I think Kotick has his head in the right place at the right time on this. I think the games themselves were more forcefully designed to be on a computer versus a console - not that the consumer wants that in the first place. Pretty much, short of one screen co-op games (Nintendo's forte), the difference between a console game and a pc game is that that pc games tend to default to mouse and keyboard input, while consoles choose a joystick. If you look at the number of internet tv boxes popping up (roku, boxee, appleTV, xbox/ps3/Wii, vieracast, googleTV) you will start to notice that everyone is already getting something between a netbook and a gaming pc hooked up right to their living room. I suppose you could hope to dump all this onto some online cloud streaming service, but it's too forward thinking in terms of both consumers and technology. PC gaming for the tv could easily be the next iPad product. Heck, it wouldn't suprise me if we saw some sort of GoogleGame pop up to stomp on Microsoft's injured back...
While I might agree that Activision has ignored many people screaming, "horrible idea", the times they have done so - they seem to have widely not bombed for doing so. They keep pumping out games that sell millions of copies. So... they're doing something right.
At the same time, I imagine many successful have enough money and want the *power* to provide an affordable way for their fans to come to the show. These lower prices likely increase the amount of money an artist makes by broadening their fan base demographics. You can claim market this and market that, but the scalpers are making a profit by breaking a contract. Say you go to a buffet and you've been given free reign to eat as much as you want. Why can't you resell the food you've been given to other people at a lower rate? I mean, the unlimited amount of food you have is clearly priced below market value. The food was given to you under the condition that you were the one that was going to consume it. The same goes for most tickets.
Considering the people within these countries don't seem to have issues with harboring people who make death threats without locking them up, perhaps it's better these countries get fuzzy walls to protect themselves from starting violent wars instead of (or until) they actually adapt to modern society.
He's got a job - does he need more money for his findings? By sharing his good work, others will benefit freely from it. There is also reward in merit. Ever hear anyone talk about the Apache Way? http://theapacheway.com/
Is this the same GPL where no dual-licensed proprietary and GPL licensed software exists? If someone purchases a different licensing agreement, all the GPL has done is assured the author a cut of the proprietary code money - which means a higher upfront cost, which means it's less likely to be used. I suppose the GPL code authors could outright refuse to re-license their code for an over-market-value of money, in which case a company can just have the code rewritten proprietary style making for more inefficient markets. What are you going to do? Sue the company with a patent suit for making code that does the same thing?
Frankly, HTML5, css, and javascript allow you to do everything flash does. They don't control the tools there. I don't know, as a web developer - I'm all for the death of flash and old browsers. If the iPhone and iPod become pervasive enough to say, make it more valuable to code in HTML5 over flash, then companies with limited budgets will use HTML5. If enough people use HTML5, older standards incompatible browsers will be less useful. Think of all those companies running IE6 for business apps. If Apple had some way of killing off these incompatible applications, Apple would be opening themselves to more customers... Or perhaps Apple just wants to hurt Adobe enough to buy them out.
Did you actually read those employee contracts? I mean, sure, it's a shame that the Infinity Ward employees all decided to jump ship and launch a multimillion dollar lawsuit against their employer. On the other hand, they sold out. I repeat, they sold out. What were they expecting? Now they're EA's bitches.
Certainly, the government will be efficient and effective at figuring out what is and isn't offensive speech. Never mind the unsupervised kids already have access to 4chan and network (more often cable) tv, we need to make the judge and jury play through the entirety of a given game and then debate amongst themselves if there was any "protected speech" in Fallout 3. Should make sure we can't talk about violence when using free speech? Should any story about WWII not mention the horrible atrocities taking place there? I'm sure nothing violent or horrible happened there, and heaven forbid someone sells a kid a game depicting such events! There was no Holocaust, and Hitler was a charismatic leader who mysteriously vanished, leading to the USA as the best place on the planet. Nuclear war and the aftermath should not be a topic children should ever discuss. If there's something VIOLENT described in PROTECTED SPEECH, the government stands very little chance of making rational opinions free from bias and in any timely cost effective manner.
But who... who in the world can influence these children to keep them from the SMUT the world has to offer? Where can we find these people?
What's next is high taxes for everyone and more tax credits... Sure, they don't like to word it like, "We're putting a tax on everyone, then giving a credit to the people fortunate enough to have health care - health care bill", so yes I'd say it's unconstitutional. Of course, it might be reasonable to argue that all tax credits are inherently a hack job way for the federal government to gain unconstitutional authority over the states... Never mind highway funding requirements...
If the problem is the market failure of a natural monopoly, how the hell does a monolithic speech controlling organization like the FCC make things better for "neutrality"? Wouldn't it make more sense to create incentives for competition while chopping at the monopolies with an axe? Which do you think would make for better "neutrality"?
Find me a useful javascript IDE that knows wtf to do with all those var's that can also run quickly, and I'll tell you Eclipse and NetBeans are much better because the strictly typed languages inherently works better with IDE's. I'm not saying Javascript is bad because of it, but simply that Java is superior in a giant set of applications because of this "apparent" kludgyness... Java is incredibly "simplified". There's a can of worms, and this article doesn't seem to get that Java gets its strength by fulfilling a solid "niche" that so happens to be needed by a large portion or programmers. It might be more popular than it deserves, but it does fulfill certain roles impressively. Also, most people declare their array lists as lists....
It's not necessary in Java really... It's just the preferred way of doing things. The basic functionality is there, and you could even get hell bent on using the default package. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could make some default package class called "stdio", put any additional non-default library functionality into it you wanted, then just extend it everywhere in place of Object.
I think Ubisoft is making a large mistake in terms of liability for this. If my internet is fine, and Ubisoft's internet connection is the failing point, I've paid for their product and THEY are the ones not providing me with what I paid them for. This is not some service like WoW where if they botch up they can make amends with the ongoing payment scheme. The consumer, should be notified clearly that the PC game version, unlike the console game, will experience unplanned down time. I really don't see why anyone would purchase for PC, when a perfectly good console version exists. I suppose there are some suckers out there, and those suckers can probably hold Ubisoft liable for shitty service. My bet is distributors will get hammered with returns, a lawsuit will happen, and a patch will be out in short order. I didn't really care for the original Assassin's Creed, but as a potential investor http://www.google.com/finance?q=EPA%3AUBI I don't think this will help make them profitable.
jdbc, the most basic way to get java database access, lets you do this with a PreparedStatement... The fact that I still see code that just stupidly takes a string from a client and concatenates / runs it on the server frustrates me to no end. Java code letting this shit in? -guess the developer didn't RTFM... the short manual...
uhh... I don't think it's hard to tell the difference between a nonprofit consumer protection group like the EFF fighting fraudulent claims of ownership based on complaints and a mysterious "Patent Compliance Group, Inc." that seems to hunt for supposed fraudulent patent claims. To me, that's apples and oranges (yes they're both fruit!). I don't know how they come off thinking Activision Blizzard is making these claims for the "purpose of deceiving the public", and I further don't see how this group should be entitled to compensation. If the state was going after ATVI, or this was some class action suit, this might make some vague sense... I mean, even if Activision is guilty of breaking this act, how has PCG possibly been harmed in any way?
Perhaps it matters a bit less in fps's, but when it comes to rpg's and rts's, cheating really makes for an unpleasant gameplay experience. I remember that late in the life of Diablo (1) cheating was pretty much inescapable on battle.net...
I doubt they're doing anything to measure DVR use, which is now widely deployed and used to skip ads. Short of live events, I bet you will find that a large portion of tv viewers record the shows they regularly watch (which are the ones getting the ratings).
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I think Kotick has his head in the right place at the right time on this. I think the games themselves were more forcefully designed to be on a computer versus a console - not that the consumer wants that in the first place. Pretty much, short of one screen co-op games (Nintendo's forte), the difference between a console game and a pc game is that that pc games tend to default to mouse and keyboard input, while consoles choose a joystick. If you look at the number of internet tv boxes popping up (roku, boxee, appleTV, xbox/ps3/Wii, vieracast, googleTV) you will start to notice that everyone is already getting something between a netbook and a gaming pc hooked up right to their living room. I suppose you could hope to dump all this onto some online cloud streaming service, but it's too forward thinking in terms of both consumers and technology. PC gaming for the tv could easily be the next iPad product. Heck, it wouldn't suprise me if we saw some sort of GoogleGame pop up to stomp on Microsoft's injured back... While I might agree that Activision has ignored many people screaming, "horrible idea", the times they have done so - they seem to have widely not bombed for doing so. They keep pumping out games that sell millions of copies. So... they're doing something right.
At the same time, I imagine many successful have enough money and want the *power* to provide an affordable way for their fans to come to the show. These lower prices likely increase the amount of money an artist makes by broadening their fan base demographics. You can claim market this and market that, but the scalpers are making a profit by breaking a contract. Say you go to a buffet and you've been given free reign to eat as much as you want. Why can't you resell the food you've been given to other people at a lower rate? I mean, the unlimited amount of food you have is clearly priced below market value. The food was given to you under the condition that you were the one that was going to consume it. The same goes for most tickets.
Considering the people within these countries don't seem to have issues with harboring people who make death threats without locking them up, perhaps it's better these countries get fuzzy walls to protect themselves from starting violent wars instead of (or until) they actually adapt to modern society.
He's got a job - does he need more money for his findings? By sharing his good work, others will benefit freely from it. There is also reward in merit. Ever hear anyone talk about the Apache Way? http://theapacheway.com/
Is this the same GPL where no dual-licensed proprietary and GPL licensed software exists? If someone purchases a different licensing agreement, all the GPL has done is assured the author a cut of the proprietary code money - which means a higher upfront cost, which means it's less likely to be used. I suppose the GPL code authors could outright refuse to re-license their code for an over-market-value of money, in which case a company can just have the code rewritten proprietary style making for more inefficient markets. What are you going to do? Sue the company with a patent suit for making code that does the same thing?
Frankly, HTML5, css, and javascript allow you to do everything flash does. They don't control the tools there. I don't know, as a web developer - I'm all for the death of flash and old browsers. If the iPhone and iPod become pervasive enough to say, make it more valuable to code in HTML5 over flash, then companies with limited budgets will use HTML5. If enough people use HTML5, older standards incompatible browsers will be less useful. Think of all those companies running IE6 for business apps. If Apple had some way of killing off these incompatible applications, Apple would be opening themselves to more customers... Or perhaps Apple just wants to hurt Adobe enough to buy them out.
Did you actually read those employee contracts? I mean, sure, it's a shame that the Infinity Ward employees all decided to jump ship and launch a multimillion dollar lawsuit against their employer. On the other hand, they sold out. I repeat, they sold out. What were they expecting? Now they're EA's bitches.
Certainly, the government will be efficient and effective at figuring out what is and isn't offensive speech. Never mind the unsupervised kids already have access to 4chan and network (more often cable) tv, we need to make the judge and jury play through the entirety of a given game and then debate amongst themselves if there was any "protected speech" in Fallout 3. Should make sure we can't talk about violence when using free speech? Should any story about WWII not mention the horrible atrocities taking place there? I'm sure nothing violent or horrible happened there, and heaven forbid someone sells a kid a game depicting such events! There was no Holocaust, and Hitler was a charismatic leader who mysteriously vanished, leading to the USA as the best place on the planet. Nuclear war and the aftermath should not be a topic children should ever discuss. If there's something VIOLENT described in PROTECTED SPEECH, the government stands very little chance of making rational opinions free from bias and in any timely cost effective manner. But who... who in the world can influence these children to keep them from the SMUT the world has to offer? Where can we find these people?
Never mind that people actually pay more for "collector's editions" of games, which generally are just more packaging... http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/01/img273.jpg http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/924/924565/fallout-3-collectors-edition-20081028113013731_640w.jpg I suppose Ubisoft would need to focus on making consumers happy as opposed to squeezing them for every last penny.
IANAL, but the "Within a reasonable time" part stuck out to me.
I guess this explains why all aliens have cow fetishes and like to do rectal probings... Just think what would happen if we sent them goatse...
What's next is high taxes for everyone and more tax credits... Sure, they don't like to word it like, "We're putting a tax on everyone, then giving a credit to the people fortunate enough to have health care - health care bill", so yes I'd say it's unconstitutional. Of course, it might be reasonable to argue that all tax credits are inherently a hack job way for the federal government to gain unconstitutional authority over the states... Never mind highway funding requirements...
If the problem is the market failure of a natural monopoly, how the hell does a monolithic speech controlling organization like the FCC make things better for "neutrality"? Wouldn't it make more sense to create incentives for competition while chopping at the monopolies with an axe? Which do you think would make for better "neutrality"?
Find me a useful javascript IDE that knows wtf to do with all those var's that can also run quickly, and I'll tell you Eclipse and NetBeans are much better because the strictly typed languages inherently works better with IDE's. I'm not saying Javascript is bad because of it, but simply that Java is superior in a giant set of applications because of this "apparent" kludgyness... Java is incredibly "simplified". There's a can of worms, and this article doesn't seem to get that Java gets its strength by fulfilling a solid "niche" that so happens to be needed by a large portion or programmers. It might be more popular than it deserves, but it does fulfill certain roles impressively. Also, most people declare their array lists as lists....
It's not necessary in Java really... It's just the preferred way of doing things. The basic functionality is there, and you could even get hell bent on using the default package. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could make some default package class called "stdio", put any additional non-default library functionality into it you wanted, then just extend it everywhere in place of Object.
This is not far from telling a group consisting mostly of Atheists, that the Pope is the definitive authority on God.
I think Ubisoft is making a large mistake in terms of liability for this. If my internet is fine, and Ubisoft's internet connection is the failing point, I've paid for their product and THEY are the ones not providing me with what I paid them for. This is not some service like WoW where if they botch up they can make amends with the ongoing payment scheme. The consumer, should be notified clearly that the PC game version, unlike the console game, will experience unplanned down time. I really don't see why anyone would purchase for PC, when a perfectly good console version exists. I suppose there are some suckers out there, and those suckers can probably hold Ubisoft liable for shitty service. My bet is distributors will get hammered with returns, a lawsuit will happen, and a patch will be out in short order. I didn't really care for the original Assassin's Creed, but as a potential investor http://www.google.com/finance?q=EPA%3AUBI I don't think this will help make them profitable.
jdbc, the most basic way to get java database access, lets you do this with a PreparedStatement... The fact that I still see code that just stupidly takes a string from a client and concatenates / runs it on the server frustrates me to no end. Java code letting this shit in? -guess the developer didn't RTFM... the short manual...
**cough** battle.net marketplace... http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html
I personally would feel better leeching from a secure connection than my local "tranny hub".
God forbid anyone use good RESTful design. It's almost as though it was designed partly to let people type things into the url to get what they want... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
uhh... I don't think it's hard to tell the difference between a nonprofit consumer protection group like the EFF fighting fraudulent claims of ownership based on complaints and a mysterious "Patent Compliance Group, Inc." that seems to hunt for supposed fraudulent patent claims. To me, that's apples and oranges (yes they're both fruit!). I don't know how they come off thinking Activision Blizzard is making these claims for the "purpose of deceiving the public", and I further don't see how this group should be entitled to compensation. If the state was going after ATVI, or this was some class action suit, this might make some vague sense... I mean, even if Activision is guilty of breaking this act, how has PCG possibly been harmed in any way?
Perhaps it matters a bit less in fps's, but when it comes to rpg's and rts's, cheating really makes for an unpleasant gameplay experience. I remember that late in the life of Diablo (1) cheating was pretty much inescapable on battle.net...
I doubt they're doing anything to measure DVR use, which is now widely deployed and used to skip ads. Short of live events, I bet you will find that a large portion of tv viewers record the shows they regularly watch (which are the ones getting the ratings).
Being able to step backwards through code while debugging would be nice...
Here are some google tech talks / presentations...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpfmKIxusZY
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3897010229726822034#
And there's a debugger here (which I should try out sometime...):
http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/debugger.html
Still, I haven't seen this being available with many different platforms.