Since they have "Spock Prime" from the alternate future, they are also set up to have new and diverging technology to do cooler things with and travel further; possibly meet Next Gen species earlier.
I can also see Neo Star Trek replacing Lost's time slot when it ends, and that this movie succeeding being the criteria for more funding. At least, I hope so...
Actually, you can also play your own music in games on your Xbox, and Xbox Live has an online store for games and videos. Other than a multi-touch interface (Nintendo DS's turf), what is Apple doing new besides combining these and putting their logo on it?
From Blizzard's point of view, is it really worth going after? If they put out an official iPhone client, a lot of people are going to drop the (at worst) buggy and (at best) unsupported unofficial clients for the latest and greatest Blizzard one. It's worth more to them to keep their customers happy then to be The Source for an iPhone ap that they'll like;y not even break even on developing and maintaining (since clients themselves are usually, what, free?), unless they plan on charging an arm and a leg for it (above and beyond the other arm and leg it costs your for your monthly fees).
Simple: because it's much smarter to expect tech savvy users to be able to turn off autorun if they don't want it than for tech novices to turn it on if they do. Remember, if they're running Vista, it may be because they can't compile their own Linux distro to run on a Beowulf cluster of PS3's - they may just be your grandma trying to run their card-making or Tax software.
when you register, linden labs clearly states that what the people make is their work, and linden labs doesn't interfere... so why does taser try this? They need to contact the maker, but of course it's easier to get linden labs.
You're missing the point... Linden is $worth$ $going$ $after$, the (probably) tweenage kid selling these things on 2nd Life isn't.
At least with NetFlix if you get tired of the Postal problems and broken/scratched discs, you can look for something to stream. If it wasn't for the streaming stuff, I'd have canceled by now. The last disc I ordered a month ago is sitting waiting for me to do something with it while I have more fun streaming old Doctor Who and Red Dwarf episodes on demand.
Unfortunately, there's no real equivalent for streaming NetFlix style games... yet.
Other search engines not owned by Microsoft don't support this integration, so the filter blocks them as they would otherwise be a trivial way around the filter.
This seems reasonable. So it wasn't a devious attempt to block a competitor, just a very rigid safety feature that is unmotivated to integrate competitive products. Unfortunately, this will very likely drive a large chunk of people away from using it, and will make a lot of users think that MS is just being a dick.
Unfortunately, some parents may just turn it on for their kids without testing it thoroughly and not realize what their safety filter is locking their kids into.
As a former employee more recent than the ones in the above chain, I wanted to say that this policy has been in place even to this day. It was there when I was an employee 3 years ago, and when I go in and chat with the new guys, they say its the only reason they still work there. Our store manager had restricted it to used games only since he wasa bitch, but it was still something to keep us going. The "glow" of working around video games dies pretty quickly when you have do deal with:
People who trade in their entire collection of scratched up 5-10 year old games, and they need the money to make rent and get very angry when the game they paid $50-60 dollars a few years ago is now selling for less than $10 so trades in for $3-$5
Kids who have piles of sticky quarters and dimes they want you to count to see if it ads up to the new Pokemon, and you need to talk them down to an old $5 Game Boy Color Yu-Gi-Oh game
High school nerds who know more about games than you do since they have the time and money to play them all, and consider GameStop their haven and you their Diety/Best Friend/Spiritual Advisor/something else you don't want to be to them (most of the employees fall into this pool)
Parents who think this is like a used car lot and the the *nudge wink* " I know how this works, you can come down $15 on this, right?" stuff that corporate would sooner fire you than ask about the situation if you did.
But it's not the check-out policy that bothered me about working there, it was that they tracked every employee's magazine/discount card subscriptions and the reservations they got. Didn't do corporate minimums? You didn't get hours to work. This would drive many employees to be incredibly pushy about it, which is what a lot of people refer to as their "horror stories" when going to GameStop. Just understand, their job was probably on the line.
3 providers that have gone out of business?! Really? Here's what I do, maybe it can help you:
Get free universal / generic address from a slightly more permanent company, like Hotmail or Gmail, and have it forward to whatever you're using now. Easier to switch the "forward to" address in the settings than do what you're doing if you throw in your lot with... whatever sort of oddball providers you keep using. If you don't want to use it much, you can at least use it for your email verification address and not hand it out to friends. "firstname.lastname@hotgmail.bum" is usually good since you won't forget it if you don't use it much.
That way, when the DRM fairy comes pounding at your e-door, you can answer!
Possibility 1.5: Apple uses a database in countries where internet database connectivity isn't a problem, and hashes in countries where they perceive most stores won't have internet connectivity.
Similar business models that work on the web for "free" stuff may work for Facebook as well. I'm not familiar with your game's specifics, but developers generally offer MMO's (especially ones from Korea breaking in overseas) for free to attract people, then offer premium content for an extra price (cooler equipment, avatar accessories, etc). They offer everything from traditional MMO-style fantasy games to online virtual golf with the same basic business model.
If all the coolest stuff is already free, it sounds like your friend just didn't plan this in such a way that can make money. Since he didn't know how Facebook pays developers, I would definitely say that planning and profit was not a priority. Maybe the game can be redesigned so all the cool free stuff just isn't as cool as the newer paid content.
Yeah, whereas conversely, Nintendo's approach: 1. Make it fairly simple to develop for 2. Rake in money from swarms of 3rd party shovelware and the occasional 1st & 3rd party decent game 3....Profit
It could be that because you didn't pay for those games, you didn't value them as much as much as someone who forked over $$ for the game. Because of this, you didn't force yourself over the learning curve for that particular game and went back to one you were more familiar with.
It may not be the case for all people or for all games, but I've found that when I buy a game that's kinda old but really good really cheap (like Jak & Daxter for $5 used), I play it for a bit, like it a lot, but then put it down and never pick it back up after a new game comes out that I paid full price for. I never really thought about it before, but I played the hell out of it and gave it more of a chance because I know I paid more for it, as opposed to a pile of games I'm looking at right now that I got used relatively cheap, that were good but I know I'll never pick back up.
It may be because somewhere inside my head, I put a value on my free time?
Well, the thing about "Faster Better Cheaper" is that you can only have two. Frequently with NASA, we rarely get more than none, and generally when we do get one, it's "cheaper" that ends up blowing up astronauts trying to launch or land.
Unfortunately, it's hard to mass-produce when we're only building one every few years. By the time we'd want a mass-produced part, it's technologically obsolete.
Profit is hard to calculate, but sales revenue isn't. If the claim on wikipedia is 8 million unit sales globally (which could be out of date, I didn't verify it, but we'll start there), and assuming a 50% split between USD$60 game and $100 game+guitar, we get about $640 million in sales. Not far from a billion, and international sales, DLC, additional guitars, more recent sales figures and a split weighed more to guitar packs could bring it closer the $billion mark.
Xbox 360 and PS3 media players already support h264 video and AAC audio in the MP4 container. It's what I use (yay for large portable USB hard drives). Repackaging MKV to MP4 to work on them is trivial, it generally involves using MKVdemux and MP4Box or YAMB unless your video/audio is a non-standard stream or has subtitles.
By the way, for some reason the user information page (right before the download page) has trouble loading when using Chrome, but works fine in IE. I don't know why this comes as a shock to me...
Actually, their Household Panel methodology is pretty well known. A certain number of households are tracked based on their media viewing and usage, similarly to how their TV viewing is monitored.
With the video game usage, there would be a box on top of their TV where they just enter which console they're using, and they just play while the device measures the time. Households are representative of a nationally representative population, so (as TFA notes) numbers are extrapolated from their sample to apply to the nation. Nielsen pays them to be monitored, so there is financial motivation to be accurate in their data reporting, and households generally get used to it fairly quickly. Nielsen Household panel data then becomes some of the most accurate and highly paid-for data available.
But... but it's "quantitative!" That makes it "TRUE," which will mean scientific and government papers will be quoting it as an authoritative scientific source for years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if it looked more interesting than it does.
But I won't feel much sympathy when the cut-off peasants storm his gates holding pitchforks, hot pokers and rope.
You mean old motherboards with pointy edges, unshielded power supplies and LAN cables?
Since they have "Spock Prime" from the alternate future, they are also set up to have new and diverging technology to do cooler things with and travel further; possibly meet Next Gen species earlier.
I can also see Neo Star Trek replacing Lost's time slot when it ends, and that this movie succeeding being the criteria for more funding. At least, I hope so...
Actually, you can also play your own music in games on your Xbox, and Xbox Live has an online store for games and videos. Other than a multi-touch interface (Nintendo DS's turf), what is Apple doing new besides combining these and putting their logo on it?
From Blizzard's point of view, is it really worth going after? If they put out an official iPhone client, a lot of people are going to drop the (at worst) buggy and (at best) unsupported unofficial clients for the latest and greatest Blizzard one. It's worth more to them to keep their customers happy then to be The Source for an iPhone ap that they'll like;y not even break even on developing and maintaining (since clients themselves are usually, what, free?), unless they plan on charging an arm and a leg for it (above and beyond the other arm and leg it costs your for your monthly fees).
Why wasn't this the default to begin with?
Simple: because it's much smarter to expect tech savvy users to be able to turn off autorun if they don't want it than for tech novices to turn it on if they do. Remember, if they're running Vista, it may be because they can't compile their own Linux distro to run on a Beowulf cluster of PS3's - they may just be your grandma trying to run their card-making or Tax software.
when you register, linden labs clearly states that what the people make is their work, and linden labs doesn't interfere... so why does taser try this? They need to contact the maker, but of course it's easier to get linden labs.
You're missing the point... Linden is $worth$ $going$ $after$, the (probably) tweenage kid selling these things on 2nd Life isn't.
At least with NetFlix if you get tired of the Postal problems and broken/scratched discs, you can look for something to stream. If it wasn't for the streaming stuff, I'd have canceled by now. The last disc I ordered a month ago is sitting waiting for me to do something with it while I have more fun streaming old Doctor Who and Red Dwarf episodes on demand.
Unfortunately, there's no real equivalent for streaming NetFlix style games... yet.
Other search engines not owned by Microsoft don't support this integration, so the filter blocks them as they would otherwise be a trivial way around the filter.
This seems reasonable. So it wasn't a devious attempt to block a competitor, just a very rigid safety feature that is unmotivated to integrate competitive products. Unfortunately, this will very likely drive a large chunk of people away from using it, and will make a lot of users think that MS is just being a dick.
Unfortunately, some parents may just turn it on for their kids without testing it thoroughly and not realize what their safety filter is locking their kids into.
As a former employee more recent than the ones in the above chain, I wanted to say that this policy has been in place even to this day. It was there when I was an employee 3 years ago, and when I go in and chat with the new guys, they say its the only reason they still work there. Our store manager had restricted it to used games only since he wasa bitch, but it was still something to keep us going. The "glow" of working around video games dies pretty quickly when you have do deal with:
But it's not the check-out policy that bothered me about working there, it was that they tracked every employee's magazine/discount card subscriptions and the reservations they got. Didn't do corporate minimums? You didn't get hours to work. This would drive many employees to be incredibly pushy about it, which is what a lot of people refer to as their "horror stories" when going to GameStop. Just understand, their job was probably on the line.
3 providers that have gone out of business?! Really? Here's what I do, maybe it can help you:
Get free universal / generic address from a slightly more permanent company, like Hotmail or Gmail, and have it forward to whatever you're using now. Easier to switch the "forward to" address in the settings than do what you're doing if you throw in your lot with... whatever sort of oddball providers you keep using. If you don't want to use it much, you can at least use it for your email verification address and not hand it out to friends. "firstname.lastname@hotgmail.bum" is usually good since you won't forget it if you don't use it much.
That way, when the DRM fairy comes pounding at your e-door, you can answer!
Update: The guy is already on leave. It's amazing how short your political career can be just by being appointed to something by Obama...
Possibility 1.5: Apple uses a database in countries where internet database connectivity isn't a problem, and hashes in countries where they perceive most stores won't have internet connectivity.
Similar business models that work on the web for "free" stuff may work for Facebook as well. I'm not familiar with your game's specifics, but developers generally offer MMO's (especially ones from Korea breaking in overseas) for free to attract people, then offer premium content for an extra price (cooler equipment, avatar accessories, etc). They offer everything from traditional MMO-style fantasy games to online virtual golf with the same basic business model.
If all the coolest stuff is already free, it sounds like your friend just didn't plan this in such a way that can make money. Since he didn't know how Facebook pays developers, I would definitely say that planning and profit was not a priority. Maybe the game can be redesigned so all the cool free stuff just isn't as cool as the newer paid content.
Yeah, whereas conversely, Nintendo's approach: ...Profit
1. Make it fairly simple to develop for
2. Rake in money from swarms of 3rd party shovelware and the occasional 1st & 3rd party decent game
3.
It could be that because you didn't pay for those games, you didn't value them as much as much as someone who forked over $$ for the game. Because of this, you didn't force yourself over the learning curve for that particular game and went back to one you were more familiar with.
It may not be the case for all people or for all games, but I've found that when I buy a game that's kinda old but really good really cheap (like Jak & Daxter for $5 used), I play it for a bit, like it a lot, but then put it down and never pick it back up after a new game comes out that I paid full price for. I never really thought about it before, but I played the hell out of it and gave it more of a chance because I know I paid more for it, as opposed to a pile of games I'm looking at right now that I got used relatively cheap, that were good but I know I'll never pick back up.
It may be because somewhere inside my head, I put a value on my free time?
Well, the thing about "Faster Better Cheaper" is that you can only have two. Frequently with NASA, we rarely get more than none, and generally when we do get one, it's "cheaper" that ends up blowing up astronauts trying to launch or land.
Unfortunately, it's hard to mass-produce when we're only building one every few years. By the time we'd want a mass-produced part, it's technologically obsolete.
Repeat? http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/08/2043206
Yeah, but does it run Linux?
Why should they? They leave the cooking to the swedes! Bork bork bork.
Profit is hard to calculate, but sales revenue isn't. If the claim on wikipedia is 8 million unit sales globally (which could be out of date, I didn't verify it, but we'll start there), and assuming a 50% split between USD$60 game and $100 game+guitar, we get about $640 million in sales. Not far from a billion, and international sales, DLC, additional guitars, more recent sales figures and a split weighed more to guitar packs could bring it closer the $billion mark.
Xbox 360 and PS3 media players already support h264 video and AAC audio in the MP4 container. It's what I use (yay for large portable USB hard drives). Repackaging MKV to MP4 to work on them is trivial, it generally involves using MKVdemux and MP4Box or YAMB unless your video/audio is a non-standard stream or has subtitles.
By the way, for some reason the user information page (right before the download page) has trouble loading when using Chrome, but works fine in IE. I don't know why this comes as a shock to me...
Actually, their Household Panel methodology is pretty well known. A certain number of households are tracked based on their media viewing and usage, similarly to how their TV viewing is monitored.
With the video game usage, there would be a box on top of their TV where they just enter which console they're using, and they just play while the device measures the time. Households are representative of a nationally representative population, so (as TFA notes) numbers are extrapolated from their sample to apply to the nation. Nielsen pays them to be monitored, so there is financial motivation to be accurate in their data reporting, and households generally get used to it fairly quickly. Nielsen Household panel data then becomes some of the most accurate and highly paid-for data available.
Wikipedia has some more information on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Company
But... but it's "quantitative!" That makes it "TRUE," which will mean scientific and government papers will be quoting it as an authoritative scientific source for years to come.