"I believe," "I think," etc. are the reasons we have these stupid health scares. There are still idiots out there who believe that their digestive system can't process chewing gum (most of it doesn't get digested, but it goes through just fine when swallowed) or that people who don't get frequent enemas get sick because of toxic substances in their colons. Scientific evidence doesn't mean jack to the crowd getting their information from garbage-spewers/enablers (Oprah, Montel and their ilk; though even the big news broadcasts tended to be uncritical on the thimerosal issue), and the long-term effects of this irrational distrust of medical professionals can only be harmful.
Folks don't go to YouTube for new information (except maybe to discover for the first time the very awesome Italian Spider Man.). They go for confirmation of their previously held opinions and beliefs. They get their new "information" from sources like Oprah Winfrey (who has given the anti-immunization nuts non-judgemental time in the past and who, of course, popularized "The Secret"), Larry King, and other mass-media purveyors of bullshit.
You're suggesting we optimize for the minority case and that's a cop-out that all too many software programs opt for. Most users don't want to have to configure their browser before they start using it. They want it to "just work" and that's what we aim to deliver.
I'm glad you do, too. Getting my parents up and running with Firefox was a matter of installing the package, having Firefox take over as the default browser in XP and telling the folks not to click the blue "e" anymore. Since her first week with it, my mom hasn't had a single Firefox-related problem. If she has to install it again on another PC, she knows right where to go and will be up and running in minutes, but if she had to sit down and configure it she would just use IE until I had a chance to set it up - if she told me in the first place. So, thanks for not requiring configuration.:)
My only hope is that this doesn't lead to the death of the physical copy of a comic book. I still go back every few years and read through my old collection, and the fun of reading a physical comic book never gets old.
There's no reason to think that comics will stop being published. They clearly sell enough of them to make money even though the number of people buying them today isn't a tenth of the numbers from 20 years ago.
There's nothing bad about this idea (having started a subscription last night, I have some issues with execution, but I think it will improve in that area). Marvel still gets to sell physical copies of their products, and with the low subscription price (incredibly low since comics are about $3 a piece now) they could get back some of the customers lost when comic books stopped being everywhere and started being found (in quantity) only at specialty stores, and often only by preordering, often months in advance.
Personally, I'll be recommending this service (or making a Christmas gift of it) to my sister for her kids and to anybody else who wants "back issues on a budget." Sure, I could teach them all how to use Bit Torrent sites and download the stuff for free, but with the very low price Marvel is charging nobody has an excuse to steal (not interested in the semantical argument about this word, by the way) digital copies of Marvel comics anymore - it would take months for a normal person in school or with a job to read what Marvel's already put online and they claim they're going to be making additions every week.
Sidekicking/exemplaring is undoubtedly the best feature of CoX. I played World of Warcraft this past summer, and thanks to my addictive personality I was constantly outleveling my friends and having to start new characters if I wanted to play with them. Every time I did, I wished that I could just say "exemplar me" and play with them using my favorite character. Ironically, in CoX it's actually a lot more fun creating additional characters thanks to the customization available in terms of powers and appearance. There are definitely things that I really like about World of Warcraft, and on the whole it's always going to be a larger game than CoX ("duh"), but the fun factor of the latter is higher for me.
I should mention here that I am not at all against the idea of creating OSX-compatible versions of PC games. I'd be particularly happy if this became the norm with MMOGs since when I play one, I'd like there to be as many players in my community as possible. I believe, though, that there are good reasons to eschew OSX in the gaming area, not the least of which is Apple's lack of encouragement. Microsoft has DirectX which has clearly won over the game development community. If Apple would create and support something similar for OSX, it would probably entice developers to do more multi-platform work. As it is, there's an implied (and sometimes stated) disdain from Apple regarding games that can't help but turn developers away from the platform.
How many of your "twenty million" are interested in City of Heroes/Villains? How many would buy the game and then maintain a subscription? How much would it cost to develop and maintain the OSX client? What would be even more interesting: How many of your "twenty million" are Mac Minis with minimal gaming capability, and how many are truly new Mac users as opposed to Mac users who buy every upgrade?
I simply don't believe that large publishers (and NCSoft has become a large publisher) ignore the Mac userbase. I believe that they are well aware of the numbers and would create an OSX client if it was in their fiscal interest to do so. One of the biggest games of all time is Half-Life 2, which is already on multiple platforms. Yet, Source/Steam is still not available for OSX. Is that because Valve is stupid or could it be because that while they know they could sell the game to OSX users they've decided the advantages of creating a native OSX version of their software would provide minimal returns?
Actually, it says more about the fact that there aren't enough Macs to make it worthwhile for [most] MMOGs to maintain two separate versions of their software...and Boot Camp gives them further disincentive.
It had better, since people do purposely accrue debt in order to pay it back and get the badges (in fact, said badges can lead to a special power in combination with others). If not, then it would actually be a penalty to those players, forcing them to take extra time to die a bunch of times again.
Oh, and there's a debt penalty cap, so there's a limit to how much benefit could be realized (per character) from this relief.
Couldn't the same be said of any content distribution, though? Why would we want all of our video coming from one source? As long as the providers support standards (and, love it or hate it, Flash is very much a standard), consumers shouldn't want all their content coming from the same place. That's the definition of a monopoly and it's counterproductive in an environment with so much room for competition. All Apple would have to do is support a variety of standards in the AppleTV and you too wouldn't care if you were typing in "www.youtube.com" or "www.comedycentral.com." Instead, Apple wants your primary source of video to be iTunes and they'll grudgingly support YouTube since it's dealing more Internet video than anybody else and lacking it would be considered by their customer base - even the die-hard Mac fans - to be a defect.
I won't argue with you about Flash video, which varies wildly from unwatchable to acceptable, but is it Viacom's fault that your AppleTV doesn't support their site (or, apparently, MySpace), or is it Apple's?
PS- Just for the marketing hell of it, I thought I'd note, too, that the 360 Premium and Elite models will come with Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance this holiday season. $350 for an Xbox 360 and two good games is pretty nice - not "Wii nice" but still...:)
(You may not like Blu-Ray, but it is a feature, and the base PS3 still has more hard drive space than all but the top of the line 360.)
To be clear: I don't dislike Blu-ray (it's just too expensive). Further, increasing the capacity of one of the cheapest parts of the system doesn't impress me much, especially when the uses to which I would put that part of the system don't require a lot of space anyway. Whatever the reasons, the 360 bought today is superior to that bought at launch, and at a lower price - that seems like win/win to me.
I think people should be pissed that Sony started out including all this expensive hardware that is now apparently unnecessary. If nobody needs backward compatibility, and it's such a huge contributor to the cost of the console, why wasn't there a $400 unit without it at launch?
Logically, its a sound business trade-off to get the price down to increase sales. Prestige-wise it certainly hurts, but maybe that's all fluff anyway (The XBox360 certainly doesn't emulate all XBox titles and the Gamecube never emulated the Nintendo-64)
A few problems that keep this from entering the "no big deal" category: 1. Sony has pounded on backwards compatibility in terms of marketing and general rhetoric. 2. Every time Sony has a "price drop" they're closing out and/or removing features. Even the 80GB model added 20GB of hard drive space while reducing backwards compatibility (by removing the PS2 CPU). 3. The PS3 is behind on the "native" game front.
Folks have been criticizing the Xbox 360's level of backward compatibility from the start, but Microsoft has continued working on it and improving it for the life of the hardware (and the Wii is just plain GC compatible with no caveats - go Nintendo). Further, 360 hardware has actually improved since launch (nowhere to go but up?) while the PS3 keeps receiving downgrades. One can find justifications for Sony's actions if they're desired, but the bottom line is that somebody buying one of these 40GB units is getting a worse product than somebody who bought one of the [rare] 20GB units at launch. Even assuming the thing is $400-450 (probably $400 because Sony needs to lower prices rapidement), having zero PS2 compatibility is going to turn people off.
It doesn't sound "reasonable" in any way, shape or form. In order to sound "reasonable" it would have to contain an explanation of why the manufacturers of CD/DVD hardware haven't either a) solved this "problem" before or b) started selling higher-priced equipment that specifically mentions solving this "problem." Frankly, the whole thing to me reads in no way different than astrology, phrenology, or any of the other pseudoscientific babble in the wild.
Here's my problem with this banning: It would be a trivial exercise to teach flight attendants how to tell if the wireless is active on a Nintendo DS, and I assume that the PSP has a similar activity light. 30 minutes (or less) of training for its employees and they could avoid angering their game-playing customers - that sounds like a pretty good deal.
Yeah, you know what? Anyone that allergic ought to be wearing a fucking surgical mask. Hundreds of people - whether adults or children - should not have to change their eating habits for one person. Peanuts are not only tasty but they're nutritious as well. I'd certainly rather kids be enjoying some peanuts at lunch rather than some of the crap served by, and present in, public schools...
and for the record, you can see the difference between 640p and 720p - just like you can see the difference between 5 feet and 5 square feet.
Sure you can. If you blow up the image and get right next to the screen. But, if you're telling me that from any reasonable distance, and without extra manipulation of the image, you can tell the difference between 1152x640 and 1280x720 in motion then you're full of shit, ESPECIALLY when the image is already being converted first to 720p/1080i/1080p before leaving the box and then potentially going through another conversion to the native resolution of the display.
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Well said.
Jack Thompson: "Because I took on Bar complainant, Al Cardenas, the Howard Stern Show is off terrestrial radio and his influence diminished."
Really, Jack? I thought it was because Sirius offered Stern a free hand with content and over $100 million per year on a 5-year contract.
Biggest crab pot ever?
"I believe," "I think," etc. are the reasons we have these stupid health scares. There are still idiots out there who believe that their digestive system can't process chewing gum (most of it doesn't get digested, but it goes through just fine when swallowed) or that people who don't get frequent enemas get sick because of toxic substances in their colons. Scientific evidence doesn't mean jack to the crowd getting their information from garbage-spewers/enablers (Oprah, Montel and their ilk; though even the big news broadcasts tended to be uncritical on the thimerosal issue), and the long-term effects of this irrational distrust of medical professionals can only be harmful.
Folks don't go to YouTube for new information (except maybe to discover for the first time the very awesome Italian Spider Man.). They go for confirmation of their previously held opinions and beliefs. They get their new "information" from sources like Oprah Winfrey (who has given the anti-immunization nuts non-judgemental time in the past and who, of course, popularized "The Secret"), Larry King, and other mass-media purveyors of bullshit.
It's not an argument?
I'm glad you do, too. Getting my parents up and running with Firefox was a matter of installing the package, having Firefox take over as the default browser in XP and telling the folks not to click the blue "e" anymore. Since her first week with it, my mom hasn't had a single Firefox-related problem. If she has to install it again on another PC, she knows right where to go and will be up and running in minutes, but if she had to sit down and configure it she would just use IE until I had a chance to set it up - if she told me in the first place. So, thanks for not requiring configuration.
There's no reason to think that comics will stop being published. They clearly sell enough of them to make money even though the number of people buying them today isn't a tenth of the numbers from 20 years ago.
There's nothing bad about this idea (having started a subscription last night, I have some issues with execution, but I think it will improve in that area). Marvel still gets to sell physical copies of their products, and with the low subscription price (incredibly low since comics are about $3 a piece now) they could get back some of the customers lost when comic books stopped being everywhere and started being found (in quantity) only at specialty stores, and often only by preordering, often months in advance.
Personally, I'll be recommending this service (or making a Christmas gift of it) to my sister for her kids and to anybody else who wants "back issues on a budget." Sure, I could teach them all how to use Bit Torrent sites and download the stuff for free, but with the very low price Marvel is charging nobody has an excuse to steal (not interested in the semantical argument about this word, by the way) digital copies of Marvel comics anymore - it would take months for a normal person in school or with a job to read what Marvel's already put online and they claim they're going to be making additions every week.
Thanks, Dr. Laura. Now, could we get back to our regularly scheduled Slashdot viewing?
Sidekicking/exemplaring is undoubtedly the best feature of CoX. I played World of Warcraft this past summer, and thanks to my addictive personality I was constantly outleveling my friends and having to start new characters if I wanted to play with them. Every time I did, I wished that I could just say "exemplar me" and play with them using my favorite character. Ironically, in CoX it's actually a lot more fun creating additional characters thanks to the customization available in terms of powers and appearance. There are definitely things that I really like about World of Warcraft, and on the whole it's always going to be a larger game than CoX ("duh"), but the fun factor of the latter is higher for me.
I should mention here that I am not at all against the idea of creating OSX-compatible versions of PC games. I'd be particularly happy if this became the norm with MMOGs since when I play one, I'd like there to be as many players in my community as possible. I believe, though, that there are good reasons to eschew OSX in the gaming area, not the least of which is Apple's lack of encouragement. Microsoft has DirectX which has clearly won over the game development community. If Apple would create and support something similar for OSX, it would probably entice developers to do more multi-platform work. As it is, there's an implied (and sometimes stated) disdain from Apple regarding games that can't help but turn developers away from the platform.
How many of your "twenty million" are interested in City of Heroes/Villains? How many would buy the game and then maintain a subscription? How much would it cost to develop and maintain the OSX client? What would be even more interesting: How many of your "twenty million" are Mac Minis with minimal gaming capability, and how many are truly new Mac users as opposed to Mac users who buy every upgrade?
I simply don't believe that large publishers (and NCSoft has become a large publisher) ignore the Mac userbase. I believe that they are well aware of the numbers and would create an OSX client if it was in their fiscal interest to do so. One of the biggest games of all time is Half-Life 2, which is already on multiple platforms. Yet, Source/Steam is still not available for OSX. Is that because Valve is stupid or could it be because that while they know they could sell the game to OSX users they've decided the advantages of creating a native OSX version of their software would provide minimal returns?
Actually, it says more about the fact that there aren't enough Macs to make it worthwhile for [most] MMOGs to maintain two separate versions of their software...and Boot Camp gives them further disincentive.
It had better, since people do purposely accrue debt in order to pay it back and get the badges (in fact, said badges can lead to a special power in combination with others). If not, then it would actually be a penalty to those players, forcing them to take extra time to die a bunch of times again.
Oh, and there's a debt penalty cap, so there's a limit to how much benefit could be realized (per character) from this relief.
Couldn't the same be said of any content distribution, though? Why would we want all of our video coming from one source? As long as the providers support standards (and, love it or hate it, Flash is very much a standard), consumers shouldn't want all their content coming from the same place. That's the definition of a monopoly and it's counterproductive in an environment with so much room for competition. All Apple would have to do is support a variety of standards in the AppleTV and you too wouldn't care if you were typing in "www.youtube.com" or "www.comedycentral.com." Instead, Apple wants your primary source of video to be iTunes and they'll grudgingly support YouTube since it's dealing more Internet video than anybody else and lacking it would be considered by their customer base - even the die-hard Mac fans - to be a defect.
I won't argue with you about Flash video, which varies wildly from unwatchable to acceptable, but is it Viacom's fault that your AppleTV doesn't support their site (or, apparently, MySpace), or is it Apple's?
PS- Just for the marketing hell of it, I thought I'd note, too, that the 360 Premium and Elite models will come with Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance this holiday season. $350 for an Xbox 360 and two good games is pretty nice - not "Wii nice" but still... :)
To be clear: I don't dislike Blu-ray (it's just too expensive). Further, increasing the capacity of one of the cheapest parts of the system doesn't impress me much, especially when the uses to which I would put that part of the system don't require a lot of space anyway. Whatever the reasons, the 360 bought today is superior to that bought at launch, and at a lower price - that seems like win/win to me.
I think people should be pissed that Sony started out including all this expensive hardware that is now apparently unnecessary. If nobody needs backward compatibility, and it's such a huge contributor to the cost of the console, why wasn't there a $400 unit without it at launch?
A few problems that keep this from entering the "no big deal" category:
1. Sony has pounded on backwards compatibility in terms of marketing and general rhetoric.
2. Every time Sony has a "price drop" they're closing out and/or removing features. Even the 80GB model added 20GB of hard drive space while reducing backwards compatibility (by removing the PS2 CPU).
3. The PS3 is behind on the "native" game front.
Folks have been criticizing the Xbox 360's level of backward compatibility from the start, but Microsoft has continued working on it and improving it for the life of the hardware (and the Wii is just plain GC compatible with no caveats - go Nintendo). Further, 360 hardware has actually improved since launch (nowhere to go but up?) while the PS3 keeps receiving downgrades. One can find justifications for Sony's actions if they're desired, but the bottom line is that somebody buying one of these 40GB units is getting a worse product than somebody who bought one of the [rare] 20GB units at launch. Even assuming the thing is $400-450 (probably $400 because Sony needs to lower prices rapidement), having zero PS2 compatibility is going to turn people off.
For the record, so does the 80GB PS3, soon to be the only backwards-compatible PS3 available at retail.
Well, you are posting on Slashdot, so I guess that question is even more rhetorical...
It doesn't sound "reasonable" in any way, shape or form. In order to sound "reasonable" it would have to contain an explanation of why the manufacturers of CD/DVD hardware haven't either a) solved this "problem" before or b) started selling higher-priced equipment that specifically mentions solving this "problem." Frankly, the whole thing to me reads in no way different than astrology, phrenology, or any of the other pseudoscientific babble in the wild.
Here's my problem with this banning: It would be a trivial exercise to teach flight attendants how to tell if the wireless is active on a Nintendo DS, and I assume that the PSP has a similar activity light. 30 minutes (or less) of training for its employees and they could avoid angering their game-playing customers - that sounds like a pretty good deal.
Yeah, you know what? Anyone that allergic ought to be wearing a fucking surgical mask. Hundreds of people - whether adults or children - should not have to change their eating habits for one person. Peanuts are not only tasty but they're nutritious as well. I'd certainly rather kids be enjoying some peanuts at lunch rather than some of the crap served by, and present in, public schools...
Sure you can. If you blow up the image and get right next to the screen. But, if you're telling me that from any reasonable distance, and without extra manipulation of the image, you can tell the difference between 1152x640 and 1280x720 in motion then you're full of shit, ESPECIALLY when the image is already being converted first to 720p/1080i/1080p before leaving the box and then potentially going through another conversion to the native resolution of the display.