HL2 hasn't been touched since I started playing WoW. Neither have my copies of GTA:SA, Metroid Prime 2, Doom 3 (which doesn't even belong in the same breath as the rest of these, sorry id...), Halo 2 (ditto), or any of the other supposed blockbusters this year. "Ground breaking" doesn't mean anything to me when I'm choosing what game to play. WoW is a better game than any of them by a mile.
Now if only they could keep the servers up.
I wouldn't think anything short of the extinguishing of all life on earth could kill a game as good as WoW, but they seem to be making a go of it with their shoddy handling of technical issues (both in how they actually deal with them, and especially how they communicate with their customers about them).
Blizzard still has a lot of work to do on that front, and nobody should try to minimize how much it harms the experience, but the game itself? It's beyond reproach. The few really showstopping bugs (Orc Rouges, anyone?) have apparently been squashed in the latest patch, and there are virtually no class balance issues (Shamans and Paladins are fine, IMHO, as are Druids, Warriors, Priests, and Mages). There are a few annoyances left -- bugged quests, mainly -- but with so many quests available they're easily abandoned and forgotten quickly once you start the next one. Best of all, and blasphemy for a MMORPG, the game is fast-paced, ridiculously easy to get into, and completely lacks "grind".
Those of you who are silly enough to complain about the lack of bells and whistles in its graphics engine must be off the deep end. It may not tax my system at all -- even at 1600x1200 with all settings maxed -- but the signature Blizzard artwork makes the game as stunning as anything else I've seen this year. I've just stopped and stared on a few occasions when cresting a hill and seeing the gorgeous landscape stretch out in front of me in all directions. The character, item, and monster artwork are all as polished and full of personality. What's more, it runs on my 12" Powerbook as well and still looks good.
And no, I'm not a Blizzard fanboy. Neither are the many non-gamer friends of mine who have been playing WoW with the fervor of EQ addicts. We've formed a guild, we play together constantly, and I think each of us finds something new to appreciate about the game we never noticed before on a daily basis. I can think of few, if any, games that can make a claim like that. Certainly nothing else published this year.
I'd rather they didn't waste the money. It's not like I trust who Verisign says it's from, anyway. Who knows how many more incidents like this have happened that we don't know about?
Yeah, I don't use a spellchecker often (not sure why, just never have), but it seems to me that this is such a good idea everyone should have done it a long time ago.
Because Windows figures that if you rip a drive out of the machine you probably really mean to do it.
This isn't like clicking "OK" or "Cancel" on a dialog that just spontaneously popped up under your cursor. This isn't hitting the wrong button on a toolbar. This is physically pulling something out of the machine.
99.999% of the time if you do this, you mean to. The other.001% of the time? You pop the drive back in and no harm done.
Sure, you may have forgotten to save a file or something, but "did you really mean to take your drive out?" warning or not you're not likely to notice until you close the application.
I'm not a Windows fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm typing this on a PowerBook, but this is one design decision I think Microsoft got right.
Honestly? For the hours I've put in for family over the years doing the most boring technical support work possible, and the bitching I've listened to? It'd be worth it. To the tune of several thousand dollars, easily.
Once upon a time I actually did work tech support. It was better than working for family, and the real tech support job was by far the worst "real" job I've ever had.
Of course most of my family are a bunch of assholes, so that might have something to do with it. Incidentally, the biggest assholes tend to be the ones most computer "savvy", ie. able to get themselves in trouble, but not good enough to get themselves out.
And no, it wouldn't actually be irony (yes, it's one of the most-misused English words ever, blah blah blah) even if my post's parent wasn't being silly.
(If I hadn't pointed that out, someone else would've.)
You don't. Your mail administrator does. Once critical mass of MTA support is achieved everyone starts refusing mail without the proper authentication. Then you never have to worry about it again.
I have an old backpack I've been carrying around for about the last 10 years. I really hated giving it up for a laptop bag, but decided that I wasn't going to carry around an expensive Powerbook in a plain old backpack either (after doing this for a couple years with the Powerbook's predecessor).
I ended up getting one of these. It's padded and fits the laptop snugly, and hopefully gives it a bit of protection. At the same time it fits easily inside my regular backpack and the shoulder strap detaches when it's not needed. Cords and accessories go into the various compartments in the backpack itself and there's plenty of room left over for carrying books, my other electronic goodies (iPod, GBA, digital camera), and I've even gotten an Xbox in there with everything else before.
As an added bonus, it's much less obvious what's in it. That doesn't mean I leave it sitting around on the front seat of my car or anything, but every little bit helps I guess.
Mainly, it lets me transport my laptop relatively safely while still carrying everything around in my old JanSport. Can't beat that as far as I'm concerned.
They have one of those jobs that's impossible to do correctly. Much like referees in professional sports, even if they get 99.9% of the calls right, they're still going to make a mistake once in a while. Since people tend not to bitch about things they're happy about, nobody's going to notice all the good work they do, and instead they'll just fixate on the screw up.
Add into this the fact that they get patent applications dealing with just about every obscure corner of just about every obscure technology, and the fact that they just can't afford to have a team of experts on staff who know everything about everything, and you have a recipe for one of the most difficult and thankless jobs you could possibly take.
The system for issuing patents is fundamentally broken. It's not the fault of the individuals working in the patent office. If you think you could walk in there and get everything right, by all means do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the argument can be made that he's acting as an ISP for the end user.
Since Speakeasy (who actually endorses doing this; see their NetShare program) can/will provide the billing, he might be even better off.
He should probably talk to a lawyer.
The codecs that are in Helix (if there are any) are open. Real's proprietary codecs are not part of Helix, but are added to it to make "Real Player".
That is my almost-completely-uninformed understanding, anyway. Helix reeks of Real, which is enough to make me stay very far away.
HL2 hasn't been touched since I started playing WoW. Neither have my copies of GTA:SA, Metroid Prime 2, Doom 3 (which doesn't even belong in the same breath as the rest of these, sorry id...), Halo 2 (ditto), or any of the other supposed blockbusters this year. "Ground breaking" doesn't mean anything to me when I'm choosing what game to play. WoW is a better game than any of them by a mile.
Now if only they could keep the servers up.
I wouldn't think anything short of the extinguishing of all life on earth could kill a game as good as WoW, but they seem to be making a go of it with their shoddy handling of technical issues (both in how they actually deal with them, and especially how they communicate with their customers about them).
Blizzard still has a lot of work to do on that front, and nobody should try to minimize how much it harms the experience, but the game itself? It's beyond reproach. The few really showstopping bugs (Orc Rouges, anyone?) have apparently been squashed in the latest patch, and there are virtually no class balance issues (Shamans and Paladins are fine, IMHO, as are Druids, Warriors, Priests, and Mages). There are a few annoyances left -- bugged quests, mainly -- but with so many quests available they're easily abandoned and forgotten quickly once you start the next one. Best of all, and blasphemy for a MMORPG, the game is fast-paced, ridiculously easy to get into, and completely lacks "grind".
Those of you who are silly enough to complain about the lack of bells and whistles in its graphics engine must be off the deep end. It may not tax my system at all -- even at 1600x1200 with all settings maxed -- but the signature Blizzard artwork makes the game as stunning as anything else I've seen this year.
I've just stopped and stared on a few occasions when cresting a hill and seeing the gorgeous landscape stretch out in front of me in all directions. The character, item, and monster artwork are all as polished and full of personality. What's more, it runs on my 12" Powerbook as well and still looks good.
And no, I'm not a Blizzard fanboy. Neither are the many non-gamer friends of mine who have been playing WoW with the fervor of EQ addicts. We've formed a guild, we play together constantly, and I think each of us finds something new to appreciate about the game we never noticed before on a daily basis. I can think of few, if any, games that can make a claim like that. Certainly nothing else published this year.
Oh, now I get it.
I'd rather they didn't waste the money. It's not like I trust who Verisign says it's from, anyway. Who knows how many more incidents like this have happened that we don't know about?
I know LISP certainly makes it difficult for me to express myself coherently.
All those damn parentheses...
Yeah, that would have been nice. Unfortunately, my Satellite was one of these. It can't even play a DVD smoothly, much less any 3D game.
Yeah, I don't use a spellchecker often (not sure why, just never have), but it seems to me that this is such a good idea everyone should have done it a long time ago.
Because Windows figures that if you rip a drive out of the machine you probably really mean to do it.
.001% of the time? You pop the drive back in and no harm done.
This isn't like clicking "OK" or "Cancel" on a dialog that just spontaneously popped up under your cursor. This isn't hitting the wrong button on a toolbar. This is physically pulling something out of the machine.
99.999% of the time if you do this, you mean to. The other
Sure, you may have forgotten to save a file or something, but "did you really mean to take your drive out?" warning or not you're not likely to notice until you close the application.
I'm not a Windows fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm typing this on a PowerBook, but this is one design decision I think Microsoft got right.
It's a better idea to do this anyway, since I assume:
:).
a) The cache can't be cleared if the browser exits abnormally (ie. the power goes out or the browser/system crashes)
b) The cache files probably aren't removed securely. It'd most likely be somewhat trivial to recover these files using any number of utilities.
If either of these assumptions are wrong about how either Firefox or IE manages their disk cache, I'd love to know
Honestly? For the hours I've put in for family over the years doing the most boring technical support work possible, and the bitching I've listened to? It'd be worth it. To the tune of several thousand dollars, easily.
Once upon a time I actually did work tech support. It was better than working for family, and the real tech support job was by far the worst "real" job I've ever had.
Of course most of my family are a bunch of assholes, so that might have something to do with it. Incidentally, the biggest assholes tend to be the ones most computer "savvy", ie. able to get themselves in trouble, but not good enough to get themselves out.
Maybe they're trying to perfect that feature before releasing Duke Nukem Forever. That'd be the only reasonable explanation for it taking so long.
To go to a decent public college, especially one in your home state? Nah, not even close.
If you wanna get snobby, or just really really need to go to the best private schools possible? Sure.
Most of the top end schools are $40+k/yr.
I think this has more to do with PostNuke being ass, and a lot less with any inherent flaw in open source itself.
Micron is one of the world's largest memory manufacturers. If you've heard of Crucial, that's them too.
They've also been, at times, one of the larger PC manufacturers (twice), one of the larger web hosting providers, and a decently-sized ISP.
Slashdot will probably be a more efficient delivery mechanism for this thing than email ever was. Let's see:
Yeah, I think all of those guys are here.
And no, it wouldn't actually be irony (yes, it's one of the most-misused English words ever, blah blah blah) even if my post's parent wasn't being silly.
(If I hadn't pointed that out, someone else would've.)
You know what's really ironic? The post you replied to said the exact thing you italicized. What a coincidence!
You don't. Your mail administrator does. Once critical mass of MTA support is achieved everyone starts refusing mail without the proper authentication. Then you never have to worry about it again.
Years are just a whole lot of months. I've been waiting for Duke Nukem Forever for weeks now.
Everyone knew except for you. Haha.
I have an old backpack I've been carrying around for about the last 10 years. I really hated giving it up for a laptop bag, but decided that I wasn't going to carry around an expensive Powerbook in a plain old backpack either (after doing this for a couple years with the Powerbook's predecessor).
I ended up getting one of these. It's padded and fits the laptop snugly, and hopefully gives it a bit of protection. At the same time it fits easily inside my regular backpack and the shoulder strap detaches when it's not needed. Cords and accessories go into the various compartments in the backpack itself and there's plenty of room left over for carrying books, my other electronic goodies (iPod, GBA, digital camera), and I've even gotten an Xbox in there with everything else before.
As an added bonus, it's much less obvious what's in it. That doesn't mean I leave it sitting around on the front seat of my car or anything, but every little bit helps I guess.
Mainly, it lets me transport my laptop relatively safely while still carrying everything around in my old JanSport. Can't beat that as far as I'm concerned.
They have one of those jobs that's impossible to do correctly. Much like referees in professional sports, even if they get 99.9% of the calls right, they're still going to make a mistake once in a while. Since people tend not to bitch about things they're happy about, nobody's going to notice all the good work they do, and instead they'll just fixate on the screw up.
Add into this the fact that they get patent applications dealing with just about every obscure corner of just about every obscure technology, and the fact that they just can't afford to have a team of experts on staff who know everything about everything, and you have a recipe for one of the most difficult and thankless jobs you could possibly take.
The system for issuing patents is fundamentally broken. It's not the fault of the individuals working in the patent office. If you think you could walk in there and get everything right, by all means do so.
It's a troll because it's true?
Which is very true. And since Slackware has the best open source GUI around there's absolutely no point in using BSD on the desktop.