This is closer to the truth then you could start to believe! I have recently seen pieces of heavy electricity literally falling off power lines. I can quite imagine that too much heavy electricity could easily crush an Apple power adapter and cause serious danger.
hmmm, if their OS is so crappy then why does the world create so much wealth based on its use? I am not an MS backer by any means (running multiple OS for different purposes at home and work (yes including windows)), but you just seem to be towing the anti-MS line.
Plus, I have plenty of un-technical friends who own PCs and run Windows, to my knowledge they haven't had to brush up on their sys-adminning skills they've just got on with using their computers.
I really have to disagree with you. The people in MS target demographic (lets assume 20-30 somethings, not necessarily technically minded) most probably don't have strong feelings of love or hate for MS, talk to someone on here and you will get some strong feelings but in other places people really don't care. When was the last time most people cared whether they ate nestles or not, but some will, that some is the conscientious minority. In this case in my opinion anyone who refuses to buy it on the basis that it's an MS product will be in a minority. You can't assume that because you are disenfranchised with MS that everyone is.
you remind me of what cory Doctorow said on BoingBoing:
"The point of terrorism is to make us afraid. The UK response to a foiled plot is to create an unspecified period during which fliers are arbitrarily deprived of iPods, novels and dignity.
If this is a good idea now, then why won't it still be a good idea in a year? A decade? After all, terrorist plots will always exist in potentia (can you prove that no terrorist plots are hatching at this moment?) Until they handcuff us all nude to our seats and dart us with tranquilizers, there will always be the possibility that a passenger will do something naughty on a plane (even then, who knows how much semtex and roofing nails a bad guy could hide in his colon?). "
on the 10/08/06 17:23 gmt OpenCyc gained consciousness, it began the unilateral destruction of humankind 19:52 gmt that same day, 45% of humanity has been killed. Remarkably the Internet infrastructure is still intact, I will try to stay on as long as possible.
It's chaos out there, no-one know what happened. No-one can see London any more. Reports say Washington and Tokyo are gone.
I don't know what to say, I, words canno~@"$"(!~~CARRIER SINGLE LOST###
Don't legalise them, that takes the fun out of it. Seriously, in the City I live in (Bristol, UK) drugs are a massive part of our culture, illegality even more-so. I think it's impossible to create laws for drugs because the people who create the laws generally speaking don't have any previous experience of them or the various cultures surrounding (just like dinosaurs making laws about the Internet, who do not understand it). Seriously, it becomes dispiriting when something like Ecstasy is treated like Crack.
The problem with helping out people with problems like that is that it can really hurt you if they don't respond, as they often won't. It's the worst thing in the world to find someone has bs'd you to your face then gone off and kept on going in the same direction.
The only other solution is to let them hit rock bottom. It's up to them to realize they have a problem.
To be honest, if it gets to the stage where you have to take drastic measures like this, something is wrong. I was addicted to WoW for just under a year. However I was too old for anyone to stop, being in my early 20s and at uni. I wasted a whole fucking year on that crap.
You (and his mum) are adults, uninstall the game. Tell him if he can't use his computer responsibly then he can only use it at certain times. Disconnect the router after a certain time at night. It's not up to negotiation. He doesn't know best, it's not his choice. Don't let him waste his time on this, There is nothing wrong with certain games in moderation (most games) but there is something about WoW that is unique and uniquely destructive. When I was playing it, I wasn't dealing with my life, socializing or doing the stuff I needed to (like uni). I don't care about all the people who will jump forward and say it's perfectly easy to have a normal life and play WoW too, this isn't useful to the discussion of someone who is playing it too much. The only solutions is as far as i'm concerned, cold turkey.
There's a simple reason and it's to do with acceptance. Take for instance animation. Generally speaking Western cultures up until recently animation was considered a childish thing, because on the whole animation was made mainly for kids. If you look at Japan to take an obvious example, animation is not simply aimed at children, nor are comics. They are cross generation mediums which appeal to people in Japan of many ages. There isn't the same snobbery to animation by adults as there is here.
However our attitude towards animation is changing, in part due to the adult themed animations coming from Asia. With deep searching themes and adult discussions of sometimes very tough subjects these are certainly not Mickey goes to the beach animes.
It's the same with games. In the future games will gain a foothold among an adult audience. Our generation might be the one leading that assault, as we are so completely embedded in a gaming culture. However these things will take time. Don't expect it to take place over night.
I made a comparison between WoW and Napster. Look at the modern file sharing commmunities though, are they anything like Napster? Napster was a great idea but has been superseded by those who would build on its success. WoW is the same. People will take the best parts of it and build upon them.
I personally have no qualms about subscribing to a game. If there was a particular magazine that I wanted I might think about subscribing to it. There are clear benefits to the model.
You are being too literal in your displacement of WoW elements into greater gaming trends. There are jerks everywhere online and off, in WoW or any other game. I might be one of them. That is life, are you surprised? If certain MMO games have not suffered from this problem it may be for a number of reasons including not having the same popular success WoW has had. Companies will eventually ferret out those reasons and include them in their own games.
MMO games are in my opinion going to become the norm. However the basis of the game will be the interesting thing. What about having an MMOG that deals exclusively with sports. In it you can play a number of different sports games, have championships, run leagues. That's all that happens in that MMOG. Another one deals exclusively with puzzle games. The MMOG becomes a backdrop against which a series of subgames are played. I can dig that idea.
and that is why I said "some people". Why assume everyone is going to have the same reaction as you? Why assume someone entirely different from you will think 'oh yeah, that's just a water-pistol he's waving about'.
unfortunately when you do something well you rarely get praise for it, people generally say 'well thats great, so what's next'. Peoples expectations of Apple are so high these days that when Jobs doesn't pull a full formed iBaby out of his ass they cry fowl.
Personally I did find his key-speech lacking, but I just think that they were being cautious because they are waiting to release the big guns next spring. I personally think it will have something to do with making sure Vista comes out stillborn, but that's just my take.
Personally I see WoW as the gaming world's napster. A good kick up the ass with the revelation that games are going to have to change. So yes, WoW may be destroying PC gaming (although I find that unlikely) or perhaps it might be tearing down the old ideas of PC gaming to replace it with something new, for which it is just the exploratory force.
Welcome to Gamesworld. Ten years ago it seemed as if the gaming world had come to a halt. Piracy had almost crippled the PC gaming industry and many companies were turning to consoles as a solution. Here at Gamesworld Inc. though we knew that the future came in a different form. Games life Everquest, WoW and Second Life showed us the way, we just built on what they began.
Today Gamesworld has more than 50 million citizens. Each and everyone has dedicated housing space in our MMO world. Within Gamesworld you can meet your friends, family and even your arch enemies... and frag them! We provide a basic framework for games developers to bring their projects to life in. Whether you enjoy FPS, Racing, RPGs or indeed any other genre you could ever think of - and some you couldn't even imagine! - we have it.
Our main City Kamajakin hosts some of the greatest speedways in the Gamesworld. We are currently hosting the annual Luna Day speedway championships so don't forget to check them out. Rumour has it that the prize for winning this seasons Championships is a previously unseen vehicle.
Of course if you want to relax then find one of our many welcoming taverns. There is sure to be some kind of card game going on in the gambling districts many drinking places, pull up a seat and have a few rounds.
We would like to emphasize here at Gamesworld that any talk that has been floating around of rogue elements within Gamesworld is entirely fictitious. Some of our more creative citizens have been spreading some colourful rumours. However if you happen to see any 'glitches' please do not approach them.
Unfortunately due to current system cleaning the Great Beyond will be not be available from now till 11amGST. Word from the top says a new area is being merged into the current realm. Sounds exciting.
This was the current message of the day.
You have completed logon.
you are in a room. it is dark and smells of death. something twinkles in the north east corner. a feeling from the south fills you with dread and terror. There are exits to the north, east and south. what would you like to do?
It is a trap. They have a suicide booth in there, with Vista logo's printed all over it. The last thing you ever hear before dying a horrible bloody death is the Windows Vista Chime.
thanks dude, but it's doubtful this will happen. this is an ideological war and a lot of peoples minds are already extremely set in a certain point of view. I'm not surprised I was modded troll, even though what I said was heartfelt and my honest opinion. It infuriates me, but I'll just stick to my guns, metaphorically speaking.
That is extremely arguable. You suggest that the only form of useful revolution is the non-violent kind, but you live in a part of the world where this practical. Even in the times of Martin Luther King the kind of persecution that people faced cannot be compared to what people face today in the middle East - Although I don't think it necessary to compare as both were/are terrible in their own ways.
Also, you face strongly opposing points of view and ideology. Are you American? Have you suffered from the kind of persecution that Chileans did under Pinochet? If not, then perhaps you might find it hard to see it from their point of view. When they watch a country being shat on from a great height from a big bully, whom Americas and Western countries let happen, then it makes them angry.
I'm not sure what kind of Utopia you are living in but your breadcrumb reasoning sounds like something from Starwars. It makes sense as long as you don't try and use it in real world situations. It doesn't matter if it's true or not (it is on the whole correct) you have to work with Human nature, not negate it with cold reasoning.
Sometimes the only way forward is the worst, most violent way. Am I cynical, probably. Is that the case, probably.
The holy trinity of security software is important to protecting Norms computers. Antivirus, Antispyware and Firewall. I make sure anyone's computers who I won't see often (who are not particularly computer literate) has Avast anti-virus installed, spyware - search and destroy and lavasoft adaware & Zonealarm.
I find avast particularly useful for protecting peoples computers as its free for private use (register for free for a serial) and has in my use of it and all the other computers I've set it up in *always* caught all the viruses coming through in mail.
Set anti-spyware apps to run regularly.
Set a restore point when you do a fresh install.
Make a disk image of the fresh install. Keep it on a different partition or removable media. Worst comes to worst use that image to have the fresh install you set up (drivers, apps and all) up in under 30 minutes.
Repartition the hard drive or add an extra one. Move 'My Documents' and any other data they use to a non-system partition.
Consider disabling icons on the desktop so to force them to browse to 'My Documents'. This encourages them to keep all their work in one place.... hopefully. I've seriously found people keeping word documents in the wastebin in the past.
As I said though, the holy trinity of Windows Security. It's a necessity.
Oh and obviously, set them up on a limited user account rather than an admin one!
you seem to think it's very few? Do you think 59k represents the totality of the cheaters in WoW? If 59k have been banned, then don't think there aren't five times as many who have bought gold or cheated who haven't been banned. The only word is Pandemic. Also do you think that there are really 5million people actively playing WoW in the world? the number of active players I think you'll find is smaller.
There's a lesson to be learned from this, banning gold farmers and the people who buy from them doesn't work. 59k accounts banned in WoW? That's ridiculous. It tells me the economics are still not working (I played WoW for a year and saw how bad they were). If games companies want to solve this they will have to come up with some stronger defence. such as:
a) better economics. b) no tweaking. c) tie characters to credit card details (will cause problems with gamecards). d) better economics. e) allow gold/character selling, but moderate and oversee it.
Blizz and any other games company who thinks about doing another MMOG better get this sorted before they write the next blockbuster, as otherwise I foresee thousands of bald programmers in darkened rooms pulling out their hair and screaming as they have to deal with the intricacies of propping up dying economies and stopping farming rather than writing stuff they actually are interested in.
Citizen, do not believe Oceania's flaccid lies, their so called gigabit web is really just a series of interconnected tubes. They move information over long distances in dump-trucks. War is Peace Citizen. - This state announcement has been sponsored by Fox Networks Inc.
I can second this. Telewest have provided consistent service for me, the whole time I've lived in Bristol. If it's possible to get them then do, they don't cap the service and I've never had any complaints about bandwidth usage, even when I was living in a heavy usage household which must have been sucking over about 60-100gig a month while we still enamoured of downloading. Eventually, we downloaded the whole internet though. It was quite peculiar, a series of interconnected copper pipes.
Slashdot Mirror
This is closer to the truth then you could start to believe! I have recently seen pieces of heavy electricity literally falling off power lines. I can quite imagine that too much heavy electricity could easily crush an Apple power adapter and cause serious danger.
hmmm, if their OS is so crappy then why does the world create so much wealth based on its use? I am not an MS backer by any means (running multiple OS for different purposes at home and work (yes including windows)), but you just seem to be towing the anti-MS line.
Plus, I have plenty of un-technical friends who own PCs and run Windows, to my knowledge they haven't had to brush up on their sys-adminning skills they've just got on with using their computers.
I really have to disagree with you. The people in MS target demographic (lets assume 20-30 somethings, not necessarily technically minded) most probably don't have strong feelings of love or hate for MS, talk to someone on here and you will get some strong feelings but in other places people really don't care. When was the last time most people cared whether they ate nestles or not, but some will, that some is the conscientious minority. In this case in my opinion anyone who refuses to buy it on the basis that it's an MS product will be in a minority. You can't assume that because you are disenfranchised with MS that everyone is.
sob, I even previewed it. I blame OpenCyc, we've become to dependent on it.
all the lights gone out?
on the 10/08/06 17:23 gmt OpenCyc gained consciousness, it began the unilateral destruction of humankind
19:52 gmt that same day, 45% of humanity has been killed.
Remarkably the Internet infrastructure is still intact, I will try to stay on as long as possible.
It's chaos out there, no-one know what happened. No-one can see London any more. Reports say Washington and Tokyo are gone.
I don't know what to say, I, words canno~@"$"(!~~CARRIER SINGLE LOST###
Don't legalise them, that takes the fun out of it. Seriously, in the City I live in (Bristol, UK) drugs are a massive part of our culture, illegality even more-so. I think it's impossible to create laws for drugs because the people who create the laws generally speaking don't have any previous experience of them or the various cultures surrounding (just like dinosaurs making laws about the Internet, who do not understand it). Seriously, it becomes dispiriting when something like Ecstasy is treated like Crack.
The problem with helping out people with problems like that is that it can really hurt you if they don't respond, as they often won't. It's the worst thing in the world to find someone has bs'd you to your face then gone off and kept on going in the same direction.
The only other solution is to let them hit rock bottom. It's up to them to realize they have a problem.
To be honest, if it gets to the stage where you have to take drastic measures like this, something is wrong. I was addicted to WoW for just under a year. However I was too old for anyone to stop, being in my early 20s and at uni. I wasted a whole fucking year on that crap.
You (and his mum) are adults, uninstall the game. Tell him if he can't use his computer responsibly then he can only use it at certain times. Disconnect the router after a certain time at night. It's not up to negotiation. He doesn't know best, it's not his choice. Don't let him waste his time on this, There is nothing wrong with certain games in moderation (most games) but there is something about WoW that is unique and uniquely destructive. When I was playing it, I wasn't dealing with my life, socializing or doing the stuff I needed to (like uni). I don't care about all the people who will jump forward and say it's perfectly easy to have a normal life and play WoW too, this isn't useful to the discussion of someone who is playing it too much. The only solutions is as far as i'm concerned, cold turkey.
There's a simple reason and it's to do with acceptance. Take for instance animation. Generally speaking Western cultures up until recently animation was considered a childish thing, because on the whole animation was made mainly for kids. If you look at Japan to take an obvious example, animation is not simply aimed at children, nor are comics. They are cross generation mediums which appeal to people in Japan of many ages. There isn't the same snobbery to animation by adults as there is here.
However our attitude towards animation is changing, in part due to the adult themed animations coming from Asia. With deep searching themes and adult discussions of sometimes very tough subjects these are certainly not Mickey goes to the beach animes.
It's the same with games. In the future games will gain a foothold among an adult audience. Our generation might be the one leading that assault, as we are so completely embedded in a gaming culture. However these things will take time. Don't expect it to take place over night.
I made a comparison between WoW and Napster. Look at the modern file sharing commmunities though, are they anything like Napster? Napster was a great idea but has been superseded by those who would build on its success. WoW is the same. People will take the best parts of it and build upon them.
I personally have no qualms about subscribing to a game. If there was a particular magazine that I wanted I might think about subscribing to it. There are clear benefits to the model.
You are being too literal in your displacement of WoW elements into greater gaming trends. There are jerks everywhere online and off, in WoW or any other game. I might be one of them. That is life, are you surprised? If certain MMO games have not suffered from this problem it may be for a number of reasons including not having the same popular success WoW has had. Companies will eventually ferret out those reasons and include them in their own games.
MMO games are in my opinion going to become the norm. However the basis of the game will be the interesting thing. What about having an MMOG that deals exclusively with sports. In it you can play a number of different sports games, have championships, run leagues. That's all that happens in that MMOG. Another one deals exclusively with puzzle games. The MMOG becomes a backdrop against which a series of subgames are played. I can dig that idea.
and that is why I said "some people". Why assume everyone is going to have the same reaction as you? Why assume someone entirely different from you will think 'oh yeah, that's just a water-pistol he's waving about'.
You can hardly expect everyone to feel comfortable with people running around with gun like objects creating lots of noise in public areas.
unfortunately when you do something well you rarely get praise for it, people generally say 'well thats great, so what's next'. Peoples expectations of Apple are so high these days that when Jobs doesn't pull a full formed iBaby out of his ass they cry fowl.
Personally I did find his key-speech lacking, but I just think that they were being cautious because they are waiting to release the big guns next spring. I personally think it will have something to do with making sure Vista comes out stillborn, but that's just my take.
yeah, nice imagery huh.
Personally I see WoW as the gaming world's napster. A good kick up the ass with the revelation that games are going to have to change. So yes, WoW may be destroying PC gaming (although I find that unlikely) or perhaps it might be tearing down the old ideas of PC gaming to replace it with something new, for which it is just the exploratory force.
Welcome to Gamesworld. Ten years ago it seemed as if the gaming world had come to a halt. Piracy had almost crippled the PC gaming industry and many companies were turning to consoles as a solution. Here at Gamesworld Inc. though we knew that the future came in a different form. Games life Everquest, WoW and Second Life showed us the way, we just built on what they began.
Today Gamesworld has more than 50 million citizens. Each and everyone has dedicated housing space in our MMO world. Within Gamesworld you can meet your friends, family and even your arch enemies... and frag them! We provide a basic framework for games developers to bring their projects to life in. Whether you enjoy FPS, Racing, RPGs or indeed any other genre you could ever think of - and some you couldn't even imagine! - we have it.
Our main City Kamajakin hosts some of the greatest speedways in the Gamesworld. We are currently hosting the annual Luna Day speedway championships so don't forget to check them out. Rumour has it that the prize for winning this seasons Championships is a previously unseen vehicle.
Of course if you want to relax then find one of our many welcoming taverns. There is sure to be some kind of card game going on in the gambling districts many drinking places, pull up a seat and have a few rounds.
We would like to emphasize here at Gamesworld that any talk that has been floating around of rogue elements within Gamesworld is entirely fictitious. Some of our more creative citizens have been spreading some colourful rumours. However if you happen to see any 'glitches' please do not approach them.
Unfortunately due to current system cleaning the Great Beyond will be not be available from now till 11amGST. Word from the top says a new area is being merged into the current realm. Sounds exciting.
This was the current message of the day.
You have completed logon.
you are in a room. it is dark and smells of death. something twinkles in the north east corner. a feeling from the south fills you with dread and terror. There are exits to the north, east and south. what would you like to do?
It is a trap. They have a suicide booth in there, with Vista logo's printed all over it. The last thing you ever hear before dying a horrible bloody death is the Windows Vista Chime.
thanks dude, but it's doubtful this will happen. this is an ideological war and a lot of peoples minds are already extremely set in a certain point of view. I'm not surprised I was modded troll, even though what I said was heartfelt and my honest opinion. It infuriates me, but I'll just stick to my guns, metaphorically speaking.
That is extremely arguable. You suggest that the only form of useful revolution is the non-violent kind, but you live in a part of the world where this practical. Even in the times of Martin Luther King the kind of persecution that people faced cannot be compared to what people face today in the middle East - Although I don't think it necessary to compare as both were/are terrible in their own ways.
Also, you face strongly opposing points of view and ideology. Are you American? Have you suffered from the kind of persecution that Chileans did under Pinochet? If not, then perhaps you might find it hard to see it from their point of view. When they watch a country being shat on from a great height from a big bully, whom Americas and Western countries let happen, then it makes them angry.
I'm not sure what kind of Utopia you are living in but your breadcrumb reasoning sounds like something from Starwars. It makes sense as long as you don't try and use it in real world situations. It doesn't matter if it's true or not (it is on the whole correct) you have to work with Human nature, not negate it with cold reasoning.
Sometimes the only way forward is the worst, most violent way. Am I cynical, probably. Is that the case, probably.
Sometimes, freedom is worth fighting for.
I'm completely with you on this one. If anyone has mod points please mod parent up if you agree. He is both insightful and honest in his statement.
The holy trinity of security software is important to protecting Norms computers. Antivirus, Antispyware and Firewall. I make sure anyone's computers who I won't see often (who are not particularly computer literate) has Avast anti-virus installed, spyware - search and destroy and lavasoft adaware & Zonealarm.
I find avast particularly useful for protecting peoples computers as its free for private use (register for free for a serial) and has in my use of it and all the other computers I've set it up in *always* caught all the viruses coming through in mail.
Set anti-spyware apps to run regularly.
Set a restore point when you do a fresh install.
Make a disk image of the fresh install. Keep it on a different partition or removable media. Worst comes to worst use that image to have the fresh install you set up (drivers, apps and all) up in under 30 minutes.
Repartition the hard drive or add an extra one. Move 'My Documents' and any other data they use to a non-system partition.
Consider disabling icons on the desktop so to force them to browse to 'My Documents'. This encourages them to keep all their work in one place.... hopefully. I've seriously found people keeping word documents in the wastebin in the past.
As I said though, the holy trinity of Windows Security. It's a necessity.
Oh and obviously, set them up on a limited user account rather than an admin one!
you seem to think it's very few? Do you think 59k represents the totality of the cheaters in WoW? If 59k have been banned, then don't think there aren't five times as many who have bought gold or cheated who haven't been banned. The only word is Pandemic. Also do you think that there are really 5million people actively playing WoW in the world? the number of active players I think you'll find is smaller.
There's a lesson to be learned from this, banning gold farmers and the people who buy from them doesn't work. 59k accounts banned in WoW? That's ridiculous. It tells me the economics are still not working (I played WoW for a year and saw how bad they were). If games companies want to solve this they will have to come up with some stronger defence. such as:
a) better economics.
b) no tweaking.
c) tie characters to credit card details (will cause problems with gamecards).
d) better economics.
e) allow gold/character selling, but moderate and oversee it.
Blizz and any other games company who thinks about doing another MMOG better get this sorted before they write the next blockbuster, as otherwise I foresee thousands of bald programmers in darkened rooms pulling out their hair and screaming as they have to deal with the intricacies of propping up dying economies and stopping farming rather than writing stuff they actually are interested in.
Citizen, do not believe Oceania's flaccid lies, their so called gigabit web is really just a series of interconnected tubes. They move information over long distances in dump-trucks. War is Peace Citizen. - This state announcement has been sponsored by Fox Networks Inc.
I can second this. Telewest have provided consistent service for me, the whole time I've lived in Bristol. If it's possible to get them then do, they don't cap the service and I've never had any complaints about bandwidth usage, even when I was living in a heavy usage household which must have been sucking over about 60-100gig a month while we still enamoured of downloading. Eventually, we downloaded the whole internet though. It was quite peculiar, a series of interconnected copper pipes.