Buy Doom after getting to try 1/3 of the game first.
* Be able to play it via dialup modem or LAN for as long as you have the working equipment. * Be able to sell the game after you're done with it and have that second user have the game be just as usable to them. * Enjoy playing thousands of user-created maps and mods -- anything from a monster health editor to a porn graphic replacement mod.
2008:
Buy game X.
* Require internet permission to install it. Hopefully you haven't committed the mortal sin of installing it more than three times. * Require internet permission every time you wish to run the game. * Require CD checking despite the above. * Unable to sell the game to people who want something more than a coaster. * Multiplayer server for Game X goes down after year because Game X 2009 edition is now out. People who still want to play the original Game X via LAN/hosted internet games are SOL and anyone hacking together hosting capabilities likely receives notice from lawyers. * Have some type of over-zealous security check built into the game mess with your computer, internet connection, or both. * Deal with an over-moderated/sterile mod community.
The second thread you link almost reads like a Monty Python skit.
"You won't let me *not* play for free?! Well, in that case I'll cancel my *second* and *third* accounts dedicated to not playing! See how you like me not playing for free now! And my first account? Well, it'll not only 'not play' all that often, but pay to do so! In your face, CCP!"
This may sound facetious, but is any system really secure from keylogging?
I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows. If I type:
sudo apt-get install lokkit (as an example, not an accusation) how do I know I'm not getting a free keysniffer as an added bonus?
I run windows with a firewall, have a firewalled router with minimal ports forwarded, use ad-aware/the windows spyware program/spybot search and destroy as well as AVG. How do I know that none of these pieces of software are, in themselves, spyware/keylogging software? How do I know that my browser hasn't been attacked by some 0-day hack embedded in an ad banner despite rigorous/consistent upgrading of both of my OSes?
Are people really diligent to that point that every time they're about to do their banking, they close all active programs, update and run their suites of virus scanners and anti-spyware software, and *then* do their banking once the all-clear is given by all programs?
Honestly, I just see it as a game of probabilities. *Most likely* I don't have a key logger installed on my system, and *most likely* my banking experience is going to be a sane one, but if the shit ever hits the fan, I'm willing to bet that there are people hired to specifically poke holes in my system and say "Linux is an unapproved OS. We can't cover your banking losses."
I've already noticed things getting better. Keep in mind that I can only speak for my server and not the game as a whole.
Sundays used to have massive lag, 1-2 reboots. Mondays were pretty much unplayable with 4-5 reboots a day. People in Ironforge disappearing, mobs not respawning, infinite loot lag, instances in limbo, etc, etc.
Over the past couple weeks Sundays have usually had one reboot, Mondays are fairly solid albeit a bit laggy. Gives me hope as far as their tech teams are concerned. Hopefully people who aren't seeing changes yet will see some soon.
Awesome. I'm looking forward to doing that stuff. The raid quest in Silithus explaining the reasoning behind Un'Goro Crater was nice and gave me hope for the future as far as lore-type quests go.
I don't know what all you casual people are whining about. There's been tons of new stuff introduced in the last 5 months for people to have fun with on their own or in a group of 5:
1) Grind furbolgs a couple hours a day for a few months and get a trinket that summons a furbolg for 45 seconds and does 300 damage!
2) Enjoy the Lunar Festival happening right now! Collect 50 coins from around the world and swap them in for..... fireworks.... and dresses!
3) A brand new Yojimba Isle. Visit there and learn about a couple of raid quests you won't be able to go on! Lots of in-depth lore if "We must kill them all" is lore to you.
4) The race to open AQ20/40! Do your part skinning 1,000s of animals or collecting 1,000s of runecloth to open up the new 20/40-man instances!
5) The darkmoon faire! Skin 1,000s of animals and collect rare drops to get trinkets!
6) The Thorium brotherhood introduced! Have you mined your 2100 ore yet? Didn't think so! Start now! Again, tons of in-depth lore and involved quests such as "give me 25 incendosaur scales!"
7) Go from Hated to Exalted with the Brood of Nozdormu. Again, tons of fun, lots of laughs!
In Blizzard's defense, Cenarion Hold had a couple interesting quests to it and the fishing tournament was a cool idea. Other than that, not much happening lore-wise or 1-5 casual player-wise.
I'm also in the same boat. Enjoyed some of the quests with interesting stories to them earlier on -- tracking down a kingdom's missing king, investigating a burnt out inn, etc. Haven't found much of that recently. Just a lot of raiding to upgrade peoples characters by 0.01%.
I've stepped away from the game a bit hoping that Blizzard puts more interesting things lore-wise into the game with the expansion. The Caverns of Time have decent potential for this, but who knows, maybe they'll just make the places you go to within the caverns lots of 20-40-man raid places with thin stories to them.
Maybe the D+B arcade machine purchasers are, in fact, well aware that a DDR game would make money, but in the long run money would be lost by the type of clientele the game might attract? ie: people who spend money on the food, bar drinks, pool *simultaneously* being attractive customers versus someone who just pumps money in the DDR machine and sweats?
1) The article is stupid for mentioning anti-intelligent design stuff over and over. Tell us about the discovery in the article and save the anti-religious commentary for people that get off on arguing this shit over and over elsewhere.
2) Intelligent design people are stupid for ever making the argument that since scientists can't understand natural/common phenomenon X that God designed the world. Are there really people out there saying this about the bees? I haven't gone out looking for it myself and consider myself lucky I don't have friends that would make this argument in front of me.
I don't think there's much more to say. Just lots of stupidity to go around on *both* sides.
Any other Canadians use QuantumLink? As a young person without much of a concept of money and how usage fees can multiply, I was blown away by the first month's bill we received for QuantumLink. 20 hours of use -- after some bizarre internal long distance charges, access fees, and currency conversion -- worked out to about $200. Club Caribe was fun, but the bill (and my parents' reaction at the time) made it a service that I disconnected from quickly.
Like another poster above asked, has anyone been able to connect to the server and see if Club Caribe worked?
I'll start buying E-books when the price of mainstream ones is substantially lower than their physical counterparts. Why bother taking risks with proprietary readers and formats when I know my trusty hardcover -- short of disaster -- will be readable 75 years from now?
On top of that, reading in front of a monitor at this point in time is not enjoyable. Maybe (hopefully) e-paper will change that.
For me, when I first heard about E-books I immediately thought "no cost of shipping, no middleman warehouse distribution, no physical cost to print/bind, no brick and mortar store paying electricity, rent, stocking risky books at a premium, they'll be dirt cheap!" I was wrong.
The price went up to $0.50 to play and I stopped there. Cold. Actually, I stopped going to the arcades in general at that point.
Once every couple of years I'll go to play a pinball game and reconfirm why I stopped: the game never seems to work properly. A flipper will be half dead, the ball will get stuck in some bizarre part of the board, or the game itself will be dead. I'm sure it's because the games don't get a lot of play and therefore see less maintenance, but it's a vicious cycle that, for me, started with the game costing $0.50.
Nowadays I see machines set to $1 to play. I'm not going to risk $1 on a machine that, these days, seems to have a 90% chance of being broken.
It's a shame to see that there's only one pinball machine manufacturer left, but I'm unwilling to pay $1 each time to help them out.
Why not wait to see what the ratings are like next week? How many people can watch the 2nd episode with a straight face after seeing the first episode was about killer mannequins?
Have you ever tried calling it a "PIN" in real life? I have and have gotten nothing but blank looks until I called it a "PIN number." On paper "PIN" looks fine but saying "PIN" alone in a sentence throws people off.
1) Bonzi Buddy -- ask them if I can install it on their systems so they can see the beautiful masterpiece they may never own.
2) The source code and image content of the goatse.cx domain. Again, show them the works so they may approve that they don't require access to this intellectual property.
3) The flash video of the guy singing Dragostea Din Tei. Showing this is up to you.
4) The phrase "Any combination of ASCII or UNICODE symbols manually or automatically entered via a standard or non-standard input device and stored electronically or otherwise prior to March 19, 2005."
Seriously though? I would just stay away. Anyone "entrepeneurish" enough to ask to own your prior work will be "entrepeneurish" enough to hire a lawyer that costs $2X to find loopholes in the document your lawyer charged $X to prepare in order to protect you.
What's stopping me is either writing an entry portraying Junis as a troll when he's an actual human being or vice-versa.
Truth be told, *I* don't know much about Junis aside from the Slashdot phenomenon and I don't think making an entire biographical entry using Slashdot as the source would do much to help Wikipedia's cause.
I would donate $30 to a fund for the ship to be named Junis.
To those who don't know who Junis is, I can honestly say that you missed the golden age of Slashdot. It was a melting pot of both great trolls and great expertise.
I'm really surprised Junis doesn't have a wikipedia entry.
"If you don't mind deleting spam manually, that's your prerogative, but don't complain about it. If your ISP doesn't do a good job fighting spam, then switch ISPs or install your own anti-spam software. There are a lot of choices out there."
It seems pretty simple to me: complaining leads to awareness, which leads to action. Maybe a bunch of people on Slashdot griping about spam won't amount to jack, but let Oprah or someone else with a grappling hook or two on the office/church/bar water cooler complain about it and they can make a difference in social attitudes.
SpamAssassin is a good step but the real problem is the social system which makes spamming possible. How else can you explain a 60-year-old grandmother 1) using her computer as a spam relay, 2) acknowledging it on television, and 3) not seeing it as a problem because it's "legal" and she's getting regular cheques to do so?
How is it that a social/legal system can be designed to bankrupt and scare the shit out of people who share a few movies or songs but barely put a dent in the people sending out millions of useless, offensive, and content-bordering-on-the-illegal emails? Is there nothing wrong with this?
I think this is one of the very rare cases on Slashdot where asking a legitimate question during an interview can be seen as karma whoring due to the lack of a substantial amount of people knowing who this person is.
Slashdot Mirror
How things change in just over 15 years.
1992:
Buy Doom after getting to try 1/3 of the game first.
* Be able to play it via dialup modem or LAN for as long as you have the working equipment.
* Be able to sell the game after you're done with it and have that second user have the game be just as usable to them.
* Enjoy playing thousands of user-created maps and mods -- anything from a monster health editor to a porn graphic replacement mod.
2008:
Buy game X.
* Require internet permission to install it. Hopefully you haven't committed the mortal sin of installing it more than three times.
* Require internet permission every time you wish to run the game.
* Require CD checking despite the above.
* Unable to sell the game to people who want something more than a coaster.
* Multiplayer server for Game X goes down after year because Game X 2009 edition is now out. People who still want to play the original Game X via LAN/hosted internet games are SOL and anyone hacking together hosting capabilities likely receives notice from lawyers.
* Have some type of over-zealous security check built into the game mess with your computer, internet connection, or both.
* Deal with an over-moderated/sterile mod community.
The second thread you link almost reads like a Monty Python skit.
"You won't let me *not* play for free?! Well, in that case I'll cancel my *second* and *third* accounts dedicated to not playing! See how you like me not playing for free now! And my first account? Well, it'll not only 'not play' all that often, but pay to do so! In your face, CCP!"
I've had to pull a few strings to grab a hold of the expansion's source code. Luckily the download should be a small one.
GenerateExpansion()
for (i = 1..200)
GenerateSolarSystem()
end for
end GenerateExpansion()
GenerateSolarSystem()
GeneratePlanets(random(1..20))
GenerateBases(random(1..3))
GenerateAsteroidFields(random(1..5))
GenerateSecurityLevel(random(0.0..1.0))
Connect(this, universe)
end GenerateSolarSystem()
I kid, I kid...
This may sound facetious, but is any system really secure from keylogging?
I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows. If I type:
sudo apt-get install lokkit (as an example, not an accusation) how do I know I'm not getting a free keysniffer as an added bonus?
I run windows with a firewall, have a firewalled router with minimal ports forwarded, use ad-aware/the windows spyware program/spybot search and destroy as well as AVG. How do I know that none of these pieces of software are, in themselves, spyware/keylogging software? How do I know that my browser hasn't been attacked by some 0-day hack embedded in an ad banner despite rigorous/consistent upgrading of both of my OSes?
Are people really diligent to that point that every time they're about to do their banking, they close all active programs, update and run their suites of virus scanners and anti-spyware software, and *then* do their banking once the all-clear is given by all programs?
Honestly, I just see it as a game of probabilities. *Most likely* I don't have a key logger installed on my system, and *most likely* my banking experience is going to be a sane one, but if the shit ever hits the fan, I'm willing to bet that there are people hired to specifically poke holes in my system and say "Linux is an unapproved OS. We can't cover your banking losses."
I look forward to a better solution.
I've already noticed things getting better. Keep in mind that I can only speak for my server and not the game as a whole.
Sundays used to have massive lag, 1-2 reboots. Mondays were pretty much unplayable with 4-5 reboots a day. People in Ironforge disappearing, mobs not respawning, infinite loot lag, instances in limbo, etc, etc.
Over the past couple weeks Sundays have usually had one reboot, Mondays are fairly solid albeit a bit laggy. Gives me hope as far as their tech teams are concerned. Hopefully people who aren't seeing changes yet will see some soon.
Awesome. I'm looking forward to doing that stuff. The raid quest in Silithus explaining the reasoning behind Un'Goro Crater was nice and gave me hope for the future as far as lore-type quests go.
:)
Thanks for the news
I don't know what all you casual people are whining about. There's been tons of new stuff introduced in the last 5 months for people to have fun with on their own or in a group of 5:
1) Grind furbolgs a couple hours a day for a few months and get a trinket that summons a furbolg for 45 seconds and does 300 damage!
2) Enjoy the Lunar Festival happening right now! Collect 50 coins from around the world and swap them in for..... fireworks.... and dresses!
3) A brand new Yojimba Isle. Visit there and learn about a couple of raid quests you won't be able to go on! Lots of in-depth lore if "We must kill them all" is lore to you.
4) The race to open AQ20/40! Do your part skinning 1,000s of animals or collecting 1,000s of runecloth to open up the new 20/40-man instances!
5) The darkmoon faire! Skin 1,000s of animals and collect rare drops to get trinkets!
6) The Thorium brotherhood introduced! Have you mined your 2100 ore yet? Didn't think so! Start now! Again, tons of in-depth lore and involved quests such as "give me 25 incendosaur scales!"
7) Go from Hated to Exalted with the Brood of Nozdormu. Again, tons of fun, lots of laughs!
In Blizzard's defense, Cenarion Hold had a couple interesting quests to it and the fishing tournament was a cool idea. Other than that, not much happening lore-wise or 1-5 casual player-wise.
I'm also in the same boat. Enjoyed some of the quests with interesting stories to them earlier on -- tracking down a kingdom's missing king, investigating a burnt out inn, etc. Haven't found much of that recently. Just a lot of raiding to upgrade peoples characters by 0.01%.
I've stepped away from the game a bit hoping that Blizzard puts more interesting things lore-wise into the game with the expansion. The Caverns of Time have decent potential for this, but who knows, maybe they'll just make the places you go to within the caverns lots of 20-40-man raid places with thin stories to them.
Maybe the D+B arcade machine purchasers are, in fact, well aware that a DDR game would make money, but in the long run money would be lost by the type of clientele the game might attract? ie: people who spend money on the food, bar drinks, pool *simultaneously* being attractive customers versus someone who just pumps money in the DDR machine and sweats?
1) The article is stupid for mentioning anti-intelligent design stuff over and over. Tell us about the discovery in the article and save the anti-religious commentary for people that get off on arguing this shit over and over elsewhere.
2) Intelligent design people are stupid for ever making the argument that since scientists can't understand natural/common phenomenon X that God designed the world. Are there really people out there saying this about the bees? I haven't gone out looking for it myself and consider myself lucky I don't have friends that would make this argument in front of me.
I don't think there's much more to say. Just lots of stupidity to go around on *both* sides.
What I learned from this comment is that I should resign a month and a half in advance and hope I get paid for it.
Any other Canadians use QuantumLink? As a young person without much of a concept of money and how usage fees can multiply, I was blown away by the first month's bill we received for QuantumLink. 20 hours of use -- after some bizarre internal long distance charges, access fees, and currency conversion -- worked out to about $200. Club Caribe was fun, but the bill (and my parents' reaction at the time) made it a service that I disconnected from quickly.
Like another poster above asked, has anyone been able to connect to the server and see if Club Caribe worked?
I'll start buying E-books when the price of mainstream ones is substantially lower than their physical counterparts. Why bother taking risks with proprietary readers and formats when I know my trusty hardcover -- short of disaster -- will be readable 75 years from now?
On top of that, reading in front of a monitor at this point in time is not enjoyable. Maybe (hopefully) e-paper will change that.
For me, when I first heard about E-books I immediately thought "no cost of shipping, no middleman warehouse distribution, no physical cost to print/bind, no brick and mortar store paying electricity, rent, stocking risky books at a premium, they'll be dirt cheap!" I was wrong.
I am looking forward to this so much! I'm sure the price of games will only be $20-30 since piracy has been blamed in the past for high game prices.
Since it's hackerproof, I'm sure they can put their money where their mouth is.
The price went up to $0.50 to play and I stopped there. Cold. Actually, I stopped going to the arcades in general at that point.
Once every couple of years I'll go to play a pinball game and reconfirm why I stopped: the game never seems to work properly. A flipper will be half dead, the ball will get stuck in some bizarre part of the board, or the game itself will be dead. I'm sure it's because the games don't get a lot of play and therefore see less maintenance, but it's a vicious cycle that, for me, started with the game costing $0.50.
Nowadays I see machines set to $1 to play. I'm not going to risk $1 on a machine that, these days, seems to have a 90% chance of being broken.
It's a shame to see that there's only one pinball machine manufacturer left, but I'm unwilling to pay $1 each time to help them out.
Why not wait to see what the ratings are like next week? How many people can watch the 2nd episode with a straight face after seeing the first episode was about killer mannequins?
Real steadicams also take a great amount of practice, to the point where you can hire a steadicam operator for a day for $1000.
A person who does non-steadicam camerawork as their day job still comes up with a shaky picture when walking around in a shot with a steadicam.
What I would have like to have seen is a steadicam operator (one raking in $1000 a day) attempt to use it.
Have you ever tried calling it a "PIN" in real life? I have and have gotten nothing but blank looks until I called it a "PIN number." On paper "PIN" looks fine but saying "PIN" alone in a sentence throws people off.
1) Bonzi Buddy -- ask them if I can install it on their systems so they can see the beautiful masterpiece they may never own.
2) The source code and image content of the goatse.cx domain. Again, show them the works so they may approve that they don't require access to this intellectual property.
3) The flash video of the guy singing Dragostea Din Tei. Showing this is up to you.
4) The phrase "Any combination of ASCII or UNICODE symbols manually or automatically entered via a standard or non-standard input device and stored electronically or otherwise prior to March 19, 2005."
Seriously though? I would just stay away. Anyone "entrepeneurish" enough to ask to own your prior work will be "entrepeneurish" enough to hire a lawyer that costs $2X to find loopholes in the document your lawyer charged $X to prepare in order to protect you.
To clarify, I have made Wikipedia entries in the past, just not about Junis or other topics/facts I'm not completely sure of.
What's stopping me is either writing an entry portraying Junis as a troll when he's an actual human being or vice-versa.
Truth be told, *I* don't know much about Junis aside from the Slashdot phenomenon and I don't think making an entire biographical entry using Slashdot as the source would do much to help Wikipedia's cause.
I would donate $30 to a fund for the ship to be named Junis.
To those who don't know who Junis is, I can honestly say that you missed the golden age of Slashdot. It was a melting pot of both great trolls and great expertise.
I'm really surprised Junis doesn't have a wikipedia entry.
1920x1080 at 82"... Those are some big dots. I wouldn't call it "liquid crystal" but more like "vacuum tubes with plastic filters on them."
Quick correction (I missed this when previewing). Replace "social system" with "social attitudes."
"If you don't mind deleting spam manually, that's your prerogative, but don't complain about it. If your ISP doesn't do a good job fighting spam, then switch ISPs or install your own anti-spam software. There are a lot of choices out there."
It seems pretty simple to me: complaining leads to awareness, which leads to action. Maybe a bunch of people on Slashdot griping about spam won't amount to jack, but let Oprah or someone else with a grappling hook or two on the office/church/bar water cooler complain about it and they can make a difference in social attitudes.
SpamAssassin is a good step but the real problem is the social system which makes spamming possible. How else can you explain a 60-year-old grandmother 1) using her computer as a spam relay, 2) acknowledging it on television, and 3) not seeing it as a problem because it's "legal" and she's getting regular cheques to do so?
How is it that a social/legal system can be designed to bankrupt and scare the shit out of people who share a few movies or songs but barely put a dent in the people sending out millions of useless, offensive, and content-bordering-on-the-illegal emails? Is there nothing wrong with this?
I think this is one of the very rare cases on Slashdot where asking a legitimate question during an interview can be seen as karma whoring due to the lack of a substantial amount of people knowing who this person is.