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Games

An Inside Look At Warhammer Online's Server Setup 71

Posted by Soulskill from the hate-to-see-the-power-bill dept.
An article at Gamasutra provides some details on the hardware Mythic uses to power Warhammer Online, courtesy of Chief Technical Officer Matt Shaw and Online Technical Director Andrew Mann. Quoting: "At any given time, approximately 2,000 servers are in operation, supporting the gameplay in WAR. Matt Shaw commented, 'What we call a server to the user, that main server is actually a cluster of a number of machines. Our Server Farm in Virginia, for example,' Mann said, 'has about 60 Dell Blade chassis running Warhammer Online — each hosting up to 16 servers. All in all, we have about 700 servers in operation at this location.' ... 'We use blade architecture heavily for Warhammer Online,' Mann noted. 'Almost every server that we deploy is a blade system. We don't use virtualization; our software is somewhat virtualized itself. We've always had the technology to run our game world across several pieces of hardware. It's application-layer clustering at a process level. Virtualization wouldn't gain us much because we already run very close to peak CPU usage on these systems.' ... The normalized server configuration — in use across all of the Mythic-managed facilities — features dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors running at 3 GHz with 8 GB of RAM."

Comment Re:Every film is flawed (Score 1) 629

by tuxedobob (#30519452) Attached to: The Definitive Evisceration of <em>The Phantom Menace</em> *NSFW*

I don't know if you sat through the whole seven of them, but he mentions the lightsaber duels. Yes, the lightsaber duels in #1 are very choreographed, but they're not any good. If you want choreography, go see the ballet. Or a flag routine, if you want choreography with sticks.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with pretty much everything this guy says. : \

Comment Still needs work (Score 1) 180

by tuxedobob (#30339704) Attached to: Google Launches Dictionary, Drops Answers.com

Yeah, so, after looking it up, I still don't know how to say "ginormous". (Not that I plan on using it any time soon anyway.) Their pronunciation guide could stand to also include the guide I've seen in dictionaries for decades, rather than an unnecessary international guide when I'm looking up an English word.
Security

Easing the Job of Family Tech Support? 932

Posted by Soulskill from the shock-collars-and-a-willingness-to-yell dept.
DarkDevil writes "Ever since I was introduced to computers at a very young age, I've been the resident tech support for a household of 7 users. I've been in a cycle for the last ~8 years where something happens to my parents' computer, I spend a week or two trying to non-destructively fix the problem (and try to explain to the users what caused it and how to avoid it), and then if it's not easily fixed I'll reformat and start from scratch. Most often, the level of infection warrants a reformat, which usually ends up taking even more time to get the computer back to how my parents know how to use it. 4-8 months later, it happens again. Recently, I found ~380 instances of malware and 6 viruses. I only realized something was wrong with their computer after it slowed down the entire network whenever anyone used it. My question for Slashdot is: are there any resources out there that explain computer viruses, malware, adware, and general safe computer practices to non-technical people in an easy-to-digest format? The security flaws in my house are 9, 26, and ~50 years old, with no technical background aside from surfing the internet. Something in video format would be ideal as they are perfectly happy with our current arrangement and so it'll be hard to get them reading pages and pages of technical papers."
OS X

Microsoft Responds To "Like OS X" Comment 505

Posted by samzenpus from the imitation-is-the-greatest-form-of-flattery dept.
Z80xxc! writes "After a comment by a Microsoft employee claiming in an interview that 'what we [Microsoft] have tried to do with Windows 7... is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics,' the Windows 7 team has issued an official rebuttal, saying that the comment came from an employee who was 'not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7,' and that it was 'inaccurate and uninformed.'"

Comment Re:Why are you so backwards? (Score 1) 405

by tuxedobob (#30041364) Attached to: Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer?

Okay... and since we're comparing that to a landline phone, exactly how much of that do you get with a landline?

My phone has both an alarm clock and a calculator. It's a Nokia 6015i. Five years ago, when I bought it, I think I paid maybe $50 for it. Your other reasons for having a landline make sense, to be sure, but the way you're comparing the prices is a little skewed, is all.

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