I second that, how do you keep bars of both types (and can you maintain a consistent visual style?)
My desire is for a Gnome panel with large icons at the bottom (select app launchers only - that does NOT take up the entire screen width) and a slightly modified KDE or GNOME bar at the top.
I was not aware that you could mix n' match...
I love the look/feel of Gnome, but do not desire the overhead when launching KDE apps from a Gnome environment.
Unfortunately, there are no GTK equivalents for the few KDE apps I use.
That's not to say there aren't programs that TRY to be equivalent - they just seem to fall short in one way or another every time.
I tried that - it broke, briefly, locking up and refusing to download/install the rest of the upgrade. I restarted, did a partial upgrade, then the update manager updated/upgraded the rest of the packages later on.
So far, no apparent issues except with the new implementation of compiz-fusion. Beryl was working fine w/ Emerald as the window manager... For now, I am just using GDM and have turned off visual effects, window decoration, etc.
Issues include, freezing, windows moving to odd places, and general unresponsiveness, occasionally the title bars disappear altogether (I had this issue before, but now restarting the window manager doesn't work - the GUI freezes entirely and I have to restart X...)
There is no reason for me to expect that the issues with compiz-fusion have anything to do with the upgrade process though.
You mock, but I have to admit I've bought my wife almost as many trackballs as flowers... If the trackballs were less reliable, I'm sure it would easily surpass that.
As for me, I used an optical wireless trackball early on (One of the MS ones) and was mostly pleased with the performance. Once that died, I could not find any reasonable replacement - and did not want to troll eBay for an old one.
We did find however, a replacement for my wife's trackball (big ol' Logitech optical w/ scrollwheel on the thumb and 4 buttons) on eBay.
Currently I use laser mice, a Logitech MX-610 at the office and an MX-1000 (early one - clunky charger, no bluetooth, etc) at home. I will probably replace the MX-1000 with an MX Revolution when it dies - I have been nothing but pleased.
A lot of the usability comes down to desired functionality (features). I will admit, I'm a button whore. Since I am a lefty, I tend to use the mouse ambidextrously - but hate ambidextrous mice, so it has to have many buttons w/ mapped functions. To accomplish this, the only solution I have found is Logitech's crappy SetPoint software w/ the (fantastic) UberOptions mod SetPoint is almost useless without this).
Even under heavy use, I have had no jitter, no random flying cursors, and no battery/wireless issues for either Logitech mouse - issues I frequently had with the trackball. But that may be a MS Vs. Logitech issue - my wife's Logitech Trackball has none of the issues my MS trackball had.
I may be going out on a limb here, but when I read it, I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the invasion of privacy was the market research they do in the first place in order to know where to send that costly snail spam.
The casual player that wants to "cash out" does not have nearly the same impact as a farming business. However, the ability to cash out so easily often leads players to take on the same unscrupulous practices as the farmers.
This includes camping spawns unattended, scripting easily repeatable (profitable) actions, and (as mentioned elsewhere) hogging resources and/or NPCs needed by other players that are actually PLAYING the game.
Anything that discourages actions which impede legitimate players is a step in the right direction.
Windows Desktop Search (which isn't for Linux, and is thus off-topic) was a CPU hog the same way I hear Beagle is. I had to switch to Google Desktop to keep my CPU from spiking and causing major issues.
Confining it to a single core worked on my dual core machine, but it still ate what it could. On my single-core work tablet it spikes and hogs worse than my (corporate-required) Symantec AV.
I use Google Desktop to search and index network drives/folders all the time in Windows. You just have to map the drive first, and refer to it as a "lettered" drive rather than by its universal share name. IE: "X:\FOLDER\"
Is this not the case for the Linux Google Desktop? (And if not, why? I am a bit of a Linux n00b)
It seems to me that it would depend on the intended use of the humans manufactured.
If you were selling them in a Soylent Green context, obviously mass is important.
If they are more of a single-use commodity (IE, sex slave, acid miner, etc) then it would not make any sense to call per-pound the higher yield manufacturing process, and it would be per unit.
And also, as pointed out by another poster, China still wins in mass (though obviously not mass per unit, they have enough units to make up for it)
WoW's lack of customization options is the biggest missing feature for me.
I understand that they (Blizzard) want to maintain quality, and that it is therefore easier to limit options, but what I loved in UO (which I played from Dec. '97 until around a month ago) was the ability to distinguish yourself from others graphically with minimal effort.
Granted, re-hues can be ugly as sin, but at least they were distinct.
Unfortunately with the UO: Age of Shadows expansion, it became more about the stats on your equipment than about wearing what you wanted, and only what you wanted.
Second life had all of the customization I wanted, but lacked any in-game "official" content. I didn't think it was possible, but it was *too* open ended for casual play, as it isn't really a game so much as a 3D chat room.
I would love it if WoW allowed for some sort of pay-per-enhancement that would change the art of an item, but retain the name/properties, affording guilds/individuals the ability to look however they wanted without sacrificing any function, and at the same time providing a sort of gold-sink.
I think you misunderstand my use of the word "sheep".
I was merely referring to those that would be prey to "wolves" - those out hunting the sheep. I don't mean they that were mindless herds so much as vulnerable prey to the jerks out there.
I'm a farily hardcore Trammie, and I definitely enjoyed the game Post-Trammel (Hell, I'm still playin' ain't I?) but something was definitely lost.
As I said before, my best known character is a beggar - that sort of thing didn't fly very well for me in Felucca.
Sheep wasn't meant to be offensive (ie: Trammie Carebear), just a term to refer to those that weren't out for a fight.
Granted, the game did change entirely once the PKs had no one to pick on, (I was running on a machine and connection which were way under spec. for the time)
However, if you look at the larger MMO picture, a game can be a success without non-con PvP/Grief play.
Maybe it wasn't your particular style (I prefered the sense of adventure of those times myself), but it kept a lot of the "easy mode" players happier longer, and so was hardly the "death" of UO.
AoS on the other hand was when EA really messed it up, NO playstyle was safe at that point.
After Trammel, my primary character was a beggar. I didn't require non-con PvP or things of that natur,e and had a lot of fun with the "game world", as it was at the time.
It only REALLY became an issue for me post-AoS.
And for the record, I'm still playing (Since Dec. '97, few months post release), just not entirely satisfied anymore.
And now EA wants to use PunkBuster for UO... Criminy. If they hadn't killed it yet, expansions like Mondain's Legacy (Poorly instanced dungeons) and restrictive policies like PunkBuster may just drive away the two or three people still playing.
From what I recall, subscriptions actually went UP post-Trammel, and the Siege ruleset shard was still there as a non-Trammel alternative. Not to mention, no one *had* to leave Felucca, they chose to.
In terms of sheer negative impact, Age of Shadows was far more significant. (Combat changes, at-will special moves rather than random, clunky nasty interfaces, etc.)
While I still think they should have left some shards with regular rulesets non-Trammelized, I think they would've rapidly emptied as "sheep" flocked to the safe haven of other shards.
UO still has yet to recover from Age of Shadows - With that expansion the entire gameplay style shifted, but without any associated updates/overhauls.
The interface and graphics for the 2D client were dated in '97, and the monster of a "3D" client (not even true 3d...) they released was so bad, that the majority of players STILL uses the dated '97 client.
The few updates they have managed, have generally served to make things look/feel worse and less immersive.
I just don't think EA understands the concept of persistant worlds, and as someone else put it, assumes a shelf life for products that should be constantly updated and therefore shouldn't have an artificially limited life.
Judging by the post above, which states Dell is offering Blu-ray only, my guess would be that alienware would follow suit, being recently acquired by Dell...
If you're trying to appeal to a large segment of players, you have to make it mind-numbingly easy. People tend to play games (MMORPGs especially) to relax or escape, and they don't want to waste a lot of time 'thinking' or 'figuring out stuff'.
UO has gotten nothing but more complicated over the years, and that huge learning curve is undoubtedly intimidating to new players.
I can't say the same about WoW from what I've seen. If you want to keep your numbers up, make it like pop music, or anything else popular: Dumb it down.
Quality does not equal popularity, and popularity is where the money is in the subscription world.
Not only is it true, but for UO's 7th Anniversary, the Dev. team released an item to commemorate each year, and the first one was "Royal Leggings of Embers" to commemorate this event.
Sadly, the item is way overpowered, especially on certain harsher ruleset servers, and nearly everyone on those servers (Siege Perilous and Mugen) are forced to wear these ugly orange platemail leggings merely to keep up.
Pardon my laziness, but when does FFXII hit the US market? And is there any word on FFXIII, is it supposed to be released on any of the next-gen platforms? (PS3?), that would certainly influence my buying decision.
Their naming conventions drive me nuts. First it was the discrepancy between the US and Japanese "Version" numbers, and then that whole XII/X:2 thing.
They should've just skipped numbers where the US counterpart didn't exist.
Amen to that.
UO is all but ruined by the semi-annual feature barrage.
Sometimes it is worse than others, but it is almost never in the best interest of the game.
If they offered a "clean" server, that was essentialy the same gameplay-wise as early UO, but patched the known bugs, it'd be a unique and incredibly appealing game to me again.
I still play currently, but so much of the world either doesn't match itself, seems a pointless waste of coding time, is unbalanced or is just flat-out broken.
I would love to see a good concept come to life, ge tthe bugs worked out, and be left alone content-wise.
There's a reason I still play the Legen Of Zelda almost annually - I like the original feel and structure. It's a good formula.
Some people just don't know when they have it right, and can't stop adding things into the mix.
Most of my Ultima Online guildies ran to SWG when it came out, having been long-time supporters of the franchise, and enjoying an open semi-sandbox style of gameplay.
While I'd like to see them back into UO, I doubt it'll ever happen, as MMOs are constantly getting EQ'd to death, or plagarized in different manners in attempts to capitallize on the success of whatever top multi-player RPG is the flavor of the day.
Diablo II got UO pretty bad, and it looks like EQ and its ilk are responsible for the retardation of SWG.
I really, really fear whatever the devs of these games are cooking up currently, as it is no doubt 100% WoW-based...
Slashdot Mirror
...And run that entire FrankenDesk as a virtual machine?
I second that, how do you keep bars of both types (and can you maintain a consistent visual style?)
My desire is for a Gnome panel with large icons at the bottom (select app launchers only - that does NOT take up the entire screen width) and a slightly modified KDE or GNOME bar at the top.
I was not aware that you could mix n' match...
I love the look/feel of Gnome, but do not desire the overhead when launching KDE apps from a Gnome environment.
Unfortunately, there are no GTK equivalents for the few KDE apps I use.
That's not to say there aren't programs that TRY to be equivalent - they just seem to fall short in one way or another every time.
I tried that - it broke, briefly, locking up and refusing to download/install the rest of the upgrade. I restarted, did a partial upgrade, then the update manager updated/upgraded the rest of the packages later on.
So far, no apparent issues except with the new implementation of compiz-fusion.
Beryl was working fine w/ Emerald as the window manager...
For now, I am just using GDM and have turned off visual effects, window decoration, etc.
Issues include, freezing, windows moving to odd places, and general unresponsiveness, occasionally the title bars disappear altogether (I had this issue before, but now restarting the window manager doesn't work - the GUI freezes entirely and I have to restart X...)
There is no reason for me to expect that the issues with compiz-fusion have anything to do with the upgrade process though.
Actually, there is a very interesting article in Nature describing this.3 -11.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061113/full/06111
You mock, but I have to admit I've bought my wife almost as many trackballs as flowers...
If the trackballs were less reliable, I'm sure it would easily surpass that.
As for me, I used an optical wireless trackball early on (One of the MS ones) and was mostly pleased with the performance.
Once that died, I could not find any reasonable replacement - and did not want to troll eBay for an old one.
We did find however, a replacement for my wife's trackball (big ol' Logitech optical w/ scrollwheel on the thumb and 4 buttons) on eBay.
Currently I use laser mice, a Logitech MX-610 at the office and an MX-1000 (early one - clunky charger, no bluetooth, etc) at home.
I will probably replace the MX-1000 with an MX Revolution when it dies - I have been nothing but pleased.
A lot of the usability comes down to desired functionality (features).
I will admit, I'm a button whore. Since I am a lefty, I tend to use the mouse ambidextrously - but hate ambidextrous mice, so it has to have many buttons w/ mapped functions.
To accomplish this, the only solution I have found is Logitech's crappy SetPoint software w/ the (fantastic) UberOptions mod SetPoint is almost useless without this).
Even under heavy use, I have had no jitter, no random flying cursors, and no battery/wireless issues for either Logitech mouse - issues I frequently had with the trackball.
But that may be a MS Vs. Logitech issue - my wife's Logitech Trackball has none of the issues my MS trackball had.
Bah! Back from whence ye came!
http://linux.slashdot.org/
You can have THAT discussion when the personal electronics powered by the nano-generators in TFA have a desktop environment to quibble over...
I may be going out on a limb here, but when I read it, I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the invasion of privacy was the market research they do in the first place in order to know where to send that costly snail spam.
That is a good point.
The casual player that wants to "cash out" does not have nearly the same impact as a farming business.
However, the ability to cash out so easily often leads players to take on the same unscrupulous practices as the farmers.
This includes camping spawns unattended, scripting easily repeatable (profitable) actions, and (as mentioned elsewhere) hogging resources and/or NPCs needed by other players that are actually PLAYING the game.
Anything that discourages actions which impede legitimate players is a step in the right direction.
Windows Desktop Search (which isn't for Linux, and is thus off-topic) was a CPU hog the same way I hear Beagle is.
I had to switch to Google Desktop to keep my CPU from spiking and causing major issues.
Confining it to a single core worked on my dual core machine, but it still ate what it could.
On my single-core work tablet it spikes and hogs worse than my (corporate-required) Symantec AV.
I use Google Desktop to search and index network drives/folders all the time in Windows.
You just have to map the drive first, and refer to it as a "lettered" drive rather than by its universal share name. IE: "X:\FOLDER\"
Is this not the case for the Linux Google Desktop?
(And if not, why? I am a bit of a Linux n00b)
It seems to me that it would depend on the intended use of the humans manufactured.
If you were selling them in a Soylent Green context, obviously mass is important.
If they are more of a single-use commodity (IE, sex slave, acid miner, etc) then it would not make any sense to call per-pound the higher yield manufacturing process, and it would be per unit.
And also, as pointed out by another poster, China still wins in mass (though obviously not mass per unit, they have enough units to make up for it)
WoW's lack of customization options is the biggest missing feature for me.
I understand that they (Blizzard) want to maintain quality, and that it is therefore easier to limit options, but what I loved in UO (which I played from Dec. '97 until around a month ago) was the ability to distinguish yourself from others graphically with minimal effort.
Granted, re-hues can be ugly as sin, but at least they were distinct.
Unfortunately with the UO: Age of Shadows expansion, it became more about the stats on your equipment than about wearing what you wanted, and only what you wanted.
Second life had all of the customization I wanted, but lacked any in-game "official" content. I didn't think it was possible, but it was *too* open ended for casual play, as it isn't really a game so much as a 3D chat room.
I would love it if WoW allowed for some sort of pay-per-enhancement that would change the art of an item, but retain the name/properties, affording guilds/individuals the ability to look however they wanted without sacrificing any function, and at the same time providing a sort of gold-sink.
I think you misunderstand my use of the word "sheep".
I was merely referring to those that would be prey to "wolves" - those out hunting the sheep.
I don't mean they that were mindless herds so much as vulnerable prey to the jerks out there.
I'm a farily hardcore Trammie, and I definitely enjoyed the game Post-Trammel (Hell, I'm still playin' ain't I?) but something was definitely lost.
As I said before, my best known character is a beggar - that sort of thing didn't fly very well for me in Felucca.
Sheep wasn't meant to be offensive (ie: Trammie Carebear), just a term to refer to those that weren't out for a fight.
Granted, the game did change entirely once the PKs had no one to pick on, (I was running on a machine and connection which were way under spec. for the time)
However, if you look at the larger MMO picture, a game can be a success without non-con PvP/Grief play.
Maybe it wasn't your particular style (I prefered the sense of adventure of those times myself), but it kept a lot of the "easy mode" players happier longer, and so was hardly the "death" of UO.
AoS on the other hand was when EA really messed it up, NO playstyle was safe at that point.
After Trammel, my primary character was a beggar. I didn't require non-con PvP or things of that natur,e and had a lot of fun with the "game world", as it was at the time.
It only REALLY became an issue for me post-AoS.
And for the record, I'm still playing (Since Dec. '97, few months post release), just not entirely satisfied anymore.
And now EA wants to use PunkBuster for UO... Criminy.
If they hadn't killed it yet, expansions like Mondain's Legacy (Poorly instanced dungeons) and restrictive policies like PunkBuster may just drive away the two or three people still playing.
From what I recall, subscriptions actually went UP post-Trammel, and the Siege ruleset shard was still there as a non-Trammel alternative. Not to mention, no one *had* to leave Felucca, they chose to.
In terms of sheer negative impact, Age of Shadows was far more significant. (Combat changes, at-will special moves rather than random, clunky nasty interfaces, etc.)
While I still think they should have left some shards with regular rulesets non-Trammelized, I think they would've rapidly emptied as "sheep" flocked to the safe haven of other shards.
UO still has yet to recover from Age of Shadows - With that expansion the entire gameplay style shifted, but without any associated updates/overhauls. The interface and graphics for the 2D client were dated in '97, and the monster of a "3D" client (not even true 3d...) they released was so bad, that the majority of players STILL uses the dated '97 client. The few updates they have managed, have generally served to make things look/feel worse and less immersive. I just don't think EA understands the concept of persistant worlds, and as someone else put it, assumes a shelf life for products that should be constantly updated and therefore shouldn't have an artificially limited life.
Judging by the post above, which states Dell is offering Blu-ray only, my guess would be that alienware would follow suit, being recently acquired by Dell...
If you're buying an AlienWare machine, I doubt the price point is going to be your first concern.
Especially for something as negligible (Vs. total price) as a ~$70 OS liscence.
Indeed.
If you're trying to appeal to a large segment of players, you have to make it mind-numbingly easy.
People tend to play games (MMORPGs especially) to relax or escape, and they don't want to waste a lot of time 'thinking' or 'figuring out stuff'.
UO has gotten nothing but more complicated over the years, and that huge learning curve is undoubtedly intimidating to new players.
I can't say the same about WoW from what I've seen.
If you want to keep your numbers up, make it like pop music, or anything else popular: Dumb it down.
Quality does not equal popularity, and popularity is where the money is in the subscription world.
Not only is it true, but for UO's 7th Anniversary, the Dev. team released an item to commemorate each year, and the first one was "Royal Leggings of Embers" to commemorate this event.
Sadly, the item is way overpowered, especially on certain harsher ruleset servers, and nearly everyone on those servers (Siege Perilous and Mugen) are forced to wear these ugly orange platemail leggings merely to keep up.
Pardon my laziness, but when does FFXII hit the US market?
And is there any word on FFXIII, is it supposed to be released on any of the next-gen platforms? (PS3?), that would certainly influence my buying decision.
Their naming conventions drive me nuts. First it was the discrepancy between the US and Japanese "Version" numbers, and then that whole XII/X:2 thing.
They should've just skipped numbers where the US counterpart didn't exist.
That's a bit harsh.
Solitaire junkies might have to do something crazy, like smuggle in an actual deck of cards!
No evidence that games are constructive forms of either recreation or learning?
P'shaw, I know firsthand that games taught me to type, an essential skill this day and age.
Not to mention some of the social cause/effect lessons taught by MMORPGs...
Amen to that. UO is all but ruined by the semi-annual feature barrage. Sometimes it is worse than others, but it is almost never in the best interest of the game. If they offered a "clean" server, that was essentialy the same gameplay-wise as early UO, but patched the known bugs, it'd be a unique and incredibly appealing game to me again. I still play currently, but so much of the world either doesn't match itself, seems a pointless waste of coding time, is unbalanced or is just flat-out broken. I would love to see a good concept come to life, ge tthe bugs worked out, and be left alone content-wise. There's a reason I still play the Legen Of Zelda almost annually - I like the original feel and structure. It's a good formula. Some people just don't know when they have it right, and can't stop adding things into the mix.
Most of my Ultima Online guildies ran to SWG when it came out, having been long-time supporters of the franchise, and enjoying an open semi-sandbox style of gameplay.
While I'd like to see them back into UO, I doubt it'll ever happen, as MMOs are constantly getting EQ'd to death, or plagarized in different manners in attempts to capitallize on the success of whatever top multi-player RPG is the flavor of the day.
Diablo II got UO pretty bad, and it looks like EQ and its ilk are responsible for the retardation of SWG.
I really, really fear whatever the devs of these games are cooking up currently, as it is no doubt 100% WoW-based...