Considering that a large number of users could be getting the feed from bloglines, it really isn't a problem. If it isn't saving you bandwidth even with the lack of caching, then the bandwidth taken up by RSS probably doesn't matter.
It certainly did make calls to dos, but keep in mind that by 98 dos was little more than a bootstrapper for windows, and contained very little code from the pre-95 days.
There isn't much of a difference. 2k/XP drivers are really just 2k drivers, but as the GP stated XP can handle 2k drivers.
Most of the XP driver API changes seem to exist only for the purpose of making it easier to kill off 2k in the future (as eventually driver support will start to get worse for it)
No, it's like saying that a fully loaded van that can have everything in it can't go as fast as your vanilla Honda Accord, and they can't. The primary purpose of a sports car is to go fast, not to have a huge number of features. The primary purpose of Outlook is to have a huge number of features, not to go fast.
d20 HAS killed off competition. As you said, everyone now uses it, instead of making thier own system. In many cases, this is a good thing, but it doesn't change the fact that the system (not D&D) has killed off competition.
I also agree that the comparison isn't very accurate, especially as D&D itself wasn't a particularly huge success. If anything, Quake 3 is the computer game most like D&D 3e. It has the same number, was a successful game with a significant portion of the comunity supporting it, and it was followed by a huge number of releases powered by its engine.
The 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons, which came out several years ago, introduced a core game system known as "d20", which was released (somewhat) openly, allowing anyone to produce game content for it without paying any money to Wizards of the Coast.
The only problem is that the game system sucks, but it improves sales, so d20 has killed off most of the competition.
To put this in/. terms, imagine a world where linux sucks, and Linus works for Red Hat. Instead of being forkable, the kernal is treated like Fedora. Because everyone developes software for linux, all of the other operating systems are switching over to using the linux kernal.
There are certainly instances where lag can kill you (such as if you're trying to stay alive long enough to blast off an instant-cast spell that'll kill the mob but leave you at 1 hp), and naturally in large raids it can become a problem as the tanks can die in only slightly longer than the casting time of the heals.
I can't give any personal experiance as to the lethality of lag because... I've never had lag over 200ms playing WoW, despite being on dialup for a signficant chunk of the beta. The Queues are annoying, but they do make the game run flawlessly once you get in it.
WoW is definatly the best major MMORPG for this, but no, you won't enjoy it if you play it an hour a week, any more than you would enjoy any classic CRPG if you played it an hour a week. You won't make it far in the story, get high enough level to do any real PVP stuff, or be on enough to do anything "social". As these are the main appeals of WoW, why would you want to play if you can only play an hour a week?
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Well, they never made it incompatible with pages, they just didn't bother to make it compatible with pages not designed for netscape 3.
Considering that a large number of users could be getting the feed from bloglines, it really isn't a problem. If it isn't saving you bandwidth even with the lack of caching, then the bandwidth taken up by RSS probably doesn't matter.
It certainly did make calls to dos, but keep in mind that by 98 dos was little more than a bootstrapper for windows, and contained very little code from the pre-95 days.
There isn't much of a difference. 2k/XP drivers are really just 2k drivers, but as the GP stated XP can handle 2k drivers. Most of the XP driver API changes seem to exist only for the purpose of making it easier to kill off 2k in the future (as eventually driver support will start to get worse for it)
No, it's like saying that a fully loaded van that can have everything in it can't go as fast as your vanilla Honda Accord, and they can't. The primary purpose of a sports car is to go fast, not to have a huge number of features. The primary purpose of Outlook is to have a huge number of features, not to go fast.
d20 HAS killed off competition. As you said, everyone now uses it, instead of making thier own system. In many cases, this is a good thing, but it doesn't change the fact that the system (not D&D) has killed off competition. I also agree that the comparison isn't very accurate, especially as D&D itself wasn't a particularly huge success. If anything, Quake 3 is the computer game most like D&D 3e. It has the same number, was a successful game with a significant portion of the comunity supporting it, and it was followed by a huge number of releases powered by its engine.
The 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons, which came out several years ago, introduced a core game system known as "d20", which was released (somewhat) openly, allowing anyone to produce game content for it without paying any money to Wizards of the Coast. The only problem is that the game system sucks, but it improves sales, so d20 has killed off most of the competition. To put this in /. terms, imagine a world where linux sucks, and Linus works for Red Hat. Instead of being forkable, the kernal is treated like Fedora. Because everyone developes software for linux, all of the other operating systems are switching over to using the linux kernal.
There are certainly instances where lag can kill you (such as if you're trying to stay alive long enough to blast off an instant-cast spell that'll kill the mob but leave you at 1 hp), and naturally in large raids it can become a problem as the tanks can die in only slightly longer than the casting time of the heals. I can't give any personal experiance as to the lethality of lag because... I've never had lag over 200ms playing WoW, despite being on dialup for a signficant chunk of the beta. The Queues are annoying, but they do make the game run flawlessly once you get in it.
War2 BNE is actually a relatively recent product (99 iirc). Diablo 1 is the oldest game you can play on bnet.
WoW is definatly the best major MMORPG for this, but no, you won't enjoy it if you play it an hour a week, any more than you would enjoy any classic CRPG if you played it an hour a week. You won't make it far in the story, get high enough level to do any real PVP stuff, or be on enough to do anything "social". As these are the main appeals of WoW, why would you want to play if you can only play an hour a week?
AOL doesn't have someone who only makes money from people buying the CDs. Blizzard does, and they're even owned by them.