Blizzard do an amazing job of making gamers happy,
and making games that people play for months and years.
They have done this repeatedly over a number of games.
It's graphics AND backstory AND quality, but to me
it's the game design (i.e. their understanding of effort/reward tradeoffs
and user motivation) that seems to be better than anyone else.
If it was easy, other people would have done it.
How come this works and yet SWG doesn't, to the same extent?
I name SWG specifically here because Star Wars is such an established
franchise that you would expect it to beat all comers.
MMORPG designers the world over must be scratching their heads.
Looking at historical data, just what are the economics of shuttle
compared to simpler non-reusable rockets (either US, Russian or wherever)?
Even for low-orbit stuff I get the impression that shuttle has been
less of an improvement over rockets than was originally hoped,
but I would love to know the numbers for cost and launch success rate.
This is so freaky - I worked on RISC OS many, many years ago.
We managed to write a pretty damn good desktop OS and
fit it into a MB or two. Modern PCs have 1000 times
as much memory, 100 times as many CPU cycles, 10000 times
as much disc space. I have to admit that modern PCs are
better now, buy only if you force me to.
If I keep going I'll spill my beer down my long white beard.
Not just the text, scale the whole page accurately.
With modern LCD pixels getting smaller,
and with differing personal preference on font
and image size, this should be available.
And apply a different scale factor to printed pages.
Re:At least Jim Anchower is still there
on
The Onion in 2056
·
· Score: 1
Jeez man, lighten up. "Onion appears to contain non-truthful statements, my fellow droids. Do not trust it as a data source".
I fully realise that it's very very hard,
and that.doc has many inherent bugs.
I also realise that MS don't try to make it easy.
I do not say this lightly.
But unfortunately, this is the killer issue
that prevents me from upgrading to Open Office.
I suspect it is the same for others.
It's a lot like the Intel 386 instruction set.
It has many warts, and in the 80s Intel's
competitors invented better ones.
But the sticky glue just won't go away.
Now, Intel's biggest competitor (AMD)
accepts this instruction set, and works with it,
and mostly us customers just breathe a sigh of
relief.
In the short and medium term,
the thing that would most help
OpenOffice is to do a
SUPERP job of.doc,.xls,.ppt import
AND export.
I tried OpenOffice 7 and it was not up to the job,
by miles and miles. I haven't even tried OO 8,
because 7 made such basic errors.
Why is this? Because I swap documents with my
co-workers, my suppliers, and my customers.
If a customer wants a copy of my slides, I HAVE
to give him.ppt. There is no way I can start any
sort of discussion with him about doc formats,
it is a distraction to my primary business.
Editable office document formats are not just an organisation-internal thing.
That's why they are so sticky.
I am far more afraid of a new document
format than of a new word processor.
If I try a new word processor and don't like it,
I can go back. But if I embrace a new
document format, and want to change back in 2
years' time, I'm stuck. FireFox spread
quickly because trying it is low-risk.
The same is not true of OO.
Why can't OO embrace and extend the.doc format,
rather than inventing something new?
Slashdot Mirror
If you like thought experiments on future energy supplies, here is absolutely essential background reading:
www.withouthotair.com
No major energy source left behind! Enjoy!
Maybe IE is bloated - but this is often the fate of a successful application.
Surely it must be possible to structure the system so that the threat caused by any application going crazy/malicious, can be contained?
This is the system architecture issue that is wider than just a browser.
... OK, how about Iran?
If it was easy, other people would have done it. How come this works and yet SWG doesn't, to the same extent? I name SWG specifically here because Star Wars is such an established franchise that you would expect it to beat all comers.
MMORPG designers the world over must be scratching their heads.
How can anyone top this?
Even for low-orbit stuff I get the impression that shuttle has been less of an improvement over rockets than was originally hoped, but I would love to know the numbers for cost and launch success rate.
If I keep going I'll spill my beer down my long white beard.
Not just the text, scale the whole page accurately. With modern LCD pixels getting smaller, and with differing personal preference on font and image size, this should be available.
And apply a different scale factor to printed pages.
Jeez man, lighten up.
"Onion appears to contain non-truthful statements, my fellow droids. Do not trust it as a data source".
But unfortunately, this is the killer issue that prevents me from upgrading to Open Office. I suspect it is the same for others.
It's a lot like the Intel 386 instruction set. It has many warts, and in the 80s Intel's competitors invented better ones. But the sticky glue just won't go away. Now, Intel's biggest competitor (AMD) accepts this instruction set, and works with it, and mostly us customers just breathe a sigh of relief.
Why is this? Because I swap documents with my co-workers, my suppliers, and my customers. If a customer wants a copy of my slides, I HAVE to give him .ppt. There is no way I can start any
sort of discussion with him about doc formats,
it is a distraction to my primary business.
Editable office document formats are not just an organisation-internal thing. That's why they are so sticky.
I am far more afraid of a new document format than of a new word processor. If I try a new word processor and don't like it, I can go back. But if I embrace a new document format, and want to change back in 2 years' time, I'm stuck. FireFox spread quickly because trying it is low-risk. The same is not true of OO.
Why can't OO embrace and extend the .doc format,
rather than inventing something new?
/quickly dons flame-proof underpants