That reduces the complexity of the password to the complexity of the word, and defeats the purpose of including numbers and non-alphanumeric characters.
Don't fall into the trap of the technical mind; we're talking about a business, here. For business and audit purposes, whether the product actually works as advertised is nowhere near as important as whether the purchasing authority did his due diligence (and can convincingly say he had every reason to believe it didn't have a back door built in), and whether the vendor officially supports the featureset the purchaser will be using (which means they, not the purchaser, can be blamed when the product fails to perform).
Now, purchasing security software from a company in Ukraine makes boths those goals harder to meet, but not impossible. Purchasing closed source software doesn't have any material impact on either of those goals.
All consoles to date have shipped this way; the composite cable is included and the HD cables are extras. Except, of course, the PS3's primary next-gen competitor, the 360, which comes with component cables included.
So the plan is to kill the part of MS that's doing the best work, their R&D people?
This would take shortsightedness to heights dreamed of only by teenage boys ten seconds away from orgasm.
(Not to mention that the amount of capital required to even begin to entertain the thought that there might be a chance of MS tanking hard enough in the near future to make this possible is so high the only organizations that could afford it wouldn't care to.)
My statement was based on a business case study of Netflix I read a while ago (about a year, I think), not on my personal experience with Netflix. When I was a subscriber four years ago, I didn't encounter an out of stock title even once. I dropped the service about two years ago at this point (for reasons completely unrelated to my satisfaction with Netflix itself), so I don't know what the experience is like now.
I won't argue your point regarding the definition of sunk costs - I'm using the term as I remember it from a (mandatory) GAAP accounting class I took in college, and am not terribly surprised to find out that I'm using it incorrectly.
Psychologically, though, the idea that it's money already spent is still, IMHO, the driving force. While in a strict sense, it's still currency, the fact that the "real" (psychology, remember) money is already spent makes the points, once acquired, of less perceived value than money. If there was an aftermarket for points, or a way to cash them out, perhaps this wouldn't be the case - but as it is, I stand by my assertion that, in the minds of most people, points are money already spent.
Actually, I've read that Netflix has something approaching 99% of their discs in circulation at any given time. I don't know that they really would be the best place to look.
You have these at home? And they only cost $25 apiece?
Where did you find the space for a bookshelf that's roughly as long as a seven-storey building is tall? And where did you buy them (or the materials for them)? I don't have the room in my apartment for a twenty-two meter bookshelf, but if the price scales down appropriately, I want in.
While I'm sure that plays a role (it must, or gas wouldn't be priced out to tenths of a cent), I don't think it's the largest reason MS uses points - or even the largest reason it's easier to spend points than money.
The big reason to use points, if you're MS, is that it allows them to sell points outside the Live system. You can buy redeemable cards in Best Buy et al, which makes them convenient stocking stuffers. Yes, there could be other ways to accomplish the same result, but:
Points are, as the article suggests, easier to spend. But not primarily because people are somehow "tricked" into not thinking of 1200 points as $15 - it's primarily because people see 1200 points as money they've already spent. The disconnect is between the perceived value of the points when purchasing them and the perceived value of the points once they've been purchased. People tend to have a reasonably good grasp of the concept of sunk costs.
When purchasing points, it's easy to dump $20 into it, thinking of how many little purchases that will cover. Once you've got the points, though, you know you're not spending any new money.
Building lots of cities and micromanaging is the only way to win. It's the same in CivIII, CivIV and Alpha Centauri
Actually, no, it isn't. The proper strategy for Civ3 was certainly endless city spawning (and SMAC might be the same; I've never played it), but the support cost structure in Civ4 prevents you from winning that way. One of the fastest ways to lose an empire is to keep taking barb cities instead of razing them. On a normal-size map, I've found the ideal number of cities to be right around six (depending on which Civ you are, what the resources around you look like, etc.)
You're not the only one by far. I've often wondered why FPS designers insist on bounding playable areas with items that I, who am not any kind of cybernetically enhanced soldier, ubermarine, hazard-suit wearing professor, or whatnot, could easily get over in real life. Call of Duty did a pretty good job of have realistic-seeming boundaries, but aside from that, it's always seemed to be a problem.
The other fairly minor thing I'd really like to see is a game that made going up or down stairs more realistic: you ought to be slowed down by stairs. Not to mention every character I've seen walking up or down stairs looks completely phony.
I think you're overestimating the damage potential of the AR. In Halo 1, once you were playing a difficulty setting higher than normal, a full AR magazine at close range wasn't enough to take down a healthy blue elite with body shots (and, given the inherent inaccuracy of the rifle, consistent headshotting with the AR is difficult). I don't know the actual numbers, but I always got the impression that Brutes are tougher than elites.
Your point about the inaccuracy vs. hordes of facehuggers/headcrabs/whatchamacallits is well-taken, though. There were several points in Halo that I worked to hang onto my AR because I knew they'd be swarming soon.
Nonetheless, I was always disappointed by the AR in Halo - it looked cool (as you say), it had great ammo capacity, and it made you feel like a badass marine to be carrying it. But it was just so unhelpful against so many of the enemies that it irked me.
So how would this work for you for 3: revamp the look of the BR, add back the AR, and have the AR & BR share the same ammo store?
As for the pistol...what would actually make that a useful thing in the game is to have it used the way real troops use pistols; allow the player to carry the pistol in addition to his real weapons. It could be a useful holdout gun for when you're swarmed under and run out of real ammo, but you wouldn't have to waste a perfectly good weapon slot on it.
The last level was also extremly annoying, actually one of the worst I have ever seen, not sure if there actually is a way to drive around that track in anything remotly fluid, but I certainly didn't manage to and it turned into a try&error where the outcome was more luck then anything, certainly wasn't fun.
Feel free to dislike the game as much as you want, but this is unwarranted. Yes, with good enough driving skills, you can make it through the last level in a quite fluid manner. I've played through the game at least eight times (at least twice on each difficulty setting) both co-op and SP; I've only failed to make it through the last level twice. Once, the first time I played it (that was normal difficulty), and once the first time I played it on legendary (but that was due to me ramming one too many explody Flood, not running out of time).
Granted, the SMG's only useful for dual wielding (and not worth sacrificing grenades for even then), but how can you prefer the assault rifle to the battle rifle? The assault rifle is inaccurate, low damage, and pretty much forces either spray-n-pray or knife range combat. The battle rifle is accurate, reasonably high damage, and has a scope thrown in for good measure.
The only possible drawbacks to the BR compared to the AR are no full-auto and a limited ammo capacity. I wouldn't mind having a full-auto option on the rifle, I suppose, but I never really felt the lack. The ammo capacity I'll give you - it's kind of a PITA. On the other hand, it's not like you can carry a hundred shotgun shells, either, and that's still a quality gun.
Now, the magnum...well, that's just unfortunate all 'round.
I think you're confusing the term "humans" with "human civilization as we are familiar with it."
The odds of current civilization lasting another thousand years may be low, for the reasons you cite. The odds, however, of us successfully wiping out so much of the population that humans are no longer a viable species within the next thousand years are, in my opinion, fantastically low. We breed too fast, we're spread over 30% of the planet's total area, and we're highly adaptable to changing conditions.
Frankly, I fully expect some descendant species of humans to be living here pretty much right up until the planet is inside the sun.
Ever since I've been going to Gen Con (not forever, but long enough that I consider myself a veteran) there has been an entire subculture of teenage boys who will play Magic, or whatever the collectible card game of the moment is, anywhere, anytime
That's the most depressing thing I've heard in the gaming community in I don't know how long.
Magic ruined GenCon, for my money - it was vastly cooler before the hordes of "gamers" whose only exposure to fantasy gaming was M:tG took the con over. Not that I'm innocent of playing the game (though I'm happy to say I got out by the time 4th ed. came out), but I can't even properly express the annoyance factor when, suddenly, it got hard to find anything not CCG related.
(Admittedly, part of my general disgust towards M:tG revolves around WotC, in my opinion, driving it into the ground. When the only way to maintain game balance is to start saying large numbers of existing cards just can't be used anymore, you've done something wrong)
The decision to move the GenCon two states away from its namesake Lake Geneva, of course, is a whole different travesty.
Bah.
[/old fart rant]
(there's something vaguely dismaying about being an old fart at 29)
Corporations desperately want to move to a model where you don't buy hardware, you "license" it, but when that happens, that's the day I stop buying it.
Which translates to:
The day they no longer sell hardware is the day I stop buying it.
Which, you know, is sort of self-evident.;)
(Yes, I know what you meant, your point is well taken, and I pretty much agree with you - but my internal logic parser couldn't resist the comment)
I expect they'll be on par with the pictures the average person will take using a cell phone from a moving car under questionable lighting conditions.
Which is, honestly, good enough for the sort of "I was there" pictures that fill the pages of your average family's vacation album. But, I suspect, not good enough to serve the purpose they're supposed to in this context, which involves quick place recognition.
You have to be real careful with this sort of thing.
You really don't want to train people to know that you're going to drop the price of something within a few weeks. It's one thing to know that you could wait a year and spend $30 to get the game you're about to spend $50 on. It's another thing entirely to know that you could wait a month and spend $50 to get the game you're about to spend $80 on.
A lot more people will be willing to wait month to save $30 than a year to save $20. All you're going to do, ultimately, is drive down sales within the first few weeks of release.
It would probably work for the first couple games they did it with, sure...but even the American buying public would catch on to quick follow-on price drops. Note how, even today, MS denies that they have any plans to drop the price on the 360 when the PS3 launches, despite the fact that it's so painfully obvious that anyone with two neurons firing in synch is pretty sure they will.
But you never, ever, want people to believe (much less know) that the thing they're about to buy will be cheaper just a little bit down the road.
Let me just head one line of reasoning off at the pass: I'm sure someone's going to start throwing around calculations involving inflation and real purchasing power. Which are right......but they don't matter.
People, by and large, do not factor the devaluation of money between then and now into their price comparisons. For example, consider gas prices - everyone complains about them, despite the fact that they're actually lower (in terms of real dollars) than they were 25 years ago.
Yet you'll always hear the stories about how "I remember when a gallon of gas was fifty cents!"
Video games are the same way. They've been in the $50 range for a long time, and people are therefore acclimated to that price point. It doesn't really matter that $50 for a game in 1995 was more money than $50 is now.
According to a calculator I found online (grain of salt, but it passes my smell test and I can't be arsed to really research this just now), $200 in 1985 translates to $363 in 2005. Which means that the premium XBox 360 is a whole $36 more expensive than the NES (and the core system $63 cheaper!), in terms of real purchasing power. This has not stopped plenty of people complaining about its price.
Of course, anyone who figures real purchasing power into the equation is right, when you come down to it...but it doesn't matter when it comes to what drives the purchasing public to either pull the trigger or not on a new toy.
Slashdot Mirror
That reduces the complexity of the password to the complexity of the word, and defeats the purpose of including numbers and non-alphanumeric characters.
Don't fall into the trap of the technical mind; we're talking about a business, here. For business and audit purposes, whether the product actually works as advertised is nowhere near as important as whether the purchasing authority did his due diligence (and can convincingly say he had every reason to believe it didn't have a back door built in), and whether the vendor officially supports the featureset the purchaser will be using (which means they, not the purchaser, can be blamed when the product fails to perform).
Now, purchasing security software from a company in Ukraine makes boths those goals harder to meet, but not impossible. Purchasing closed source software doesn't have any material impact on either of those goals.
Could you stop doing that? These are...new shoes.
Nah
We're still working on developing hyperparasitism - we're in the clear for a bit yet.
All consoles to date have shipped this way; the composite cable is included and the HD cables are extras.
Except, of course, the PS3's primary next-gen competitor, the 360, which comes with component cables included.
Someone should read up on modern philosophy (I think Kant would be a good start), particularly the bits about the ends justifying the means.
That's one of the stupider ideas I've ever read.
So the plan is to kill the part of MS that's doing the best work, their R&D people?
This would take shortsightedness to heights dreamed of only by teenage boys ten seconds away from orgasm.
(Not to mention that the amount of capital required to even begin to entertain the thought that there might be a chance of MS tanking hard enough in the near future to make this possible is so high the only organizations that could afford it wouldn't care to.)
A bit of googling comes up with this article from 7/1/2003 on Business 2.0.
This isn't where I originally read the statistic, I'm pretty sure, but it's probably where it originated.
My statement was based on a business case study of Netflix I read a while ago (about a year, I think), not on my personal experience with Netflix. When I was a subscriber four years ago, I didn't encounter an out of stock title even once. I dropped the service about two years ago at this point (for reasons completely unrelated to my satisfaction with Netflix itself), so I don't know what the experience is like now.
I won't argue your point regarding the definition of sunk costs - I'm using the term as I remember it from a (mandatory) GAAP accounting class I took in college, and am not terribly surprised to find out that I'm using it incorrectly.
Psychologically, though, the idea that it's money already spent is still, IMHO, the driving force. While in a strict sense, it's still currency, the fact that the "real" (psychology, remember) money is already spent makes the points, once acquired, of less perceived value than money. If there was an aftermarket for points, or a way to cash them out, perhaps this wouldn't be the case - but as it is, I stand by my assertion that, in the minds of most people, points are money already spent.
Actually, I've read that Netflix has something approaching 99% of their discs in circulation at any given time. I don't know that they really would be the best place to look.
*blink*
You have these at home? And they only cost $25 apiece?
Where did you find the space for a bookshelf that's roughly as long as a seven-storey building is tall? And where did you buy them (or the materials for them)? I don't have the room in my apartment for a twenty-two meter bookshelf, but if the price scales down appropriately, I want in.
1200 points seems somehow cheaper than $15
While I'm sure that plays a role (it must, or gas wouldn't be priced out to tenths of a cent), I don't think it's the largest reason MS uses points - or even the largest reason it's easier to spend points than money.
The big reason to use points, if you're MS, is that it allows them to sell points outside the Live system. You can buy redeemable cards in Best Buy et al, which makes them convenient stocking stuffers. Yes, there could be other ways to accomplish the same result, but:
Points are, as the article suggests, easier to spend. But not primarily because people are somehow "tricked" into not thinking of 1200 points as $15 - it's primarily because people see 1200 points as money they've already spent. The disconnect is between the perceived value of the points when purchasing them and the perceived value of the points once they've been purchased. People tend to have a reasonably good grasp of the concept of sunk costs.
When purchasing points, it's easy to dump $20 into it, thinking of how many little purchases that will cover. Once you've got the points, though, you know you're not spending any new money.
Building lots of cities and micromanaging is the only way to win. It's the same in CivIII, CivIV and Alpha Centauri
Actually, no, it isn't. The proper strategy for Civ3 was certainly endless city spawning (and SMAC might be the same; I've never played it), but the support cost structure in Civ4 prevents you from winning that way. One of the fastest ways to lose an empire is to keep taking barb cities instead of razing them. On a normal-size map, I've found the ideal number of cities to be right around six (depending on which Civ you are, what the resources around you look like, etc.)
"Why can this guy climb over simple obstacles?"
You're not the only one by far. I've often wondered why FPS designers insist on bounding playable areas with items that I, who am not any kind of cybernetically enhanced soldier, ubermarine, hazard-suit wearing professor, or whatnot, could easily get over in real life. Call of Duty did a pretty good job of have realistic-seeming boundaries, but aside from that, it's always seemed to be a problem.
The other fairly minor thing I'd really like to see is a game that made going up or down stairs more realistic: you ought to be slowed down by stairs. Not to mention every character I've seen walking up or down stairs looks completely phony.
I think you're overestimating the damage potential of the AR. In Halo 1, once you were playing a difficulty setting higher than normal, a full AR magazine at close range wasn't enough to take down a healthy blue elite with body shots (and, given the inherent inaccuracy of the rifle, consistent headshotting with the AR is difficult). I don't know the actual numbers, but I always got the impression that Brutes are tougher than elites.
Your point about the inaccuracy vs. hordes of facehuggers/headcrabs/whatchamacallits is well-taken, though. There were several points in Halo that I worked to hang onto my AR because I knew they'd be swarming soon.
Nonetheless, I was always disappointed by the AR in Halo - it looked cool (as you say), it had great ammo capacity, and it made you feel like a badass marine to be carrying it. But it was just so unhelpful against so many of the enemies that it irked me.
So how would this work for you for 3: revamp the look of the BR, add back the AR, and have the AR & BR share the same ammo store?
As for the pistol...what would actually make that a useful thing in the game is to have it used the way real troops use pistols; allow the player to carry the pistol in addition to his real weapons. It could be a useful holdout gun for when you're swarmed under and run out of real ammo, but you wouldn't have to waste a perfectly good weapon slot on it.
The last level was also extremly annoying, actually one of the worst I have ever seen, not sure if there actually is a way to drive around that track in anything remotly fluid, but I certainly didn't manage to and it turned into a try&error where the outcome was more luck then anything, certainly wasn't fun.
Feel free to dislike the game as much as you want, but this is unwarranted. Yes, with good enough driving skills, you can make it through the last level in a quite fluid manner. I've played through the game at least eight times (at least twice on each difficulty setting) both co-op and SP; I've only failed to make it through the last level twice. Once, the first time I played it (that was normal difficulty), and once the first time I played it on legendary (but that was due to me ramming one too many explody Flood, not running out of time).
Huh?
Granted, the SMG's only useful for dual wielding (and not worth sacrificing grenades for even then), but how can you prefer the assault rifle to the battle rifle? The assault rifle is inaccurate, low damage, and pretty much forces either spray-n-pray or knife range combat. The battle rifle is accurate, reasonably high damage, and has a scope thrown in for good measure.
The only possible drawbacks to the BR compared to the AR are no full-auto and a limited ammo capacity. I wouldn't mind having a full-auto option on the rifle, I suppose, but I never really felt the lack. The ammo capacity I'll give you - it's kind of a PITA. On the other hand, it's not like you can carry a hundred shotgun shells, either, and that's still a quality gun.
Now, the magnum...well, that's just unfortunate all 'round.
I think you're confusing the term "humans" with "human civilization as we are familiar with it."
The odds of current civilization lasting another thousand years may be low, for the reasons you cite. The odds, however, of us successfully wiping out so much of the population that humans are no longer a viable species within the next thousand years are, in my opinion, fantastically low. We breed too fast, we're spread over 30% of the planet's total area, and we're highly adaptable to changing conditions.
Frankly, I fully expect some descendant species of humans to be living here pretty much right up until the planet is inside the sun.
Ever since I've been going to Gen Con (not forever, but long enough that I consider myself a veteran) there has been an entire subculture of teenage boys who will play Magic, or whatever the collectible card game of the moment is, anywhere, anytime
That's the most depressing thing I've heard in the gaming community in I don't know how long.
Magic ruined GenCon, for my money - it was vastly cooler before the hordes of "gamers" whose only exposure to fantasy gaming was M:tG took the con over. Not that I'm innocent of playing the game (though I'm happy to say I got out by the time 4th ed. came out), but I can't even properly express the annoyance factor when, suddenly, it got hard to find anything not CCG related.
(Admittedly, part of my general disgust towards M:tG revolves around WotC, in my opinion, driving it into the ground. When the only way to maintain game balance is to start saying large numbers of existing cards just can't be used anymore, you've done something wrong)
The decision to move the GenCon two states away from its namesake Lake Geneva, of course, is a whole different travesty.
Bah.
[/old fart rant]
(there's something vaguely dismaying about being an old fart at 29)
Corporations desperately want to move to a model where you don't buy hardware, you "license" it, but when that happens, that's the day I stop buying it.
;)
Which translates to:
The day they no longer sell hardware is the day I stop buying it.
Which, you know, is sort of self-evident.
(Yes, I know what you meant, your point is well taken, and I pretty much agree with you - but my internal logic parser couldn't resist the comment)
I expect they'll be on par with the pictures the average person will take using a cell phone from a moving car under questionable lighting conditions.
Which is, honestly, good enough for the sort of "I was there" pictures that fill the pages of your average family's vacation album. But, I suspect, not good enough to serve the purpose they're supposed to in this context, which involves quick place recognition.
Spectacular - thanks.
You have to be real careful with this sort of thing.
You really don't want to train people to know that you're going to drop the price of something within a few weeks. It's one thing to know that you could wait a year and spend $30 to get the game you're about to spend $50 on. It's another thing entirely to know that you could wait a month and spend $50 to get the game you're about to spend $80 on.
A lot more people will be willing to wait month to save $30 than a year to save $20. All you're going to do, ultimately, is drive down sales within the first few weeks of release.
It would probably work for the first couple games they did it with, sure...but even the American buying public would catch on to quick follow-on price drops. Note how, even today, MS denies that they have any plans to drop the price on the 360 when the PS3 launches, despite the fact that it's so painfully obvious that anyone with two neurons firing in synch is pretty sure they will.
But you never, ever, want people to believe (much less know) that the thing they're about to buy will be cheaper just a little bit down the road.
Let me just head one line of reasoning off at the pass: I'm sure someone's going to start throwing around calculations involving inflation and real purchasing power. Which are right... ...but they don't matter.
People, by and large, do not factor the devaluation of money between then and now into their price comparisons. For example, consider gas prices - everyone complains about them, despite the fact that they're actually lower (in terms of real dollars) than they were 25 years ago.
Yet you'll always hear the stories about how "I remember when a gallon of gas was fifty cents!"
Video games are the same way. They've been in the $50 range for a long time, and people are therefore acclimated to that price point. It doesn't really matter that $50 for a game in 1995 was more money than $50 is now.
According to a calculator I found online (grain of salt, but it passes my smell test and I can't be arsed to really research this just now), $200 in 1985 translates to $363 in 2005. Which means that the premium XBox 360 is a whole $36 more expensive than the NES (and the core system $63 cheaper!), in terms of real purchasing power. This has not stopped plenty of people complaining about its price.
Of course, anyone who figures real purchasing power into the equation is right, when you come down to it...but it doesn't matter when it comes to what drives the purchasing public to either pull the trigger or not on a new toy.