From my experiences, and this is only a very rough majority of players, but most of the Alliance players are prepubscent idiots and most of the Horde players are older and more mature types, and generally more hard core gamers.
This is also just random speculation I guess, but I am assuming my observations are helped along by the fact that more serious gamers are engaged enough to want to play the "bad guys"
I've also noticed that Alliance AH's have much more expensive tradegoods - the whole Alliance economy tends to be badly jilted for some reason, and I am not sure if it just because of Alliance being significantly larger in number than the Horde is (the servers I play on are usually around 1.3:1.0 in favour of Alliance). Presumably, the same players who prefer Alliance also buy gold from the chinese sweatshops, which grind the game areas much harder to generate more cash. Bad inflation may be the cause.
It does, but it's well known that with HD-DVD you keep more of your fair use rights than you do with Blu-Ray. Sony won't allow people to stream data from a Blu-Ray over a network, for instance. Microsoft are fighting that because they want the home network to be a reality, it lets them sell more OS product.
Stuff that matters: Microsoft is the lesser of two evils on this one. The Microsoft model is more open source friendly, heck, at least you can emulate Windows from an open source OS and interoperate with the new schema. Sony on the other hand despises the whole PC arena (yes I know they make laptops), because it's not their territory and so they're trying very hard to keep Blu-Ray from being controlled in this space by anyone but themselves.
* giving computer manufacturers the flexibility to contract with competing software developers and place their middleware products on Microsoft's operating system;
and
Microsoft seems to be in violation of resolution two.
Well, no, they aren't. Computer manufacturers can put as much Blu-Ray in their gear as they want. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD aren't mutually exclusive, in the same way that DVD+R and DVD-R aren't mutually exclusive. MS are just going to give a Windows discount to OEMs for any box with a HD-DVD in it. It could even have a HD-DVD and a Blu-Ray and still get the discount.
It's not like MS telling OEM's they weren't allowed to install Netscape. There's nothing in this that stops Sony from just cutting the cost of Blu-Ray and making it cheaper than a HD-DVD + discount for an OEM. And if Sony can't do that it just makes HD-DVD a more cost effective solution. Wow, manufacturers competing on price for our business. That makes Adam Smith a happy panda.
Also, whose arse did you pull that "exclusive agreements" comment from? Way to go with the FUD without backing it up. MS makes exclusive agreements constantly, it's a part of day to day business.
Totally different - well, the end is really the same but this time MS won't be in any legal hot water.
Why?
Because they're not restricting OEM's from doing anything. An OEM could theoretically bundle HD-DVD support *and* Blu-Ray and still get a rebate from MS.
Way back in the day, MS wasn't telling OEM's they had to supply MSIE - they were telling OEM's they couldn't supply Netscape. This new trick is just telling OEM's they get cheaper Windows if they supply MSIE along with it. Slightly less evil. And, in terms of the great absolutes of justice, it's legal.
Now, I don't have a problem with this, because from what I understand Sony isn't keen on you being able to read data from a Blu-Ray disk in a PC. Microsoft, however, wants users to keep and use their Fair-Use rights (namely, so they can stream to a 360, but so long as I keep more of my rights, I'm cool with that).
Also, if the DRM is cracked on either of these technologies, more so the better for humanity.
As far as version release articles go on/., this is not a horrible one.
But, since it wasn't explicitly mentioned, aMSN is an open source MSN Messenger IM clone. And, like many other/. product releases, I never saw it before today and I had no idea what it was for without researching it.
In the interests of salesmanship
on
Why Use GTK+?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yet another slashdot article referring to a product without explaining the purpose of said product.
GTK+ is a toolkit for GIMP. GIMP is an open sourced graphics manipulation package (think Photoshop but free as in speech and beer).
Actually those products were named back in the early 90's when the bubble was raging and brands were rising and falling like an ocean.
The reason we still have those names is because they are now winning brands. It was redundant perhaps to even mention their function, they're so well known. Not so with GIMP, in fact, it took me a long time of glossing over Slashdot articles until I worked out what it actually did. It's the same with a whole bunch of other release articles on Slashdot - Ruby on Rails, Python, things like that. I have to go look elsewhere from Slashdot if I even want to know what these things are. Given the purpose of a release article is to incite adoption, they could do better I think.
Microsoft's premier word processor is called "Word" and the premier office package is called "Office". Microsoft's new naming standards are following the most sensible route, with products like MS AntiSpyware and MS AntiVirus. Brand building is hard, so if you can get away with not doing it, or levering an existing brand, why not do that?
Some of the more businessminded open source software is also reasonably named, like Open Office. OOo, as many people like to refer to it as, continues to do the brand developement efforts severe damage. Tell a pleb: "You need to get Open Office!" or "You need to get OOo!". Which will sell your case better?
The open source community does not have the same financial backing to build advertising and marketing for brand development. I would find Linux a lot better to use if the names all gave a good hint as to the function.
Funny you should mention that it pisses you off, quite appropriate really, Intel calls these new performance processors the PEE range. Pentium Extreme Edition. WTF. I hope the little case badge is yellow and says PEE on it in big letters. I want my computer to have PEE in it. NOT!
You could always just print directly onto the letter sized envelope you intend to send through the mail.
If concerned about jamming, please only place the intended mailing contents into the envelope after you have printed on it.
Having once had the questionable honour of servicing printers that have been used for reprinting label sheets and peeling stickly labels off rollers that should never had adhesive applied to them, I would strongly suggest the whole-envelope printing option.
Or, as people have many times said here, use a dot matrix (although the risk of adhesive related printer ruining is almost unchanged there).
Of course, if you RTFA, the article stipulates that ISPs would be required by law to only allow boxes with mandatory government spyware running connect to the internet.
The government is unlikely to be interested in producing a spyware module compatible with your favourite flavour linux distro, although industry uproar might make a Mac version available. Many linux and BSD clients under this system would be completely blocked from using the net.
Writing spyware for MS is quite easy however and therefore, Windows systems would be the first back on the net when the new wall comes down. Not a bad deal for Microsoft, eh?
So why are they objecting? Because it's a blatently stupid idea. Not, as you suggest, because they might lose market share from it, when in fact they stand on gaining a monopoly on american internet from it.
R'ing TFA, and a vague FA it was, the whole system would work by running a client agent that spies on the user and reports to the ISP, allowing the ISP to determine how to manage traffic (based presumably on draconian laws that further US govt ends).
Now, Microsoft will, realistically, be opposed to this simply because they don't control it. Absolutely they have every right to tell the govt they're not interested in them bundling software onto every Windows distribution. Only MS is allowed to bundle. But at the same time, MS has been reasonably anti-DRM and reasonably pro-freedom lately (it seems they are on the end of more patent litigation than they're causing lately, for example). A lot of this is simply going to be MS trying to prevent others from controlling the market in the same way they try to. Either way, take it as given that corps are evil, at least don't complain when they do something good.
Likewise, I am amused to think of what the Linux kernel owners would say about a mandatory bundling of a linux client agent to spy on the end user for the government.
Personally, I can't see it being popular anywhere outside the USA. And you try tell an ISP they need to increase their operating costs so they can enforce government policy for the government by running servers to monitor mandatory government spyware installed on client PC's.
See, I don't want to play a souped up version of Space Invaders.
I want to play FPS games (and do the aiming myself instead of relying on autoaim). I want to play MMORPG's and use a keyboard to chat with people while I'm playing. I want to play open source games and download mods and maps without paying a fee to Microsoft. I want the freedom to upgrade to bleeding edge graphics far superior to the 360 whenever I want. I want the luxury of choosing which CPU to install next upgrade cycle, at a time and budget that pleases me most. I don't want to have to break the law to install Linux on my rig if I feel like it. I'm not going to settle for 5.1 Audio, I much prefer my Audigy 2ZX.
I'm one of at least a million serious PC gamers. 360 is not good enough for me.
I might go so far as to suggest a large chessboard with hefty quality marble pieces and clearly defined squares with plenty of space to see and properly analyse the game makes a better chess set than a tiny traveller set with barely enough room to move the pieces without moving them all out of place. I would enjoy playing with the former rather than the latter.
The topic is about the nature of the presentation of the content, not the content itself.
Sometimes the fidelity, the quality of the experience counts for as much as the experience itself.
Another example - McDonalds food provides, curiously enough, enough of the right nutrition for you to survive until the next meal. By consuming McDonalds food, you are "eating". Some people even see that as a recreational activity. Disregarding the issue of quality, as you say, "chess" is the same as it ever was and presentation doesn't count, McDonalds is in fact better than eating a 5 course meal at a 5 star restaurant. Because it's cheaper. Completely disregarding the true value difference that quality adds to any experience.
China and Taiwan continue to flagrantly ignore the US laws that govern them and produce illegal devices that allow playback and recording of media from analog sources.
When was the last time anyone bought a DVD player that was made in the USA anyway? And how exactly does the US think they'll enforce this law onto the rest of the world?
It just means that as a consumer I need to be more careful to ensure I buy "open" devices instead of devices engineered for the US market (the most restrictive market outside of islamic fundamentalist nations, I believe, where lipstick and audio cassettes are illegal).
Do you work for the RIAA? Are you feeling threatened by my exercising of free speech? Are you aware in many countries that a death threat is a violation of law and can be seen as an incarcerable offense?
Good thing, as it seems to be your wish, that ISP's will soon be monitoring everything you say for fear of threat or terror or copyright infringement. Perhaps you will have a knock on your door very soon.
I hope it pleases you greatly when your boyfriend makes love to you in jail.
Remembering before the browser wars - it's quite funny. OEM's used to do this constantly back then.
Compaq for instance preloaded heaps of different junk, including hacked up versions of Netscape (which wasn't so bad, IE at the time was unusable). Custom desktop, custom wallpaper, you name it.
Now, Microsoft realised they were losing out a bit with all this freedom the OEM's were exercising, so they got heavyhanded and threatened the OEM's with charging a higher price for Windows than they were charging their competitors.
Very soon, desktops became very clean and streamlined (albiet, you had to use IE out of the box now). This is not such a bad thing from the usability perspective.
However, more importantly, it was killing Netscape. MSIE5.0 came out and was a usable alternative to Netscape, and it was bundled on every OEM box and system and Windows install (even on the servers). This really hurt Netscape and the browser war went to the final battleground, the courts. Netscape effectively one, but a pyrric victory.
The courts found Microsoft guilty of bundling and anticompetitive practice. Microsoft weasled and dragged feet until Netscape had truly died from the bundling, then they slowly enacted the fixes the court ordered them to at last.
Now we're back to a whole mess of bundled apps on the desktop. It will only stop when MS feels some of the bundles are hurting their own business, and get heavyhanded with Dell again.
A lot of serious PC gamers won't know about the new Prince of Persia games. The reason being, mainly, is that these aren't PC games, although they have been converted (badly) to run on DirectX.
Now, there are several titles, although they are the same engine, so not really new games. I won't get into the specifics, because really, there are none.
Why is it not a good game? PoP ignores most of the conventions for a good PC game.
- There's no control over viewing angles. This is a console thing, as consoles until the 360 haven't had enough power to allow freedom of view.
- There's no mouselook - see above.
- The control scheme is awful - it was designed for a console, so get used to mashing buttons.
- Gaming conventions are not followed - On some games this implies originality, but PoP is a conventional hack and slash game - although, if you are skilled at such games on PC, your skill will not carry across because, heck, the devs did a bad job and ignored convention.
Save your time, save your money, don't touch it. Wait for them to get the message, we don't want PS/2 overflow.
Does it matter? Blizzard is still getting the cash.
Although it does break one of the premises for a "happy" MMORPG - more cash in the real world should not make you any better at playing a MMORPG. People play those games to escape the real world, and don't enjoy people dragging it back in there with them.
Obviously you should conduct your research into joints somewhere away from the sight of prying law enforcement officers, as they will gladly be an obstruction to your joint research.
Slashdot Mirror
From my experiences, and this is only a very rough majority of players, but most of the Alliance players are prepubscent idiots and most of the Horde players are older and more mature types, and generally more hard core gamers.
This is also just random speculation I guess, but I am assuming my observations are helped along by the fact that more serious gamers are engaged enough to want to play the "bad guys"
I've also noticed that Alliance AH's have much more expensive tradegoods - the whole Alliance economy tends to be badly jilted for some reason, and I am not sure if it just because of Alliance being significantly larger in number than the Horde is (the servers I play on are usually around 1.3:1.0 in favour of Alliance). Presumably, the same players who prefer Alliance also buy gold from the chinese sweatshops, which grind the game areas much harder to generate more cash. Bad inflation may be the cause.
The article mainly hinted this would just be a client thing for retail internet users.
But it's really preposterous to suggest that you install government mandated spyware anyway.
I was expecting a "please won't someone think of the children" line in there somewhere.
It does, but it's well known that with HD-DVD you keep more of your fair use rights than you do with Blu-Ray. Sony won't allow people to stream data from a Blu-Ray over a network, for instance. Microsoft are fighting that because they want the home network to be a reality, it lets them sell more OS product.
Stuff that matters: Microsoft is the lesser of two evils on this one. The Microsoft model is more open source friendly, heck, at least you can emulate Windows from an open source OS and interoperate with the new schema. Sony on the other hand despises the whole PC arena (yes I know they make laptops), because it's not their territory and so they're trying very hard to keep Blu-Ray from being controlled in this space by anyone but themselves.
Please read your own post.
* giving computer manufacturers the flexibility to contract with competing software developers and place their middleware products on Microsoft's operating system;
and
Microsoft seems to be in violation of resolution two.
Well, no, they aren't. Computer manufacturers can put as much Blu-Ray in their gear as they want. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD aren't mutually exclusive, in the same way that DVD+R and DVD-R aren't mutually exclusive. MS are just going to give a Windows discount to OEMs for any box with a HD-DVD in it. It could even have a HD-DVD and a Blu-Ray and still get the discount.
It's not like MS telling OEM's they weren't allowed to install Netscape. There's nothing in this that stops Sony from just cutting the cost of Blu-Ray and making it cheaper than a HD-DVD + discount for an OEM. And if Sony can't do that it just makes HD-DVD a more cost effective solution. Wow, manufacturers competing on price for our business. That makes Adam Smith a happy panda.
Also, whose arse did you pull that "exclusive agreements" comment from? Way to go with the FUD without backing it up. MS makes exclusive agreements constantly, it's a part of day to day business.
Totally different - well, the end is really the same but this time MS won't be in any legal hot water.
Why?
Because they're not restricting OEM's from doing anything.
An OEM could theoretically bundle HD-DVD support *and* Blu-Ray and still get a rebate from MS.
Way back in the day, MS wasn't telling OEM's they had to supply MSIE - they were telling OEM's they couldn't supply Netscape. This new trick is just telling OEM's they get cheaper Windows if they supply MSIE along with it. Slightly less evil. And, in terms of the great absolutes of justice, it's legal.
Now, I don't have a problem with this, because from what I understand Sony isn't keen on you being able to read data from a Blu-Ray disk in a PC. Microsoft, however, wants users to keep and use their Fair-Use rights (namely, so they can stream to a 360, but so long as I keep more of my rights, I'm cool with that).
Also, if the DRM is cracked on either of these technologies, more so the better for humanity.
Actually it's just NSW that was founded as a penal colony to start with.
Ahh, how little has changed.
As far as version release articles go on /., this is not a horrible one.
/. product releases, I never saw it before today and I had no idea what it was for without researching it.
But, since it wasn't explicitly mentioned, aMSN is an open source MSN Messenger IM clone.
And, like many other
Yet another slashdot article referring to a product without explaining the purpose of said product.
GTK+ is a toolkit for GIMP.
GIMP is an open sourced graphics manipulation package (think Photoshop but free as in speech and beer).
Actually those products were named back in the early 90's when the bubble was raging and brands were rising and falling like an ocean.
The reason we still have those names is because they are now winning brands. It was redundant perhaps to even mention their function, they're so well known. Not so with GIMP, in fact, it took me a long time of glossing over Slashdot articles until I worked out what it actually did. It's the same with a whole bunch of other release articles on Slashdot - Ruby on Rails, Python, things like that. I have to go look elsewhere from Slashdot if I even want to know what these things are. Given the purpose of a release article is to incite adoption, they could do better I think.
Microsoft's premier word processor is called "Word" and the premier office package is called "Office". Microsoft's new naming standards are following the most sensible route, with products like MS AntiSpyware and MS AntiVirus. Brand building is hard, so if you can get away with not doing it, or levering an existing brand, why not do that?
Some of the more businessminded open source software is also reasonably named, like Open Office. OOo, as many people like to refer to it as, continues to do the brand developement efforts severe damage. Tell a pleb: "You need to get Open Office!" or "You need to get OOo!". Which will sell your case better?
The open source community does not have the same financial backing to build advertising and marketing for brand development. I would find Linux a lot better to use if the names all gave a good hint as to the function.
Funny you should mention that it pisses you off, quite appropriate really, Intel calls these new performance processors the PEE range. Pentium Extreme Edition. WTF. I hope the little case badge is yellow and says PEE on it in big letters. I want my computer to have PEE in it. NOT!
You could always just print directly onto the letter sized envelope you intend to send through the mail.
If concerned about jamming, please only place the intended mailing contents into the envelope after you have printed on it.
Having once had the questionable honour of servicing printers that have been used for reprinting label sheets and peeling stickly labels off rollers that should never had adhesive applied to them, I would strongly suggest the whole-envelope printing option.
Or, as people have many times said here, use a dot matrix (although the risk of adhesive related printer ruining is almost unchanged there).
Of course, if you RTFA, the article stipulates that ISPs would be required by law to only allow boxes with mandatory government spyware running connect to the internet.
The government is unlikely to be interested in producing a spyware module compatible with your favourite flavour linux distro, although industry uproar might make a Mac version available. Many linux and BSD clients under this system would be completely blocked from using the net.
Writing spyware for MS is quite easy however and therefore, Windows systems would be the first back on the net when the new wall comes down. Not a bad deal for Microsoft, eh?
So why are they objecting? Because it's a blatently stupid idea. Not, as you suggest, because they might lose market share from it, when in fact they stand on gaining a monopoly on american internet from it.
That's a bit kneejerk isn't it?
R'ing TFA, and a vague FA it was, the whole system would work by running a client agent that spies on the user and reports to the ISP, allowing the ISP to determine how to manage traffic (based presumably on draconian laws that further US govt ends).
Now, Microsoft will, realistically, be opposed to this simply because they don't control it. Absolutely they have every right to tell the govt they're not interested in them bundling software onto every Windows distribution. Only MS is allowed to bundle. But at the same time, MS has been reasonably anti-DRM and reasonably pro-freedom lately (it seems they are on the end of more patent litigation than they're causing lately, for example). A lot of this is simply going to be MS trying to prevent others from controlling the market in the same way they try to. Either way, take it as given that corps are evil, at least don't complain when they do something good.
Likewise, I am amused to think of what the Linux kernel owners would say about a mandatory bundling of a linux client agent to spy on the end user for the government.
Personally, I can't see it being popular anywhere outside the USA. And you try tell an ISP they need to increase their operating costs so they can enforce government policy for the government by running servers to monitor mandatory government spyware installed on client PC's.
I'm a gamer, I read your post. I say, No.
See, I don't want to play a souped up version of Space Invaders.
I want to play FPS games (and do the aiming myself instead of relying on autoaim).
I want to play MMORPG's and use a keyboard to chat with people while I'm playing.
I want to play open source games and download mods and maps without paying a fee to Microsoft.
I want the freedom to upgrade to bleeding edge graphics far superior to the 360 whenever I want.
I want the luxury of choosing which CPU to install next upgrade cycle, at a time and budget that pleases me most.
I don't want to have to break the law to install Linux on my rig if I feel like it.
I'm not going to settle for 5.1 Audio, I much prefer my Audigy 2ZX.
I'm one of at least a million serious PC gamers. 360 is not good enough for me.
I might go so far as to suggest a large chessboard with hefty quality marble pieces and clearly defined squares with plenty of space to see and properly analyse the game makes a better chess set than a tiny traveller set with barely enough room to move the pieces without moving them all out of place. I would enjoy playing with the former rather than the latter.
The topic is about the nature of the presentation of the content, not the content itself.
Sometimes the fidelity, the quality of the experience counts for as much as the experience itself.
Another example - McDonalds food provides, curiously enough, enough of the right nutrition for you to survive until the next meal. By consuming McDonalds food, you are "eating". Some people even see that as a recreational activity. Disregarding the issue of quality, as you say, "chess" is the same as it ever was and presentation doesn't count, McDonalds is in fact better than eating a 5 course meal at a 5 star restaurant. Because it's cheaper. Completely disregarding the true value difference that quality adds to any experience.
Enjoy your Big Mac. I think I'll try the lobster.
I dunno... I'll drop 1600x1200 for 4xAA and some Aniso if the framerates are comparable.
The latest generation of games are really hurting my aging 6800 though, NFSMW, F.E.A.R and Civ IV all have amazing and demanding graphics engines.
Certainly, however, anything below 1024x768 is a joke nowadays, and that includes trying to play a game on an analog CRT television set.
China and Taiwan continue to flagrantly ignore the US laws that govern them and produce illegal devices that allow playback and recording of media from analog sources.
When was the last time anyone bought a DVD player that was made in the USA anyway?
And how exactly does the US think they'll enforce this law onto the rest of the world?
It just means that as a consumer I need to be more careful to ensure I buy "open" devices instead of devices engineered for the US market (the most restrictive market outside of islamic fundamentalist nations, I believe, where lipstick and audio cassettes are illegal).
Do you work for the RIAA? Are you feeling threatened by my exercising of free speech? Are you aware in many countries that a death threat is a violation of law and can be seen as an incarcerable offense?
Good thing, as it seems to be your wish, that ISP's will soon be monitoring everything you say for fear of threat or terror or copyright infringement. Perhaps you will have a knock on your door very soon.
I hope it pleases you greatly when your boyfriend makes love to you in jail.
Yes, I have. In Diablo, there was only one button you really needed to mash consistently.
Remembering before the browser wars - it's quite funny. OEM's used to do this constantly back then.
Compaq for instance preloaded heaps of different junk, including hacked up versions of Netscape (which wasn't so bad, IE at the time was unusable). Custom desktop, custom wallpaper, you name it.
Now, Microsoft realised they were losing out a bit with all this freedom the OEM's were exercising, so they got heavyhanded and threatened the OEM's with charging a higher price for Windows than they were charging their competitors.
Very soon, desktops became very clean and streamlined (albiet, you had to use IE out of the box now). This is not such a bad thing from the usability perspective.
However, more importantly, it was killing Netscape. MSIE5.0 came out and was a usable alternative to Netscape, and it was bundled on every OEM box and system and Windows install (even on the servers). This really hurt Netscape and the browser war went to the final battleground, the courts. Netscape effectively one, but a pyrric victory.
The courts found Microsoft guilty of bundling and anticompetitive practice. Microsoft weasled and dragged feet until Netscape had truly died from the bundling, then they slowly enacted the fixes the court ordered them to at last.
Now we're back to a whole mess of bundled apps on the desktop. It will only stop when MS feels some of the bundles are hurting their own business, and get heavyhanded with Dell again.
Huh? With Sony's new rootkit controls, they no longer need to pay for their shills, they run on remote control.
Although, I do agree with the premise that gaming is better on a properly built and configured PC than it could ever be on a console.
A lot of serious PC gamers won't know about the new Prince of Persia games. The reason being, mainly, is that these aren't PC games, although they have been converted (badly) to run on DirectX.
Now, there are several titles, although they are the same engine, so not really new games. I won't get into the specifics, because really, there are none.
Why is it not a good game? PoP ignores most of the conventions for a good PC game.
- There's no control over viewing angles. This is a console thing, as consoles until the 360 haven't had enough power to allow freedom of view.
- There's no mouselook - see above.
- The control scheme is awful - it was designed for a console, so get used to mashing buttons.
- Gaming conventions are not followed - On some games this implies originality, but PoP is a conventional hack and slash game - although, if you are skilled at such games on PC, your skill will not carry across because, heck, the devs did a bad job and ignored convention.
Save your time, save your money, don't touch it.
Wait for them to get the message, we don't want PS/2 overflow.
Does it matter? Blizzard is still getting the cash.
Although it does break one of the premises for a "happy" MMORPG - more cash in the real world should not make you any better at playing a MMORPG. People play those games to escape the real world, and don't enjoy people dragging it back in there with them.
Obviously you should conduct your research into joints somewhere away from the sight of prying law enforcement officers, as they will gladly be an obstruction to your joint research.
A long time ago, computer games were hip and counterculture in a lot of ways. Now they're mainstream, and now big media is controlling that media too.
The internet seems to be the last point of free expression remaining today. How long will that last?