given that we don't have the least bit of choice in the matter
This is exactly the thing you should not accept.
In a healthy market, competion would drive companies to offer higher speeds for less money. But since real competion is absent for a lot of Americans, the state of their internet connections is becoming more shameful every day. Already is the sad point reached at which people claim a mere few mbits is "enough", just because it's the only thing that is within their reach.
Of course not. You never have enough bandwith. The biggest restricting factor in online services is a lack of bandwith. The Internet could be so much more awesome if only people had more bandwidth.
And besides, DSL is perfectly capable of doing 20 Mbit, so you shouldn't accept lower speeds than that. And even 20 Mbit is pretty low on the scale, since the cable companies (using DOCSIS 3) are already pushing 200 and 400 Mbit downstream speeds, not to mention the fact that glassfiber to the home is around the corner.
I'm really amazed people are accepting ridicously small bandwiths of 10 Mbit or less and even suggest it's "enough".
I've always wondered about this:.NET is around now for 10 years or so and still most products shipped by MS are not built using it. Why is that? It sends off a really strange message in my opinion... like a chef who doesn't eat his own food.
I still don't get how there is a determination that they are separate markets. I could see if Microsoft was actually making a profit on IE, but they were giving it away for free. And it's their software, if they want to integrate IE into Windows, that should be their prerogative.
For a large number of simple applications, your logic is correct. That's why nobody is making a problem of MS including things like Wordpad or Paint with Windows. And I think they could have gotten away with IE also, if it weren't for two things: 1) IE is not removable, and 2) IE uses it's own variation of web standards (HTML, CSS, Javascript).
I think this second issue really is the root of the problem: because MS included their browser with their operating system and this browser doesn't uses the same open standard as all other browsers do, creators of web sites started to make things that only worked with IE.
If this trend would have continued to go on the way it was going in the late '90ies, there would ahve been a severe risk of turning the web into a Windows-only platform and people who want to use the web would have been locked in to using Windows.
I believe this was MS's plan with IE from the start. The fact they came up with stuff like ActiveX is another proof of their quest to create the web into something that is only usable on Windows. I'm very happy things turned out a bit different.
Yes, because by making IE part of Windows, Microsoft was abusing their monopoly in the operating system market to get another monopoly in the browser market. And to make matters even worse, Microsoft created their own "standards" on how HTML, CSS and Javascript functions in their browser, so websites created for IE would not work properly in other browsers.
Abusing your monopoly is anti-competitive. Including one product with another is not.
How is creating your own platform anti-competitive? Why shouldn't Apple be allowed to create a product how they see fit and let the market decide if it's worth purchasing? Do you also think all those home computers from the '70ies and '80ies were engaging in anti-competitive behaviour by tying their OS'es to their hardware?
there are consequences just minor but it does set you back, also your line about not failing in wow because you can "try again" if you have to try again.. you failed the first time you tried.
I'm not saying you can't fail at playing WoW. I'm saying failing has no real consequence, so it doesn't matter if you fail.
Yeah, but why would an educational institution restrict itself to also-ran tools when it can afford the most popular ones?
It's extremely bad when education focuses on particular software applications. It's absolutely useless to learn all about a specific version of a specific program, because once you start applying the knowledge and skills you've learned, you will be locked into using this specific application for the rest of your life.
Proper schools/colleges/universities teach you principles and methods, so you have a solid foundation of knowledge and skills you can apply in the real world. Which application you pick to put this to use is absolutely trivial.
What do other games' benefit have to do with this?
Because that is how you recognize real innovation: if it's copied by others so that all games improve instead of just the one that came up with the innovation.
You actually believe Blizzard should host 12,000,000 players on one server at the same time? And why is it so important to you that you be able to communicate with every single person logged into the game, anyway?
I don't care how it's handled technically, but if I'm playing WoW and someone I know is playing WoW, then we should be able to meet and talk. This is currently not possible, unless we happen to have our characters on the same server, which is extremely unlikely. Especially since I have more than 1 friend and my friends are spread out over multiple servers. It comes down to choosing which of my friends I want to play with, even though they all are online and playing the same game as I am.
WoW having a lot of users is not "of no consequence whatsoever." Just one high population WoW server has more active players than you'll find in all of EVE.
It doesn't matter how many players are active in a particular game. What matters is that when I'm online, I should be able to communicate with every other person playing. That is the essence of a social platform. If I tell someone I'm playing EVE and he/she is also playing EVE, then we can team up and play together. This doesn't work in WoW, because everybody is spread out over different servers which don't communicate with each other, so I'm not aware of my friends in-game existence, even though we're playing exactly the same game.
Imagine Facebook would work like that. "Hey, I'm on Facebook, you too?" "Yeah man, add me as your friend! Oh wait, you're on a different Facebook server... never mind." You think that's acceptable too?
The problem is that most innovations from Blizzard are geared towards getting more players to subscribe and keeping them subscribed in order to generate money, instead of greating an actual good and fun game.
Not that money is a bad motivation for creating a game. But I think Blizzard is putting the improvement of their business model above the improvement of the game itself.
Are there other games out there that benefit from the innovations created by Blizzard?
Slashdot Mirror
given that we don't have the least bit of choice in the matter
This is exactly the thing you should not accept.
In a healthy market, competion would drive companies to offer higher speeds for less money. But since real competion is absent for a lot of Americans, the state of their internet connections is becoming more shameful every day. Already is the sad point reached at which people claim a mere few mbits is "enough", just because it's the only thing that is within their reach.
So it will basically be a giant iPhone.
What's wrong with that?
So...where in America do you live??
I live in Europe, but we don't use different DSL technology here than what is used in the US.
5mb would do most American's just fine.
Of course not. You never have enough bandwith. The biggest restricting factor in online services is a lack of bandwith. The Internet could be so much more awesome if only people had more bandwidth.
And besides, DSL is perfectly capable of doing 20 Mbit, so you shouldn't accept lower speeds than that. And even 20 Mbit is pretty low on the scale, since the cable companies (using DOCSIS 3) are already pushing 200 and 400 Mbit downstream speeds, not to mention the fact that glassfiber to the home is around the corner.
I'm really amazed people are accepting ridicously small bandwiths of 10 Mbit or less and even suggest it's "enough".
I've always wondered about this: .NET is around now for 10 years or so and still most products shipped by MS are not built using it. Why is that? It sends off a really strange message in my opinion... like a chef who doesn't eat his own food.
But there is no such thing as a retail version of Mac OS X.
I still don't get how there is a determination that they are separate markets. I could see if Microsoft was actually making a profit on IE, but they were giving it away for free. And it's their software, if they want to integrate IE into Windows, that should be their prerogative.
For a large number of simple applications, your logic is correct. That's why nobody is making a problem of MS including things like Wordpad or Paint with Windows. And I think they could have gotten away with IE also, if it weren't for two things: 1) IE is not removable, and 2) IE uses it's own variation of web standards (HTML, CSS, Javascript).
I think this second issue really is the root of the problem: because MS included their browser with their operating system and this browser doesn't uses the same open standard as all other browsers do, creators of web sites started to make things that only worked with IE.
If this trend would have continued to go on the way it was going in the late '90ies, there would ahve been a severe risk of turning the web into a Windows-only platform and people who want to use the web would have been locked in to using Windows.
I believe this was MS's plan with IE from the start. The fact they came up with stuff like ActiveX is another proof of their quest to create the web into something that is only usable on Windows. I'm very happy things turned out a bit different.
Yes, because by making IE part of Windows, Microsoft was abusing their monopoly in the operating system market to get another monopoly in the browser market. And to make matters even worse, Microsoft created their own "standards" on how HTML, CSS and Javascript functions in their browser, so websites created for IE would not work properly in other browsers.
Abusing your monopoly is anti-competitive. Including one product with another is not.
How is creating your own platform anti-competitive? Why shouldn't Apple be allowed to create a product how they see fit and let the market decide if it's worth purchasing? Do you also think all those home computers from the '70ies and '80ies were engaging in anti-competitive behaviour by tying their OS'es to their hardware?
The funny thing is that in the electronic music scene, analog equipment is seen as the holy grail.
When I put on electronic music, my productivity is at least doubled.
I really hope so *fingers crossed*
WoW is like Facebook, except for the fact that it fails at it.
That's what I'm saying the entire time.
You must be heavily obese.
Especially considering 10% of US internet users are still on dial up.
there are consequences just minor but it does set you back, also your line about not failing in wow because you can "try again" if you have to try again.. you failed the first time you tried.
I'm not saying you can't fail at playing WoW. I'm saying failing has no real consequence, so it doesn't matter if you fail.
Yeah, but why would an educational institution restrict itself to also-ran tools when it can afford the most popular ones?
It's extremely bad when education focuses on particular software applications. It's absolutely useless to learn all about a specific version of a specific program, because once you start applying the knowledge and skills you've learned, you will be locked into using this specific application for the rest of your life.
Proper schools/colleges/universities teach you principles and methods, so you have a solid foundation of knowledge and skills you can apply in the real world. Which application you pick to put this to use is absolutely trivial.
So what do you do with 10 friends spread out over multiple servers?
And don't say "play EVE instead" :-P
What do other games' benefit have to do with this?
Because that is how you recognize real innovation: if it's copied by others so that all games improve instead of just the one that came up with the innovation.
I agree things like quests and raids are games. But WoW is merely the platform hosting these games, it's not a game itself.
WoW is Facebook.
Okay, so the chance of you being able to interact with someone else in WoW is 10K in 12M. That's roughly 0.08%.
Not a lot of social platforms are proud of this.
WoW doesn't allow you to interact with them all, yet, but it will.
Great, now Blizzard sounds like Microsoft :-P
You actually believe Blizzard should host 12,000,000 players on one server at the same time? And why is it so important to you that you be able to communicate with every single person logged into the game, anyway?
I don't care how it's handled technically, but if I'm playing WoW and someone I know is playing WoW, then we should be able to meet and talk. This is currently not possible, unless we happen to have our characters on the same server, which is extremely unlikely. Especially since I have more than 1 friend and my friends are spread out over multiple servers. It comes down to choosing which of my friends I want to play with, even though they all are online and playing the same game as I am.
WoW having a lot of users is not "of no consequence whatsoever." Just one high population WoW server has more active players than you'll find in all of EVE.
It doesn't matter how many players are active in a particular game. What matters is that when I'm online, I should be able to communicate with every other person playing. That is the essence of a social platform. If I tell someone I'm playing EVE and he/she is also playing EVE, then we can team up and play together. This doesn't work in WoW, because everybody is spread out over different servers which don't communicate with each other, so I'm not aware of my friends in-game existence, even though we're playing exactly the same game.
Imagine Facebook would work like that. "Hey, I'm on Facebook, you too?" "Yeah man, add me as your friend! Oh wait, you're on a different Facebook server... never mind." You think that's acceptable too?
Eve *does* have instances--there are missions that DO instance you off from the rest of the player base.
Only a few tutorial missions and only for the purpose of protecting the player from being destroyed while still learning the game.
Blizzard's done a lot to come up with new ideas.
The problem is that most innovations from Blizzard are geared towards getting more players to subscribe and keeping them subscribed in order to generate money, instead of greating an actual good and fun game.
Not that money is a bad motivation for creating a game. But I think Blizzard is putting the improvement of their business model above the improvement of the game itself.
Are there other games out there that benefit from the innovations created by Blizzard?