You have to be kidding me. UPS? To transfer secure information? Where I work, we receive a backup tape from a production system that we load that contains sensitive data. That tape is sent back to my group via Iron Mountain (and we send the old tape back the same way). And this isn't even stuff as high profile as like what's Citigroup apparently lost. When services exist like this to facilitate occasional, VERY important shipments, there's just no excuse using UPS or Fedex. I fear for the free market if this is "business as usual" for it.
Early mac? That's an Apple 1 system! You know, the precursor to the Apple 2 systems sold at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto. I'm not surprised someone would value it so high; they were hand-made by Jobs and Wozniak so there aren't many of them in existance... and less that work.
And no, I'm not an Apple zealot, but this really is an interesting item for auction if you ask me.
I know this was modded funny, but some people might actually think it's a good idea. Consider what permadeath means to an MMO game:
Just about everyone is going to be afraid to take risks. In real life, when you fail, it's not usually the end of the world; you've gained experience and you know what not to do next time. Here, if you fail, you have to do the exact same thing to get back to where you were before you failed. Fun! Even if it doesn't take long to do it, would you want to do it? More than once?
Don't tell me that the first time your connection dies, the game crashs, etc. and your character is lost, through no fault of your own, that you won't be extremely annoyed. I know I would be, especially since my ISP is Verizon, who can't keep their DSL network even close to stable.
Some of us take longer to do things than everyone else. For instance, in the game that I play, my two main characters have about 4.5 months of in game time. But I've probably spent the majority of it just sitting around talking to friends I've made, and just running around and seeing the world. Should I be penalized for trying to engage in what I like by not being about to see as much of the world as the lifeless, boring powerleveler?
As a side note, the rise of PvP-oriented MMOs is a bit strange, isn't it? From everything I've read, only a minority of people who play MMO games are into PvP. To use my MMO as an example, there's 9 servers... only 1 is PvP only, and it has always had the lowest population, by far... and a very, very small minority of people on the other servers chose to participate in PvP fighting. If permadeath is "necessary" to make PvP decent, why inflict it on the rest of us?
So yeah. You crazy people play your game with your permadeaths. I'd like to see a better solution, personally.
Yeah, and there's the problem: Everquest. Most MMOs have been copies of EQ. And it's a horrible game: a pronounced leveling treadmill, ridiculously long spawn times (remember that article way back when about the guy who was going to wait 8 months to get a try at some quest, because the quest in question had a monster you needed to kill with a 1-3 day spawn time?), massively uneven advancement, a draconian code of conduct that forces every to play nice, etc. I have no idea why it was so successful. But people look at the success and assume "If we copy it, we'll be successful, too!"
Here's something I've noticed, though. MMOs are pretty addicting, as you probably know, and many people often end up quitting, but coming back in a few months (lord knows how many times I've left and returned to Asheron's Call!). But I have never, ever heard an anecdote of someone leaving EQ by their own violition and coming back later. I'm sure it's happened, but I've never heard of it. Contrast that to pretty much ever other MMO that wasn't a total flop (Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call 2, Horizons, etc.)... and even THEY have people that come back. Maybe eventually EQ will become passe and eclipsed by the upcoming EQ2, which will turn out to be either much different or a flop, and finally the industry can wake up and figure out how to solve the problems it faces. We can dream:).
He highlights a lot of problems I see in games today (especially MMORPGS... a genre I love but whose games are a bit lacking sometimes).
What he didn't hit on, though, is something disturbing I've seen in recent games: games that diss on you when you lose. The one that comes to my mind the most is Civilization 3. For those who haven't played the game, it can take a lot of work to master a difficulty level, and often times the downfall of any civ (a computer controlled one or yours) is when every in the world gangs up on it and crushes it. Okay, bad things happen sometimes. But do I have to see the enemies spew juvenile trash talk at me when I lose? Things like:
Gimme an 'L!' Gimme an 'O!' Whatever... LOSER! Don't worry "champ," you'll get 'em next time. Go back to chieftain! (Ed note: Cheiftain is the lowest difficulty level in Civ 3... imagine getting this while trying to learn how to play!) Aww... was that your last city? Maybe we should give it back...
and so on. Really, if I wanted to listen to stuff like this, I'd go play some random game on a public forum, like Warcraft 3 (the ladder actually isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, though) or an FPS. And I'm pretty sure there's been other games in the recent past like this, either by way of insulting you or over heavily punshing you...
It's funny that this guy picks Grand Theft Auto 3 as an example. I loved its sequel, Vice City, but I hated GTA 3. Why the big difference? Well, let's consider:
Cars had ridiculously low health. I was afraid of driving through Mafia-controlled territory, because a lot of them carried shotguns. 2 shotgun shots = instantly destroyed car. Maybe this is realistic, but it sucks to fail a mission because of one slight mistake causing you to die before you know what's going on. In Vice City, however, cars could take some punishment, AND they could catch on fire before they exploded (letting you bail out before that happened and you died).
By the end of the gang, EVERY gang in the game (except the Yakuzas) puts you on their KoS (kill on sight) list. So you're pretty much safe nowhere, and exploring the game is no fun at all. Compare this to Vice City, where only one gang, who controlled a small territory you could often avoid, attacked you on sight.
Many missions had very low timers to do things. One, for instance, required you bust up 9 espresso stands (fronts of drugs:P) in 8 minutes. And they spanned all of the game. GTA3's map was BIG. You really had to plan very carefully your route, and then don't fuck up at all or else you have to do the mission over again. I ended up doing some missions several times because of badly thought out mechanics. Vice City's story missions were much better in this regard.
Missions you couldn't appear to do again. There's a class of missions called "rampages" where if you died or ran out of time completing, they didn't respawn so you could try again. And you didn't get credit for completing them. Not the case in Vice City.
Insulting failure messages. I think Vice City had a couple of these here and there, but GTA3 had worse ones, like "You didn't win the race. LOSER!" As with Civ 3, why? I lost because I couldn't find a fucking sports car to race the other sports cars with (very rare in the first part of the game), not because I don't know what I'm doing.
And there's more. GTA3 seems to very strongly embody the faults he highlights in his article, so it seemed an unusual choice. I wouldn't be surprised if he only played Vice City, because he makes references to things from that game not in GTA3 (like robbing stores). Or maybe he's just better than I am at GTA3:P. Either way, Rockstar seems to have realized these problems and corrected them. We shall see what they change in GTA: San Andreas; hopefully more for the better!
Still, he makes excellent points all around. Often asked is "What happened to the fun in game designs?" particularly when MMORPGs are concerned.
The goal? To have fun. When you no longer have fun, stop playing. It's a simple concept that veterans often seem to forget. It works for me. As I said in another thread, I've played Asheron's Call a lot. I started in June 2000, but I've taken a lot of time off from the game. But I usually come back, because the game can still be fun when you'd been out of it for awhile and there's a lot of new changes to experience. Not currently playing, but big changes are likely ahead, so I've been thinking of coming back in the near future.
So while stalking and calling names etc is certainly uncalled for, messing with other people seems to be the whole point of most MMPOGS. With guild v guild and kingdom v kingdom and pvp, what do you expect but that people will be competitive. And competition means winners and loser, and in an MMPOG thats one winner and a thousand losers.
Well, I think the main problem here is that game developers are trying to create a perception that's not there. In nearly every MMORPG, only a small minority (maybe around 10% for AC, prolly not that different between games) actually partake in PvP if the game isn't PvP-centric. So it boggled a lot of observers (myself included!) when every new MMORPG that came out was oriented toward PvP, instead of just making it completely optional. Perhaps they're trying to tap into a new market? The problem, though, is that they're essentially restricting their market instead; now they have to find people who satisfy two requirements, e.g. they must like RPG PvP and they must like MMORPGs. I don't think there's all that many people in this intersection, and I think they've already found a game by now:).
So the games bring it upon themselves in a way, the unhappy newbies being picked on by the powergaming kiddies. Thats what they are designed to do, deep down. And since the rules arent written down anywhere, and in fact change randomly, who is to say what is legal and what is not, really, if the game lets you do it, it must be legal unless they tell you otherwise, and even then like in sports, is it only not legal if the umpire notices?
Yeah, and that's why PvP is not very popular in most MMORPGs. The people with too much time on their hands get powerful and kill all the new people. Hence my wondering why every new game is a PvP game.
You know, it's funny you should mention this. As an avid Asheron's Call player (not currently playing, though), I find that the maturity level in that game is actually higher than in normal online games (FPS, RTS, etc.) The demographic is a lot different, though. A lot of older and retired people play AC compared to say Unreal Tournament 2003. Pretty much everyone I have ever known in that game was at least in their 20s, and the younger ones that do play tend to be pretty reasonable; it's mostly the 16-30 or so demographic that's the obnoxious types, and even so most of that demographic isn't so bad usually.
In addition, I rarely see people "add another mask" when they play MMORPGs. They have a character, sure, but when you talk with them, they tend to just be themselves (or as much themself as they are in any Internet chat). In AC at least true role playing really isn't that common, and I don't think it's that big in other big name MMORPGs either. I used to spend a lot of time just standing around talking to people about anything, whether it be about the game or about real life things. Though there are a few things I don't do in AC when I chat (like swear, since that's against the CoC), I don't really act much differently than I would on IRC. I think maybe I even act a little bit more kindly, because the atmosphere is more positive than where I hang out on IRC.
So to suggest that MMORPGs are more anti-social for the reason you state is plausible but incorrect. Now, if you want to start talking about time commitment as a possible reason for anti-social behavior, then I'll start to agree...
Lewis Black once said something like "Where I come from [New York], fuck isn't even a word; it's a comma." The same has happened to "lol". I've seen people use it multiple times in the same sentence, usually something like "lol [phrase which isn't necessarily even funny or related to something that is] lol" complete without punctuation or anything that would make sense of the sentence. Essentially, as it use popularly used, "lol" means nothing. When they're really laughing, they say "(rof)lmao" instead. So stop saying "lol", it's like inserting extra whitespace in your text, without the extra clarity you get for indenting your code.
My friends and I are sort of "game afficiandoes" in as much as we all play games, but have pretty divergent interests. However, we can all agree on this: ID stopped making games a long time ago. What they do is make something that shows off their engine instead, and then other companies (Raven and whoever did the Jedi Knight series) license the engine and make something out of it which people actually like. I've got a feeling that the EPIC and the Unreal engine is heading the same way. For this reason, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you about little innovation: the content certainly isn't, but the engine itself is bounds ahead of the previous one. I think the Unreal people have been more innovative as far as FPS gameplay goes, but not by too much. It is this lack of gameplay innovativation that made me sort of curse FPSes past Unreal Tournament, though; they stopped being fun.
As far as a lot of other game types go, this is far too accurate, sadly... I just hope Homeworld2 doesn't turn out that way...
It's really too bad, because DirectPlay usually ends up being much better than what vendors choose to put into games. Ever heard of battle.net? Or WON? It's because Blizzard and Sierra, respectively, refuse to support DirectPlay TCP/IP services and instead put in their own horky Internet gaming services. Now, I'm not totally going off on bnet and won: They have their place. For one, it's a nice online community where you can meet and play people who like the same game you do. But, I find it very frusterating when vendors choose not to include direct TCP/IP because it's much, much easier to do games with friends that way. I don't know about WON, but battle.net is so badly overloaded now, that the lag is terrible for doing ANYTHING on the service. So, I have to suffer because they wantes to make everyone use a service that they won't give enough capacity to. I always hope that my games support DirectPlay for that reason, not because it's a Microsoft standard, but because at least you're getting a decent set of primative protocols.
I loved Dungeon Master. I never really wanted to get into the DM2: Legend of Skull Keep, though. It looked kind of dippy. Actually, I think the question to ask, though, is what happened to FTL in general? They did release a better version of DM later for the Amiga (with multiple language support, plus it runs on my A1200 without having to degrade the OS), but that's the last I'd seen of them.
Go to www.networkweek.com, you'll find it somewhere there.
Re:Use the mirrors? And what good will that do?
on
Linux 2.2.11 Released
·
· Score: 1
Wow, I didn't know that. I always figured they were the same server. Thanks. Still, it irks me to find out that some servers (notably, ftp.uk.kernel.org) seem to lag behind for days (I think 4 days is the longest I remember). I think it makes more since to call these "photograph" sites.
I have been reading slashdot for a few months now, and this is my first post. I was hoping that this isn't how I'd get my start, but...
I think it's great that kernel.org is mirrored. Especially when you know a few mirror servers that are hardly loaded that give you good speed (ftp.us.kernel.org is not one, of course). However, sometimes it literally takes days for the new updates to reach the mirror sites. What's the point of saying "We're busy. Please use a mirror" when you can't get what you're looking for anyway? I am aware that there are lots of other things on kernel.org besides the Linux kernel, but I bet it's quite commonly downloaded from there. I guess I'm just a little annoyed that they don't take the time to distribute this first to all the servers before making the official release.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to be kidding me. UPS? To transfer secure information? Where I work, we receive a backup tape from a production system that we load that contains sensitive data. That tape is sent back to my group via Iron Mountain (and we send the old tape back the same way). And this isn't even stuff as high profile as like what's Citigroup apparently lost. When services exist like this to facilitate occasional, VERY important shipments, there's just no excuse using UPS or Fedex. I fear for the free market if this is "business as usual" for it.
I hope the robot isn't running BSD, heh. Not sure if this is still true, but amusing none the less.
Early mac? That's an Apple 1 system! You know, the precursor to the Apple 2 systems sold at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto. I'm not surprised someone would value it so high; they were hand-made by Jobs and Wozniak so there aren't many of them in existance... and less that work.
And no, I'm not an Apple zealot, but this really is an interesting item for auction if you ask me.
So yeah. You crazy people play your game with your permadeaths. I'd like to see a better solution, personally.
Yeah, and there's the problem: Everquest. Most MMOs have been copies of EQ. And it's a horrible game: a pronounced leveling treadmill, ridiculously long spawn times (remember that article way back when about the guy who was going to wait 8 months to get a try at some quest, because the quest in question had a monster you needed to kill with a 1-3 day spawn time?), massively uneven advancement, a draconian code of conduct that forces every to play nice, etc. I have no idea why it was so successful. But people look at the success and assume "If we copy it, we'll be successful, too!"
:).
Here's something I've noticed, though. MMOs are pretty addicting, as you probably know, and many people often end up quitting, but coming back in a few months (lord knows how many times I've left and returned to Asheron's Call!). But I have never, ever heard an anecdote of someone leaving EQ by their own violition and coming back later. I'm sure it's happened, but I've never heard of it. Contrast that to pretty much ever other MMO that wasn't a total flop (Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call 2, Horizons, etc.)... and even THEY have people that come back. Maybe eventually EQ will become passe and eclipsed by the upcoming EQ2, which will turn out to be either much different or a flop, and finally the industry can wake up and figure out how to solve the problems it faces. We can dream
What he didn't hit on, though, is something disturbing I've seen in recent games: games that diss on you when you lose. The one that comes to my mind the most is Civilization 3. For those who haven't played the game, it can take a lot of work to master a difficulty level, and often times the downfall of any civ (a computer controlled one or yours) is when every in the world gangs up on it and crushes it. Okay, bad things happen sometimes. But do I have to see the enemies spew juvenile trash talk at me when I lose? Things like:
Gimme an 'L!' Gimme an 'O!' Whatever... LOSER!
Don't worry "champ," you'll get 'em next time.
Go back to chieftain! (Ed note: Cheiftain is the lowest difficulty level in Civ 3... imagine getting this while trying to learn how to play!)
Aww... was that your last city? Maybe we should give it back...
and so on. Really, if I wanted to listen to stuff like this, I'd go play some random game on a public forum, like Warcraft 3 (the ladder actually isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, though) or an FPS. And I'm pretty sure there's been other games in the recent past like this, either by way of insulting you or over heavily punshing you...
It's funny that this guy picks Grand Theft Auto 3 as an example. I loved its sequel, Vice City, but I hated GTA 3. Why the big difference? Well, let's consider:
And there's more. GTA3 seems to very strongly embody the faults he highlights in his article, so it seemed an unusual choice. I wouldn't be surprised if he only played Vice City, because he makes references to things from that game not in GTA3 (like robbing stores). Or maybe he's just better than I am at GTA3
Still, he makes excellent points all around. Often asked is "What happened to the fun in game designs?" particularly when MMORPGs are concerned.
The goal? To have fun. When you no longer have fun, stop playing. It's a simple concept that veterans often seem to forget. It works for me. As I said in another thread, I've played Asheron's Call a lot. I started in June 2000, but I've taken a lot of time off from the game. But I usually come back, because the game can still be fun when you'd been out of it for awhile and there's a lot of new changes to experience. Not currently playing, but big changes are likely ahead, so I've been thinking of coming back in the near future.
:).
So while stalking and calling names etc is certainly uncalled for, messing with other people seems to be the whole point of most MMPOGS. With guild v guild and kingdom v kingdom and pvp, what do you expect but that people will be competitive. And competition means winners and loser, and in an MMPOG thats one winner and a thousand losers.
Well, I think the main problem here is that game developers are trying to create a perception that's not there. In nearly every MMORPG, only a small minority (maybe around 10% for AC, prolly not that different between games) actually partake in PvP if the game isn't PvP-centric. So it boggled a lot of observers (myself included!) when every new MMORPG that came out was oriented toward PvP, instead of just making it completely optional. Perhaps they're trying to tap into a new market? The problem, though, is that they're essentially restricting their market instead; now they have to find people who satisfy two requirements, e.g. they must like RPG PvP and they must like MMORPGs. I don't think there's all that many people in this intersection, and I think they've already found a game by now
So the games bring it upon themselves in a way, the unhappy newbies being picked on by the powergaming kiddies. Thats what they are designed to do, deep down. And since the rules arent written down anywhere, and in fact change randomly, who is to say what is legal and what is not, really, if the game lets you do it, it must be legal unless they tell you otherwise, and even then like in sports, is it only not legal if the umpire notices?
Yeah, and that's why PvP is not very popular in most MMORPGs. The people with too much time on their hands get powerful and kill all the new people. Hence my wondering why every new game is a PvP game.
You know, it's funny you should mention this. As an avid Asheron's Call player (not currently playing, though), I find that the maturity level in that game is actually higher than in normal online games (FPS, RTS, etc.) The demographic is a lot different, though. A lot of older and retired people play AC compared to say Unreal Tournament 2003. Pretty much everyone I have ever known in that game was at least in their 20s, and the younger ones that do play tend to be pretty reasonable; it's mostly the 16-30 or so demographic that's the obnoxious types, and even so most of that demographic isn't so bad usually.
In addition, I rarely see people "add another mask" when they play MMORPGs. They have a character, sure, but when you talk with them, they tend to just be themselves (or as much themself as they are in any Internet chat). In AC at least true role playing really isn't that common, and I don't think it's that big in other big name MMORPGs either. I used to spend a lot of time just standing around talking to people about anything, whether it be about the game or about real life things. Though there are a few things I don't do in AC when I chat (like swear, since that's against the CoC), I don't really act much differently than I would on IRC. I think maybe I even act a little bit more kindly, because the atmosphere is more positive than where I hang out on IRC.
So to suggest that MMORPGs are more anti-social for the reason you state is plausible but incorrect. Now, if you want to start talking about time commitment as a possible reason for anti-social behavior, then I'll start to agree...
Lewis Black once said something like "Where I come from [New York], fuck isn't even a word; it's a comma." The same has happened to "lol". I've seen people use it multiple times in the same sentence, usually something like "lol [phrase which isn't necessarily even funny or related to something that is] lol" complete without punctuation or anything that would make sense of the sentence. Essentially, as it use popularly used, "lol" means nothing. When they're really laughing, they say "(rof)lmao" instead. So stop saying "lol", it's like inserting extra whitespace in your text, without the extra clarity you get for indenting your code.
My friends and I are sort of "game afficiandoes" in as much as we all play games, but have pretty divergent interests. However, we can all agree on this: ID stopped making games a long time ago. What they do is make something that shows off their engine instead, and then other companies (Raven and whoever did the Jedi Knight series) license the engine and make something out of it which people actually like. I've got a feeling that the EPIC and the Unreal engine is heading the same way. For this reason, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you about little innovation: the content certainly isn't, but the engine itself is bounds ahead of the previous one. I think the Unreal people have been more innovative as far as FPS gameplay goes, but not by too much. It is this lack of gameplay innovativation that made me sort of curse FPSes past Unreal Tournament, though; they stopped being fun.
As far as a lot of other game types go, this is far too accurate, sadly... I just hope Homeworld2 doesn't turn out that way...
It's really too bad, because DirectPlay usually ends up being much better than what vendors choose to put into games. Ever heard of battle.net? Or WON? It's because Blizzard and Sierra, respectively, refuse to support DirectPlay TCP/IP services and instead put in their own horky Internet gaming services. Now, I'm not totally going off on bnet and won: They have their place. For one, it's a nice online community where you can meet and play people who like the same game you do. But, I find it very frusterating when vendors choose not to include direct TCP/IP because it's much, much easier to do games with friends that way. I don't know about WON, but battle.net is so badly overloaded now, that the lag is terrible for doing ANYTHING on the service. So, I have to suffer because they wantes to make everyone use a service that they won't give enough capacity to. I always hope that my games support DirectPlay for that reason, not because it's a Microsoft standard, but because at least you're getting a decent set of primative protocols.
...so people can see that it is I who writes such intellegent posts (pshaw).
I loved Dungeon Master. I never really wanted to get into the DM2: Legend of Skull Keep, though. It looked kind of dippy. Actually, I think the question to ask, though, is what happened to FTL in general? They did release a better version of DM later for the Amiga (with multiple language support, plus it runs on my A1200 without having to degrade the OS), but that's the last I'd seen of them.
Go to www.networkweek.com, you'll find it somewhere there.
Wow, I didn't know that. I always figured they were the same server. Thanks. Still, it irks me to find out that some servers (notably, ftp.uk.kernel.org) seem to lag behind for days (I think 4 days is the longest I remember). I think it makes more since to call these "photograph" sites.
I have been reading slashdot for a few months now, and this is my first post. I was hoping that this isn't how I'd get my start, but...
I think it's great that kernel.org is mirrored. Especially when you know a few mirror servers that are hardly loaded that give you good speed (ftp.us.kernel.org is not one, of course). However, sometimes it literally takes days for the new updates to reach the mirror sites. What's the point of saying "We're busy. Please use a mirror" when you can't get what you're looking for anyway? I am aware that there are lots of other things on kernel.org besides the Linux kernel, but I bet it's quite commonly downloaded from there. I guess I'm just a little annoyed that they don't take the time to distribute this first to all the servers before making the official release.