Actually, based on reading various forums, there appear to be quite a few Series 2 units out there still in use. Also, there's still an active market for series 2 units with lifetime subscriptions on e-bay (search for "tivo series 2 lifetime")
We have a series 2 and still use it regularly. The analog tuner issue isn't a problem since you can get cheap or even free digital to analog converter boxes. The dial-up change won't affect ours since it is using our broadband (via wifi) to get the program updates.
We own two TiVos with lifetime service (a Series 2 model in a bedroom, and a Roamio OTA model in our family room). Given how long we've been using them, our TiVos have been extremely cost effective DVR solutions, and we're extremely happy with their features. Both connect to our wifi to get regular programming updates. We don't have cable or dish, and instead we use an indoor antenna to get over 30 local channels, several in HD. Since the Series 2 doesn't natively handle digital OTA signals, we use a digital to analog converter (which I got for free) in between the antenna input and the antenna, and the IR output from the TiVo controls its tuning. Since the Series 2 doesn't record in HD and can only record 1 channel at a time, we mostly use it for recording shows on sub-channels or sometimes for various reruns. The Roamio OTA records up to 4 channels at once and in HD. Both of these units get used almost every day.
It's hard to beat the cost of our monthly bill for TV + DVR package: $0.00. Whenever we get calls from cable or satellite services that say they can beat the price we're currently paying for our TV service, I simply reply, "Great! How much are you going to pay me to use your service?" The calls end soon after they figure out that I'm not kidding.
I've had a window office. I've also had a cube adjacent to a windowed wall where turning my head left let me look right outside. I've worked in labs with windows. However, I found I was always more productive in offices or rooms without windows. Invariably, I find having a window ends up being more of a distraction than a benefit.
What I prefer instead is being able to leave the site during lunch. That gives me plenty of time to get out, enjoy some fresh air and clear my head midway through the day. As a result, I rank flexible work hours and being able to pick when I arrive, and when I leave as a much higher than having a window. Vacations, sick days, personal days and so forth also rank much higher than having a window. And of course, getting paid and getting insurance tops all of those.
They based this on the commute times from the census bureau, but I'm not sure how they arrived at the values. Two of the cities (pop 100K to 150K) where I've lived in are listed at 39+ minutes for commutes (roundtrip), but you'd have to take some really bad routes to need more than 15 minutes to go point-to-point in those cities. 8-12 minutes each way for a round trip of 16-24 (avg 20) minutes would be a more realistic average for most residents in those communities.
On the other hand, the commutes for some of the larger cities actually seem too low. Could the census bureau method be biased and incorrectly scaling up commute times in smaller cities for some reason?
We have two kids and 2 amazon kindles loaded with a bunch of free kids stuff including PBS Kids apps. However, the kids still prefer to watch most of the shows directly on the big screen TV. We also have 2 TiVos (SD series 2 still kicking with a digital OTA converter box I got for free, and a HD Roamio OTA). Both have lifetime subscriptions that have more than paid for themselves several times over.
It's true that the Twin Cities metro area is somewhat unique for OTA broadcasting. However, there are several parts of the state that are not able to easily view TC channels, so it's not accurate to say that the MSP market covers most of the state, not by a long shot!. In those areas, both cable and satellite have strong market penetration.
Some examples:
Duluth - Gets about 4 to 5 good stations, but non are from the Twin Cities. Terrain and distance is definitely a factor
Rochester - Gets about 4 to 5 good stations, but none are from the Twin Cities. Rochester's terrain is essentially a large bowl, and it really limits their ability to pull in anything from the TC metro areas to the northwest.
Mankato - due to the river valley terrain, large parts of this city can't pull in anything beyond the local station KEYC. Even the eastern hilltop area is a virtual OTA wasteland without a pretty tall antenna. Cable and satellite are the preferred options for many residents there. For kicks, try punching in zipcode 56001 into the dtvmaps website. It's not a mistake that it returns 0 stations. There are areas where you can't even pull in KEYC!
There are several more outstate examples in the southwest, west, and north areas of MN that are unable to view TC stations. Those cover the TC metro, but not much beyond it.
"Churn" equates to "change" or "fluctuation" and it doesn't have any associated upward or downward velocity. In fact, a common phrase is "steady churn" which essentially means constant change or continual fluctuation.
In this phrase "Sign of Churn In TV Watching", it means is that there's still a continual change affecting how people are watching TV. Historically, the changes been::
- OTA viewing being displaced (and almost fully replaced in many areas) by cable TV broadcast
- Cable TV viewing being displaced somewhat by satellite
- Both Cable and satellite TV viewing being displaced by online streaming services
- Now it appears that cable and satellite are also being displaced by a significant number of people returning to OTA TV viewing.
Yes and No. It's highly dependent on where you live. I'm fortunate to live in a 2-story home with vinyl siding which is located in a relatively flat area within 30 miles of multiple towers with no obstructions. I can easily pull all of those in plus a few farther away with an inexpensive flat indoor antenna. It took me all of 5 minutes to find a spot to place it in an upstairs room, and then run the signal back to the main junction to split it out to the 3 TVs in our house. Ever since putting it up a few years ago, it has continued to pull 30+ channels flawlessly.
Those living in other ares may not be so fortunate. For example, my parents 1 story house is blocked by multiple 3-story apartments nearby, and they're unable to receive any signal using an indoor antenna at all despite the nearest towers being just over 30 miles. At their previous house just a few miles away, they could get those stations with a small roof-mounted antenna, but they'd need a huge tower to clear the nearby apartments for their current residence.
It's usually an afterthought, but when buying a house, the OTA maps should definitely be a factor. Considering you might live there for many years, being able to save $100+ per month by using an antenna instead of paying for cable or dish, that can add up to a significant savings over time.
For us it was purely price. We don't subscribe to any streaming services (now or ever). Our primary viewing is major networks, especially for local news broadcasts, and some sports, along with PBS for the kids. We're also big believers in 1-time purchases vs. any form of monthly fees or contracts. I don't see how any service with a monthly fee can realistically compete against our one-time antenna purchase (under $50) that gives us 30+ channels per month for free which includes all the major networks we want to watch.
I started out using cable, but our local provider had terrible signal and service. We experienced complete loss of signal out anytime it rained, go figure. Calling their service line would usually take over an hour of waiting to reach a human, Due to all the problems in our area, their repair teams are spread so thin that they can't arrive for at least a full week after a service call by which point the problem would gone so they can't ever find the root cause to fix it. This entire neighborhood, and adjacent ones had the same issue and the repair guys were completely clueless as to how to fix it which is why everyone moved to satellite or antenna. We opted for satellite and initially liked the service, but the costs kept creeping up until it was well over $100 per month with no premium channels.
After checking the OTA coverage in my area with various sites (tvfool.com, antennaweb.org, dtvmaps), I was surprised that we could probably receive broadcasts from at least nearby towers with over 30 channels of programming, much of it in HD. I bought a up a small, flat rectangular indoor antenna for under $50 that has an amp and was supposed to have a 50 mile range, and it pulled in all of them plus a few more. We now get 33 channels, and 11 of them are in HD. Best of all, it's all the major networks and PBS that comprised over 90% of our regular viewing.
So for less than half the monthly cost of the dish, our 1 time antenna purchase allows us to watch the same major networks. Whenever I tell people about this, they are usually shocked, but after investigating it, several have since made the switch themselves. As the word continues to spread, I would expect more and more to cut the cord and make the switch.
Ultimately, this appears to be an issue with data atomicity. If the function is dependent upon receiving both lat and lon information, then from an architecture standpoint, the containerization of that data should be structured to be atomic if possible. However, the he network design may be using ARINC-429 words which are only large enough to contain lat or lon data, but not both. A possible fix would be to use a larger network data object (NDO) that contains both pieces of data if the network supports it. Otherwise, the design would need to be improved to mitigate or improve the handling of situations where only 1 piece of lat/lon data is available.
Considering that ADS-B is not yet mandatory in most air space, and the feature is being added to more or and more new aircraft designs, it is possible that this type of bug could affect other makes and models of aircraft if the designers aren't careful in how the lat/lon data is handled.
It's true that most of Iowa has a road grid. Here's an example from Story County which includes Ames: https://www.storycountyiowa.go...
What's interesting to note on this map is the purple lines which represent some roads that were reclassified as Level B roads around 2006-2007 timeframe. Level B roads are minimum maintenance and typically include many dirt/earthen roads. Others may include a thin layer of gravel on top, but lack a complete foundation. In addition, some regular gravel or paved roads with a good foundation periodically get reclassified this way as well due to lack of use or need.
AFAIK, the Level B designation is currently controlled at the county level, but the DoT could begin making recommendations for more roadways to be listed this way. This could give Iowa a relatively easy option for transitioning to fewer maintained roads by simply reclassifying more and more of the roads as Level B. Once redesignated, the DoT would stop performing regular maintenance on them. Many of the gravel roads may become seriously pot-holed over time, but they would still be drivable. Those that are seldom used might become overgrown. Some form of infrequent maintenance may still be required to address issues like erosion or washouts.
For those locations that require these roads to access dwellings or fields, the owners or agencies they contract could perform some types of necessary maintenance. For example, snowplowing of the redesignated roads would still be needed to allow home access, but many rural land owners already own trucks or other farm machinery that can be fitted with plow-blades for clearing snow. The state could potentially offer some form of rebate program for the equipment, or tax-breaks based on the mileage of B-level roads from main road to dwelling. Either would be significantly cheaper for the state than continually maintaining tens of thousands of roads that see little to no use.
I've never had a CFL bulb last more than 2 years. I've had several fail in under a year, and a couple that died within a few weeks. Of those that have failed, 1 exploded, and 2 others made audible pops and burned up. Thankfully, the glass cover of the light fixture captured the pieces from the one that blew up, and there was no fire started by the other two that ignited. I've tried different brands, and all have seen extremely high failure rates. The cost and unreliability have also been a net loss for me compared to if I had opted for incandescent bulbs instead.
Also a result, I stopped buying CFL bulbs a while ago due to how unreliable and potentially dangerous and costly they have proven to be. Instead, I stocked up on a bunch of cheaper incandescent bulbs before they were removed from store shelves. At the much slower rate of replacement for incandescent bulbs I've observed, my stock will hopefully last me for several more years. Hopefully by then, there is a reliable alternative on the market.
1 ) Make liberal use of saves, back-ups and version control check-ins. Disk space is cheap, and having incremental versions can be a life-saver in case things go awry.
2 ) When given an existing piece of software to modify or maintain, do not assume that the previous authors had any clue about what they were doing, or that they followed good coding practices. After fully analyzing the code, be alert for opportunities to restructure / rewrite portions that will improve maintainability and efficiency and determine if they can be implemented as part of the updates.
3 ) Comment heavily. At the very least, add comments for each functional block to help identify their purpose, expected inputs and outputs. Always add comments for non-obvious line entries. Also make sure to clearly comment any debug / trouble-shooting code that is added to make it easy to remove later.
4 ) Today's coding choices may last forever. Once implemented and released, it becomes significantly harder to make changes later. Make sure that proper architecting and design work is done up front way before any code gets written.
5 ) If you don't like it, get out. One of my professor's used this phrase a lot, and my experience in engineering has led me to agree with it. If you don't like coding those lame exercises in software classes, chances are you won't like coding in the real world either. Passionate and motivated programmers tend to produce better results. If you don't enjoy writing software, find something else that you do like instead.
IIRC, JMS once mentioned that there was something in the Babylon 5 Pilot, possibly related to the graphics, a scene or the imagery, that he would have changed if he could do it over. From the quote, it seem like it may have been one of those "once you see it, you can't unsee it" kinds of things. I've watched the pilot many times, but I've never spotted it. What was it?
If you activate skills the moment they cooldown, you will fail hard in this game. If anything, the cooldown system in GW2 actually requires more resource management to know when to best activate skills. Of all the RPGs I've played, I think GW2's skill system might be one of the easier ones to begin learning, but one of the hardest to master. In other words, it manages to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers, which is no small feat.
Also, each class plays distinctly differently. Abilities and play styles are very different between them. The fact each one has a heal skill doesn't alter this. Most heal skills have long cool downs, so you need to really stay alert and use them when you need them the most.
As for the original GW's skill system, GW2's version is significantly different. You can still respec your character in GW2, but there are some costs to do certain kinds of changes.
A 4-year-old gaming rig should be able to handle it, but maybe not on the highest graphical settings. It plays pretty well on my 5-year-old laptop with the graphics set on low to medium.
This is the first game I've ever played where I've actually enjoyed the resource gathering and crafting. The resource gathering also encourages exploration.
From a game design stand-point, a mana system is fundamentally a way to prevent players from activating too many skills too quickly...which is the same thing that cooldown timers do. However, cooldown timers don't force players to channel funds into a gold sink like mana potions, or waste inventory slots to carry them. Having played many games with mana pools, I find the cooldown system in GW2 to be vastly superior.
Obviously, those players that really enjoy buying, carrying and quaffing mana potions may disagree.
- Insurance companies sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of cost/benefits
- Larger hospitals that do research sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of medicines and treatments
- Manufacturing companies sometimes hire them to do statistical analysis of product failures
If she doesn't mind focusing on the statistics branch of math, there are jobs out there.
If the hardware came with Vista (as opposed to being upgraded to it from something else), consider trying Vista first before removing it. I know a lot of people love to hate Vista, but personally I've found it to be extremely reliable - far more reliable than WinXP ever was. I've had zero crashes or other problems with Vista in over 2 years of using it on two PCs which are up 24/7 and see some rather heavy use at times. From reading lots of Vista horror stories, I think my main keys to success were to start with Vista rather than trying to upgrade to it, and to build PCs with enough horsepower to handle it.
Depending on the hardware, it's possible that your church's machines might run just fine with Vista.
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Actually, based on reading various forums, there appear to be quite a few Series 2 units out there still in use. Also, there's still an active market for series 2 units with lifetime subscriptions on e-bay (search for "tivo series 2 lifetime")
We have a series 2 and still use it regularly. The analog tuner issue isn't a problem since you can get cheap or even free digital to analog converter boxes. The dial-up change won't affect ours since it is using our broadband (via wifi) to get the program updates.
TiVo is still working great!
We own two TiVos with lifetime service (a Series 2 model in a bedroom, and a Roamio OTA model in our family room). Given how long we've been using them, our TiVos have been extremely cost effective DVR solutions, and we're extremely happy with their features. Both connect to our wifi to get regular programming updates. We don't have cable or dish, and instead we use an indoor antenna to get over 30 local channels, several in HD. Since the Series 2 doesn't natively handle digital OTA signals, we use a digital to analog converter (which I got for free) in between the antenna input and the antenna, and the IR output from the TiVo controls its tuning. Since the Series 2 doesn't record in HD and can only record 1 channel at a time, we mostly use it for recording shows on sub-channels or sometimes for various reruns. The Roamio OTA records up to 4 channels at once and in HD. Both of these units get used almost every day.
It's hard to beat the cost of our monthly bill for TV + DVR package: $0.00. Whenever we get calls from cable or satellite services that say they can beat the price we're currently paying for our TV service, I simply reply, "Great! How much are you going to pay me to use your service?" The calls end soon after they figure out that I'm not kidding.
I've had a window office. I've also had a cube adjacent to a windowed wall where turning my head left let me look right outside. I've worked in labs with windows. However, I found I was always more productive in offices or rooms without windows. Invariably, I find having a window ends up being more of a distraction than a benefit.
What I prefer instead is being able to leave the site during lunch. That gives me plenty of time to get out, enjoy some fresh air and clear my head midway through the day. As a result, I rank flexible work hours and being able to pick when I arrive, and when I leave as a much higher than having a window. Vacations, sick days, personal days and so forth also rank much higher than having a window. And of course, getting paid and getting insurance tops all of those.
They based this on the commute times from the census bureau, but I'm not sure how they arrived at the values. Two of the cities (pop 100K to 150K) where I've lived in are listed at 39+ minutes for commutes (roundtrip), but you'd have to take some really bad routes to need more than 15 minutes to go point-to-point in those cities. 8-12 minutes each way for a round trip of 16-24 (avg 20) minutes would be a more realistic average for most residents in those communities.
On the other hand, the commutes for some of the larger cities actually seem too low. Could the census bureau method be biased and incorrectly scaling up commute times in smaller cities for some reason?
We have two kids and 2 amazon kindles loaded with a bunch of free kids stuff including PBS Kids apps. However, the kids still prefer to watch most of the shows directly on the big screen TV. We also have 2 TiVos (SD series 2 still kicking with a digital OTA converter box I got for free, and a HD Roamio OTA). Both have lifetime subscriptions that have more than paid for themselves several times over.
It's true that the Twin Cities metro area is somewhat unique for OTA broadcasting. However, there are several parts of the state that are not able to easily view TC channels, so it's not accurate to say that the MSP market covers most of the state, not by a long shot!. In those areas, both cable and satellite have strong market penetration.
Some examples:
Duluth - Gets about 4 to 5 good stations, but non are from the Twin Cities. Terrain and distance is definitely a factor
Rochester - Gets about 4 to 5 good stations, but none are from the Twin Cities. Rochester's terrain is essentially a large bowl, and it really limits their ability to pull in anything from the TC metro areas to the northwest.
Mankato - due to the river valley terrain, large parts of this city can't pull in anything beyond the local station KEYC. Even the eastern hilltop area is a virtual OTA wasteland without a pretty tall antenna. Cable and satellite are the preferred options for many residents there. For kicks, try punching in zipcode 56001 into the dtvmaps website. It's not a mistake that it returns 0 stations. There are areas where you can't even pull in KEYC!
There are several more outstate examples in the southwest, west, and north areas of MN that are unable to view TC stations. Those cover the TC metro, but not much beyond it.
"Churn" equates to "change" or "fluctuation" and it doesn't have any associated upward or downward velocity. In fact, a common phrase is "steady churn" which essentially means constant change or continual fluctuation.
In this phrase "Sign of Churn In TV Watching", it means is that there's still a continual change affecting how people are watching TV. Historically, the changes been::
- OTA viewing being displaced (and almost fully replaced in many areas) by cable TV broadcast
- Cable TV viewing being displaced somewhat by satellite
- Both Cable and satellite TV viewing being displaced by online streaming services
- Now it appears that cable and satellite are also being displaced by a significant number of people returning to OTA TV viewing.
Yes and No. It's highly dependent on where you live. I'm fortunate to live in a 2-story home with vinyl siding which is located in a relatively flat area within 30 miles of multiple towers with no obstructions. I can easily pull all of those in plus a few farther away with an inexpensive flat indoor antenna. It took me all of 5 minutes to find a spot to place it in an upstairs room, and then run the signal back to the main junction to split it out to the 3 TVs in our house. Ever since putting it up a few years ago, it has continued to pull 30+ channels flawlessly.
Those living in other ares may not be so fortunate. For example, my parents 1 story house is blocked by multiple 3-story apartments nearby, and they're unable to receive any signal using an indoor antenna at all despite the nearest towers being just over 30 miles. At their previous house just a few miles away, they could get those stations with a small roof-mounted antenna, but they'd need a huge tower to clear the nearby apartments for their current residence.
It's usually an afterthought, but when buying a house, the OTA maps should definitely be a factor. Considering you might live there for many years, being able to save $100+ per month by using an antenna instead of paying for cable or dish, that can add up to a significant savings over time.
For us it was purely price. We don't subscribe to any streaming services (now or ever). Our primary viewing is major networks, especially for local news broadcasts, and some sports, along with PBS for the kids. We're also big believers in 1-time purchases vs. any form of monthly fees or contracts. I don't see how any service with a monthly fee can realistically compete against our one-time antenna purchase (under $50) that gives us 30+ channels per month for free which includes all the major networks we want to watch.
...I didn't do it sooner!
I started out using cable, but our local provider had terrible signal and service. We experienced complete loss of signal out anytime it rained, go figure. Calling their service line would usually take over an hour of waiting to reach a human, Due to all the problems in our area, their repair teams are spread so thin that they can't arrive for at least a full week after a service call by which point the problem would gone so they can't ever find the root cause to fix it. This entire neighborhood, and adjacent ones had the same issue and the repair guys were completely clueless as to how to fix it which is why everyone moved to satellite or antenna. We opted for satellite and initially liked the service, but the costs kept creeping up until it was well over $100 per month with no premium channels.
After checking the OTA coverage in my area with various sites (tvfool.com, antennaweb.org, dtvmaps), I was surprised that we could probably receive broadcasts from at least nearby towers with over 30 channels of programming, much of it in HD. I bought a up a small, flat rectangular indoor antenna for under $50 that has an amp and was supposed to have a 50 mile range, and it pulled in all of them plus a few more. We now get 33 channels, and 11 of them are in HD. Best of all, it's all the major networks and PBS that comprised over 90% of our regular viewing.
So for less than half the monthly cost of the dish, our 1 time antenna purchase allows us to watch the same major networks. Whenever I tell people about this, they are usually shocked, but after investigating it, several have since made the switch themselves. As the word continues to spread, I would expect more and more to cut the cord and make the switch.
Ultimately, this appears to be an issue with data atomicity. If the function is dependent upon receiving both lat and lon information, then from an architecture standpoint, the containerization of that data should be structured to be atomic if possible. However, the he network design may be using ARINC-429 words which are only large enough to contain lat or lon data, but not both. A possible fix would be to use a larger network data object (NDO) that contains both pieces of data if the network supports it. Otherwise, the design would need to be improved to mitigate or improve the handling of situations where only 1 piece of lat/lon data is available.
Considering that ADS-B is not yet mandatory in most air space, and the feature is being added to more or and more new aircraft designs, it is possible that this type of bug could affect other makes and models of aircraft if the designers aren't careful in how the lat/lon data is handled.
It's true that most of Iowa has a road grid. Here's an example from Story County which includes Ames:
https://www.storycountyiowa.go...
What's interesting to note on this map is the purple lines which represent some roads that were reclassified as Level B roads around 2006-2007 timeframe. Level B roads are minimum maintenance and typically include many dirt/earthen roads. Others may include a thin layer of gravel on top, but lack a complete foundation. In addition, some regular gravel or paved roads with a good foundation periodically get reclassified this way as well due to lack of use or need.
AFAIK, the Level B designation is currently controlled at the county level, but the DoT could begin making recommendations for more roadways to be listed this way. This could give Iowa a relatively easy option for transitioning to fewer maintained roads by simply reclassifying more and more of the roads as Level B. Once redesignated, the DoT would stop performing regular maintenance on them. Many of the gravel roads may become seriously pot-holed over time, but they would still be drivable. Those that are seldom used might become overgrown. Some form of infrequent maintenance may still be required to address issues like erosion or washouts.
For those locations that require these roads to access dwellings or fields, the owners or agencies they contract could perform some types of necessary maintenance. For example, snowplowing of the redesignated roads would still be needed to allow home access, but many rural land owners already own trucks or other farm machinery that can be fitted with plow-blades for clearing snow. The state could potentially offer some form of rebate program for the equipment, or tax-breaks based on the mileage of B-level roads from main road to dwelling. Either would be significantly cheaper for the state than continually maintaining tens of thousands of roads that see little to no use.
I've never had a CFL bulb last more than 2 years. I've had several fail in under a year, and a couple that died within a few weeks. Of those that have failed, 1 exploded, and 2 others made audible pops and burned up. Thankfully, the glass cover of the light fixture captured the pieces from the one that blew up, and there was no fire started by the other two that ignited. I've tried different brands, and all have seen extremely high failure rates. The cost and unreliability have also been a net loss for me compared to if I had opted for incandescent bulbs instead.
Also a result, I stopped buying CFL bulbs a while ago due to how unreliable and potentially dangerous and costly they have proven to be. Instead, I stocked up on a bunch of cheaper incandescent bulbs before they were removed from store shelves. At the much slower rate of replacement for incandescent bulbs I've observed, my stock will hopefully last me for several more years. Hopefully by then, there is a reliable alternative on the market.
1 ) Make liberal use of saves, back-ups and version control check-ins. Disk space is cheap, and having incremental versions can be a life-saver in case things go awry.
2 ) When given an existing piece of software to modify or maintain, do not assume that the previous authors had any clue about what they were doing, or that they followed good coding practices. After fully analyzing the code, be alert for opportunities to restructure / rewrite portions that will improve maintainability and efficiency and determine if they can be implemented as part of the updates.
3 ) Comment heavily. At the very least, add comments for each functional block to help identify their purpose, expected inputs and outputs. Always add comments for non-obvious line entries. Also make sure to clearly comment any debug / trouble-shooting code that is added to make it easy to remove later.
4 ) Today's coding choices may last forever. Once implemented and released, it becomes significantly harder to make changes later. Make sure that proper architecting and design work is done up front way before any code gets written.
5 ) If you don't like it, get out. One of my professor's used this phrase a lot, and my experience in engineering has led me to agree with it. If you don't like coding those lame exercises in software classes, chances are you won't like coding in the real world either. Passionate and motivated programmers tend to produce better results. If you don't enjoy writing software, find something else that you do like instead.
The GUS architecture had a lot of potential. Too bad it couldn't garner more developer support.
IIRC, JMS once mentioned that there was something in the Babylon 5 Pilot, possibly related to the graphics, a scene or the imagery, that he would have changed if he could do it over. From the quote, it seem like it may have been one of those "once you see it, you can't unsee it" kinds of things. I've watched the pilot many times, but I've never spotted it. What was it?
...that it's not newsworthy unless it involves some form of mass transportation, especially ones that fly.
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs36/i/2008/252/b/5/Cybermen___upgrade_now_by_tibots.jpg
If you activate skills the moment they cooldown, you will fail hard in this game. If anything, the cooldown system in GW2 actually requires more resource management to know when to best activate skills. Of all the RPGs I've played, I think GW2's skill system might be one of the easier ones to begin learning, but one of the hardest to master. In other words, it manages to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers, which is no small feat.
Also, each class plays distinctly differently. Abilities and play styles are very different between them. The fact each one has a heal skill doesn't alter this. Most heal skills have long cool downs, so you need to really stay alert and use them when you need them the most.
As for the original GW's skill system, GW2's version is significantly different. You can still respec your character in GW2, but there are some costs to do certain kinds of changes.
A 4-year-old gaming rig should be able to handle it, but maybe not on the highest graphical settings. It plays pretty well on my 5-year-old laptop with the graphics set on low to medium.
This is the first game I've ever played where I've actually enjoyed the resource gathering and crafting. The resource gathering also encourages exploration.
You should try it before judging.
From a game design stand-point, a mana system is fundamentally a way to prevent players from activating too many skills too quickly...which is the same thing that cooldown timers do. However, cooldown timers don't force players to channel funds into a gold sink like mana potions, or waste inventory slots to carry them. Having played many games with mana pools, I find the cooldown system in GW2 to be vastly superior.
Obviously, those players that really enjoy buying, carrying and quaffing mana potions may disagree.
After Guild Wars 2 releases, the fun and addictive gameplay will lead people to quit working, eating and sleeping in order to play it.
At least we'll die having fun.
- Insurance companies sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of cost/benefits
- Larger hospitals that do research sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of medicines and treatments
- Manufacturing companies sometimes hire them to do statistical analysis of product failures
If she doesn't mind focusing on the statistics branch of math, there are jobs out there.
If the hardware came with Vista (as opposed to being upgraded to it from something else), consider trying Vista first before removing it. I know a lot of people love to hate Vista, but personally I've found it to be extremely reliable - far more reliable than WinXP ever was. I've had zero crashes or other problems with Vista in over 2 years of using it on two PCs which are up 24/7 and see some rather heavy use at times. From reading lots of Vista horror stories, I think my main keys to success were to start with Vista rather than trying to upgrade to it, and to build PCs with enough horsepower to handle it. Depending on the hardware, it's possible that your church's machines might run just fine with Vista.