Wasn't the consensus of most true (ie: non-console) gamers that Oblivion sort of sucked?
Morrowind had giant mushrooms, insect mines, floating jellyfish, plant-castles, mongolian yurts, hindu derived gods, cities built under giant crabs, underwater ruins, giant flea vehicles, flying spells, etc...
Oblivion had deer, butterflies and tudor villages. No flying, nothing underwater, and a bland European theme that was about as imaginative as the local renaissance fair.
The interface, gameworld and game play of Oblivion were dumbed down for the console crowd.
IF there's a trend at work over at Bethesda, it's the trading of imagination for stock fantasy concepts, and a dumbing down of gameplay for a wider audience. I loved Fallout... IMHO its very, very up in the air what Bethsoft does with it.
Let's pray they don't make it "half as good as Oblivion".
A little lesson in PR for a company obviously challenged in this department:
Don't go on the defensive by playing the "victim" card. (Newsflash: No one cares.)
Here's what skilled PR departments do: Make strong statements of integrity. Fire someone. Institute a new policy or two. Devise a system of compensating those wronged. Spend money on public relations, advertising and technological improvements. Claim (regardless of truth) that the problem has been solved and that (wait for it...) the reason people hate you is because your products are so damn good.
I didn't make up the rules. They've been etched in stone for a while now.
This is a business model which is designed to look good on paper, and appeal to investors. After that, it doesn't look so hot. Here's why:
First off, they call addresses like "DailyHoroscope.com" the top-tier equivalent of "Oceanfront Real Estate", by which I suppose they mean "oceanfront" as in Haiti -- because last time I checked, 14 letter domain names were about as hip as AOL email addresses.
Secondly -- the number of URL's is completely irrelevant. 750,000? I could generate 750,000 all numeric (or random text-string) URL's right now -- so without a measure of keyword quality the total number of owned URL's is purely a carrot for investors (which apparently has worked).
Thirdly -- let's say for the sake of argument that all those 6,000 "photography related" URL's he owns generate an average of 50 visits per month (I'm being generous). A *very* good click through rate would be 2% -- which equals 1 click per month. So let's redux: 6000 sites * 50 visits each = 300,000 visits. 300,000 *.02 = 6000 clicks.... psh... I know bloggers that do this well and they're not raising millions in venture capital. Even if his average rate of visitors is 4x or 8x as high, the valuation for his company is far too high.
I could cut and paste a copyrighted paragraph into this post, and you'd be guilty of downloading copyrighted content right now. I'd be the uploader, you'd be the downloader. But of course, there was no "intent" to infringe copyright.
So what we need is a TiVO like system that just automatically downloads content -- some of which is pirated.
They claimed to be "too busy" to continue publishing the M3 number last April.
The story should have been on the front page of every newspaper, and should have immediately triggered a global dollar-crisis, but instead the world believed Bernanke, and here we are today.
Go for it Microsoft. Because apparently we're living in an era populated with unquestioning sheep.
(I know, I know...it couldn't have been more offtopic... but this post gave me some deja vu. Don't mod me down -- people really do need to wiki "M3", and get a little scared...).
If I'm driving around with my laptop (turned on, of course) and my wireless device automatically searches for available networks (as most do) and my software is automatically making requests (as browsers, file sharing apps and many other programs do): It is important to remember that these "requests" are exactly that. They are "requests" to a server for both communications privileges and for information.
We may like to call this an "unsecured" server, but what it *really* is is a server that "grants all requests". The server is set to "approve and accept all incoming traffic".
What we have here is not a case of a man illegally making use of a server, what we have here is a server which is specifically configured to allow anonymous, random use.
Digital "requests" were made of the server, and rather than refusing those requests, the server granted them. The problem here is that the authorities perceive wireless access like electrical currents. This is *not* a case of a 'diverted' resource. It is a case of a resource that is specifically set to serve anyone and everyone.
Ah, the Slashdot review. Normally it is well written. The first sentence isn't misleading. The reviewer gets straight to the point. There is no confusing turnabout within the first paragraph. But this is not that review.
Plenty of video games featured in-game stores with one click shopping. That should constitute prior art. Amazon knew about these but discounted them because the transactions were virtual.
If one is in a position of authority, and is expected to determine how laws should be applied to society -- one has an obligation to be a part of society and understand that society. This judge has clearly done neither. He has failed to enter the 21st century along with the rest of his countrymen, and has failed to keep up with the most basic social trends. Is is therefore unfit for work. Dismissed.
I think it's nice that our elected officials are going after customer service departments and tackling social ills like the fact that a pint of ice cream isn't really a pint. But haven't we got bigger problems? Even forgetting about national issues like our tattered Constitution and our dictatorial "President" -- we've got dozens of billion dollar New York corporations that don't pay taxes, we've got $6 BILLION OF FRAUDULENT TRADES A DAY on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. We've got estrogen in our water supply which is decreasing male fertility (and fish stocks). And the list goes on....
Somehow I don't think Dell customer service really qualifies as an emergency...
Why is Microsoft doing this now? And more importantly, is the onus on the patent holder to make this claim in a timely manner?
It seems to me that a viable strategy of patent holders (looking to profit from previously unprofitable patents) would be to allow them to be tread upon by competing products, until at such time that those competing products become financially viable... and *then* file suit.
This strategy seems less about protecting one's intellectual property, and more about encouraging the competition to cement its dependency on your patents in order to extract greater compensation at a later date.
Anyone know if there's a requirement to file a cease-and-desist in a timely manner?
We live in a country where mega churges with tens of thousands of members, build massive structures that contain shops, restaurants and movie theaters. Other groups charge members for "knowledge". Still others use their holdings to invest in hundreds of millions worth of real-estate.
All these practices *decrease* their regional tax bases, forcing others to pay higher taxes.
It's time to pay taxes. If the net revenue of your "religion" exceeds a certain % in growth per annum -- you should be deemed a "for profit" enterprise.
The general feeling among consumers is that software costs too much, and doesn't offer a significantly enhanced featureset with each new release to warrant the additional cost. Additionally, the software runs slowly, is bloated and is full of security holes which could easily be fixed -- but the simplest fixes run counter to MSFT business strategy and are therefore ignored.
In a nutshell: The very simple problem with Microsoft is an overwhelming consumer opinion that they place their business interests well before the interests of their customers.
Passion? Quite honestly I could give a crap. What I (we) would like to see is well built products at reasonable prices which don't come along with draconian contracts and "security holes cum business models".
You probably know more about this than I, but I was under the impression that a gamma ray burst from a neighboring star was counted as one of the potential apocalyptic possibilities for humanity's end. My understanding is that much more than the local system is at risk. Than again, IANAA
As personally distasteful as I find this -- I'm not sure this constitutes a breach of any laws. "Kiddie porn" involves the sexual photography (and horrible exploitation) of children. It is difficult to see who is being "hurt" by this Second Life activity. Yes, one can make the argument that if one engages in virtual fantasy, one is more likely to engage in the 'real thing'. But this is a straw man argument that has been applied to video games for years with zero proof of any virtual/real-world crossover.
The question ultimately becomes: Can fantasy involving only digital, or make-believe characters, be illegal?
If the answer is yes, I find that to be extremely disturbing in an Orwellian sense. While I find the concept of finding children sexually appealing to be personally abhorrent, I'm not sure the law extends (or should extend) into virtual roleplaying between consenting adults.
FunCom and Blizzard come from different planets as far as culture and ethos, and IMHO its why FunCom will always be a second rate game company. (The industry will probably never forget the absolute disaster that was the AO rollout. I was personally one of the thousands in line waiting for a full refund for that atrocity). Unlike Blizzard, FunCom sticks to release schedules and predefined featuresets (among many other problems) which will always result in buggy gameplay and cut corners.
What we have now in the industry is a few players who were successful *primarily because they were early to the scene* (FunCom being one. I personally hope Mythic isn't another, but they may be). These players really don't necessarily have the caliber to maintain their position and IMHO will vanish over time.
So when FunCom says "The industry so needs competition to WoW" its very true. Except that FunCom isn't really in the running. The bar of quality and depth has been raised significantly by WoW, and the result is a black-hole which sucks players away from the competition. ArenaNet is still looking strong, and other contenders like LOTRO and DDO are looking good, but FunCom? No.
Not to mention the fact that for some reason you're excluding towns from the "game". As if they're not a completely vital part of a MMO. Buying, selling, trading, crafting... that's all "the game", not just a "chat room". And even if it were: "chat" is also part of the game.
Once again, you're using your own semantics to prove your own definition.
I know its free, but Guild Wars is about a billion times better looking (and strategically far deeper) -- and it costs $40 with no monthly fees whatsoever. I find it amazing that anyone could pay a monthly membership for a shockwave game that looks like its from the early 1990's. I've played RuneScape and WoW and I have to say GW is probably the best deal in MMO gaming I've seen to date.
Slashdot Mirror
> "This could spell the end of Microsoft's control.."
Please. They'll update the security.
Will there eventually be another way around? Yes. Of course.
Next story please.
Yet another platform to test my CSS / javascript / DHTML / Ajax on...
Sigh...
Wasn't the consensus of most true (ie: non-console) gamers that Oblivion sort of sucked?
Morrowind had giant mushrooms, insect mines, floating jellyfish, plant-castles, mongolian yurts,
hindu derived gods, cities built under giant crabs, underwater ruins, giant flea vehicles,
flying spells, etc...
Oblivion had deer, butterflies and tudor villages. No flying, nothing underwater, and a bland
European theme that was about as imaginative as the local renaissance fair.
The interface, gameworld and game play of Oblivion were dumbed down for the console crowd.
IF there's a trend at work over at Bethesda, it's the trading of imagination for stock fantasy
concepts, and a dumbing down of gameplay for a wider audience. I loved Fallout... IMHO its very,
very up in the air what Bethsoft does with it.
Let's pray they don't make it "half as good as Oblivion".
That's because this issue really isn't about privacy. It's about "freedom". And yes, it unquestionably *does* compromise our freedoms.
A little lesson in PR for a company obviously challenged in this department:
Don't go on the defensive by playing the "victim" card. (Newsflash: No one cares.)
Here's what skilled PR departments do:
Make strong statements of integrity. Fire someone. Institute a new policy or two.
Devise a system of compensating those wronged. Spend money on public relations,
advertising and technological improvements. Claim (regardless of truth) that the
problem has been solved and that (wait for it...) the reason people hate you is
because your products are so damn good.
I didn't make up the rules. They've been etched in stone for a while now.
This is a business model which is designed to look good on paper, and appeal to investors. After that, it doesn't look so hot. Here's why:
... psh... I know bloggers that do this well and they're not raising millions in venture capital. Even if his average rate of visitors is 4x or 8x as high, the valuation for his company is far too high.
First off, they call addresses like "DailyHoroscope.com" the top-tier equivalent of "Oceanfront Real Estate", by which I suppose they mean "oceanfront" as in Haiti -- because last time I checked, 14 letter domain names were about as hip as AOL email addresses.
Secondly -- the number of URL's is completely irrelevant. 750,000? I could generate 750,000 all numeric (or random text-string) URL's right now -- so without a measure of keyword quality the total number of owned URL's is purely a carrot for investors (which apparently has worked).
Thirdly -- let's say for the sake of argument that all those 6,000 "photography related" URL's he owns generate an average of 50 visits per month (I'm being generous). A *very* good click through rate would be 2% -- which equals 1 click per month. So let's redux: 6000 sites * 50 visits each = 300,000 visits. 300,000 *.02 = 6000 clicks.
I could cut and paste a copyrighted paragraph into this post, and you'd be guilty of downloading copyrighted content right now. I'd be the uploader, you'd be the downloader. But of course, there was no "intent" to infringe copyright.
So what we need is a TiVO like system that just automatically downloads content -- some of which is pirated.
Then we'd all be able to claim lack of intent.
My two cents.
Think you're driving on public roads? Think again. It's estimated that 35% of public roads will be private within
the next 20 years.
Your rights to photograph (even with your own camera) will soon be seriously curtailed.
The enemy to personal freedoms isn't government -- its private corporations and intellectual property law.
Your masters are corporate.
They claimed to be "too busy" to continue publishing the M3 number last April.
The story should have been on the front page of every newspaper, and should have immediately triggered
a global dollar-crisis, but instead the world believed Bernanke, and here we are today.
Go for it Microsoft. Because apparently we're living in an era populated with unquestioning sheep.
(I know, I know...it couldn't have been more offtopic... but this post gave me some deja vu.
Don't mod me down -- people really do need to wiki "M3", and get a little scared...).
If I'm driving around with my laptop (turned on, of course) and my wireless device automatically searches for available networks (as most do) and my software is automatically making requests (as browsers, file sharing apps and many other programs do): It is important to remember that these "requests" are exactly that. They are "requests" to a server for both communications privileges and for information.
We may like to call this an "unsecured" server, but what it *really* is is a server that "grants all requests". The server is set to "approve and accept all incoming traffic".
What we have here is not a case of a man illegally making use of a server, what we have here is a server which is specifically configured to allow anonymous, random use.
Digital "requests" were made of the server, and rather than refusing those requests, the server granted them.
The problem here is that the authorities perceive wireless access like electrical currents. This is *not* a case of a 'diverted' resource. It is a case of a resource that is specifically set to serve anyone and everyone.
Ah, the Slashdot review. Normally it is well written. The first sentence isn't misleading. The reviewer gets straight to the point. There is no confusing turnabout within the first paragraph. But this is not that review.
Plenty of video games featured in-game stores with one click shopping. That should constitute prior art. Amazon knew about these but discounted them because the transactions were virtual.
-- Brit here as well. ...Apparently my post was either misread, or mistyped. My apologies if it was the latter.
I meant: He failed to enter the 21st century along with the rest of his countrymen (who *have* entered the 21st century).
If one is in a position of authority, and is expected to determine how laws should be applied to society -- one has an obligation to be a part of society and understand that society. This judge has clearly done neither. He has failed to enter the 21st century along with the rest of his countrymen, and has failed to keep up with the most basic social trends. Is is therefore unfit for work. Dismissed.
I think it's nice that our elected officials are going after customer service departments and tackling social ills like the fact that a pint of ice cream isn't really a pint. But haven't we got bigger problems? Even forgetting about national issues like our tattered Constitution and our dictatorial "President" -- we've got dozens of billion dollar New York corporations that don't pay taxes, we've got $6 BILLION OF
FRAUDULENT TRADES A DAY on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. We've got estrogen in our water supply which is decreasing male fertility (and fish stocks). And the list goes on....
Somehow I don't think Dell customer service really qualifies as an emergency...
Why is Microsoft doing this now? And more importantly, is the onus on the patent holder to make this claim in a timely manner?
It seems to me that a viable strategy of patent holders (looking to profit from previously unprofitable patents) would be to
allow them to be tread upon by competing products, until at such time that those competing products become financially viable...
and *then* file suit.
This strategy seems less about protecting one's intellectual property, and more about encouraging the competition to cement
its dependency on your patents in order to extract greater compensation at a later date.
Anyone know if there's a requirement to file a cease-and-desist in a timely manner?
Why shouldn't religions pay taxes?
We live in a country where mega churges with tens of thousands of members, build massive structures that contain shops, restaurants and movie theaters. Other groups charge members for "knowledge". Still others use their holdings to invest in hundreds of millions worth of real-estate.
All these practices *decrease* their regional tax bases, forcing others to pay higher taxes.
It's time to pay taxes. If the net revenue of your "religion" exceeds a certain % in growth per annum -- you should be deemed a "for profit" enterprise.
The general feeling among consumers is that software costs too much, and doesn't offer a significantly enhanced featureset with each new release to warrant the additional cost. Additionally, the software runs slowly, is bloated and is full of security holes which could easily be fixed -- but the simplest fixes run counter to MSFT business strategy and are therefore ignored.
In a nutshell: The very simple problem with Microsoft is an overwhelming consumer opinion that they place their business interests well before the interests of their customers.
Passion? Quite honestly I could give a crap. What I (we) would like to see is well built products at reasonable prices which don't come along with draconian contracts and "security holes cum business models".
My two cents.
You probably know more about this than I, but I was under the impression that a gamma ray burst from a neighboring star was counted as one of the potential apocalyptic possibilities for humanity's end. My understanding is that much more than the local system is at risk. Than again, IANAA
As personally distasteful as I find this -- I'm not sure this constitutes a breach of any laws. "Kiddie porn" involves the sexual photography (and horrible exploitation) of children. It is difficult to see who is being "hurt" by this Second Life activity. Yes, one can make the argument that if one engages in virtual fantasy, one is more likely to engage in the 'real thing'. But this is a straw man argument that has been applied to video games for years with zero proof of any virtual/real-world crossover.
The question ultimately becomes: Can fantasy involving only digital, or make-believe characters, be illegal?
If the answer is yes, I find that to be extremely disturbing in an Orwellian sense. While I find the concept of finding children sexually appealing to be personally abhorrent, I'm not sure the law extends (or should extend) into virtual roleplaying between consenting adults.
My two cents.
We'll likely never know how many populated worlds were destroyed from the gamma ray burst. But all life "nearby" would have been instantly killed.
FunCom and Blizzard come from different planets as far as culture and ethos, and IMHO its why FunCom will always be a second rate game company. (The industry will probably never forget the absolute disaster that was the AO rollout. I was personally one of the thousands in line waiting for a full refund for that atrocity). Unlike Blizzard, FunCom sticks to release schedules and predefined featuresets (among many other problems) which will always result in buggy gameplay and cut corners.
What we have now in the industry is a few players who were successful *primarily because they were early to the scene* (FunCom being one. I personally hope Mythic isn't another, but they may be). These players really don't necessarily have the caliber to maintain their position and IMHO will vanish over time.
So when FunCom says "The industry so needs competition to WoW" its very true. Except that FunCom isn't really in the running. The bar of quality and depth has been raised significantly by WoW, and the result is a black-hole which sucks players away from the competition. ArenaNet is still looking strong, and other contenders like LOTRO and DDO are looking good, but FunCom? No.
20 simultaneous players in GVG...
... that's all "the game", not just a "chat room". And even if it were: "chat" is also part of the game.
Not to mention the fact that for some reason you're excluding towns from the "game". As if they're not a completely vital part of a MMO.
Buying, selling, trading, crafting
Once again, you're using your own semantics to prove your own definition.
Circular.
And the defining characteristic of an MMO is what exactly?
Enter any town and there are hundreds of simultaneous players there.
That's massively multiplayer. Who made you the god of semantics?
I know its free, but Guild Wars is about a billion times better looking (and strategically far deeper) -- and it costs $40 with no monthly fees whatsoever. I find it amazing that anyone could pay a monthly membership for a shockwave game that looks like its from the early 1990's. I've played RuneScape and WoW and I have to say GW is probably the best deal in MMO gaming I've seen to date.