If you're measuring success by revenue though that changes dramatically. Angry Birds has 300 million downloads at $1 each? Warcraft to the tune of $15/month per subscriber beats that in 2 months time. Farmville is a "free" game that makes it's money via microtransactions. I'm not sure of the exact average money spent per player, but I'd be willing to bet that it's bringing in far less money that WoW.
Realistically, I'd wager that if WoW were truly free to play (as opposed to the "free to level 20" thing they have which is really just a non-timed trial), or was only $1 as a one-time fee, I'm sure it would have a lot more players too.
Depends on if you feel like buy "entertainment" in bulk or not. My movie tickets run about $6 each rather than $10, but lets assume 10 for the sake of argument. If I go to the movies once per week (about as often as I'd choose to go - usually its more like once every 3 weeks) then my monthly cost for going to the movies is $40. If I played one game per month then my monthly gaming cost is still $60.
It doesn't make much sense to compare strictly in "dollar for the hour" terms - it's more applicable to compare it in terms of total money spent.
Comparing entertainment strictly only a dollar per hour basis makes about as much sense as comparing all foods via dollar per pound. Ramen noodes cost a lot less per pound than lobster. That doesn't mean that it's a wonderful value that we should take to the streets over comparing it's bargain prices compared to lobster (note - that's not to say that video games are ramen compared to movies being lobster - just that the $/hour metric makes as little since as the $/pound metric between those two items).
I personally dropped my account a while back. I had pretty much stopped playing for the 4-5 months before Cataclysm hit. The expansion brought me back for another 2 months or so, but after that I was bored again and just dropped the subscription.
Overall, being a competitive person, what really did it for me was the dumbing down of the content and trivializing of the gear. Don't get me wrong, I'm no elitist - I actually got very little of the top level gear when it was hard to get because I simply didn't have the time or energy to raid hardcore to get it. Still though, I raided occasionally, and when I did manage to attain something, it felt like a true achievement. When I finally downed a boss - even if it was on a raid instance from 2 content patches ago - it felt like I DID something.
They basically killed that. They hand out gear like its candy. Nothing feels special anymore, because the only thing needed to attain that gear is pure boring GRIND. Content gets easier over time - not only because they keep handing out better and better gear on a schedule, but they actually nerf the content as time goes on.
It means nothing now. Even when I wasn't doing the upper tier content - when I wasn't dripping purples, I was having more fun because it felt like what I DID have, I earned.
Naturally its their game, and their perogative, so they can do what they will, but in its current incarnation I have little interest in playing. I've gone back to mostly single player games, and now have more time to actually do outdoors things (like REAL fishing, and USPSA competitions - where I still suck, but I still enjoy it despite them not bending the scores so that everybody "wins").
No, I mean Linux. This was circa '93 - '94. Windows 95 wasn't quite out yet and back in those days a lot of the hobbiest crowd tended to still do a lot of work in DOS rather than suffer through Windows 3.1.
Good old autoexec.bat. I remember back in the days when I first got into Linux most of the comparisons for home users back then were between Linux and DOS, not Linux and Windows. One BBS poster came in ridiculing the Linux users for our stupidity because everything a computer loaded HAS to come from autoexec.bat and so you need DOS to even run Linux, so clearly DOS was superior.
Sorry, the reference just brought that old mix up to mind. Carry on.
Verizon is becoming less and less palatable to me as time goes on. I've only stuck with them as long as I have because their service is the ONLY one that picks up in the boondocks where I live. My contract expires in a year though, and right about that time I'm also planning on moving closer to work. Not sure what I'm switching to (at this point I'm honestly looking at Crickett), but anything has got to be better than the overcharging behemoth that is Verizon.
On most of them, if you go ahead and say "Operator" - regardless of where you are in the menu - it'll take you to a human to speak with. I've also heard the some of them to voice recognition for profanity and forward to an operator at that point, but I've always had better luck with just "operator":).
I think the whole exercise is short sighted. I've been there, done that. The amount of effort to keep everything running, updated, configured, etc is a PITA.
That sums it up. I used to maintain my own setup like this as well, and it's just aggravating to keep up with. With the popularity of outsourced webmail growing, its obvious that most COMPANIES don't even feel it worth the effort for up to a few thousand users. Maintaining a whole server for just yourself is just being a glutton for punishment. The only benefit I see in the whole thing is if you want to treat it as an educational exercise to learn more about the topics and how email works, but overall this is a skillset that is becoming less valuable anyways (because as I said - lots of companies that once maintained their own email systems are now outsourcing it).
If you really want to pursue it, I'd look at the following:
- a Unix-Like OS (I've sucessfully used both FreeBSD and CentOS in different setup iterations). - a MTA - Postfix always worked well for me - a mail server - Dovecot - spam/virus filtering solution: Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV integrate very well with Postfix and work well. SpamAssassin usually takes some custom rules and other plugins (Razor, DCC, etc) to really shine, but that's a long topic of discussion. Keeping the spam filter up to date and effective is the #1 headache in this setup. - a webmail/calendaring solution: Apache/PHP and IMP Horde work pretty well here.
Amen to that. I can honestly say that if BeOS was alive with proper hardware and app support I'd be using it to this day. It just plain worked, and had a level of snappiness and response that I still haven't seen matched by anything since.
That is about the best description I've heard of the problem. Linux might be used more by the masses now, but most Linux users still aren't so retarded at this point that they need panels popping in from the sides of the screen showing them where they saved their files and crap. They're dumbing down the interface not only to a group that doesn't need nor want it, but also in an age when even the general populace itself is getting more familiar with computers and how they work.
It's like a time traveler from 1985 journeyed forward, and created a desktop environment targeted towards computer idiots of yesteryear, just with today's flashy technology.
As much as any other task. IE, GUI's aren't necessary for almost any task you might perform, but it makes virtually all of them faster and easier.
Look, I grew up on the DOS era - had to do tons via command line. I still admin a few systems remotely via SSH and am perfectly capable of using the command line when I have to, but it's naive to think that a GUI isn't a welcomed addition to most stuff that people do daily.
Perhaps he's wanting to move to a platform that will be supported and aligns with his views a little better. Particularly since he's involved behind the scenes, he can help to take a project whose direction he agrees with, and help move that forward, rather than sticking with the choice that's good in the short term but won't change.
Having recently went through this, I think he's absolutely right on the money with this. Gnome3 is flat out unusable. Unity is just as bad. Having tried Xfce, it's not quite as polished as Gnome2 was, but it won't take too much development and interest to bring it up to par, and once thats achieved, hopefully we can continue on with that as a better solution.
It's easy to talk a pile of trash when you aren't accountable for your blathering.
I think the danger here is obvious just from your post, and that's the mindset that being a prick, talking a pile of trash, or blathering is anything that one needs to be "accountable for".
Its a sad state of affairs on the net when I can read a post like this and truly not know if I'm reading a sarcastic joke for which I'm just not getting the punchline, or if the writer is actually being serious.
If you are only gonna release a broken hunk of shit, why release at all?
Simple: people are often still willing to pay for broken hunks of shit. Hell Wal-mart has built a multi-billion dollar empire on that simple truth. They'd rather buy a coffee maker for $10 that breaks and needs to be repurchased every year, versus buying one for $25 that would have lasted 15 years. Quality just doesn't mean a lot these days. Why do you think their video game purchasing standards would be all that different?
$100k in the US is a pretty good income, and if you can't live comfortably off it, you're either very unlucky (eg: racked up some huge medical debt), or doing something seriously wrong.
Indeed. I'm single, and I only make $50,000/year. Now I live in a rural area where the cost of living is a bit lower than in a city, but not THAT much lower. I'm still able to afford my own home, a truck, a bass boat, and several other hobbies (I shoot pistol competitively and have my pilot's license).
If you can't make it on $100k you're just not managing your money well.
Indeed. I've failed to see the "tax on the people who are bad at math" argument. Yes, the odds of winning are astronomically high. They are however, non-zero, and someone DOES eventually cash out on the jackpots. Deciding to take a gamble isn't stupid so long as you know and accept the odds.
If you go obsessive over it (ie, dumping loads of money into the lottery as a financial "plan"), then sure, but myself for example - my state has had the lottery for about 10 years now. In those 10 years, I've bought about 8 or so lottery tickets. So I'm spending less than a dollar per year on average. Still haven't won, and don't think I realistically ever will, but it's not too much of a financial burden to gamble away at a long shot (yes, a really, really LONG shot).
Basically, I go by the advice my dad taught me while playing cards - expect that you're going to lose every bet you ever make. If you're not ok with that outcome, then don't make the bet in the first place.
In the short term however, going from $100,000 per year to $200,000 will typically mean that you can get a house with a pool instead of without, can get the nice 26-foot boat that you wanted instead of the 19-footer, and that you can drive a Jaguar instead of a really nice Honda.
Going from $10k to $20k typically means that you're no longer living on the street boiling ramen noodles over a fire-barrel.
Or as Chris Rock put it (paraphrased): "Poor people should get prenups, not rich people. Think about it: if you make $30 million per year and your wife wants half, then it's not that big a deal. But if you make $30 thousand, and your wife wants half, you just might have to kill her.".
Realistically lack of LAN play in today's market will only upset geeks, and only a very small subset of them. Battle.NET DRM is indeed annoying in it's own way, but it's also kind of cool - namely in that Blizzard will let you redownload all your games at will. I managed to find my Warcraft III jewel case in a drawer - no clue where the CD is, but it had the CD-key on the case. I logged into my Battle.NET account, registered that game, and poof. Instantly download ability. That's a benefit that I can live with a few negatives to get.
I think it would have been better to simply redefine it so that SUV's essentially didn't hit the "truck" loophole anymore. Realistically, a lot of people use small trucks for towing and hauling purposes, which will be hit HARD by these types of mandates.
The people who want to drive big gas guzzlers could still afford to do so long after the rest of us were spending all of our monthly salary feeding the gas bill of the most fuel efficient car imaginable.
I hate to break it to you, but rich people have a lot of money, and they're interspersed with the rest of us - not walled off (at least not completely). If you're hoping for rising prices to keep you from seeing a Hummer out and about (or any extravagance that you find distasteful), then know that it would take the basic destruction of the rest of our economy to achieve that.
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We really should have a "-1, Incoherent Babbling" mod option.
If you're measuring success by revenue though that changes dramatically. Angry Birds has 300 million downloads at $1 each? Warcraft to the tune of $15/month per subscriber beats that in 2 months time. Farmville is a "free" game that makes it's money via microtransactions. I'm not sure of the exact average money spent per player, but I'd be willing to bet that it's bringing in far less money that WoW.
Realistically, I'd wager that if WoW were truly free to play (as opposed to the "free to level 20" thing they have which is really just a non-timed trial), or was only $1 as a one-time fee, I'm sure it would have a lot more players too.
Depends on if you feel like buy "entertainment" in bulk or not. My movie tickets run about $6 each rather than $10, but lets assume 10 for the sake of argument. If I go to the movies once per week (about as often as I'd choose to go - usually its more like once every 3 weeks) then my monthly cost for going to the movies is $40. If I played one game per month then my monthly gaming cost is still $60.
It doesn't make much sense to compare strictly in "dollar for the hour" terms - it's more applicable to compare it in terms of total money spent.
Comparing entertainment strictly only a dollar per hour basis makes about as much sense as comparing all foods via dollar per pound. Ramen noodes cost a lot less per pound than lobster. That doesn't mean that it's a wonderful value that we should take to the streets over comparing it's bargain prices compared to lobster (note - that's not to say that video games are ramen compared to movies being lobster - just that the $/hour metric makes as little since as the $/pound metric between those two items).
I personally dropped my account a while back. I had pretty much stopped playing for the 4-5 months before Cataclysm hit. The expansion brought me back for another 2 months or so, but after that I was bored again and just dropped the subscription.
Overall, being a competitive person, what really did it for me was the dumbing down of the content and trivializing of the gear. Don't get me wrong, I'm no elitist - I actually got very little of the top level gear when it was hard to get because I simply didn't have the time or energy to raid hardcore to get it. Still though, I raided occasionally, and when I did manage to attain something, it felt like a true achievement. When I finally downed a boss - even if it was on a raid instance from 2 content patches ago - it felt like I DID something.
They basically killed that. They hand out gear like its candy. Nothing feels special anymore, because the only thing needed to attain that gear is pure boring GRIND. Content gets easier over time - not only because they keep handing out better and better gear on a schedule, but they actually nerf the content as time goes on.
It means nothing now. Even when I wasn't doing the upper tier content - when I wasn't dripping purples, I was having more fun because it felt like what I DID have, I earned.
Naturally its their game, and their perogative, so they can do what they will, but in its current incarnation I have little interest in playing. I've gone back to mostly single player games, and now have more time to actually do outdoors things (like REAL fishing, and USPSA competitions - where I still suck, but I still enjoy it despite them not bending the scores so that everybody "wins").
No, I mean Linux. This was circa '93 - '94. Windows 95 wasn't quite out yet and back in those days a lot of the hobbiest crowd tended to still do a lot of work in DOS rather than suffer through Windows 3.1.
He didn't say it was their FIRST taste of the medicine. Hell I'm hoping they OD on the shit.
Apple must get rid of autoexec.bat soon!!
Good old autoexec.bat. I remember back in the days when I first got into Linux most of the comparisons for home users back then were between Linux and DOS, not Linux and Windows. One BBS poster came in ridiculing the Linux users for our stupidity because everything a computer loaded HAS to come from autoexec.bat and so you need DOS to even run Linux, so clearly DOS was superior.
Sorry, the reference just brought that old mix up to mind. Carry on.
Verizon is becoming less and less palatable to me as time goes on. I've only stuck with them as long as I have because their service is the ONLY one that picks up in the boondocks where I live. My contract expires in a year though, and right about that time I'm also planning on moving closer to work. Not sure what I'm switching to (at this point I'm honestly looking at Crickett), but anything has got to be better than the overcharging behemoth that is Verizon.
Yeah, when I'm on an untrusted network the first thing I like to do is dial into the network where I keep all my important documents and files.
Um, that's the very POINT of a VPN - a secure way of accessing a trusted network by way of an untrusted network.
On most of them, if you go ahead and say "Operator" - regardless of where you are in the menu - it'll take you to a human to speak with. I've also heard the some of them to voice recognition for profanity and forward to an operator at that point, but I've always had better luck with just "operator" :).
I think the whole exercise is short sighted. I've been there, done that. The amount of effort to keep everything running, updated, configured, etc is a PITA.
That sums it up. I used to maintain my own setup like this as well, and it's just aggravating to keep up with. With the popularity of outsourced webmail growing, its obvious that most COMPANIES don't even feel it worth the effort for up to a few thousand users. Maintaining a whole server for just yourself is just being a glutton for punishment. The only benefit I see in the whole thing is if you want to treat it as an educational exercise to learn more about the topics and how email works, but overall this is a skillset that is becoming less valuable anyways (because as I said - lots of companies that once maintained their own email systems are now outsourcing it).
If you really want to pursue it, I'd look at the following:
- a Unix-Like OS (I've sucessfully used both FreeBSD and CentOS in different setup iterations).
- a MTA - Postfix always worked well for me
- a mail server - Dovecot
- spam/virus filtering solution: Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV integrate very well with Postfix and work well. SpamAssassin usually takes some custom rules and other plugins (Razor, DCC, etc) to really shine, but that's a long topic of discussion. Keeping the spam filter up to date and effective is the #1 headache in this setup.
- a webmail/calendaring solution: Apache/PHP and IMP Horde work pretty well here.
Amen to that. I can honestly say that if BeOS was alive with proper hardware and app support I'd be using it to this day. It just plain worked, and had a level of snappiness and response that I still haven't seen matched by anything since.
That is about the best description I've heard of the problem. Linux might be used more by the masses now, but most Linux users still aren't so retarded at this point that they need panels popping in from the sides of the screen showing them where they saved their files and crap. They're dumbing down the interface not only to a group that doesn't need nor want it, but also in an age when even the general populace itself is getting more familiar with computers and how they work.
It's like a time traveler from 1985 journeyed forward, and created a desktop environment targeted towards computer idiots of yesteryear, just with today's flashy technology.
As much as any other task. IE, GUI's aren't necessary for almost any task you might perform, but it makes virtually all of them faster and easier.
Look, I grew up on the DOS era - had to do tons via command line. I still admin a few systems remotely via SSH and am perfectly capable of using the command line when I have to, but it's naive to think that a GUI isn't a welcomed addition to most stuff that people do daily.
Perhaps he's wanting to move to a platform that will be supported and aligns with his views a little better. Particularly since he's involved behind the scenes, he can help to take a project whose direction he agrees with, and help move that forward, rather than sticking with the choice that's good in the short term but won't change.
Having recently went through this, I think he's absolutely right on the money with this. Gnome3 is flat out unusable. Unity is just as bad. Having tried Xfce, it's not quite as polished as Gnome2 was, but it won't take too much development and interest to bring it up to par, and once thats achieved, hopefully we can continue on with that as a better solution.
It's easy to talk a pile of trash when you aren't accountable for your blathering.
I think the danger here is obvious just from your post, and that's the mindset that being a prick, talking a pile of trash, or blathering is anything that one needs to be "accountable for".
Its a sad state of affairs on the net when I can read a post like this and truly not know if I'm reading a sarcastic joke for which I'm just not getting the punchline, or if the writer is actually being serious.
If you are only gonna release a broken hunk of shit, why release at all?
Simple: people are often still willing to pay for broken hunks of shit. Hell Wal-mart has built a multi-billion dollar empire on that simple truth. They'd rather buy a coffee maker for $10 that breaks and needs to be repurchased every year, versus buying one for $25 that would have lasted 15 years. Quality just doesn't mean a lot these days. Why do you think their video game purchasing standards would be all that different?
$100k in the US is a pretty good income, and if you can't live comfortably off it, you're either very unlucky (eg: racked up some huge medical debt), or doing something seriously wrong.
Indeed. I'm single, and I only make $50,000/year. Now I live in a rural area where the cost of living is a bit lower than in a city, but not THAT much lower. I'm still able to afford my own home, a truck, a bass boat, and several other hobbies (I shoot pistol competitively and have my pilot's license).
If you can't make it on $100k you're just not managing your money well.
Indeed. I've failed to see the "tax on the people who are bad at math" argument. Yes, the odds of winning are astronomically high. They are however, non-zero, and someone DOES eventually cash out on the jackpots. Deciding to take a gamble isn't stupid so long as you know and accept the odds.
If you go obsessive over it (ie, dumping loads of money into the lottery as a financial "plan"), then sure, but myself for example - my state has had the lottery for about 10 years now. In those 10 years, I've bought about 8 or so lottery tickets. So I'm spending less than a dollar per year on average. Still haven't won, and don't think I realistically ever will, but it's not too much of a financial burden to gamble away at a long shot (yes, a really, really LONG shot).
Basically, I go by the advice my dad taught me while playing cards - expect that you're going to lose every bet you ever make. If you're not ok with that outcome, then don't make the bet in the first place.
In the short term however, going from $100,000 per year to $200,000 will typically mean that you can get a house with a pool instead of without, can get the nice 26-foot boat that you wanted instead of the 19-footer, and that you can drive a Jaguar instead of a really nice Honda.
Going from $10k to $20k typically means that you're no longer living on the street boiling ramen noodles over a fire-barrel.
Or as Chris Rock put it (paraphrased): "Poor people should get prenups, not rich people. Think about it: if you make $30 million per year and your wife wants half, then it's not that big a deal. But if you make $30 thousand, and your wife wants half, you just might have to kill her.".
Realistically lack of LAN play in today's market will only upset geeks, and only a very small subset of them. Battle.NET DRM is indeed annoying in it's own way, but it's also kind of cool - namely in that Blizzard will let you redownload all your games at will. I managed to find my Warcraft III jewel case in a drawer - no clue where the CD is, but it had the CD-key on the case. I logged into my Battle.NET account, registered that game, and poof. Instantly download ability. That's a benefit that I can live with a few negatives to get.
I think it would have been better to simply redefine it so that SUV's essentially didn't hit the "truck" loophole anymore. Realistically, a lot of people use small trucks for towing and hauling purposes, which will be hit HARD by these types of mandates.
The people who want to drive big gas guzzlers could still afford to do so long after the rest of us were spending all of our monthly salary feeding the gas bill of the most fuel efficient car imaginable.
I hate to break it to you, but rich people have a lot of money, and they're interspersed with the rest of us - not walled off (at least not completely). If you're hoping for rising prices to keep you from seeing a Hummer out and about (or any extravagance that you find distasteful), then know that it would take the basic destruction of the rest of our economy to achieve that.
You must not understand what a pork project is . . .