devil fist - \m/

jesus, I had forgotten about that product until you mentioned it. the first IT job I had involved LANtastic for the company's pitifully small LAN and an IBM System/36. We used their proprietary adapters to get 2MBit/sec! Ugh, that was also my introduction to the joy that was Windows for Workgroups....

Wow... that's some serious flashback from an epoch long past...

I can recommend Zimbra Open Source Edition, as I installed it instead of MS Exchange at two small companies. It'll integrate with Active Directory, if you want it to, or it can host its own directory information. The OS edition is nice - installation is straightforward and easy and the software performs well enough. You'll have to come up with your own backup solution for the OSE, though there are a number of sample scripts floating around.

I don't know about the value of the subscriptions for Zimbra. It will depend on how many users you're licensing, and whether you need to factor in MS Office into the equation. The 'Professional' edition of Zimbra, which includes an Outlook connector runs $875 a year, the 'standard' edition, which doesn't include the connector but does have backup integrated in, is somewhat cheaper - $625 per year.

The web client is definitely very nice, and it can be downloaded as a standalone package as well, to interface with other mail services.
PoS I have no direct experience with, unfortunately - google turns up stuff on Openbravo POS, among others. I know nothing about these products, though. Check out Zimbra, if you're serious. I've used it, and can definitely recommend it highly.

no, no, no. I don't like the game, I admit that. I think it's fine/cool/great/whatever if other people like it. I just think it's asinine to say that one is developing meaningful skills while playing the thing.

At least, not in a guild filled with people who feel that they individually are rockstars, and everyone else needs to cater.
I've managed a couple of guilds, but they were small, and the people weren't all wrapped up in their characters or skills or whatever. We were all people who were of a mind that since we were paying to play the damned game, we should enjoy ourselves, not get into bitchfests about who got what loot or what we were going to do.
In retrospect, I do remember a couple of guilds which were constantly recruiting because the leader was an absolute hard-ass (some military kid ) who decided everything, and their membership was constantly in turnover. So yeah, maybe you (and brkello) are right about that...

No, Eve isn't my thing, either. Sad to say, if I had to choose WoW or Eve, man... i don't know what I'd do.
The reason I am posting is because I'm at work, bored as hell while waiting for approvals for layouts and such.
I don't have a problem, per se, with people who play WoW - it's the attachment of 'skills' used in the game to some sort of significance in real life. It would be equally pretentious of me to spout off about how I'm a terrific marksman, and can survive on my own in the wilderness because I play Fallout 3.

I'd have to disagree with the premise that management in a guild has to do with catering to everyone's needs. If you are leading the group, what is this catering crap? You're in charge, fucker, for good or ill. This wishy-washy bullshit about not offending prima donna egos and such is exactly why I think all of you who talk about how 'difficult' it is to manage your guild all full of shit.
All of these complications from your interactions are self-imposed. You make WoW sound like MySpace, but with quests. "Oh, I don't want to piss off Cairne_Bloodhoof_9993 because he/she will quit my guild, will talk shit about me to the other guilds, and our ranking will go down."
I've worked with managers in Real Life (you know, where I get paid to do some work, not where I pay to sit and chat and play a game) - some were mamby-pamby like most of you defending the complexity of managing a guild. Some were hard-asses. The ones who couldn't decide to what to do for fear of pissing team members off had the most divisive, counter-productive groups: Programmers who each had their own agenda, depending on what their particular focus was (user interface vs back-end implementation); UNIX vs Desktop vs Network Admin vs Tech support, so on and so forth.
The Bastards, who didn't care who was mad, seemed to generate about the same bit of resentment, but it wasn't from a shifting group of people every week. Everyone hated the Bastards, but we all knew where we stood in regards to getting our shit done. Trying to be everyone's friend didn't make the wishy-washy managers everyone's friend - it made everyone suspicious that every other group was getting special treatment.

High-end? Is that what it's called when you have a significant membership?
I put the game down because:
  a) fucktards like you spring to the defense of the thing, talking about how great it is and how you're developing your social/managerial/reflexive/whatever skills by playing it
  b) it is extremely popular not because of anything new, innovative, or interesting, but because the entry-point is low
  c) because the game is boring and pretty generic if you're not inclined to care one way or another about Blizzard's derivative works.

Game play is something that a 7-year-old with Down Syndrome could master after one session. Classes are tired DnD/Tolkien-derived archetypes, with Blizzard's GW-inspired fluff thrown on top. Then there is the WoW Community - many of whom are people who seem to think they're something special because they lead, co-lead, or otherwise participate at some level in a guild composed of groups of friends' friends or otherwise 1337-enuf players. Their amazing social skills rise to the forefront when they lead or otherwise ride herd over groups of these prima donnas through missions where the challenge is not in the mission itself, it's in keeping people focused on the simple objectives while aking sure everyone gets along and gets enough phat lewt for the hour or so to complete an instance. It's not like herding cats. It's like herding a bunch of developmentally-challenged people through a trip to the mall.

I've played your game, brkello. it's fucking retarded, and the user community is composed primarily of social malcontents who somehow believe that talking with their 'friends' while wearing a headset and watching each other's characters dance around on a computer screen is social interaction.

actually, I'm not the one who started the whole "WoW is a glorified chat app, blah blah blah", and then carried it forward with nonsense about how it being glorified chat wasn't a bad thing.
There is a lot to do other than sit around and use it as a chat client, and I'm sure a good part of the subscriber base don't use it as some kind of fantasy Second Life.
Troll I might be, but not ignorant. All it takes to see the ignorance is a perusal of the defenses presented for this game by a lot of the people who feel the need to defend their choice of entertainment - ignorance is attempting to present WoW as more than it is; as if WoW has ramifications and demonstrates broad skillsets needed beyond the confines of the virtual world it takes place in.
I'll stop posting when you fans of this game lay off with your bullshit about how WoW is more than a game whose attraction stems from the fact that it caters to the least-common denominators in gameplay.

I didn't want to presume that people were buying WoW time or WoW + voice chat server in blocks. I figured someone would say something if they were.
So, only $10 a month to have an AIM client with defined goals/objectives, oh, and with voice if you set that up with something else? Damn, what a deal!

"I don't remember any grinding" and "I remember grinding for cash way back when" could be considered exclusive statements, you know.
Maybe you meant to say that you didn't repeat any content, after way back when?
I know for a fact that the first 10 levels of the game (when it should be putting tenterhooks into your brain, not dulling it with stupid repetition) are packed with lots of mind-numbing "kill/return x of y" quests that do absolutely nothing to hook you into the game.

It seems like they're all here on Slashdot at the moment, going on about the social, managerial, and reflex-oriented skills that are needed to play WoW.

Seriously - social skills? The same set you use with AIM or when sending a text message on a cell phone. I love how organizing or co-leading a raid really means you've got what it takes(!) to manage people or resources.

For fuck's sake, people, WoW is the least-common denominator of gaming now - there's no skillset required. Persistence and slavish devotion is what this game rewards, not innovative tactics or strategy. PvP is a matter of who has the biggest grind-peen, and thus has the most 1337 gear. What kind of skill do you need to employ with autoattack?

It's great that people love WoW, but don't fucking try to tart it up. It's designed to sit you in front of the computer, grinding day in and day out, leeching $15 a month out of your pocketbook.

well, I suppose it's not a bad thing to be a glorified chat, if you don't mind spending $15 a fucking month for the privilege, along with the $30/each updates.

Sounds like a deal to me.

jesus fucking christ.

yeah, that bottle's text reads like it was written by a fucking madman. I had a roommate who was in love with that stuff. The product itself was all right, I guess (unless you got it in your eye), but holy crap the nonsense on the bottle was insane.

i would say it is somewhat burdensome to pick and choose one song at a time, as opposed to creating a list of songs to be dumped at once.

go fuck yourself with your condescending tone. I don't love iTunes - it's turned into a bloated pig of a program. But I don't embrace this neo-hippy outlook that we should all be running a full-blown operating system on a fucking music player, either, wherein i need to navigate a filesystem so that i can simply listen to music.