Even I know that any Slashdot article with both Google and Microsoft in the title sets off the alarms at Redmond. Everyone is to stop what they are doing and defend the queen.;)
You make six figures, inherited a fortune, and drive around in a sports car?
Seriously though, this is way off topic for the original posting about some kid trying to get job hits on Slashdot, but I have to admit: I'll play along just to ask the same rhetorical questions. I've pretty much given up finding _that_ one girl. She's taken by now. A 10+ year search led me nowhere but a few realizations. I'm a pretty picky person, I refuse to settle, and I'd rather live alone than deal with the mental pain when I ask her if she wants to go somewhere and she declines then yelling at me for staying "too late" or "taking too long to get home."
One of the posters above mentioned that women lose interest if you don't maintain the "push" and continue going after it. That's the one thing that PISSES me off about dating in general. Why is it the guy that has to be the pushy one to get you involved? It's bullshit if you ask me. Why is it the socially accepted norm that the guy has to be the initiator and the girl gets to be the decider? And who's to decide if I dress like an asshat? In the past few years I decided to try something. I decided to go to several places, sit back, chill out, and mind my own business. I don't casually glance across the bar or any of that lame ass stuff and I wait. I've had 1, yes 1, girl actually walk up to me and start a conversation. She was drunk off her noggin and wanted me to follow her into the women's bathroom. Call me a "nice guy dork", but I won't do that and if it took alcohol to get that one girl to loosen up to the point where she'd actually leave her inhibitions about being called a slut, then there's something wrong about society in general. So, should I seek out my gay friend and ask him to dress me for the night so you will realize that I'm just an average guy trying to live and be happy with my life? So she can realize that I'm the same guy that expects the girl to have a job and make money to pay for her own wants instead of me working harder to supply it for her?
Doing the dating scene for the past 10 years, I've found that most women are looking for some guy who wants to go places all the time and will spend his entire waking hour thinking about her and ways to make her happy and is willing to drop his friends at a drop of a hat to come home and make her happy. When I was fresh out of high school, the girls only talked about finding someone nice and "love". Later in life, it turns into a quest to find the guy that has the best 401K. She's looking for that same guy who claims to like mountain climbing and photography, but interestingly enough, doesn't have photos of any climb. Let's not even get into the idea of forgetting about Valentine's day and all that one sided gifting crap. Those are the only ways you can PROVE that you love her. Simply coming home to the same person every night isn't enough?
Damn, I'm becoming the cranky old guy and I'm not past 30 yet. I think I am finally beginning to understand my Grandfather. Ah man.
I personally don't like that the "Clean Up" button was removed from the download window. Now I have to right click, then click a menu option. Talk about adding needles steps.
The firewall at work not allowing you to access the same sites you do at home, thus getting IT to come down on you with nasty emails and possibly the esteemed opportunity to job seek!
Who said they wouldn't ship LinFox. A Linux based OS with Firefox as the GUI, and default user login with no privileges. An Internet appliance of sorts. I'm just brainstorming here. Haven't really thought this through yet.
I say we pad every sidewalk, road, building, car, pole, fence, animal, etc that is under 5 ft tall. That way, there's no possible way the kids can be hurt! Hell, just make the entire city one of those inflatable jumping rooms.
One of those concerns was the apparent "market grab" they are in. Coming out with game consoles, portable audio devices, in car systems, and everything else to try to find something to latch on to to slow the decline.
The problem I had with LOTRO was the quests. There were too many simple quests and not enough complicated multi-part quests. Also, killing mobs for exp isn't always fun, but I love dungeon exploration and I like getting experience for the mobs killed. I also prefer to skip quests as most of the time they are meaningless gather/fed ex. If I remember correctly (it's been a while since I played) LOTRO gave no experience for mob kills. It was either that or I got upset at the lack of underworld areas that I so desperately wanted to explore (ie: no dungeons.) Either way, I got bored of it quite quickly.
If you want to nitpick, sure. But the topic at hand is MMOs.
You re-enforced my point though. Games that you just sit and repeat the same steps over and over are not fun, nor do they reflect real world success. I was pointing out that the game should be fun to play instead of a grind. You should usually be able to log in, complete an objective (quest, party, get items, etc.) and log out feeling like you did something. If you are required to kill 5000 bats to get enough wings to please the gnome on the hill, you're grinding... not playing the game. Collection quests should be rare and small. They should be real collection quests like finding one chunk of wood from all every species of tree in the game by going to the area and using a knife on a tree, not "You there! Go get me 1000 mouse turds!"
You can put all the effort you have against the problem - But ultimately - there is a geek, in a basement somewhere, who WILL create a way to break your software schema.
I wasn't talking about people creating bots when I said power gamer. A power gamer to me is defined as anyone that plays more than average. Seeks to get the best out of their character and plays for more than the social aspect of the game. I was suggesting that Blizzard looks into making the game fun so people will want to play it manually instead of automatically. I mention in another post that if you're worried about gold farmers, simply get rid of the auction house and trading, thus no problem. People can still get together, help each other get items (while they are online) and you promote helping each other. Power gamers (and I don't mean botters) will be happy when they get ___ item because you have to go through what they did to get the item, gold farmers would be pointless (besides bragging rights?) and the only downfall is the casual gamer who can't "power" themselves up simply buy buying an item. Instead of having the auction houses, have items on vendors that they can buy that actually mean something if they want to go that route. What about crafters? Let them setup craft only vendors somewhere (preferably in a house/area that they own instead of the front gate of whatever area) and sell their stuff. What's the point of getting money for them then? I don't know... maybe buying better materials or tools from craft agents?
I also wasn't talking about giving everyone everything. But make them get those things in a fun and meaningful way. Not the vendor/gold farmer. I'd argue that gold farming is the major reason these bots exist. There might be a few people who use it to keep the level of their characters up, but in WoW, you can hit max level in less than two months if you're slightly dedicated and levels are pretty meaningless overall.
I was talking about making the game fun and challenging, not a grindfest. Your path to max level should be fun the whole way... not just when you hit level cap. I'd even suggest to take out the levels so people don't feel that they HAVE to get max level to enjoy the game as a lot of players feel. Again, take out the grind doesn't mean give people everything they ever want. I cannot stress that enough. Instead of getting 1000 of some item, give them longer more complicated quest lines to take up the time. They make enough money. They could hire some writers.
That's the thing... these millions of WoW players ARE entertained. But because YOU aren't - That somehow invalidates the game they enjoy? Other posts have said as much but there are MANY failed companies that have tried different approaches. Yet Blizzard remains on top.
I never said anything invalidates the game. Where do you get that from? You're putting words in my mouth. I just wish there were more people who played games sans-grind. Did you feel attacked?
Farming gold is simple enough to fix. Just remove trading from the game in any form. It will make the power gamers happy that they get to show off their equipment and make gold farming pointless. The casual players who depend on equipment trading to get a jump may complain, but isn't this what we are talking about anyway? A way for one player to get ahead of others. Trading items, in essence, is just like botting. You are getting [an item|gold] in the game for not doing something else like [a dungeon|grinding].
Perhaps you can point out a few MMOs that do not have "grinding"?
It's about money. If the player has to play the game longer to get to whatever point they feel "complete" then they pay more subscription fees. If they bot while they are not playing, they can achieve more items in less time and therefore pay less. It's what makes me sick with MMOs. They aren't about a fun game. It's about an end goal, and making it time consuming to get to. Instead of the developers out-thinking the power gamers, they are taking the easy way out and increasing the time to acquire _____. Unfortunately, companies are seeing MMOs as good money making models because many people are buying into it. I'm interested, and kind of hoping, that all these millions of WoW players will get to the point where I am (Sick of grind MMOs) and start buying games that actually innovate and create entertainment.
It's just like software/music piracy and drugs. Going after the people that might happen upon the material instead of going after the cause or the distributor. It far less expensive to scare people into believing they will be raided by instances like yours than it is to track down and research where it's coming from. Simply by posting that, you perpetuate the fear and support their cause. I'm not saying that you posting your history was wrong, but I'm using it to back my opinion on the whole matter.
So how are all you Icelandii doing up there in the green land next to icy Greenland?;)
[yes, it's a sad boring day when I post simply to use the word "Icelandii" and poke fun of the Iceland/Greenland battle for identity all in one sentence.]
Well, what I find interesting is the double standard. Your sibling poster pasted a whole group of hardware that prohibits Windows Update from updating. Now, if it were Linux/Apple/other the world would be in an uproar on how such and such software doesn't work with their hardware. In the case of Microsoft, the user blames the hardware for being incompatible. How do you win that?
I guess that would depend on how separate your production data is from your development environment. If you give your devs full access to production, you're asking for leaks and trouble. In your scenario, with a proper separation of development and production, you shouldn't really have a rogue hacker be able to get to sensitive data on your protected production network. Well, that and you wouldn't have a developer push something to production without proper testing causing Google.com to go down... I'm assuming they have a proper separation, and most likely a testing environment that mimics production.
Slashdot Mirror
A bit off topic, but why does everyone call gnutoo, Twitter?
What you should have said is:
... Spank the Monkeyboy Mondays
Regrettable moments
Even I know that any Slashdot article with both Google and Microsoft in the title sets off the alarms at Redmond. Everyone is to stop what they are doing and defend the queen. ;)
As long as we can have edit battles to declare "colour" the proper spelling of the word, the wiki will succeed.
AIR does use Webkit: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:developerfaq#Why_did_Adobe_choose_WebKit.3F
Seriously though, this is way off topic for the original posting about some kid trying to get job hits on Slashdot, but I have to admit: I'll play along just to ask the same rhetorical questions. I've pretty much given up finding _that_ one girl. She's taken by now. A 10+ year search led me nowhere but a few realizations. I'm a pretty picky person, I refuse to settle, and I'd rather live alone than deal with the mental pain when I ask her if she wants to go somewhere and she declines then yelling at me for staying "too late" or "taking too long to get home."
One of the posters above mentioned that women lose interest if you don't maintain the "push" and continue going after it. That's the one thing that PISSES me off about dating in general. Why is it the guy that has to be the pushy one to get you involved? It's bullshit if you ask me. Why is it the socially accepted norm that the guy has to be the initiator and the girl gets to be the decider? And who's to decide if I dress like an asshat? In the past few years I decided to try something. I decided to go to several places, sit back, chill out, and mind my own business. I don't casually glance across the bar or any of that lame ass stuff and I wait. I've had 1, yes 1, girl actually walk up to me and start a conversation. She was drunk off her noggin and wanted me to follow her into the women's bathroom. Call me a "nice guy dork", but I won't do that and if it took alcohol to get that one girl to loosen up to the point where she'd actually leave her inhibitions about being called a slut, then there's something wrong about society in general. So, should I seek out my gay friend and ask him to dress me for the night so you will realize that I'm just an average guy trying to live and be happy with my life? So she can realize that I'm the same guy that expects the girl to have a job and make money to pay for her own wants instead of me working harder to supply it for her?
Doing the dating scene for the past 10 years, I've found that most women are looking for some guy who wants to go places all the time and will spend his entire waking hour thinking about her and ways to make her happy and is willing to drop his friends at a drop of a hat to come home and make her happy. When I was fresh out of high school, the girls only talked about finding someone nice and "love". Later in life, it turns into a quest to find the guy that has the best 401K. She's looking for that same guy who claims to like mountain climbing and photography, but interestingly enough, doesn't have photos of any climb. Let's not even get into the idea of forgetting about Valentine's day and all that one sided gifting crap. Those are the only ways you can PROVE that you love her. Simply coming home to the same person every night isn't enough?
Damn, I'm becoming the cranky old guy and I'm not past 30 yet. I think I am finally beginning to understand my Grandfather. Ah man.
I personally don't like that the "Clean Up" button was removed from the download window. Now I have to right click, then click a menu option. Talk about adding needles steps.
The firewall at work not allowing you to access the same sites you do at home, thus getting IT to come down on you with nasty emails and possibly the esteemed opportunity to job seek!
Who said they wouldn't ship LinFox. A Linux based OS with Firefox as the GUI, and default user login with no privileges. An Internet appliance of sorts. I'm just brainstorming here. Haven't really thought this through yet.
I say we pad every sidewalk, road, building, car, pole, fence, animal, etc that is under 5 ft tall. That way, there's no possible way the kids can be hurt! Hell, just make the entire city one of those inflatable jumping rooms.
I thought that was the point of the Boy Scouts. (The woods, and learning... not the finding wild animals part... ) ;)
One of those concerns was the apparent "market grab" they are in. Coming out with game consoles, portable audio devices, in car systems, and everything else to try to find something to latch on to to slow the decline.
The problem I had with LOTRO was the quests. There were too many simple quests and not enough complicated multi-part quests. Also, killing mobs for exp isn't always fun, but I love dungeon exploration and I like getting experience for the mobs killed. I also prefer to skip quests as most of the time they are meaningless gather/fed ex. If I remember correctly (it's been a while since I played) LOTRO gave no experience for mob kills. It was either that or I got upset at the lack of underworld areas that I so desperately wanted to explore (ie: no dungeons.) Either way, I got bored of it quite quickly.
If you want to nitpick, sure. But the topic at hand is MMOs.
You re-enforced my point though. Games that you just sit and repeat the same steps over and over are not fun, nor do they reflect real world success. I was pointing out that the game should be fun to play instead of a grind. You should usually be able to log in, complete an objective (quest, party, get items, etc.) and log out feeling like you did something. If you are required to kill 5000 bats to get enough wings to please the gnome on the hill, you're grinding... not playing the game. Collection quests should be rare and small. They should be real collection quests like finding one chunk of wood from all every species of tree in the game by going to the area and using a knife on a tree, not "You there! Go get me 1000 mouse turds!"
I also wasn't talking about giving everyone everything. But make them get those things in a fun and meaningful way. Not the vendor/gold farmer. I'd argue that gold farming is the major reason these bots exist. There might be a few people who use it to keep the level of their characters up, but in WoW, you can hit max level in less than two months if you're slightly dedicated and levels are pretty meaningless overall.
I was talking about making the game fun and challenging, not a grindfest. Your path to max level should be fun the whole way... not just when you hit level cap. I'd even suggest to take out the levels so people don't feel that they HAVE to get max level to enjoy the game as a lot of players feel. Again, take out the grind doesn't mean give people everything they ever want. I cannot stress that enough. Instead of getting 1000 of some item, give them longer more complicated quest lines to take up the time. They make enough money. They could hire some writers.I never said anything invalidates the game. Where do you get that from? You're putting words in my mouth. I just wish there were more people who played games sans-grind. Did you feel attacked?
Farming gold is simple enough to fix. Just remove trading from the game in any form. It will make the power gamers happy that they get to show off their equipment and make gold farming pointless. The casual players who depend on equipment trading to get a jump may complain, but isn't this what we are talking about anyway? A way for one player to get ahead of others. Trading items, in essence, is just like botting. You are getting [an item|gold] in the game for not doing something else like [a dungeon|grinding].
That's painful to read...
Perhaps you can point out a few MMOs that do not have "grinding"?
It's about money. If the player has to play the game longer to get to whatever point they feel "complete" then they pay more subscription fees. If they bot while they are not playing, they can achieve more items in less time and therefore pay less. It's what makes me sick with MMOs. They aren't about a fun game. It's about an end goal, and making it time consuming to get to. Instead of the developers out-thinking the power gamers, they are taking the easy way out and increasing the time to acquire _____. Unfortunately, companies are seeing MMOs as good money making models because many people are buying into it. I'm interested, and kind of hoping, that all these millions of WoW players will get to the point where I am (Sick of grind MMOs) and start buying games that actually innovate and create entertainment.
It's just like software/music piracy and drugs. Going after the people that might happen upon the material instead of going after the cause or the distributor. It far less expensive to scare people into believing they will be raided by instances like yours than it is to track down and research where it's coming from. Simply by posting that, you perpetuate the fear and support their cause. I'm not saying that you posting your history was wrong, but I'm using it to back my opinion on the whole matter.
So how are all you Icelandii doing up there in the green land next to icy Greenland? ;)
[yes, it's a sad boring day when I post simply to use the word "Icelandii" and poke fun of the Iceland/Greenland battle for identity all in one sentence.]
Well.... http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14529 They kind of already do that. It's not necessarily a boat, and they test parts, and not the whole shuttle (that I know of) but it's close.
Damn, I was hoping for Mr. Fusion.
Why not water, sand, dirt, wind, or the sun?
I guess that would depend on what you consider a major environmental concern. Getting as many people off my planet is the top of my list. ;)
Well, what I find interesting is the double standard. Your sibling poster pasted a whole group of hardware that prohibits Windows Update from updating. Now, if it were Linux/Apple/other the world would be in an uproar on how such and such software doesn't work with their hardware. In the case of Microsoft, the user blames the hardware for being incompatible. How do you win that?
I guess that would depend on how separate your production data is from your development environment. If you give your devs full access to production, you're asking for leaks and trouble. In your scenario, with a proper separation of development and production, you shouldn't really have a rogue hacker be able to get to sensitive data on your protected production network. Well, that and you wouldn't have a developer push something to production without proper testing causing Google.com to go down... I'm assuming they have a proper separation, and most likely a testing environment that mimics production.