And, preemptively, for those who have philosophical objections to me having written the code in the first place, I'll just have to live with your disapproval and hope my steady paycheck somehow sooths my guilty conscience.
Sir, your conscience should enable you to sleep as a baby. This feature alone has provided me with countless hours of entertainment as people suddenly realize the error of their ways as they make bold statements (often of a derogatory nature) in an e-mail which happens to be sent to the wrong person in CC. As they hastily move to send out the recall of their mail only to receive a mail from someone who was offended.
This feature combined with the nature of some people to act before they think has proven quite entertaining indeed. Please enjoy your steady paycheck to its fullest, your code has amused me countless times.
I'm curious to know specifically what you did to get to level 20 so quickly.
I got to level 20 in about 15 hours of gameplay. All I did was exploring and killing things... Lots of killing. The game hands you XP for practically anything. Discover a location? Pick a lock? Disarm a mine?
The level cap was a bit silly in my opinion, but the truth is that once you're 20 there's practically nothing in the game that can stop you anymore. With the right choice of perks and skills the game becomes either a sneak-and-snipe splatterfest, or you can start going one on one with supermutants in unarmed combat.
This game had both the most awesome and disappointing ending ever though. Having a giant robot wreak havoc through a destroyed Washington DC while firing lasers and shouting "Accept democracy or be eradicated!" has to be one of the better moments of the past 2 years in gaming. Not being able to continue playing after finishing the main quest was kind of weak though.
Gladly, our society had, on the whole, treated breastfeeding in public in a sane way - by treating it as normal, not putting restrictions on it, and even protecting it
I don't live in the US so we don't have a law that protects this right, or gives us this privilege (whatever your point of view is). In general, you don't see people breastfeeding in public here. Most of the restaurants have some private space to do such things (no, not the toilet), or the owner will gladly improvise a space with privacy.
While it is a perfectly natural process, and I personally don't have a problem with it, a lot of people do. You will find people staring as if they've never seen a breast before. I think it sets somewhat of an uneasy setting for both the mother that is breastfeeding and the possible person who takes offense or (worse) gets aroused by it. Maybe it's best for both parties to simply sidestep the problem altogether, and provide a private space where people can take of their babies. Even our trains provide such areas these days.
A friend of mine recently gave birth to a healthy young boy. When she has company around in her own house, she goes to the childs room to breastfeed simply to avoid any awkward situation. I don't think our generation is one raising hell about a bare breast, and I think you see more of a sexual context in the average showergel advertisement than in breastfeeding. It's a matter of consideration towards how others might react.
On the topic of Facebook itself. The Internet is a wonderful place, but in general it mirrors society with the added bonus of the illusion of anonymity because you aren't in direct contact with another person. I wonder how wise it is to put up pictures of yourself breastfeeding on a medium where you have no idea of who is looking at those pictures in whatever context fancies them. What if a future employer takes offense to this (not because he's a puritan or whatever term you wish to label him, but because one of his customers might google his latest project manager and have the first find be a picture of her breastfeeding).
In that context, a few years ago a coworker of mine decided to put pictures of the birth of his daughter online on some photo gallery. Most people tend to just put the pictures of the child online, but he captured the whole birth in a way that most documentaries don't. Is that a bad thing? Not really, it's a very natural process. But in his absence more than one of my coworkers made a derogatory remark, and I personally wasn't exactly jumping for joy when I saw those pictures. Fast forward a couple of years where a coworker had taken pictures of himself in the bathtub with his son and put those on his desk. Rest assured that it only took one coffeebreak before someone said "What the hell", pointing out that our coworker was naked in his pictures. Generally speaking, most people tend to bathe naked. Again, this is a natural thing. So why were so many people uncomfortable with those pictures?
As I grow older for some reason I've come to see society as growing more and more to conveniencing self without regards to others. Most people have become so focused on themselves that they disregard the opinions of others without looking for a middle ground that is acceptable to both parties. I think it's important enough to not lose sight of your surroundings. I think that this applies to both parties in this whole debate.
I think Neverwinter Nights and it's successors are among the best games ever.
The only thing that saved the original Neverwinter Nights in my opinion was the last expansion, Hordes of the Underdark. The rest of the original game got old real soon. Halfway the original campaign I lost interest and started tinkering with the toolset that came with it. Fast forward a few weeks and I was majorly irritated by the numerous amounts of bugs in that.
It's sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2, managed to capture my attention long enough with an actual story. The first expansion for it however was another horrible piece of dung because of a nifty mechanic that required you to feed (or not to feed) on spirits and became a real drag as it really got in the way of gameplay. I haven't even bothered picking up the latest expansion simply because halfway through the first expansion I got annoyed and just gave up on the whole thing.
There are certainly things wrong with NWN, but I think that's mainly the use of the D&D world - from that point of view, The Witcher, which is set in a much grittier and more realistic world, is better.
I'll agree with you that the witcher is a much better game using the same (albeit a little souped up) engine, but I don't really think that the D&D setting has a lot to do with it. When I played the original Baldurs Gate game by the end of it when I defeated Sarevok I had a sense of just having played a really epic campaign. You started out as the D&D equivalent of John Q. Public and ended up being the offspring of a deity.
Maybe it's the nostalgia kicking in, but for me that game had everything an RPG needed:
a story that kept you coming back for more
a setting that would drag you in, where even the side-quests did a pretty good job of masking the typical kill-fetch-retrieve quests as having somewhat of a background
a familiar backdrop in the D&D world, with a few references here and there
a good balance between story and action
unforgettable party members (really, who can forget Minsc, Jaheira,...)
I don't think NWN is crap as much as that it failed to deliver to anticipation after the Baldurs Gate series. It had a mediocre story, numerous gameplay flaws (party size being the most prominent one at that), and on release it was riddled with bugs. What it did do was allow you to have a lot of fun with the editor, but even that was a horrible drag if you didn't have the patience to mess around with a lot of (initially) undocumented calls.
I've played a lot of RPGs since Baldurs Gate, and few of them have been as polished as that title. Maybe that's just my nostalgia goggles talking...
Re:Users are branching out - game companies are no
on
Is the Gaming PC Dead?
·
· Score: 1
More than half of the people at these coffee shops are using Macs.
Strange, I recall Apple having a few games, including Spore, World of Warcraft, Prince of Persia, Command and Conquer 3. I'll agree that there aren't as many games as on PC, but there are quite a few that have been relatively popular.
Ubuntu [snip] Debian [snip] Many of us have completely given up Windows.
As someone who's been using linux for over 10 years, I find it hard to believe that anyone who plays video games gives up on windows. Yes, there is wine, but it is a hassle, has far too many problems with most games compared to just installing it on XP.
Now the companies that used to make Linux Games (Hello Unreal 3!) have decided not to do it anymore because they're kissing Microsofts ass.
Yes, because ultimately kissing ass is all what running a game-company is all about. Screw this whole profit thing and lets see how fast we can cover the entirety of Steve Ballmers behind with our lips.
Portability comes with a cost, extra development time, and the benefit is that you gain access to a very niche market that you're not sure of if they will buy your games. Supporting Linux would mean that now they have to test not 1 or 2 platforms like with Windows, but all of the major distributions.
Testing alone suddenly tripled in costs just so you can support a very niche market segment. A very niche market segment that is very likely to already own a copy of another platform you're already going to develop for. That leaves only the die hard Microsoft haters who will refuse to reboot unless their kernel panics. That's a very very small market segment.
game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
Gamers on the "cutting edge" are the fools who spend hundreds of dollars on the latest and greatest videocard. Gamers on the "cutting edge" don't have to wait for wine to be updated to support their game. The prevalence of the Xbox 360, despite all of its flaws, is a sign that few people are ditching Microsoft at the moment.
As much as I love linux, I can understand people for not wanting to support it. The diversity that it offers in the form of multiple distributions, while paramount to its success, is also its most major flaw. The desktop environment alone offers enough diversity in one distribution to create an amount of testing cases that scares off most sane managers.
Of course, there is the possibility that the first prototype fries were planted in Belgium by French agents provocateurs.
Do you really think that something as delicious as fries could be invented by the country that came up with the idea of escargots? French cuisine was only saved in the 19th century by the redeeming qualities of the éclair and its delicious creamy filling.
I'm sure that the children who are actually being abused around the world are enormously happy that at least their favourite cartoon characters are safe.
I'm sorry if that's a little too cynical, but don't these people have important things to do?
U.S. Department of Justice is levying the fines, so the money goes to the US Government. The Government will use the money to help bail out banks.... that have no liquidity because of all the people who ran up their credit cards buying LCD televisions on credit and can't pay it back.
Ah, the giant circle is complete now. That's it, it's official now: THE CRISIS IS OVER!!!!
Re:My advice - don't look for satisfaction in game
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
·
· Score: 1
My youngest daughter is learning piano, and we view each new challenging piece she has to learn as a 'boss level'
Mozart is easy, just circle-strafe for victory.;)
So my advice is - don't look for more 'grown up' games - challenge yourself with something much more rewarding and useful in the long term.
As much as I agree with this, everyone needs to unwind every now and then. I can really enjoy gaming, even really stupid games, and I prefer it a lot more than watching most movies or tv-series since it keeps me busy instead of pondering about some problem that needs solving. Having said that, I recently picked up playing the guitar (yes, the instrument, not the plastic guitar hero controller) because I wanted something fulfilling to do with my spare time.
Re:My advice - don't look for satisfaction in game
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Are you married? There's your BOSS level. Then the kids... little mini bosses, all the damn time!:)
You can prevent those from spawning, but it takes a lot of fun out of the game.
Leaving for work... those are the easy levels.
Yeah, but the traffic jam level is a drag. I wish they'd replace it with some sort of mini-game.
So if you are hiding a tank in the desert, paint it desert colors?
We've actually gone one step further. We've actually built an entire tank made out of sand. Our prototype required very little materials other than that: a bucket, a shovel and a beach.
It's still a prototype though since it breaks easily, but it does blend in with its surroundings, and it has been proven combat worthy by having our troops stomp over sandcastles.
Well CPUs have gotten a lot faster in the last few years.
The linux kernel has advanced since then as well, and storage media as well. If I'd have these statistics handy they'd be an interesting reference, but they'd be hopelessly outdated.
Did you test with RAID5?
No, only RAID-0 and RAID-1. I've replied somewhere in this thread to someone else on the specifics of my type of usage.
This issue deserves some formal testing. For example does OS effect the outcome or how about file system type such as fx3 vs. Reiser?
FWIW, I've had really good experiences with XFS. For my particular usage XFS came out on top in performance in the areas that matter for our particular usage. We tested Reiser 3, ext2, ext3 and XFS. Again, some filesystems will perform better than others in different circumstances. Note that I'm not saying anything bad about other filesystems, each does what it does and fills its users particular needs.
So yeah, for specific answers especially performance wise, you're best off with googling what other people do and what kind of performance they get, and testing things out for yourself. If performance is critical enough for your application you can justify the time (and money) it takes to test the systems you're considering (within reason).
Which hardware RAID did you pick? Did you avoid RAID 5?
The RAID we tested was RAID-0 and RAID-1. We have several filesystems used only for temporary data which lives about 1 hour (intermediate results between steps) and gets tossed after that (unless we're debugging), so if that crashes it's no big deal. The largest problem for us is that we need to be able to have X TB of diskspace (with X growing every year) that needs to have Y MB/s throughput (with Y growing every year as well). These types of filesystems we usually setup in RAID-0.
With RAID-1 the idea was originally to make sure the operating system disk itself doesn't croak, but in the end we decided to make an install image that can be deployed in a matter half an hour. If a particular fileserver dies we lose at most 1 hour of computing time, and the lost jobs get rescheduled, unless all of those fileservers would die at the same time (that would really make my day).
For long term storage (the actual results and original files) we already have a solution, which I don't have any control over other than an NFS share that I mount. Speed is not really of importance here. From what I gather they do use RAID-5 there, but it's a Fibre Channel SAN that gets exported. Sadly, I didn't get to have fun with that thing since it's an area I'm quite interested in.
I'm really hoping to have some fun with ZFS in the near future. I've been hearing a lot of noise about it and I want to see what it can do for us and if it's a viable solution.
Slashdot Mirror
And, preemptively, for those who have philosophical objections to me having written the code in the first place, I'll just have to live with your disapproval and hope my steady paycheck somehow sooths my guilty conscience.
Sir, your conscience should enable you to sleep as a baby. This feature alone has provided me with countless hours of entertainment as people suddenly realize the error of their ways as they make bold statements (often of a derogatory nature) in an e-mail which happens to be sent to the wrong person in CC. As they hastily move to send out the recall of their mail only to receive a mail from someone who was offended.
This feature combined with the nature of some people to act before they think has proven quite entertaining indeed. Please enjoy your steady paycheck to its fullest, your code has amused me countless times.
In Fallout 2, they're at least smart enough not to give you the radiation-warped mutant until after he would have come in handy.
Problem is that there is no after this scene. To quote from Aliens : "Game over man... Game over".
I'm curious to know specifically what you did to get to level 20 so quickly.
I got to level 20 in about 15 hours of gameplay. All I did was exploring and killing things... Lots of killing. The game hands you XP for practically anything. Discover a location? Pick a lock? Disarm a mine?
The level cap was a bit silly in my opinion, but the truth is that once you're 20 there's practically nothing in the game that can stop you anymore. With the right choice of perks and skills the game becomes either a sneak-and-snipe splatterfest, or you can start going one on one with supermutants in unarmed combat.
This game had both the most awesome and disappointing ending ever though. Having a giant robot wreak havoc through a destroyed Washington DC while firing lasers and shouting "Accept democracy or be eradicated!" has to be one of the better moments of the past 2 years in gaming. Not being able to continue playing after finishing the main quest was kind of weak though.
Gladly, our society had, on the whole, treated breastfeeding in public in a sane way - by treating it as normal, not putting restrictions on it, and even protecting it
I don't live in the US so we don't have a law that protects this right, or gives us this privilege (whatever your point of view is). In general, you don't see people breastfeeding in public here. Most of the restaurants have some private space to do such things (no, not the toilet), or the owner will gladly improvise a space with privacy.
While it is a perfectly natural process, and I personally don't have a problem with it, a lot of people do. You will find people staring as if they've never seen a breast before. I think it sets somewhat of an uneasy setting for both the mother that is breastfeeding and the possible person who takes offense or (worse) gets aroused by it. Maybe it's best for both parties to simply sidestep the problem altogether, and provide a private space where people can take of their babies. Even our trains provide such areas these days.
A friend of mine recently gave birth to a healthy young boy. When she has company around in her own house, she goes to the childs room to breastfeed simply to avoid any awkward situation. I don't think our generation is one raising hell about a bare breast, and I think you see more of a sexual context in the average showergel advertisement than in breastfeeding. It's a matter of consideration towards how others might react.
On the topic of Facebook itself. The Internet is a wonderful place, but in general it mirrors society with the added bonus of the illusion of anonymity because you aren't in direct contact with another person. I wonder how wise it is to put up pictures of yourself breastfeeding on a medium where you have no idea of who is looking at those pictures in whatever context fancies them. What if a future employer takes offense to this (not because he's a puritan or whatever term you wish to label him, but because one of his customers might google his latest project manager and have the first find be a picture of her breastfeeding).
In that context, a few years ago a coworker of mine decided to put pictures of the birth of his daughter online on some photo gallery. Most people tend to just put the pictures of the child online, but he captured the whole birth in a way that most documentaries don't. Is that a bad thing? Not really, it's a very natural process. But in his absence more than one of my coworkers made a derogatory remark, and I personally wasn't exactly jumping for joy when I saw those pictures. Fast forward a couple of years where a coworker had taken pictures of himself in the bathtub with his son and put those on his desk. Rest assured that it only took one coffeebreak before someone said "What the hell", pointing out that our coworker was naked in his pictures. Generally speaking, most people tend to bathe naked. Again, this is a natural thing. So why were so many people uncomfortable with those pictures?
As I grow older for some reason I've come to see society as growing more and more to conveniencing self without regards to others. Most people have become so focused on themselves that they disregard the opinions of others without looking for a middle ground that is acceptable to both parties. I think it's important enough to not lose sight of your surroundings. I think that this applies to both parties in this whole debate.
Long enough for goatse to scar me for life.
Touché. I was going to post that you can't unsee something, but your example is much better at proving that point.
I think Neverwinter Nights and it's successors are among the best games ever.
The only thing that saved the original Neverwinter Nights in my opinion was the last expansion, Hordes of the Underdark. The rest of the original game got old real soon. Halfway the original campaign I lost interest and started tinkering with the toolset that came with it. Fast forward a few weeks and I was majorly irritated by the numerous amounts of bugs in that.
It's sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2, managed to capture my attention long enough with an actual story. The first expansion for it however was another horrible piece of dung because of a nifty mechanic that required you to feed (or not to feed) on spirits and became a real drag as it really got in the way of gameplay. I haven't even bothered picking up the latest expansion simply because halfway through the first expansion I got annoyed and just gave up on the whole thing.
There are certainly things wrong with NWN, but I think that's mainly the use of the D&D world - from that point of view, The Witcher, which is set in a much grittier and more realistic world, is better.
I'll agree with you that the witcher is a much better game using the same (albeit a little souped up) engine, but I don't really think that the D&D setting has a lot to do with it. When I played the original Baldurs Gate game by the end of it when I defeated Sarevok I had a sense of just having played a really epic campaign. You started out as the D&D equivalent of John Q. Public and ended up being the offspring of a deity.
Maybe it's the nostalgia kicking in, but for me that game had everything an RPG needed:
I don't think NWN is crap as much as that it failed to deliver to anticipation after the Baldurs Gate series. It had a mediocre story, numerous gameplay flaws (party size being the most prominent one at that), and on release it was riddled with bugs. What it did do was allow you to have a lot of fun with the editor, but even that was a horrible drag if you didn't have the patience to mess around with a lot of (initially) undocumented calls.
I've played a lot of RPGs since Baldurs Gate, and few of them have been as polished as that title. Maybe that's just my nostalgia goggles talking...
More than half of the people at these coffee shops are using Macs.
Strange, I recall Apple having a few games, including Spore, World of Warcraft, Prince of Persia, Command and Conquer 3. I'll agree that there aren't as many games as on PC, but there are quite a few that have been relatively popular.
Ubuntu [snip] Debian [snip] Many of us have completely given up Windows.
As someone who's been using linux for over 10 years, I find it hard to believe that anyone who plays video games gives up on windows. Yes, there is wine, but it is a hassle, has far too many problems with most games compared to just installing it on XP.
Now the companies that used to make Linux Games (Hello Unreal 3!) have decided not to do it anymore because they're kissing Microsofts ass.
Yes, because ultimately kissing ass is all what running a game-company is all about. Screw this whole profit thing and lets see how fast we can cover the entirety of Steve Ballmers behind with our lips.
Portability comes with a cost, extra development time, and the benefit is that you gain access to a very niche market that you're not sure of if they will buy your games. Supporting Linux would mean that now they have to test not 1 or 2 platforms like with Windows, but all of the major distributions.
Testing alone suddenly tripled in costs just so you can support a very niche market segment. A very niche market segment that is very likely to already own a copy of another platform you're already going to develop for. That leaves only the die hard Microsoft haters who will refuse to reboot unless their kernel panics. That's a very very small market segment.
game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
Gamers on the "cutting edge" are the fools who spend hundreds of dollars on the latest and greatest videocard. Gamers on the "cutting edge" don't have to wait for wine to be updated to support their game. The prevalence of the Xbox 360, despite all of its flaws, is a sign that few people are ditching Microsoft at the moment.
As much as I love linux, I can understand people for not wanting to support it. The diversity that it offers in the form of multiple distributions, while paramount to its success, is also its most major flaw. The desktop environment alone offers enough diversity in one distribution to create an amount of testing cases that scares off most sane managers.
Of course, there is the possibility that the first prototype fries were planted in Belgium by French agents provocateurs.
Do you really think that something as delicious as fries could be invented by the country that came up with the idea of escargots? French cuisine was only saved in the 19th century by the redeeming qualities of the éclair and its delicious creamy filling.
ytmnd.com
I should've known that nothing good would come from clicking that link.
This website is best viewed in Netscape Navigator 4.0
Oh shit. Um, would it help if I said that they were like lions? Well, sea lions, at least.
Only if you had a bucket of fish and an audience
For those of you who are wondering about step 4, let the rest of us know when you figure it out
Step 4 was not using wireless power on your lap
I'm sure that the children who are actually being abused around the world are enormously happy that at least their favourite cartoon characters are safe.
I'm sorry if that's a little too cynical, but don't these people have important things to do?
I generally ask for payment [...] Install/Fix Vista: A keg of beer, blow and hookers
In fact, forget about Vista and the beer.
ah, screw the whole thing
I smell a nobel prize idea here...
geek debate about mean vs. average
You just had to bring that up didn't you...
'I know you did it.'
The witness then took the stand and threw it violently at the prosecutor.
U.S. Department of Justice is levying the fines, so the money goes to the US Government. The Government will use the money to help bail out banks. ... that have no liquidity because of all the people who ran up their credit cards buying LCD televisions on credit and can't pay it back.
Ah, the giant circle is complete now. That's it, it's official now: THE CRISIS IS OVER!!!!
My youngest daughter is learning piano, and we view each new challenging piece she has to learn as a 'boss level'
Mozart is easy, just circle-strafe for victory. ;)
So my advice is - don't look for more 'grown up' games - challenge yourself with something much more rewarding and useful in the long term.
As much as I agree with this, everyone needs to unwind every now and then. I can really enjoy gaming, even really stupid games, and I prefer it a lot more than watching most movies or tv-series since it keeps me busy instead of pondering about some problem that needs solving. Having said that, I recently picked up playing the guitar (yes, the instrument, not the plastic guitar hero controller) because I wanted something fulfilling to do with my spare time.
Are you married? There's your BOSS level. Then the kids... little mini bosses, all the damn time! :)
You can prevent those from spawning, but it takes a lot of fun out of the game.
Leaving for work... those are the easy levels.
Yeah, but the traffic jam level is a drag. I wish they'd replace it with some sort of mini-game.
So if you are hiding a tank in the desert, paint it desert colors?
We've actually gone one step further. We've actually built an entire tank made out of sand. Our prototype required very little materials other than that: a bucket, a shovel and a beach.
It's still a prototype though since it breaks easily, but it does blend in with its surroundings, and it has been proven combat worthy by having our troops stomp over sandcastles.
You'll know when cloaking is really working when the monthly dupe of "cloaking, this time for real" stops showing up here.
Because they managed to cloak the article?
Well CPUs have gotten a lot faster in the last few years.
The linux kernel has advanced since then as well, and storage media as well. If I'd have these statistics handy they'd be an interesting reference, but they'd be hopelessly outdated.
Did you test with RAID5?
No, only RAID-0 and RAID-1. I've replied somewhere in this thread to someone else on the specifics of my type of usage.
This issue deserves some formal testing. For example does OS effect the outcome or how about file system type such as fx3 vs. Reiser?
FWIW, I've had really good experiences with XFS. For my particular usage XFS came out on top in performance in the areas that matter for our particular usage. We tested Reiser 3, ext2, ext3 and XFS. Again, some filesystems will perform better than others in different circumstances. Note that I'm not saying anything bad about other filesystems, each does what it does and fills its users particular needs.
So yeah, for specific answers especially performance wise, you're best off with googling what other people do and what kind of performance they get, and testing things out for yourself. If performance is critical enough for your application you can justify the time (and money) it takes to test the systems you're considering (within reason).
Which hardware RAID did you pick? Did you avoid RAID 5?
The RAID we tested was RAID-0 and RAID-1. We have several filesystems used only for temporary data which lives about 1 hour (intermediate results between steps) and gets tossed after that (unless we're debugging), so if that crashes it's no big deal. The largest problem for us is that we need to be able to have X TB of diskspace (with X growing every year) that needs to have Y MB/s throughput (with Y growing every year as well). These types of filesystems we usually setup in RAID-0.
With RAID-1 the idea was originally to make sure the operating system disk itself doesn't croak, but in the end we decided to make an install image that can be deployed in a matter half an hour. If a particular fileserver dies we lose at most 1 hour of computing time, and the lost jobs get rescheduled, unless all of those fileservers would die at the same time (that would really make my day).
For long term storage (the actual results and original files) we already have a solution, which I don't have any control over other than an NFS share that I mount. Speed is not really of importance here. From what I gather they do use RAID-5 there, but it's a Fibre Channel SAN that gets exported. Sadly, I didn't get to have fun with that thing since it's an area I'm quite interested in.
I'm really hoping to have some fun with ZFS in the near future. I've been hearing a lot of noise about it and I want to see what it can do for us and if it's a viable solution.