Not poor, but still happily running my dual P-III 1Ghz setup I built 5 years ago. I've upgraded from the original GeForce Pro to an ATI Radeon 9800Pro last year, swapped out the CD burner for a DVD Burner the year before that, and added two 400GB drives 6 months ago to complement the two 80GB drives that I originally had. The thing that'd really help me would be more RAM, but from day one it was maxed out with 2GB.
Until I meet anything it can't do that I really want to do, I don't see the need to replace the machine. Unfortunetly, it is about at the end of its upgradeability -- new graphics cards will require PCIe, which means new MB, and therefore new CPU(s). More RAM would also require new MB, etc.
Maybe I'm frugal, maybe I just don't see the need to always have "the latest and greatest" but I'll stick with my strategy of building a beast of a machine every few years, but not throwing much money at it after its built.
Land issues would go away if we'd drop the farm subsidies. Paying farmers to NOT grow stuff is stupid these days -- let them take their unused land and grow soybeans, corn, whatever, and sell it for FUEL instead of FOOD.
Of course, whichever party tries to do this (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever) will immedietly be branded as being "cruel" and "insensitive" and "out to get" the "poor, working class farmers"
Except that for the most part, the TAXPAYER paid for the copper and fiber to be installed in the first place, through granting of "easments" and tax breaks for "infrastructure improvements", not to mention the whole pesky group of regulations concerning "common carriers".
If we, the taxpayers, hadn't paid for the phone networks in the first place, I would have absolutely no complaints about AT&T or SBC or whomever charging whatever they'd like for data crossing their wires.
WoW was simply an example of how many people hate "the grind". I don't play anymore, haven't for over a year, and I don't miss it at all. And as I said, I don't know that MMORPGs can be made to fit a casual games model. But many other types of games can.
You seem to be missing the point, which is casual gaming is a growing market, and as such, game studios will either embrace it and profit, or they won't. You and your hardcore gamer friends will eventually discover there's more to life than sitting in front of a computer/console all day every day. Until then, enjoy your gaming. Just don't expect everyone to think you're cool because you live, eat, breathe and sleep gaming.
Ah, but if the 13-19 year old crowd wants to engage in dick-swinging contests over who can get what 1337 piece of gear, let them. All I ask is that the game makers give me the option to bypass the BS and just play the game.
Put another way, I don't care if a bunch of 13-19 year olds don't think I "earned" the stuff. Let them "earn" it if it means that much to them. Flag save games, screenshots, whatever with "Casual Play" or something like that to keep them happy that the "posers" aren't trying to brag about stuff they didn't "earn".
I think the game studios can keep both the hardcore gamer and the casual gamer happy in most games. MMORPGs would pretty much be the exception, but most casual gamers I know don't want to spend that much time on them anyway.
No, it hasn't. I think games will eventually change to meet consumer demand. To some degree we're already seeing this -- spend any amount of time on the World of Warcraft forums and you'll see constant complaining about the amount of grinding required. In all fairness, its not limited to WoW. Also see the popularity of games like the Sims -- where you can sit down, mess around a bit, save it, and turn it off. Some racing games do a pretty decent job -- unfortunetly they tend to be nascar games where there ARE no "better" cars to unlock, since they're all the same anyway, and being nascar, the variation in tracks is minimal as well. Most fall into the trap I described before.
I'd love to find a good helicopter sim to replace the obsolete-but-classic AH-64D Longbow. Or a good F-16 simulation like what the Falcon line used to be (yes, I know, Falcon4 was re-released). They both take time to learn, yes, but the "missions" are separate, and for the most part, short, without being an arcade shoot-em-up.
As for choosing "a lifestyle that leaves no time for gaming" -- I work 40 hours / week, very little overtime, and even then the overtime is not required. As with most people I graduated with, we have time, but we can now afford our other hobbies, and if that means sacrificing time sitting on my butt playing games to gain more time out doing things, so be it. If the game companies continue to want our money, they'll adapt to a changing market. If they don't, and want to survive entirely on what the 13-19 year olds can get their parents to buy them, thats fine with me too. I know I'll be able to use the extra time to prep the toys for track days. And real racing is better than any game.
Since I've entered the "real world" I have nowhere near the amount of time to spend gaming as I did in college.
I'd rather have all the features, abilities, etc "unlocked" from the beginning so I can have FUN. Racing games are the worst. Start with crappy car, on a boring track. Then spend hours to achieve first-place so you can get a slightly better car, or have a slightly more interesting track. Repeat for days until you finally can run the high-end cars on challenging tracks. All in the name of providing "lots" of gameplay. Gameplay, yes. Fun, not so much.
Give me all the cars, tracks, cool weapons, gadgets, etc all at the beginning and let me get my hours of gameplay in 10-20 minute pieces of fun.
I think "Casual games" and "Casual gamers" want fun out of their games, not work. Which means a lot more games can fall into the "casual" category than just brain teasers and Bejeweled or Tetris clones. Let the hardcore crowd work for weeks to unlock the super-baddass-mega-blaster, but at least give everyone else the option to click a "unlock all" option and just have fun.
If you bothered to RTFA, you'd see they're talking about electric ducted fans. Not gas engines. Its an electric motor with a fan in a tube. Nothing earthshattering here, except perhaps that HP is starting to actually develop some ideas now that whats-her-name is gone.
Now, if they were talking about one of the gas-turbine jet engines, or a glow-fuel piston engine, you'd have valid points.
Second Life seems to have a good solution then.
But I maintain that if it was clearchannel or their ilk, it'd be the ONLY thing you could listen to -- maybe other "stations" but all clearchannel, etc -- there would be lots of commercials, and they'd manage to get it written into the TOS that any attempt to bypass commercials would terminate your account.
Ok, I don't know if the BBC does commercials on their radio stations. But if this was one of OUR radio stations clearchannel....it'd be enough to drive me away from the game. Any game.
NO ONE that worked there smiled. Why? We were all miserable. The only time we were happy was when our shifts were ending at 7am, coincidentally when they started selling alcohol each day. I can't speak for walmart in general, but the store I worked at had HORRIBLE management, directly contributing to the lack of smiles amongst the night shift.
Back on topic, its horsepucky. People see a smiley face, they do NOT think "walmart".
With the big push towards web-deliverable apps, and thin-clients, the processing power has to come from somewhere. If its not going to be the end user, the logical place is a step back towards mainfraims.
I know its too late, but the simple solution to the problem is to not provide support in the first place, unless you're being paid specifically for that support.
Either way, refer them to someone who is willing to make a job out of support.
Sharing code snippets to try to solve a problem doesn't really fall under open source. Most of the time snippets are shared for specific reasons, to track down specific problems, and its only the lines that are immedietly around the line causing the problem.
For $19.96, no less. It was still on the shelf, but the register was saying "sale not allowed" -- make a big enough scene about them putting merchandise on the shelf to sell but refusing to sell it, and voila! New addiction, less $$.
Ignoring all the gold-farming issues, am I the only one who finds the idea of having a massive database of where everything can be found to be sort of self-defeating?
I hate "grinding" as much as most people, but isn't part of the coolness factor of having a level 60 whatever with a complete set of epic armor the simple fact that they've done a lot? It seems that if you know exactly where everything is, and exactly what is required for X quest, and that the fastest way to get item Y is to kill monster Z because it has the best drop rate, you've turned the ENTIRE game INTO "grinding".
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Not poor, but still happily running my dual P-III 1Ghz setup I built 5 years ago. I've upgraded from the original GeForce Pro to an ATI Radeon 9800Pro last year, swapped out the CD burner for a DVD Burner the year before that, and added two 400GB drives 6 months ago to complement the two 80GB drives that I originally had. The thing that'd really help me would be more RAM, but from day one it was maxed out with 2GB.
Until I meet anything it can't do that I really want to do, I don't see the need to replace the machine. Unfortunetly, it is about at the end of its upgradeability -- new graphics cards will require PCIe, which means new MB, and therefore new CPU(s). More RAM would also require new MB, etc.
Maybe I'm frugal, maybe I just don't see the need to always have "the latest and greatest" but I'll stick with my strategy of building a beast of a machine every few years, but not throwing much money at it after its built.
Land issues would go away if we'd drop the farm subsidies. Paying farmers to NOT grow stuff is stupid these days -- let them take their unused land and grow soybeans, corn, whatever, and sell it for FUEL instead of FOOD.
Of course, whichever party tries to do this (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever) will immedietly be branded as being "cruel" and "insensitive" and "out to get" the "poor, working class farmers"
According to your, mine, and many other people's sense of ethics, perhaps. Ethics, like morality, are individual.
Except that for the most part, the TAXPAYER paid for the copper and fiber to be installed in the first place, through granting of "easments" and tax breaks for "infrastructure improvements", not to mention the whole pesky group of regulations concerning "common carriers".
If we, the taxpayers, hadn't paid for the phone networks in the first place, I would have absolutely no complaints about AT&T or SBC or whomever charging whatever they'd like for data crossing their wires.
WoW was simply an example of how many people hate "the grind". I don't play anymore, haven't for over a year, and I don't miss it at all. And as I said, I don't know that MMORPGs can be made to fit a casual games model. But many other types of games can. You seem to be missing the point, which is casual gaming is a growing market, and as such, game studios will either embrace it and profit, or they won't. You and your hardcore gamer friends will eventually discover there's more to life than sitting in front of a computer/console all day every day. Until then, enjoy your gaming. Just don't expect everyone to think you're cool because you live, eat, breathe and sleep gaming.
Ah, but if the 13-19 year old crowd wants to engage in dick-swinging contests over who can get what 1337 piece of gear, let them. All I ask is that the game makers give me the option to bypass the BS and just play the game.
Put another way, I don't care if a bunch of 13-19 year olds don't think I "earned" the stuff. Let them "earn" it if it means that much to them. Flag save games, screenshots, whatever with "Casual Play" or something like that to keep them happy that the "posers" aren't trying to brag about stuff they didn't "earn".
I think the game studios can keep both the hardcore gamer and the casual gamer happy in most games. MMORPGs would pretty much be the exception, but most casual gamers I know don't want to spend that much time on them anyway.
No, it hasn't. I think games will eventually change to meet consumer demand. To some degree we're already seeing this -- spend any amount of time on the World of Warcraft forums and you'll see constant complaining about the amount of grinding required. In all fairness, its not limited to WoW. Also see the popularity of games like the Sims -- where you can sit down, mess around a bit, save it, and turn it off. Some racing games do a pretty decent job -- unfortunetly they tend to be nascar games where there ARE no "better" cars to unlock, since they're all the same anyway, and being nascar, the variation in tracks is minimal as well. Most fall into the trap I described before.
I'd love to find a good helicopter sim to replace the obsolete-but-classic AH-64D Longbow. Or a good F-16 simulation like what the Falcon line used to be (yes, I know, Falcon4 was re-released). They both take time to learn, yes, but the "missions" are separate, and for the most part, short, without being an arcade shoot-em-up.
As for choosing "a lifestyle that leaves no time for gaming" -- I work 40 hours / week, very little overtime, and even then the overtime is not required. As with most people I graduated with, we have time, but we can now afford our other hobbies, and if that means sacrificing time sitting on my butt playing games to gain more time out doing things, so be it. If the game companies continue to want our money, they'll adapt to a changing market. If they don't, and want to survive entirely on what the 13-19 year olds can get their parents to buy them, thats fine with me too. I know I'll be able to use the extra time to prep the toys for track days. And real racing is better than any game.
Since I've entered the "real world" I have nowhere near the amount of time to spend gaming as I did in college.
I'd rather have all the features, abilities, etc "unlocked" from the beginning so I can have FUN. Racing games are the worst. Start with crappy car, on a boring track. Then spend hours to achieve first-place so you can get a slightly better car, or have a slightly more interesting track. Repeat for days until you finally can run the high-end cars on challenging tracks. All in the name of providing "lots" of gameplay. Gameplay, yes. Fun, not so much.
Give me all the cars, tracks, cool weapons, gadgets, etc all at the beginning and let me get my hours of gameplay in 10-20 minute pieces of fun.
I think "Casual games" and "Casual gamers" want fun out of their games, not work. Which means a lot more games can fall into the "casual" category than just brain teasers and Bejeweled or Tetris clones. Let the hardcore crowd work for weeks to unlock the super-baddass-mega-blaster, but at least give everyone else the option to click a "unlock all" option and just have fun.
If you bothered to RTFA, you'd see they're talking about electric ducted fans. Not gas engines. Its an electric motor with a fan in a tube. Nothing earthshattering here, except perhaps that HP is starting to actually develop some ideas now that whats-her-name is gone. Now, if they were talking about one of the gas-turbine jet engines, or a glow-fuel piston engine, you'd have valid points.
Power corrupts -- absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Except they see it as "Power corrupts -- but absolute power is really pretty neat!"
Second Life seems to have a good solution then. But I maintain that if it was clearchannel or their ilk, it'd be the ONLY thing you could listen to -- maybe other "stations" but all clearchannel, etc -- there would be lots of commercials, and they'd manage to get it written into the TOS that any attempt to bypass commercials would terminate your account.
Ok, I don't know if the BBC does commercials on their radio stations. But if this was one of OUR radio stations clearchannel....it'd be enough to drive me away from the game. Any game.
Really, I just drink water or unsweetened tea. Much less sugar than soda, and as a bonus, no caffiene.
for two months to pay bills.
NO ONE that worked there smiled. Why? We were all miserable. The only time we were happy was when our shifts were ending at 7am, coincidentally when they started selling alcohol each day. I can't speak for walmart in general, but the store I worked at had HORRIBLE management, directly contributing to the lack of smiles amongst the night shift.
Back on topic, its horsepucky. People see a smiley face, they do NOT think "walmart".
With the big push towards web-deliverable apps, and thin-clients, the processing power has to come from somewhere. If its not going to be the end user, the logical place is a step back towards mainfraims.
Hurray web 2.0!
I know its too late, but the simple solution to the problem is to not provide support in the first place, unless you're being paid specifically for that support. Either way, refer them to someone who is willing to make a job out of support.
Sharing code snippets to try to solve a problem doesn't really fall under open source. Most of the time snippets are shared for specific reasons, to track down specific problems, and its only the lines that are immedietly around the line causing the problem.
For $19.96, no less. It was still on the shelf, but the register was saying "sale not allowed" -- make a big enough scene about them putting merchandise on the shelf to sell but refusing to sell it, and voila! New addiction, less $$.
Ignoring all the gold-farming issues, am I the only one who finds the idea of having a massive database of where everything can be found to be sort of self-defeating?
I hate "grinding" as much as most people, but isn't part of the coolness factor of having a level 60 whatever with a complete set of epic armor the simple fact that they've done a lot? It seems that if you know exactly where everything is, and exactly what is required for X quest, and that the fastest way to get item Y is to kill monster Z because it has the best drop rate, you've turned the ENTIRE game INTO "grinding".
What is the point in playing then?
Give us the details on the drilling rig!