature rich" browser. I agree with the Mozilla Foundation's assertion that their job is to provide a stable product that the end user can easily add pertinent features to. Once you start making features standard, you walk towards the cliff that Netscape fell off of.
I have different extensions installed on each instance of Firefox across 4 machines, suited to what I so with that computer. IMHO it doesn't get much better than that.
The infrastructure exists where lines can be added to the poles or underground conduits, but doing so requires construction crews, permits, building materials to repair the area after the install, and then you have to contract with each end-user to wire from the pole/coduit to the house.
The expenses are far too high for that. Leaseing out the lines provides essentially the same capability as running your own without nearly as much hassle so smaller companies fight for the ability to do that.
The lines are essentially owned not by the government but by the company that purchased the rights and equipment to build them. So the government steps in anyway to try and promote competition.
Once upon a time there was only 1 telephone company and they laid down all of the infrastructure that we use today. Because the American culture fears a monopoly even more than WMDs, the company was broken up into what we call the regional baby bells in order to protect consumers.
Regulation is a means to keep the Baby Bells from recombining into a telecom giant that can raise the monthly telephone access fee too high for grandma to afford a phone.
In the US, owning and maintaining wiring, be it telephone, coax or fiber, is prohibitively expensive to the point where you must be a huge company in order to do it. Normally, that would mean that the company that owned the wires would be able to charge as much as they wanted for service so long as another company didn't build up a network on their turf.
Regulation, in theory, is meant to allow smaller companies that otherwise could not exist to access the network of the larger company for a fee (think wholesale costs) and then provide services over those lines (retail) to the same customers that the large company is courting in order to stimulate competition and give consumers a choice. The idea is that without competition, my telephone company can charge me ridiculous amounts and there would be nothing I could do about it because they are the only game in town.
Regulation exists as a series of rules which restrict how much line owners can charge for access to the network and a minimum level of access they must provide. It also covers other things such as maximums they can charge end-users and codes of conduct they must follow.
The telephone companies are far more restricted than cable because telephone was always seen as a necessity and cable a luxury. Therefore if you wanted cable, you pay what the cable company asks and that was that. TV is also made freely available over the air to a much lesser extent.
When the telephone companies compete with an optional, luxury (open to debate) service such as internet access, they should be on a level playing field with cable. However, the FCC which governs the telephone and cable industries (as well as radio, wireless services and movies) is a political body and subject to lobbying and frankly, the cable companies have more money to throw around.
It is possible to have your text separate from your layout, which is really how a page should be designed anyway. That way a simple javascript or php script can detect the device/browser being used to call the page and select the proper layout to encase the text in.
That way you do not need to have separate navigation trees and completely different text sources for visitors with special needs or mobile browsers.
This separation is not only good for accessibility, but it makes modifying your pages 10 times easier because you have everything centralized. You can easily add different levels of complexity to your layout.
There is no reason to have your text and your layout hard coded into the same page anymore.
I realize that it is sexier to talk about SLI in terms of improved game performance, but has anyone looked at how this will effect the other areas of hardcore video usage such as large Photoshop graphics (600 dpi EPS docs for example), Maya renderings, video editing etc.?
I admit that I have neither the time, nor experience to properly execute this, but I would find the most value in a study which involved either a meta analysis of server logs and setups from major ISPs, online vendors and other service providers or a double blind all-out hack-fest in which an equal number of IIS and Apache systems (which is what we're really testing here) were attacked, probed and analyzed.
These 2 setups running in tandem would provide the most useful and hard to fudge data. Getting the server admins and legal departments of eBay, Amazon, AOL, Google and others to actually divulge any information would be a feat within itself but remarkably valuable.
Simply comparing two hypothetical setups and measuring patches (time/number) leaves way too much room for marketing hype and tainted research. Give me some real-world data and some hard core researchers who know server security and we can have a study worth funding.
The * is explained at the end of the release: *Based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners in North America.
I would take this to mean that they pressed 1,000,000 units and have 400K left. I really don't want to see that many people trying to log on and ruin my gameing experiance...
I know the Robo 1 was a huge sales hit over christmas and I saw the thing dancing in the Discovery Channel store but I don't understand why it deserves so much attention.
If someone has this thing can you please explain the usefulness of it? Makeing it dance would get old pretty quick and I don't have a cat for it to chase...
Norton: And I thought someone was going to finally put in print how ineffective Norton Antivirus 2004 is at removing spy-ware. Spyware protection was a new toy in 2k4. The detection engine gets a B- and the removal tool gets a F.
Does anyone have any experience with Norton Internet Security 2K5?
Free (as in beer) Advice:
Install SpyBot and AdAware SE along side of your antivirus. Also, check http://housecall.trendmicro.com for a periodic antivirus sweep to make sure your installed antivirus is doing its job (works with firefox).
Install HijackThis. At the first sign of trouble run AdAware, then SpyBot, then Housecall. Reboot, close all open apps, then run Hijack this and post the output file in your favorite "Help, My computer is possessed" message board and follow online advice.
Or you could just install Linux (Mandrake 10 = very yes) and FireFox and be done with it.
If two crafters follow the same template for an item, the two resulting items will be identical at the start. There are "armor kits" and enchanting crafts which can then alter the items. Armor kits add more protection. Enchanting adds other attributes like spirit, intellect, speed, etc.
Compared to games of a lesser scale, the buggy-ness is minimal and isolated. EA Games released several (7 total I think) patches for BF1942 in its first year after retail in order to get the bugs worked out of the multiplayer segment. As for the loss of $15/month, Blizzard includes a free month with the purchase of the game already so you really aren't losing anything in this first month while they smooth things out.
-KS
The use or sale of items is entirely up to you. The way I go about it is, if I can't use it, I offer it up in the realm chat. If no one replies or makes an offer, I sell it to an NPC or hang on to it until I'm in a zone with lower level players and try again. Since I don't have much storage space on me and I can never remember what I put in the bank, I tend to just sell it. There are people (myself included) who will just give things away, mostly because its through that charity that I got to where I am so quickly in both the release and beta phases.
I don't know about setting up vending booths. I don't think that is available in-game (yet?). In some cities there are auction houses where you can post a bunch of items ebay-style and then come back later to see the results. Most of my transactions are handled on a one-to-one basis although I have mailed friends who have started late on my server some start up cash and equipment.
It's a very collaborative community so far. But then again, all of the DAoC and SWG peeps haven't made the transition yet. I hope it can keep its friendly and collaborative environment although that may be a function of the relatively low level of experience all around.
Each server is a seperate instance of the WoW globe so your not actually on the same planet as the other 498,000 players. The people on your server will become your community. As it stands, I run into several players repeatedly. Eventually, through spontaneous grouping to complete a quest or attempting to buy/sell items, you will meet people.
The short answer is "very different" from the situation you described.
The long answer is: In WoW the purpose of the major trades is to allow you to create items of value for yourself and others in the game. They are a means of making money, yes, but useful in-and-of themselves. A Tailor can make bags which are necessary to carry more items than your backpack can fit. Engineers can make weapons which they can use and sell, and so on.
Cooking and Fishing are considered minor trades and do not count toward the 2 trade max.
Crafting in WoW is a tiered system. You have to find a NPC Journeyman in your craft (in and around cities) and they need to "train" you. This is a 1 second thing whereby they confirm that this is 1 of your 2 possible trades. This initial training is free.
From then on you visit a trainer periodically to buy new templates for the stuff you want to craft. Most templates have a minimum of required experience in the craft in order for you to train in them. Trade experience is awarded by crafting things in that trade on a tiered system whereby as things get easier for you, you gain less experience from completing them. In the beginning, most items have a 1:1 craft to experience ratio and there are several items of immediate use that you can make with the initial training.
Crafts also require tools, just as thread, skinning knives, dyes, etc. Those can be purchased from other NPC merchants, given to you (or sold) by other players and dropped by MoBs. MoBs also tend to drop templates for your trade (and all the others) from time to time giving you something to make that few others can.
Once you reach level 75 in your trade, you can visit an Expert (slightly harder to find than journeymen) in that trade to advance to more difficult templates, and arguably more useful items. Once you have risen beyond Expert level, there is an Artisan in your trade somewhere (rare) and continue on. I have even seen, in the case of tailoring, a trainer specific to my class that allows me to create even more specialized materials - whenever I reach level 240 in tailoring that is.
I hope that gives you a good idea of what you can expect from trade crafting.
This is the first game to get me to stop playing Battlefield 1942.
I was among the 500K that joined the open beta 2 weeks before launch, and I was then among the next horde of people to sprint out and buy the thing on opening day. The addiction has set in and I'm comfortable with that. My fiance is a different story all together.
There have been reports of server issues, characters getting stuck and other buggy-ness. I play from 2 different machines on 2 seperate networks and rarely experiance any major issues. Sometimes the animations do get stuck tho, but thats nothing logging out and back in can't fix.
The game rocks and I usually hate MMORPGs.
So if you're running through and you see a human warlock named Kaiser, wave. See you in-game.
So my read is that Nintendo is concerned that some kid will find this off of Google or something and mistake it for an official Ninetedo site? I highly doubt that.
IMHO there is no trademark infringement here. A member is stating a preference, not using the names to draw traffic or defraud anyone.
I posted some pictures from a friend's wedding recently at my site. Since then I have been flooded with hits from all over the east coast. I think I pretty much make up that.5% with FireFox.
Here is the breakdown from AWStats (cleaned up to rem "junk characters" and pass the lameness filter): MSIE 36728 76.7% NETSCAPE 1724 3.6% OTHERS 9416 19.6%
Mozilla 7596 15.8 %
Unknown 1153 2.4 %
FireFox 278 0.5 %
Galeon 257 0.5 %
Safari 132 0.2 %
Simple firefox solution for the time being... "View in IE" addon. It adds an item to the right-click menu that says "view this page in IE" which basically does what it says. All desktop references and startmenu IE links have been removed.
Granted, we will not be IE-free until people get off of their @#$%@#$ and write compliant code instead of proprietary.
Slashdot Mirror
no one? really?
As a Vonage subscriber this deeply saddens me. Hopefully some resolution surfaces before all their customer base transfers to other carriers. That would suck.
Thanks for posting something with some real information. KS
Not alot of details about what chip families are effected... Does it cross over to AMD chips?
I think a great analogy for this is the automotive industry: the people that design and build the engine are not the same people that design the dashboard/body/etc. The software created by the OS community are great engines. That's it.
While user testing is the best way to develop user friendly apps, there are known values and 'best practices' available to GUI designers that the hard core coder is not familiar with. Millions of dollars worth of university research is poured into understanding users and a lot of that info is freely available. Just using the basics can already improve many apps out there.
So, 2 things need to happen: 1- the OSS community needs to breed/recruit designers with a background in UI development. 2- Integration of the code and the UI needs to be easy to prototype and finish. As a designer, I know layout, but I don't know anything about windowing or developing in APIs. So I would need another piece of software (like VB or at the least the Design View of Access) where I can move around the widgets and components and graphics then mesh it all together later.
Considering most "viruses" exploit holes in Windows code, default settings or other circumstances common to a Windows box, I would be loath to entrust my anti-virus needs to the same people.
Symantec (Norton) existed well before the current virus plagued computing environment and I am fairly certain they will exist after MS releases their AV product.
Besides, if it's as useless as their malicious program remover - I don't think anyone has reason to worry about the future of AV providers.
As for integrating items with FireFox, I would be skeptical of a more "feature rich" browser. I agree with the Mozilla Foundation's assertion that their job is to provide a stable product that the end user can easily add pertinent features to. Once you start making features standard, you walk towards the cliff that Netscape fell off of.
I have different extensions installed on each instance of Firefox across 4 machines, suited to what I so with that computer. IMHO it doesn't get much better than that.
KS
The infrastructure exists where lines can be added to the poles or underground conduits, but doing so requires construction crews, permits, building materials to repair the area after the install, and then you have to contract with each end-user to wire from the pole/coduit to the house.
The expenses are far too high for that. Leaseing out the lines provides essentially the same capability as running your own without nearly as much hassle so smaller companies fight for the ability to do that.
The lines are essentially owned not by the government but by the company that purchased the rights and equipment to build them. So the government steps in anyway to try and promote competition.
Once upon a time there was only 1 telephone company and they laid down all of the infrastructure that we use today. Because the American culture fears a monopoly even more than WMDs, the company was broken up into what we call the regional baby bells in order to protect consumers.
Regulation is a means to keep the Baby Bells from recombining into a telecom giant that can raise the monthly telephone access fee too high for grandma to afford a phone.
In the US, owning and maintaining wiring, be it telephone, coax or fiber, is prohibitively expensive to the point where you must be a huge company in order to do it. Normally, that would mean that the company that owned the wires would be able to charge as much as they wanted for service so long as another company didn't build up a network on their turf.
Regulation, in theory, is meant to allow smaller companies that otherwise could not exist to access the network of the larger company for a fee (think wholesale costs) and then provide services over those lines (retail) to the same customers that the large company is courting in order to stimulate competition and give consumers a choice. The idea is that without competition, my telephone company can charge me ridiculous amounts and there would be nothing I could do about it because they are the only game in town.
Regulation exists as a series of rules which restrict how much line owners can charge for access to the network and a minimum level of access they must provide. It also covers other things such as maximums they can charge end-users and codes of conduct they must follow.
The telephone companies are far more restricted than cable because telephone was always seen as a necessity and cable a luxury. Therefore if you wanted cable, you pay what the cable company asks and that was that. TV is also made freely available over the air to a much lesser extent.
When the telephone companies compete with an optional, luxury (open to debate) service such as internet access, they should be on a level playing field with cable. However, the FCC which governs the telephone and cable industries (as well as radio, wireless services and movies) is a political body and subject to lobbying and frankly, the cable companies have more money to throw around.
I forget what the questions was now.
-KS
It is possible to have your text separate from your layout, which is really how a page should be designed anyway. That way a simple javascript or php script can detect the device/browser being used to call the page and select the proper layout to encase the text in.
That way you do not need to have separate navigation trees and completely different text sources for visitors with special needs or mobile browsers.
This separation is not only good for accessibility, but it makes modifying your pages 10 times easier because you have everything centralized. You can easily add different levels of complexity to your layout.
There is no reason to have your text and your layout hard coded into the same page anymore.
-KS
I realize that it is sexier to talk about SLI in terms of improved game performance, but has anyone looked at how this will effect the other areas of hardcore video usage such as large Photoshop graphics (600 dpi EPS docs for example), Maya renderings, video editing etc.?
-KS
I admit that I have neither the time, nor experience to properly execute this, but I would find the most value in a study which involved either a meta analysis of server logs and setups from major ISPs, online vendors and other service providers or a double blind all-out hack-fest in which an equal number of IIS and Apache systems (which is what we're really testing here) were attacked, probed and analyzed.
These 2 setups running in tandem would provide the most useful and hard to fudge data. Getting the server admins and legal departments of eBay, Amazon, AOL, Google and others to actually divulge any information would be a feat within itself but remarkably valuable.
Simply comparing two hypothetical setups and measuring patches (time/number) leaves way too much room for marketing hype and tainted research. Give me some real-world data and some hard core researchers who know server security and we can have a study worth funding.
-KS
The * is explained at the end of the release:
*Based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners in North America.
I would take this to mean that they pressed 1,000,000 units and have 400K left. I really don't want to see that many people trying to log on and ruin my gameing experiance...
-KS
I know the Robo 1 was a huge sales hit over christmas and I saw the thing dancing in the Discovery Channel store but I don't understand why it deserves so much attention.
If someone has this thing can you please explain the usefulness of it? Makeing it dance would get old pretty quick and I don't have a cat for it to chase...
--KS
Norton:
And I thought someone was going to finally put in print how ineffective Norton Antivirus 2004 is at removing spy-ware. Spyware protection was a new toy in 2k4. The detection engine gets a B- and the removal tool gets a F.
Does anyone have any experience with Norton Internet Security 2K5?
Free (as in beer) Advice:
Install SpyBot and AdAware SE along side of your antivirus. Also, check http://housecall.trendmicro.com for a periodic antivirus sweep to make sure your installed antivirus is doing its job (works with firefox).
Install HijackThis. At the first sign of trouble run AdAware, then SpyBot, then Housecall. Reboot, close all open apps, then run Hijack this and post the output file in your favorite "Help, My computer is possessed" message board and follow online advice.
Or you could just install Linux (Mandrake 10 = very yes) and FireFox and be done with it.
-KS
If two crafters follow the same template for an item, the two resulting items will be identical at the start. There are "armor kits" and enchanting crafts which can then alter the items. Armor kits add more protection. Enchanting adds other attributes like spirit, intellect, speed, etc.
-KS
Compared to games of a lesser scale, the buggy-ness is minimal and isolated. EA Games released several (7 total I think) patches for BF1942 in its first year after retail in order to get the bugs worked out of the multiplayer segment. As for the loss of $15/month, Blizzard includes a free month with the purchase of the game already so you really aren't losing anything in this first month while they smooth things out. -KS
The use or sale of items is entirely up to you. The way I go about it is, if I can't use it, I offer it up in the realm chat. If no one replies or makes an offer, I sell it to an NPC or hang on to it until I'm in a zone with lower level players and try again. Since I don't have much storage space on me and I can never remember what I put in the bank, I tend to just sell it. There are people (myself included) who will just give things away, mostly because its through that charity that I got to where I am so quickly in both the release and beta phases.
I don't know about setting up vending booths. I don't think that is available in-game (yet?). In some cities there are auction houses where you can post a bunch of items ebay-style and then come back later to see the results. Most of my transactions are handled on a one-to-one basis although I have mailed friends who have started late on my server some start up cash and equipment.
It's a very collaborative community so far. But then again, all of the DAoC and SWG peeps haven't made the transition yet. I hope it can keep its friendly and collaborative environment although that may be a function of the relatively low level of experience all around.
I think that answers your questions...
-KS
Each server is a seperate instance of the WoW globe so your not actually on the same planet as the other 498,000 players. The people on your server will become your community. As it stands, I run into several players repeatedly. Eventually, through spontaneous grouping to complete a quest or attempting to buy/sell items, you will meet people.
-KS
The short answer is "very different" from the situation you described.
The long answer is: In WoW the purpose of the major trades is to allow you to create items of value for yourself and others in the game. They are a means of making money, yes, but useful in-and-of themselves. A Tailor can make bags which are necessary to carry more items than your backpack can fit. Engineers can make weapons which they can use and sell, and so on.
Cooking and Fishing are considered minor trades and do not count toward the 2 trade max.
Crafting in WoW is a tiered system. You have to find a NPC Journeyman in your craft (in and around cities) and they need to "train" you. This is a 1 second thing whereby they confirm that this is 1 of your 2 possible trades. This initial training is free.
From then on you visit a trainer periodically to buy new templates for the stuff you want to craft. Most templates have a minimum of required experience in the craft in order for you to train in them. Trade experience is awarded by crafting things in that trade on a tiered system whereby as things get easier for you, you gain less experience from completing them. In the beginning, most items have a 1:1 craft to experience ratio and there are several items of immediate use that you can make with the initial training.
Crafts also require tools, just as thread, skinning knives, dyes, etc. Those can be purchased from other NPC merchants, given to you (or sold) by other players and dropped by MoBs. MoBs also tend to drop templates for your trade (and all the others) from time to time giving you something to make that few others can.
Once you reach level 75 in your trade, you can visit an Expert (slightly harder to find than journeymen) in that trade to advance to more difficult templates, and arguably more useful items. Once you have risen beyond Expert level, there is an Artisan in your trade somewhere (rare) and continue on. I have even seen, in the case of tailoring, a trainer specific to my class that allows me to create even more specialized materials - whenever I reach level 240 in tailoring that is.
I hope that gives you a good idea of what you can expect from trade crafting.
--KS
This is the first game to get me to stop playing Battlefield 1942.
I was among the 500K that joined the open beta 2 weeks before launch, and I was then among the next horde of people to sprint out and buy the thing on opening day. The addiction has set in and I'm comfortable with that. My fiance is a different story all together.
There have been reports of server issues, characters getting stuck and other buggy-ness. I play from 2 different machines on 2 seperate networks and rarely experiance any major issues. Sometimes the animations do get stuck tho, but thats nothing logging out and back in can't fix.
The game rocks and I usually hate MMORPGs.
So if you're running through and you see a human warlock named Kaiser, wave. See you in-game.
-KS
SuicideGirls is porn??? And all this time I just went there for the articles... sigh.
Thanks for the post.
So my read is that Nintendo is concerned that some kid will find this off of Google or something and mistake it for an official Ninetedo site? I highly doubt that.
IMHO there is no trademark infringement here. A member is stating a preference, not using the names to draw traffic or defraud anyone.
-KS
Here is the link to the Windows Media Player feed from the radio station's site:
http://rope.kgoam810.com/archive/kgo09.asxStern starts in about half way through. Enjoy.
-KSI posted some pictures from a friend's wedding recently at my site. Since then I have been flooded with hits from all over the east coast. I think I pretty much make up that .5% with FireFox.
Here is the breakdown from AWStats (cleaned up to rem "junk characters" and pass the lameness filter):
MSIE 36728 76.7%
NETSCAPE 1724 3.6%
OTHERS 9416 19.6%
Mozilla 7596 15.8 %
Unknown 1153 2.4 %
FireFox 278 0.5 %
Galeon 257 0.5 %
Safari 132 0.2 %
Simple firefox solution for the time being... "View in IE" addon. It adds an item to the right-click menu that says "view this page in IE" which basically does what it says. All desktop references and startmenu IE links have been removed.
Granted, we will not be IE-free until people get off of their @#$%@#$ and write compliant code instead of proprietary.
-KS
reply sent via robspages at gmail
Thanx
-KS