I have had both experiences with Ubuntu. I have used several laptops with recent and well-supported wireless chipsets that worked absolutely perfectly out of the box. Not even 15 mins to setup. More like 2.
On the other hand, I'm typing this on a Toshiba laptop (p.s. don't buy Toshiba laptops) with a not-so-well-supported chipset that *barely* works wirelessly in Ubuntu. A lot of messing around with ndiswrapper and various hacked drivers found on forums resulted in a connection _some_ of the time. Unfortunately, the UI reflects anything but the actual state of the connection.
So yeah, a mixed bag. If your wireless chipset is well-supported, you're set and it's at least as easy as Windows. If it's not supported, you're screwed, or at the very least, severely inconvenienced.
If you really want to run Linux, do a little research and get hardware that is already supported. There is a lot of great hardware out there that is rock-solid in Linux. It's not entirely Ubuntu's fault if the manufacturer simply produces no Linux drivers and keeps their other drivers closed-source and their hardware designs secret.
Nope. You see, batteries are a lot like dogs. If you overfeed your dog, he won't live long. If you underfeed you dog, that too can shorten his life. If you alternate between stuffing your dog full of food, and then not feeding him for a whole week until he's skin 7b ones, that too can damage him due to the stress. But if you feed your dog moderate amounts of food, on a regular basis, he'll live a happy long life.
Sorry, dog analogies are no good, I'm going to need something car-related for this concept to stick.
This method of always keeping batteries between 40-90% is also used in Toyota & Honda hybrid cars to extend their NiMH battery life to 300,000 miles. (If they discharged the battery completely, then the lifespan would only be 50,000 miles, as is the case with their EV cars.)
I'd argue there are many main protagonists. He was just one of them. They all meet up in the end, and his particular storyline was very good, but you could just as easily say that Paul Jonas was the main protagonist, or Renie. He writes all these characters with plenty of insight and description of their mental states and decisions, so they're equally important.
Oh come on... were you aware at the time that this was book 1 of 4? Did that not give you a clue that maybe the plot might take some time to develop?
I think if you can get through any of Tolkien's works then the Otherland series is light reading by comparison. I simply cannot finish LotR no matter how hard I try, yet I read all 4 Otherland novels, back to back.
Were there parts that dragged a bit? Yes, occasionally, but that happens in most novels. When you're writing a 4 book series I suppose it's hard to avoid.
On the other hand, I too have no idea how this is going to translate into an entertaining MMO. Sounds like they're just stealing the Otherland concept of "lots of virtual worlds, all different" and dropping the actual plot which is what made the books good in the first place.
And yes, that quote stuck in my head too. Which I suppose is a testament to the novels themselves. There really is a lot from the books worth remembering.
I'm actually tempted to go back and read the 4 books again now. I'll put aside a month or two to do it.:)
Just because it's from an isometric perspective (as most Diablo clones are) doesn't mean that it isn't true 3D.
Diablo and Diablo II used flat 2D art assets for most things, so what you're saying kind-of applies to them, but it definitely does not apply to Diablo III.
As far as I can see, the backgrounds, characters, particle effects and everything else in Diablo III is 3D geometry, textures and shaders, so I don't think it'll be any more detailed or have any more "visual character" than any other Blizzard game in the last few years.
(Actually, I think they did use some kind of 3D rendering for the entire viewport in Diablo II which allowed the dynamic shadowing you saw occasionally and the perspective view you could enable in the options if you had 3D acceleration. It was kinda 2.5D in that respect.)
But SSH *is* installed by default in Ubuntu. And you can even mount a volume over sftp as if it was just any other filesystem with a couple of clicks of the mouse. On the default install. Places -> Network, and a network browser shows up and double click on the icon of the computer you want to conenct with SSH.
I'm using Ubuntu Hardy right now in a site with a mix of Windows and Linux boxes. If I do as you say, it'll attempt to find and connect to SMB shares.
You can connect to ssh/sftp servers using the method I described above (or through the terminal) but you'd have to install SSH on those machines first to be able to access them, just like you'd have to install Samba to allow other machines to see your SMB shares under Places - Network.
Come to think of it, I think you only need to install SSH on the machine you actually want to allow access to. AFAIK, you can use the sftp:// or ssh:// method from a default Ubuntu install.
Again, I'm no Linux/Ubuntu expert. I may be completely wrong.
Caveat: I am an Ubuntu (and Linux) neophyte, so if I made a mistake here feel free to correct me.
SSH/SFTP is the easiest way I've found. First you have to install SSH, which is as easy as:
sudo apt-get install ssh
Or, you can do it through Synaptic if you want the GUI method. The ssh metapackage installs and configures SSH and its dependencies.
Then, while at the desktop, hit Ctrl-L to bring up the Open Location box and enter:
sftp://computername or ip/
You'll be prompted to login and then a Nautilus window will appear with the remote system's filesystem. You can drag and drop files to your heart's content.
You could even enter the address in the location bar of an existing Nautilus window instead, if you want to avoid using a keyboard shortcut.
I think this is the easiest way. If end-users can't handle this then they probably can't dress or feed themselves either.
Now, if what you meant was there's no _completely intuitive_ way to do it (i.e. one whereby a user could fumble around in the menus and generally figure out what to do) then perhaps you're right. But this method took about 1 minute of Googling to find.
As another user pointed out, there's also the Windows-like share method that sets up Samba and shares for you. I prefer this way though, especially for sharing between Linux machines.
Close. Simon Fuller created Pop Idol. Simon Cowell was a judge on Pop Idol. Simon Cowell now produces and hosts The X Factor, which is indeed a knockoff of Pop Idol.
...and I just realised I'm correcting someone on Slashdot in an offtopic thread about a show that I hate. Self-loathing has now taken over and I'm off to scrub myself with steel wool and some powerful bleach.
If you're going to complain about the graphics, point out how the view out the windows should not be visibly wavering. Water doesn't work like that; you'd think with all the effort they put into the game they could have taken the time to see how large underwater windows at the local aquarium behave.
I assumed it was because Rapture was a seriously old and leaky underwater city. The water was actually streaming down the insides of the windows through cracks in the seals?
I might be wrong, It's prolly just in there coz "it looks coooooool".
The majority of reviews were ranting about the fantastic graphics but I was suprised at how obviously low-res and fake the views out of the windows were (I mean REALLY blocky scaled up 2D bitmaps instead of 3D rendered objects even though I was playing on highest poss. graphics settings). The developers have no excuse for adopting the same cpu-cheap approach to doing background scenery that they had to do for comupters like the amiga back in the 80's.
I'm willing to bet the culprit here is the consoles' limitations.
They've probably used identical art assets on all platforms. Which means that consoles with their limited memory and optical storage have to be catered to at all times. The poor background texture quality is almost certainly part of a trade-off between visual appeal, memory usage and loading time.
It's a trade-off which doesn't really need to exist on the PC. It is unfortunate - though not unsurprising given the effort involved - that most developers don't include higher-resolution assets on platforms that have the speed and capacity to use them (i.e. PC).
The game was going to be deep and complex, but then they took it to a bunch of drooling retards who promptly cried "IT'S TOO HAAAAARD" before soiling themselves and going back to their fingerpaints.
Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh, but it does seem to be a worrying trend these days. Players seem to be rewarded for being unwilling to put up with even the slightest complication in a game.
Yes, I realise that a lot of people really LIKE the hand-holding way that modern games present themselves.
I realise that a cumbersome UI or byzantine system of "features" and poor controls can alienate new players and mire an otherwise brilliant game. (X3 I'm looking at you)
I realise that "accessibility" = sales and that not every gamer is interested in deep, involving game mechanics.
It just seems to be the way the whole industry is going; take a well-worn concept, focus-group the design down to nothing, then polish the most basic features and sell it as somehow "revolutionary".
With all the meticulous planning and crafting every detail of the "user experience", the magic seems to have become lost.
Or maybe I really am an old fogey gamer with rose-tinted glasses.:P
I have a 9800GX2. If I turn vsync on in World of Warcraft I get a BSOD within about 2 minutes. With vsync off it's absolutely fine. Yes, this is with the latest drivers, though the same thing happens with previous drivers. Even if I could get vsync to work, Triple Buffering with SLI results in massive flickering of textures with alpha channels. Not good. This is all under WinXP, I haven't tried it with Vista.
And yes, I notice microstutter with vsync off. Microstutter isn't the same as the regular tearing that you might associate with no vsync, although the end result - a distracting, flickery pseudo-jerkyness - is the same.
Other games don't exhibit this behaviour; Source Engine games, for example, are fine with or without vsync. Certain other games have their own quirks with SLI, it's a mixed bag.
Ultimately, SLI is fantastic when it works well. Unfortunately that's not always the case, even with recent drivers and modern games that *should* support it properly.
It's always sad to see things come to an end, but who knows, maybe we'll see something better rise from the ashes - word is, a lot of them are re-rolling Horde on the Blackrock server.
These players aren't even quitting the game, they're just making new characters and starting again!
Players and guilds come and go. One raiding guild splits and another takes its place. Seems like a lot of QQ over nothing.
EVE is an offline grind. Just because you don't have to be physically sitting in front of the machine to "progress" doesn't mean it's not a grind.
With a gameplay model like that, charging a monthly fee seems cynical at best. You're paying to watch stats increase. The longer you pay, the "better" your character gets. No randomness, no excitement, nothing unexpected, no opportunity for skilled players to advance faster.. the entire game is tied rigidly to the clock, or - given the time it takes to train skills - to the calendar.
I can't tell if you're flamebaiting or asking a sincere question, so I'll go against my better judgement assume good faith.
"Gratis" is a valid word in many languages, including English. It's in the Oxford English Dictionary. In Slashdot terms, it means "free, as in beer". The word comes from Latin, where it means roughly the same thing.
Yep, dying in the game can be very convenient. In TF2 I frequently make suicide runs deep into the enemy base as Scout so I know where the turrets are located. When I inevitably die I respawn as a Soldier and go destroy them.
I doubt any real-world military forces use similar tactics with much success.
On the other hand, sometimes I plan my deaths to minimize inconvenience to myself. In World of Warcraft (PvE) often when I know I'm about to die and will need to run back to my corpse, my final moments will be spent trying to move to a convenient, easily accessible and safe place to die so my resurrection will be less hassle.
No matter what tenuous metaphysical/psychological spin you put on it, personal "death" in games has almost no relationship with death in the real world. The fact that you can use it to your own advantage attests to that.
Sounds like you're talking about Q2DM8. I gained notoriety amongst my clanmates for being utterly useless in that area of that level. I was basically banned from playing clanmatches on that map because I was a liability.
I'd be going for the BFG (because I was so lame and found it almost impossible to get a kill with any other weapon) and I'd misstep or someone would fire at me and I'd be trying to dodge and almost every time I'd end up between a moving crate and the wall. Gibs ahoy! The console would just be filled with lines and lines of "StOo was squished".
The clerk sees you pick up and examine a jacket in his store. As soon as you've put it back on the rack, he rushes over, places a big "FOR SALE" sign on it, marks up the price, then quickly runs around town stealing the same type of jacket from every other store in town.
He will, of course, remove the "FOR SALE" sign and return the other jackets to their rightful owners, but only once he's satisfied that you're not really interested in the jacket he's selling.
Remember that the Dreamcast actually used the proprietary GD-ROM format, which had a maximum capacity of around 1.2 gigabytes, and I recall quite a few games that used all available space - although often much of it was used for audio data, which could be quite easily compressed.
The major warez groups releasing for the DC back then would sometimes rip and compress the audio tracks into MP3 format and provide a tool to decompress them and inject them into CD images, ready for burning. Feasible on the Wii? Who knows?
Is the Wii even powerful enough to emulate a DC? I know the DC emulators available at the moment don't need a spectacularly powerful PC to run acceptably (with some games) but the Wii is hardly a powerhouse.
Slashdot Mirror
I have had both experiences with Ubuntu. I have used several laptops with recent and well-supported wireless chipsets that worked absolutely perfectly out of the box. Not even 15 mins to setup. More like 2.
On the other hand, I'm typing this on a Toshiba laptop (p.s. don't buy Toshiba laptops) with a not-so-well-supported chipset that *barely* works wirelessly in Ubuntu. A lot of messing around with ndiswrapper and various hacked drivers found on forums resulted in a connection _some_ of the time. Unfortunately, the UI reflects anything but the actual state of the connection.
So yeah, a mixed bag. If your wireless chipset is well-supported, you're set and it's at least as easy as Windows. If it's not supported, you're screwed, or at the very least, severely inconvenienced.
If you really want to run Linux, do a little research and get hardware that is already supported. There is a lot of great hardware out there that is rock-solid in Linux. It's not entirely Ubuntu's fault if the manufacturer simply produces no Linux drivers and keeps their other drivers closed-source and their hardware designs secret.
Nope. You see, batteries are a lot like dogs. If you overfeed your dog, he won't live long. If you underfeed you dog, that too can shorten his life. If you alternate between stuffing your dog full of food, and then not feeding him for a whole week until he's skin 7b ones, that too can damage him due to the stress. But if you feed your dog moderate amounts of food, on a regular basis, he'll live a happy long life.
Sorry, dog analogies are no good, I'm going to need something car-related for this concept to stick.
This method of always keeping batteries between 40-90% is also used in Toyota & Honda hybrid cars to extend their NiMH battery life to 300,000 miles. (If they discharged the battery completely, then the lifespan would only be 50,000 miles, as is the case with their EV cars.)
Ahhh.. that's better. Clear as crystal now.
I'd argue there are many main protagonists. He was just one of them. They all meet up in the end, and his particular storyline was very good, but you could just as easily say that Paul Jonas was the main protagonist, or Renie. He writes all these characters with plenty of insight and description of their mental states and decisions, so they're equally important.
Oh come on... were you aware at the time that this was book 1 of 4? Did that not give you a clue that maybe the plot might take some time to develop?
I think if you can get through any of Tolkien's works then the Otherland series is light reading by comparison. I simply cannot finish LotR no matter how hard I try, yet I read all 4 Otherland novels, back to back.
Were there parts that dragged a bit? Yes, occasionally, but that happens in most novels. When you're writing a 4 book series I suppose it's hard to avoid.
On the other hand, I too have no idea how this is going to translate into an entertaining MMO. Sounds like they're just stealing the Otherland concept of "lots of virtual worlds, all different" and dropping the actual plot which is what made the books good in the first place.
Johnny "Dread" Wulgaru was my favourite character in the books. A well-written psycho, and very good villain. Félix Jongleur may have been the "big boss" in the game but he was rather removed from the plot for most of it. Dread was a far more immediate and consistent threat to the main characters.
And yes, that quote stuck in my head too. Which I suppose is a testament to the novels themselves. There really is a lot from the books worth remembering.
I'm actually tempted to go back and read the 4 books again now. I'll put aside a month or two to do it. :)
Just because it's from an isometric perspective (as most Diablo clones are) doesn't mean that it isn't true 3D.
Diablo and Diablo II used flat 2D art assets for most things, so what you're saying kind-of applies to them, but it definitely does not apply to Diablo III.
As far as I can see, the backgrounds, characters, particle effects and everything else in Diablo III is 3D geometry, textures and shaders, so I don't think it'll be any more detailed or have any more "visual character" than any other Blizzard game in the last few years.
(Actually, I think they did use some kind of 3D rendering for the entire viewport in Diablo II which allowed the dynamic shadowing you saw occasionally and the perspective view you could enable in the options if you had 3D acceleration. It was kinda 2.5D in that respect.)
But SSH *is* installed by default in Ubuntu. And you can even mount a volume over sftp as if it was just any other filesystem with a couple of clicks of the mouse. On the default install. Places -> Network, and a network browser shows up and double click on the icon of the computer you want to conenct with SSH.
I'm using Ubuntu Hardy right now in a site with a mix of Windows and Linux boxes. If I do as you say, it'll attempt to find and connect to SMB shares.
You can connect to ssh/sftp servers using the method I described above (or through the terminal) but you'd have to install SSH on those machines first to be able to access them, just like you'd have to install Samba to allow other machines to see your SMB shares under Places - Network.
Come to think of it, I think you only need to install SSH on the machine you actually want to allow access to. AFAIK, you can use the sftp:// or ssh:// method from a default Ubuntu install.
Again, I'm no Linux/Ubuntu expert. I may be completely wrong.
Caveat: I am an Ubuntu (and Linux) neophyte, so if I made a mistake here feel free to correct me.
SSH/SFTP is the easiest way I've found. First you have to install SSH, which is as easy as:
sudo apt-get install ssh
Or, you can do it through Synaptic if you want the GUI method. The ssh metapackage installs and configures SSH and its dependencies.
Then, while at the desktop, hit Ctrl-L to bring up the Open Location box and enter:
sftp://computername or ip/
You'll be prompted to login and then a Nautilus window will appear with the remote system's filesystem. You can drag and drop files to your heart's content.
You could even enter the address in the location bar of an existing Nautilus window instead, if you want to avoid using a keyboard shortcut.
I think this is the easiest way. If end-users can't handle this then they probably can't dress or feed themselves either.
Now, if what you meant was there's no _completely intuitive_ way to do it (i.e. one whereby a user could fumble around in the menus and generally figure out what to do) then perhaps you're right. But this method took about 1 minute of Googling to find.
As another user pointed out, there's also the Windows-like share method that sets up Samba and shares for you. I prefer this way though, especially for sharing between Linux machines.
Pretty much how I feel about it too.
It was neither the best ad in the world, nor was it particularly outstanding in any way.
If anything it was marginally less annoying and considerably less condescending than the "I'm a Mac" ads.
Was it worth $300M? No. Was it OK as tech ads go? Yep.
Close. Simon Fuller created Pop Idol. Simon Cowell was a judge on Pop Idol. Simon Cowell now produces and hosts The X Factor, which is indeed a knockoff of Pop Idol.
...and I just realised I'm correcting someone on Slashdot in an offtopic thread about a show that I hate. Self-loathing has now taken over and I'm off to scrub myself with steel wool and some powerful bleach.
Have you ever watched TV in other countries? If it's not reruns of old stuff from the US, It's knock-offs like [insert country here] Idol.
Not sure we should admit to this, but [insert country here] Idol is actually a franchise of the British TV show Pop Idol...
...and I'd like to apologise on behalf of the nation for this vile plague we've unleashed upon the world.
With that said, I agree with your point that, generally, broadcast entertainment is abysmal worldwide.
The source is available now, and from what I understand they're using the BSD License.
If you're going to complain about the graphics, point out how the view out the windows should not be visibly wavering. Water doesn't work like that; you'd think with all the effort they put into the game they could have taken the time to see how large underwater windows at the local aquarium behave.
I assumed it was because Rapture was a seriously old and leaky underwater city. The water was actually streaming down the insides of the windows through cracks in the seals?
I might be wrong, It's prolly just in there coz "it looks coooooool".
The majority of reviews were ranting about the fantastic graphics but I was suprised at how obviously low-res and fake the views out of the windows were (I mean REALLY blocky scaled up 2D bitmaps instead of 3D rendered objects even though I was playing on highest poss. graphics settings). The developers have no excuse for adopting the same cpu-cheap approach to doing background scenery that they had to do for comupters like the amiga back in the 80's.
I'm willing to bet the culprit here is the consoles' limitations.
They've probably used identical art assets on all platforms. Which means that consoles with their limited memory and optical storage have to be catered to at all times. The poor background texture quality is almost certainly part of a trade-off between visual appeal, memory usage and loading time.
It's a trade-off which doesn't really need to exist on the PC. It is unfortunate - though not unsurprising given the effort involved - that most developers don't include higher-resolution assets on platforms that have the speed and capacity to use them (i.e. PC).
Well, it pretty much spells it out in TFA.
The game was going to be deep and complex, but then they took it to a bunch of drooling retards who promptly cried "IT'S TOO HAAAAARD" before soiling themselves and going back to their fingerpaints.
Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh, but it does seem to be a worrying trend these days. Players seem to be rewarded for being unwilling to put up with even the slightest complication in a game.
Yes, I realise that a lot of people really LIKE the hand-holding way that modern games present themselves.
I realise that a cumbersome UI or byzantine system of "features" and poor controls can alienate new players and mire an otherwise brilliant game. (X3 I'm looking at you)
I realise that "accessibility" = sales and that not every gamer is interested in deep, involving game mechanics.
It just seems to be the way the whole industry is going; take a well-worn concept, focus-group the design down to nothing, then polish the most basic features and sell it as somehow "revolutionary".
With all the meticulous planning and crafting every detail of the "user experience", the magic seems to have become lost.
Or maybe I really am an old fogey gamer with rose-tinted glasses. :P
Sorry AC, but my experience of this issue varies.
I have a 9800GX2. If I turn vsync on in World of Warcraft I get a BSOD within about 2 minutes. With vsync off it's absolutely fine. Yes, this is with the latest drivers, though the same thing happens with previous drivers. Even if I could get vsync to work, Triple Buffering with SLI results in massive flickering of textures with alpha channels. Not good. This is all under WinXP, I haven't tried it with Vista.
And yes, I notice microstutter with vsync off. Microstutter isn't the same as the regular tearing that you might associate with no vsync, although the end result - a distracting, flickery pseudo-jerkyness - is the same.
Other games don't exhibit this behaviour; Source Engine games, for example, are fine with or without vsync. Certain other games have their own quirks with SLI, it's a mixed bag.
Ultimately, SLI is fantastic when it works well. Unfortunately that's not always the case, even with recent drivers and modern games that *should* support it properly.
Players and guilds come and go. One raiding guild splits and another takes its place. Seems like a lot of QQ over nothing.
EVE is an offline grind. Just because you don't have to be physically sitting in front of the machine to "progress" doesn't mean it's not a grind.
With a gameplay model like that, charging a monthly fee seems cynical at best. You're paying to watch stats increase. The longer you pay, the "better" your character gets. No randomness, no excitement, nothing unexpected, no opportunity for skilled players to advance faster.. the entire game is tied rigidly to the clock, or - given the time it takes to train skills - to the calendar.
No thanks.
I can't tell if you're flamebaiting or asking a sincere question, so I'll go against my better judgement assume good faith.
"Gratis" is a valid word in many languages, including English. It's in the Oxford English Dictionary. In Slashdot terms, it means "free, as in beer". The word comes from Latin, where it means roughly the same thing.
So, you don't need to be Dutch to say "gratis".
Yep, dying in the game can be very convenient. In TF2 I frequently make suicide runs deep into the enemy base as Scout so I know where the turrets are located. When I inevitably die I respawn as a Soldier and go destroy them.
I doubt any real-world military forces use similar tactics with much success.
On the other hand, sometimes I plan my deaths to minimize inconvenience to myself. In World of Warcraft (PvE) often when I know I'm about to die and will need to run back to my corpse, my final moments will be spent trying to move to a convenient, easily accessible and safe place to die so my resurrection will be less hassle.
No matter what tenuous metaphysical/psychological spin you put on it, personal "death" in games has almost no relationship with death in the real world. The fact that you can use it to your own advantage attests to that.
Sounds like you're talking about Q2DM8. I gained notoriety amongst my clanmates for being utterly useless in that area of that level. I was basically banned from playing clanmatches on that map because I was a liability.
I'd be going for the BFG (because I was so lame and found it almost impossible to get a kill with any other weapon) and I'd misstep or someone would fire at me and I'd be trying to dodge and almost every time I'd end up between a moving crate and the wall. Gibs ahoy! The console would just be filled with lines and lines of "StOo was squished".
Perhaps more accurate still:
The clerk sees you pick up and examine a jacket in his store. As soon as you've put it back on the rack, he rushes over, places a big "FOR SALE" sign on it, marks up the price, then quickly runs around town stealing the same type of jacket from every other store in town.
He will, of course, remove the "FOR SALE" sign and return the other jackets to their rightful owners, but only once he's satisfied that you're not really interested in the jacket he's selling.
Remember that the Dreamcast actually used the proprietary GD-ROM format, which had a maximum capacity of around 1.2 gigabytes, and I recall quite a few games that used all available space - although often much of it was used for audio data, which could be quite easily compressed. The major warez groups releasing for the DC back then would sometimes rip and compress the audio tracks into MP3 format and provide a tool to decompress them and inject them into CD images, ready for burning. Feasible on the Wii? Who knows? Is the Wii even powerful enough to emulate a DC? I know the DC emulators available at the moment don't need a spectacularly powerful PC to run acceptably (with some games) but the Wii is hardly a powerhouse.
Heh, I didn't really think that Extrans submission through. I guess it's joke tags or real tags, not both. :P