WoW IS the best MMORPG out there on many different factors:
sales
largest player base of any online game ever
easiest to learn and play
very customizable interface
appeals to wide variety of playstyles: casual, hardcore, PvP, social
relatively small engine with ability to deliver new content via downloads
ageless, artistic graphics style (as opposed to "realistic" ones that looke dated in six months)
For all of these points and more, WoW is THE most successful game to date which therefore impacts the gaming and software development industry and is therefore newsworthy of any technical forum.
3- There were several mobs that didn't have any animation assigned to them. they were just these floating statues and you couldn't tell who they were attacking or if they were even dead yet.
That is a typical development stage. When mob blood elves were added to Azshara they were "paper dolls" for quite some time.
If you cannot tell who is getting hit, I'd say you're not watching health bars, not aggroing correctly or simply not paying attention. If it helps, you can add a mob (target's target, I think) that shows who the mob is targeting.
4- He has mostly tier 2.5 and 3 gear, and is a freakishly amazing pvper, yet he was easily killed by a rogue only 2 lvls higher. he used to be able to just laugh at rogues with his mail armor and shield, now it appears the lvls signify an overpowering leap in stats making it unfair.
This is typical. Armor and weapons do not matter when fighting a rogue; it's all about playstyle and knowing the rogue's attacks. I've seen rogues 5-10 levels below players easily kill off the higher player. If a rogue was two levels above, you definitely have no chance regardless of class.
5- I don't know about him, but if I had worked relentlessly, giving up my life to get the uber leet T3 armor, and then see GREEN everyday items drop in BC that are actually better the most sought after gear in the normal game......I'd get so bitter i would prolly logoff and uninstall right that second!
Personally, I think the tier 3 gear (Naxx, AQ40) was added as a stop-gap measure to keep the hardcore, play 24x7 players satisfied until the expansion could arrive. (BTW, I think you meant.5 and T1 gear since there is no T2.5)Only a small percentage of players have T3 because it does represent an immense amount of time playing. If gear is the main reason you and your friend are playing, maybe you should log off.
Also, we already have to deal with the dreaded 'patch day' every tuesday where our servers are offine, we can't play and then we get to read about how they changed the game yet again.
Holy crap, how whiny. The servers are down a whole 6 hours (if that) a WEEK! You can't go do ANYTHING else during those six hours which are typically very early morning hours anyway (for U.S.)? Normal people have school, work or sleep. A regular, planned, six hour maintenance window is an extremely good MMORPG implementation. Beats the heck out of those surprise maintenances that UO often had.
EverQuest has something like 11 expansions now for it; previous MMO games also had expansions.
Which proves that expansions are not necessarily a good thing or an improvement to a game.
I played UO for years even through major mistakes of expansions (Blackthorne by McFarland/gag)
Blizzard has always impressed me that the release schedules do not matter; what matters is the game. Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and now WoW. ALL top quality games because Blizzard wouldn't release them until they were finished.
I understand that the hardcore achievers who (incorrectly) believe they have "done everything in the game" need new content to satisfy their gaming desires. They need something new and shiny constantly or they are immediately bored.
Thankfully, the majority of players do not fall into that category. There are millions of players greatly satisfied with WoW as it is now. The new content will offer more exploration and more options which will be great... whenever it arrives. I personally do not see the need for Blizzard to add an expansion every year. They've been doing a fantastic job.
Ultima Online was out several months before EQ. (September 1997)
Meridian 59 can be considered one of the first MMORPGs, and it was out a year or two before UO.
Original addictive, senselessly grinding only to have items and XP taken away from you upon death? Oh, yeah. EQ was first at that.
Now, when I look back at the playerbase of EQ, I'd be hard pressed to find real assholes.
You're talking about Everquest right?
I never played for numerous reasons, but I had friends that did. They ALL tell a completely opposite story of what you're saying.
In real life, every EQ player I ever met was a jerk and a half. In UO we had about a 30% chance of running into a jerk. Dark Age of Camelot people were typically nice... oh, wait, that's because the chat interface was so horrid no one ever talked.
Jerks are in every game. The more popular the game the higher percentage of jerks. They've been tolerable in WoW.
When market shares are calculated, is that based upon active browser usage (i.e. websites report back to browser companies) or is that based upon installation? Since IE comes with every Windows product (whether you want it or not), I think this would greatly affect the numbers.
If Windows came without a browser already installed and users had a choice to download one, do you think IE would still have as large a market share?
Why did tabbed browsing take Microsoft so long to implement? (Opera had it several years ago.)
Methinks this be a failure from the start
For no person would care to play a tiny part
In what once was great literature that brought Bill great fame
But for a theater of the globe, as a game, dost sound lame.
Please add the "j/k" to your post else someone would think you're serious and have no idea what you're talking about. Or if you are speaking of specific items, please clarify. i.e. "LotR Online ripped off D&D Online."
What I read into the article is that corporate business (executives, support staff, milestones, promises, etc.) has no place in the game industry. THAT'S what's wrong is that numerous small companies that produced quality products were consumed or closed by big inudstry monsters (read EA).
Throughout the entire article, I kept seeing two names being implied even though only one was explicitly mentioned: negative, game industry = EA; positive, game production company = Blizzard. (You can extrapolate that Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi, is a much better industry master than EA because they stay out of Blizzard's business and let them produce.)
EA executive response to this article: "Those bastards! How dare they slander us. Let's see if we can sue them so we can fund Madden Football 47."
Blizzard (or Vivendi) executive response: "Cool. Folks, let's make sure we're still not doing any of that archaic, corporate crap."
Go to any Gamestop or EB Games (same company now) and you'll find the store is 80-90% consoles (whatever they're selling/not selling in this realm I wouldn't know). What few PC games they have are only the top name/commercialized hits (i.e. crap).
Frye's and Best Buy carry a very wide variety, but I have yet to speak to an informed salesperson in either of those stores.
I tend to look for betas and free trials of games. If I like it, I'll order it online comparing shipping costs vs. tax if I get it at Frye's.
Warcraft II (when I felt nostalgic and curious about all the back history)
Yes, I do consider all these different playstyles within WoW different games. It all depends on what you're in the mood for, and WoW can satisfy almost every mood I have.
Determine HOW you think before you can understand how you learn. Many people are visually oriented (I am). Geometry, Trigonometry and Newtonian Physics are very easy for visual people because you can SEE how the math affects the outcome. You could possibly touch many of the problems you worked on. Algebra is almost completely conceptual and non-tangible. Calculus has some visual and physical aspects, but it typically is working with algebra within a geometric problem.
I'd expand on this parent poster's thoughts for using a programmable calculator. Look at using programming languages. In writing code you must understand the concepts of the math going on underneath. Perhaps by distracting your brain to concentrate on the coding, the understanding of the math will slip it. It would at least give you another perspective.
I never really liked math or did it very well beyond the basics: +, -, * and / (division was even difficult to grasp). That is until I took an interest in computers. When I discovered that computers talk in binary or hexidecimal (still binary underneath that), I suddenly had a grasp of ALL of the base number systems including 10 in a very different light. For some reason this triggered a deeper understanding of math for me. I did very well through high school calculus, college algebra, calc 1 and 2, but when I hit calc 3, the concepts stretched my limits.
Just try to find another way to look at it, and eventually you'll see what you've been missing. Good luck.
the U.S. government STILL doesn't have a clue about technology, how to use it appropriately or how to secure it.
ALL of that can be blocked by relatively inexpensive (for enterprises or governments) products like Surf Control or Websense. I know there are several open source solutions out there, too. Spend about $200k and save $2 billion. Easy math.
In May of 2005 we saw them laying the cables. I kept checking the website and calling on occasion to find out when I could get it. (BTW, the website is updated much less frequently than Verizon's actual service.) Finally in December 2005 we got the 15Mb down/2Mb up service and kicked the Comcast cable modem to the curb. Faster, cheaper and a dedicated line. How can you beat it?
Downloading, surfing and playing online games has been a dream. We typically run two computers playing WoW, and I may be surfing or downloading something at the same time.
We'd been Verizon wireless customers (removed our land line) since January 2005. The excellent customer service we've received on both of these services encouraged me that Verizon knows what they're doing and they value their customers.
In March 2006 we added the TV service. Again it was better and cheaper than satellite or cable with similar offerings (HD content, HD DVR, VOD). That has been absolutely fantastic. Not only do I get to watch sports in HD, but our girls can record or view the movies they want whenever they want.
Finally, we decided it was time to get a phone in the house again. Our girls are getting old enough that we may leave them at home, but we don't feel the need to buy another mobile phone. That, too, was installed quickly and cleanly and works perfectly.
I am extremely satisfied with everything Verizon offers. My only complaint is the lack of a discount for buying all of these services and the occasional spam snail mail offer to buy one of their services. We have them all; stop mailing me.:-)
Pre-wire and provision all you can right up front to reduce add ons and mess grow. EVEN if it means potentially dead cable. Costs more in the short term but less that the long term. This eliminates the costs and needs to rip open the bundles every month for 10 years.
This is a great point I'd like to emphasize.
In most cases you're talking about activating/deactivating a LAN jack to a switch since most router/switch to switch connections should be fairly static.
Lay ALL the cable that you may ever need (i.e. a cable for every possible port).
Label each end of it so it can be identified without having to trace it. (A logical label such as switch/port would be very useful.)
Bundle these by switch/panel. (Hopefully you can have a 1:1 panel to switch ratio.)
If the LAN jack needs to be active, plug it in; if not, leave it in the cable tray.
If you have the switch space, plug everything on that end into the switch. This way you only need to worry about the ends at the LAN jacks.
I wanted to do something like this at my last job, but instead we added more blades to our 4507 and made it into a wiring nightmare. Glad I'm not there any longer.
"The click fraud and bad sites are driving people away,"
Hmmm Couldn't be those pop-up, pop-under and pop-in ads interrupting normal internet activity that are making consumers mad at advertisers now could it? OVER advertising is driving people away. It shows up at movies, so people rent movies or pay for on demand. Ads are added to videos and VOD. Bastards! It shows up on TV, so people record TV and skip it. Now there's talk of no-skip advertising on DVR's. Complete bastards! They're all over the radio so you have to keep switching stations or get an iPod or satellite radio. Then, of course, there's ALWAYS telemarketers regardless of how many no-call lists you're on or what service you pay the phone company to keep your name and number unlisted. Complete freaking bastards!!
They didn't respond to requests for comment, and most of the sites disappeared in late summer, after MostChoice challenged Yahoo about them.
Extremely suspicious that Yahoo and Google may be funding these parked websites to multiply their ad hits.
Yahoo says it scans its network for PTR activity, but declines to describe its methods.
"Oh, yeah, if it's not one of the parked websites we fund... I mean... uh..."
"...it is going to scare away the further development of the Internet as an advertising medium.
OMG! The internet has some purpose besides advertising? How the hell did this happen?
I just hope that whenever internet2 becomes accessible that advertising is forbidden.
WITHIN the gaming community, sure there is a sense of unity and people getting to know each other without ever knowing race, religion, political bias, sexual orientation or (possibly) gender.
However, the fact that only a small percentage of the country and world are playing video games makes this a very inaccurate sampling of data.
The real dividing line is money. Only those with enough money to afford a gaming system or a PC (plus internet connection, software, subscriptions, etc.) are able to enter this idyllic utopia of faceless, raceless, borderless virtual worlds. Granted that nearly all races are represented in the gaming world, but many of them may be exceptions of typical members of their race. This points to where the real racism occurs -- in the workplace.
Growing up in Texas shortly after integration, my small town had its own share of strife and tension. Now in Dallas, a black person is warmly welcomed compared to someone of Hispanic decent. Indian and Asian peoples are ostracised in the technical community because of offshoring, though the people here have nothing to do with that. This is most apparent in workplaces (who gets what jobs), and less apparent in personal settings (shopping, restaurants, sporting events, fairs, etc.). People don't seem to care about race; businesses do.
When the people doing all the cooking, cleaning and landscaping can afford to have a computer and get into World of Warcraft, then maybe we can start talking about the great melting pot of MMO's.
Is this a society-changing behavior that we're seeing more often in many different disciplines?
Parallel comparison: I'm in Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org/), an international organization promoting communcation and leadership skills. There's an educational program that takes an average person about five-seven years to compete. Numerically it boils down to about 55 speeches, a major project in leadership and mentoring about 23 people. The first part (10 speeches) takes about one to one and a half years. I felt like I raced through it in 10 months, but later I heard about someone really racing through it in 10 weeks. I met that person and discovered that they had definitely missed the point. He was not a skilled speaker at all and could barely understand all of the meeting roles or the opportunities for service to the organization beyond the club level yet he had achieved the first level of education.
Indirect comparison: World of Warcraft power-levelers (or any game with specific goals). The people who play a single character to level 60 and they're "done." They quit and state "I've seen and done it all." Completely missed the point. The game, like school or professional organizations, is comprised of a great deal more than a simple ladder for reaching the "top." These people miss out on so much content, relationships and experience. I'd compare them to someone who goes to a buffet, tries a single bite of each item and calls that dinner.
Where is this coming from? Has our sense of achievement been condensed to "do the minimum requirement as fast as possible?" I guess it's the opposite end of the spectrum of people, companies and communities that are so laid back that they see no reason to change anything at all ever.
I am envious of Banh that he obviously has a high IQ and the ability to absorb a great deal of information quickly, though I wonder how long he can retain it. Patent lawyer? What a waste of a good brain.
No, not episode IV. Regardless of how they may change TOS in appearance, the stories, the messages and the morals will still be there. I think this may be a good thing. Our societies all over the world are in a rather dark age at this time. What if Star Trek could rekindle the hope that we're not alone on this planet, but if we are, shouldn't we treat each other nicely?
It could be 1969 all over again! Wooooooooo.... wooo... woo woo.
At any rate I'll be pleased to see it on prime time again, possibly reaching a new generation and possibly garnering good will towards others.
I did something like this at a previous job though we only had three of us in IT that could access this. You could adjust it for your tiered environment.
First, though I would repeat what someone else posted: using shared passwords is a high risk. It's better to structure your group access appropriately and have people log on as themselves. This way you have a record of who did what and when. Only downside is the number of profiles that get created on servers (Windows), but that's minor.
Create a secure network location that only those who need to have passwords can reach.
Create a spreadsheet for each group/level of passwords needed to provide separation.
Password protect each spreadsheet with a different password and provide that password to the appropriate people.
Keep a master password list that only two people can access (top forest/domain admin/superroot and IT manager/VP/CIO). Most likely the head of the department and his/her supervisor. This list would only contain the passwords to the other lists and possibly some top level passwords no other group can access.
Encrypt the directory.
From your description I get the impression that you have a different password per server, service, application, etc. While that separation may provide an extra degree of security, it may not be worth the effort. You might consider using "themed" passwords with l33t/hacker speak. SQLAdmin password might be 5QL.@dm1n#, webadmin could be W3B.@dm1n! and so on. Add your own twist to it so it's not an easily identified pattern. Add other factors to differentiate but be well known to those who understand the environment. i.e. all servers in rack 1 have passwords ending with ! or all IBM servers have passwords starting with an "e".
You may be restricted by standards or other outside forces. Regardless of what you use to keep up with passwords, having some obscure yet memorable system for passwords sets a good foundation.
In the late 80's or early 90's, Nacogdoches, TX was a dry town. It's also the home of Stephen F. Austin University. Students living there, on campus or just in the town, are able to vote if they register in that county. The student population is about the same as the residential population.
The city had an election of whether or not the city/county should remain dry (no alcohol sold outside of private clubs) or become wet (beer, liquor, stores, restaurants, etc.)
Almost all of the SFA students registered and voted. Nacogdoches became and has remained wet ever since.
This promotion could work if it's done properly and gamers/geeks see there could be some benefit if they took action. I haven't voted since 1988, but if I thought it'd make a difference, I would.
I wish they'd get online voting secure and unhackable.
This is the fundamental reason why I haven't voted since Bush, Sr.: lesser of two evils.
Whoever gets elected, regardless of party affiliation, they will be corrupt, owned by the big dollar lobbyists (petroleum, pharmaceuticals) and basically just a puppet for the congressmen.
Now voting on the congressional level CAN make a difference, but so many of them are only there to push their own agendas and approve their own pay increases that it's pointless.
First off, the Hobbit is only about 30 years prior to "Fellowship."
Gandalf is basically ageless as far as the second and third age of Middle Earth are concerned, so he'll look just like he did at the beginning of "Fellowship," that is if they get Sir McKellen quickly.
Again because Gollum lived to be about 500 at the time he fell into the crack of doom, he'll look about the same. Since Gollum is digital, as long as Andy can do the voice, it will be seamless.
Bilbo will need to look like he did in the prologue of "Fellowship." I think Ian Holm has looked about the same for years, so with just a bit of wrinkle cream, he'd still be fine for the part.
Elrond, too, is ageless, so Hugo could still play the same part.
There are no other characters that appear in "The Hobbit" that appear in the trilogy. However, I would not be surprised to see a cameo of Legolas in the hall of the Elven King or Gimli somewhere in the battle of five armies.
The real question becomes who might they get for the voice of Smaug? Richard Boone was awesome.
Those, too, suffered licensing rights and (probably) production issues causing them to be split oddly and made by two different companies.
"The Hobbit" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077687/ was by Rankin-Bass, done as an animated movie geared towards children (as the book was) and compressed to fit in a two hour TV slot with built-in ad breaks.
"The Lord of the Rings" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077869/ was done by Thorn EMI, was a cell over live action animation and was geared as a full length movie. This movie basically covered the first three "books," that being all of "Fellowship of the Ring," and the first half of "The Two Towers."
"The Return of the King," http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079802/ was another Rankin-Bass made for TV movie. It almost picked up where the Thorn-EMI LotR left off starting with Samwise trying to rescue Frodo from Cirith Ungol.
It looks like we're going to have something very similar with a Hobbit movie made by a different production company than the LotR movies.
Personally, as long as they get Glen Yarbrough to sing (well, he's 76) "The Greatest Adventure" and "The Road Goes Ever, Ever on," I'd be happy.
Any bets that they replace a couple of the 13 dwarves with women?:-)
THAT is one of the best things I've heard in a while.
I'm not so excited about the 9/18 marathon since it's a work day, I've seen them all and I have the DVDs, but seeing Firefly in HD will be awesome. By the look of the DVDs, I think the HD quality is there just not visible.
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WoW IS the best MMORPG out there on many different factors:
For all of these points and more, WoW is THE most successful game to date which therefore impacts the gaming and software development industry and is therefore newsworthy of any technical forum.
If you cannot tell who is getting hit, I'd say you're not watching health bars, not aggroing correctly or simply not paying attention. If it helps, you can add a mob (target's target, I think) that shows who the mob is targeting.
This is typical. Armor and weapons do not matter when fighting a rogue; it's all about playstyle and knowing the rogue's attacks. I've seen rogues 5-10 levels below players easily kill off the higher player. If a rogue was two levels above, you definitely have no chance regardless of class. Personally, I think the tier 3 gear (Naxx, AQ40) was added as a stop-gap measure to keep the hardcore, play 24x7 players satisfied until the expansion could arrive. (BTW, I think you meantI played UO for years even through major mistakes of expansions (Blackthorne by McFarland /gag)
Blizzard has always impressed me that the release schedules do not matter; what matters is the game. Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and now WoW. ALL top quality games because Blizzard wouldn't release them until they were finished.
I understand that the hardcore achievers who (incorrectly) believe they have "done everything in the game" need new content to satisfy their gaming desires. They need something new and shiny constantly or they are immediately bored.
Thankfully, the majority of players do not fall into that category. There are millions of players greatly satisfied with WoW as it is now. The new content will offer more exploration and more options which will be great... whenever it arrives. I personally do not see the need for Blizzard to add an expansion every year. They've been doing a fantastic job.
Ultima Online was out several months before EQ. (September 1997)
Meridian 59 can be considered one of the first MMORPGs, and it was out a year or two before UO.
Original addictive, senselessly grinding only to have items and XP taken away from you upon death? Oh, yeah. EQ was first at that.
You're talking about Everquest right?I never played for numerous reasons, but I had friends that did. They ALL tell a completely opposite story of what you're saying.
In real life, every EQ player I ever met was a jerk and a half. In UO we had about a 30% chance of running into a jerk. Dark Age of Camelot people were typically nice... oh, wait, that's because the chat interface was so horrid no one ever talked.
Jerks are in every game. The more popular the game the higher percentage of jerks. They've been tolerable in WoW.
If Windows came without a browser already installed and users had a choice to download one, do you think IE would still have as large a market share?
Why did tabbed browsing take Microsoft so long to implement? (Opera had it several years ago.)
Methinks this be a failure from the start
For no person would care to play a tiny part
In what once was great literature that brought Bill great fame
But for a theater of the globe, as a game, dost sound lame.
LotR ripped of D&D. lol
Throughout the entire article, I kept seeing two names being implied even though only one was explicitly mentioned: negative, game industry = EA; positive, game production company = Blizzard. (You can extrapolate that Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi, is a much better industry master than EA because they stay out of Blizzard's business and let them produce.)
EA executive response to this article: "Those bastards! How dare they slander us. Let's see if we can sue them so we can fund Madden Football 47."
Blizzard (or Vivendi) executive response: "Cool. Folks, let's make sure we're still not doing any of that archaic, corporate crap."
Go to any Gamestop or EB Games (same company now) and you'll find the store is 80-90% consoles (whatever they're selling/not selling in this realm I wouldn't know). What few PC games they have are only the top name/commercialized hits (i.e. crap).
Frye's and Best Buy carry a very wide variety, but I have yet to speak to an informed salesperson in either of those stores.
I tend to look for betas and free trials of games. If I like it, I'll order it online comparing shipping costs vs. tax if I get it at Frye's.
Yes, I do consider all these different playstyles within WoW different games. It all depends on what you're in the mood for, and WoW can satisfy almost every mood I have.
Determine HOW you think before you can understand how you learn. Many people are visually oriented (I am). Geometry, Trigonometry and Newtonian Physics are very easy for visual people because you can SEE how the math affects the outcome. You could possibly touch many of the problems you worked on. Algebra is almost completely conceptual and non-tangible. Calculus has some visual and physical aspects, but it typically is working with algebra within a geometric problem.
I'd expand on this parent poster's thoughts for using a programmable calculator. Look at using programming languages. In writing code you must understand the concepts of the math going on underneath. Perhaps by distracting your brain to concentrate on the coding, the understanding of the math will slip it. It would at least give you another perspective.
I never really liked math or did it very well beyond the basics: +, -, * and / (division was even difficult to grasp). That is until I took an interest in computers. When I discovered that computers talk in binary or hexidecimal (still binary underneath that), I suddenly had a grasp of ALL of the base number systems including 10 in a very different light. For some reason this triggered a deeper understanding of math for me. I did very well through high school calculus, college algebra, calc 1 and 2, but when I hit calc 3, the concepts stretched my limits.
Just try to find another way to look at it, and eventually you'll see what you've been missing. Good luck.
ALL of that can be blocked by relatively inexpensive (for enterprises or governments) products like Surf Control or Websense. I know there are several open source solutions out there, too. Spend about $200k and save $2 billion. Easy math.
Downloading, surfing and playing online games has been a dream. We typically run two computers playing WoW, and I may be surfing or downloading something at the same time.
We'd been Verizon wireless customers (removed our land line) since January 2005. The excellent customer service we've received on both of these services encouraged me that Verizon knows what they're doing and they value their customers.
In March 2006 we added the TV service. Again it was better and cheaper than satellite or cable with similar offerings (HD content, HD DVR, VOD). That has been absolutely fantastic. Not only do I get to watch sports in HD, but our girls can record or view the movies they want whenever they want.
Finally, we decided it was time to get a phone in the house again. Our girls are getting old enough that we may leave them at home, but we don't feel the need to buy another mobile phone. That, too, was installed quickly and cleanly and works perfectly.
I am extremely satisfied with everything Verizon offers. My only complaint is the lack of a discount for buying all of these services and the occasional spam snail mail offer to buy one of their services. We have them all; stop mailing me. :-)
In most cases you're talking about activating/deactivating a LAN jack to a switch since most router/switch to switch connections should be fairly static.
I wanted to do something like this at my last job, but instead we added more blades to our 4507 and made it into a wiring nightmare. Glad I'm not there any longer.
Hmmm Couldn't be those pop-up, pop-under and pop-in ads interrupting normal internet activity that are making consumers mad at advertisers now could it? OVER advertising is driving people away. It shows up at movies, so people rent movies or pay for on demand. Ads are added to videos and VOD. Bastards! It shows up on TV, so people record TV and skip it. Now there's talk of no-skip advertising on DVR's. Complete bastards! They're all over the radio so you have to keep switching stations or get an iPod or satellite radio. Then, of course, there's ALWAYS telemarketers regardless of how many no-call lists you're on or what service you pay the phone company to keep your name and number unlisted. Complete freaking bastards!!
Extremely suspicious that Yahoo and Google may be funding these parked websites to multiply their ad hits. "Oh, yeah, if it's not one of the parked websites we fund... I mean... uh..." OMG! The internet has some purpose besides advertising? How the hell did this happen?I just hope that whenever internet2 becomes accessible that advertising is forbidden.
However, the fact that only a small percentage of the country and world are playing video games makes this a very inaccurate sampling of data.
The real dividing line is money. Only those with enough money to afford a gaming system or a PC (plus internet connection, software, subscriptions, etc.) are able to enter this idyllic utopia of faceless, raceless, borderless virtual worlds. Granted that nearly all races are represented in the gaming world, but many of them may be exceptions of typical members of their race. This points to where the real racism occurs -- in the workplace.
Growing up in Texas shortly after integration, my small town had its own share of strife and tension. Now in Dallas, a black person is warmly welcomed compared to someone of Hispanic decent. Indian and Asian peoples are ostracised in the technical community because of offshoring, though the people here have nothing to do with that. This is most apparent in workplaces (who gets what jobs), and less apparent in personal settings (shopping, restaurants, sporting events, fairs, etc.). People don't seem to care about race; businesses do.
When the people doing all the cooking, cleaning and landscaping can afford to have a computer and get into World of Warcraft, then maybe we can start talking about the great melting pot of MMO's.
Parallel comparison: I'm in Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org/), an international organization promoting communcation and leadership skills. There's an educational program that takes an average person about five-seven years to compete. Numerically it boils down to about 55 speeches, a major project in leadership and mentoring about 23 people. The first part (10 speeches) takes about one to one and a half years. I felt like I raced through it in 10 months, but later I heard about someone really racing through it in 10 weeks. I met that person and discovered that they had definitely missed the point. He was not a skilled speaker at all and could barely understand all of the meeting roles or the opportunities for service to the organization beyond the club level yet he had achieved the first level of education.
Indirect comparison: World of Warcraft power-levelers (or any game with specific goals). The people who play a single character to level 60 and they're "done." They quit and state "I've seen and done it all." Completely missed the point. The game, like school or professional organizations, is comprised of a great deal more than a simple ladder for reaching the "top." These people miss out on so much content, relationships and experience. I'd compare them to someone who goes to a buffet, tries a single bite of each item and calls that dinner.
Where is this coming from? Has our sense of achievement been condensed to "do the minimum requirement as fast as possible?" I guess it's the opposite end of the spectrum of people, companies and communities that are so laid back that they see no reason to change anything at all ever.
I am envious of Banh that he obviously has a high IQ and the ability to absorb a great deal of information quickly, though I wonder how long he can retain it. Patent lawyer? What a waste of a good brain.
It could be 1969 all over again! Wooooooooo.... wooo... woo woo.
At any rate I'll be pleased to see it on prime time again, possibly reaching a new generation and possibly garnering good will towards others.
First, though I would repeat what someone else posted: using shared passwords is a high risk. It's better to structure your group access appropriately and have people log on as themselves. This way you have a record of who did what and when. Only downside is the number of profiles that get created on servers (Windows), but that's minor.
- Create a secure network location that only those who need to have passwords can reach.
- Create a spreadsheet for each group/level of passwords needed to provide separation.
- Password protect each spreadsheet with a different password and provide that password to the appropriate people.
- Keep a master password list that only two people can access (top forest/domain admin/superroot and IT manager/VP/CIO). Most likely the head of the department and his/her supervisor. This list would only contain the passwords to the other lists and possibly some top level passwords no other group can access.
- Encrypt the directory.
From your description I get the impression that you have a different password per server, service, application, etc. While that separation may provide an extra degree of security, it may not be worth the effort. You might consider using "themed" passwords with l33t/hacker speak. SQLAdmin password might be 5QL.@dm1n#, webadmin could be W3B.@dm1n! and so on. Add your own twist to it so it's not an easily identified pattern. Add other factors to differentiate but be well known to those who understand the environment. i.e. all servers in rack 1 have passwords ending with ! or all IBM servers have passwords starting with an "e".You may be restricted by standards or other outside forces. Regardless of what you use to keep up with passwords, having some obscure yet memorable system for passwords sets a good foundation.
The city had an election of whether or not the city/county should remain dry (no alcohol sold outside of private clubs) or become wet (beer, liquor, stores, restaurants, etc.)
Almost all of the SFA students registered and voted. Nacogdoches became and has remained wet ever since.
This promotion could work if it's done properly and gamers/geeks see there could be some benefit if they took action. I haven't voted since 1988, but if I thought it'd make a difference, I would.
I wish they'd get online voting secure and unhackable.
Whoever gets elected, regardless of party affiliation, they will be corrupt, owned by the big dollar lobbyists (petroleum, pharmaceuticals) and basically just a puppet for the congressmen.
Now voting on the congressional level CAN make a difference, but so many of them are only there to push their own agendas and approve their own pay increases that it's pointless.
Gandalf is basically ageless as far as the second and third age of Middle Earth are concerned, so he'll look just like he did at the beginning of "Fellowship," that is if they get Sir McKellen quickly.
Again because Gollum lived to be about 500 at the time he fell into the crack of doom, he'll look about the same. Since Gollum is digital, as long as Andy can do the voice, it will be seamless.
Bilbo will need to look like he did in the prologue of "Fellowship." I think Ian Holm has looked about the same for years, so with just a bit of wrinkle cream, he'd still be fine for the part.
Elrond, too, is ageless, so Hugo could still play the same part.
There are no other characters that appear in "The Hobbit" that appear in the trilogy. However, I would not be surprised to see a cameo of Legolas in the hall of the Elven King or Gimli somewhere in the battle of five armies.
The real question becomes who might they get for the voice of Smaug? Richard Boone was awesome.
"The Hobbit" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077687/ was by Rankin-Bass, done as an animated movie geared towards children (as the book was) and compressed to fit in a two hour TV slot with built-in ad breaks.
"The Lord of the Rings" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077869/ was done by Thorn EMI, was a cell over live action animation and was geared as a full length movie. This movie basically covered the first three "books," that being all of "Fellowship of the Ring," and the first half of "The Two Towers."
"The Return of the King," http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079802/ was another Rankin-Bass made for TV movie. It almost picked up where the Thorn-EMI LotR left off starting with Samwise trying to rescue Frodo from Cirith Ungol.
It looks like we're going to have something very similar with a Hobbit movie made by a different production company than the LotR movies.
Personally, as long as they get Glen Yarbrough to sing (well, he's 76) "The Greatest Adventure" and "The Road Goes Ever, Ever on," I'd be happy.
Any bets that they replace a couple of the 13 dwarves with women? :-)
I'm not so excited about the 9/18 marathon since it's a work day, I've seen them all and I have the DVDs, but seeing Firefly in HD will be awesome. By the look of the DVDs, I think the HD quality is there just not visible.
Thanks for this news.