This type of software schema has been in effect in MMO's for years... Although the microtransactions that you are referring to are usually called "expansions" (sarc) ala EQ, EQ2, WOW, GW, etc.
EVE Online doesn't toy with you like that. You pay for game time, not for a boxed copy and then monthly and then for expansions and then for every little fucking "mount" and shit.
They're already pulling this shit. The new Price of Persia game doesn't really end and it is painfully obvious it's that way to sell you the "DLC", which is essentially the ending of the game. I got the game for 14, I would have murdered someone if I paid 60 and had to pay another 10 to witness the climax. For the PC version you can't even buy "Epilogue".
Which is why it won't happen. Here's how I predict things going down:
Steve strolls out, makes some remarks about huge sales of the iPhone 4.
"Bound to be a few issues reported when you have such a large share of the market", etc, etc.
Some tap dancing about real-world performance, estimated signal strength, "every cell phone does it", and an assortment of contemptuous remarks or outright lies, much like the explanation of why apps aren't approved at the iPhone 4 reveal event.
White model ship date announced, bumper cases quietly go on sale for $20 with no announcement, and Steve wraps up with some feel-good piece hoping to bury the issue(s).
Apple's board of directors make a few phone calls to Steve's health care providers to see if he's up to date on payments for that liver he bought, hoping not to have their front man degrade into the next Ken Kutaragi.
I like the Microsoft process:
Steve strolls out, throws some chairs.
End of discussion.
Simple and direct.
I agree, however it's hard to emulate in my own life. I was committed for about a month after attempting the chair throwing and walking out. The reason it was only a month was because I pulled off the Jobsian Mind Warp much better, bringing out some graphs detailing the historical usage of chair-throwing by plenty of other sane people while having some of the other in-patients sneak some oxy into my doctors` drinks.
Perhaps a combination of the two, the Jobs/Ballmer Maneuver, where you softly placate the crowd a while before having someone come up and making an example out of them.
Why this push for everything to be 3-D? It was a stupid novelty years ago, and its no less stupid now.
Some gimmicks live longer than others. Some are undead monsters from the depths of Hell who, despite the attempts of the righteous, will always return, invincible. Some evils are less corrupting when embraced.
Unless expressly stated otherwise we already assume you're not a lawyer.;)
Says you, I don't assume there's any lawyers, physicists, mathematicians or any of that higher education stuff on Slashdot. Everyone on the internet lacks credentials by design of anonyminity.
It's all one big networked lie completely lacking any veracity!
If someone figures out a way to get past rudimentary math skills in a game (Inventory space / x bullets per y clips) then you'll have a winner but I can't think of any situation where you're going to challenge kids enough for them to do it in game and no so much that they feel frustrated with the game and look up the answer.
EVE online? Which is basically a spreadsheet with a fancy 3d screen saver? Its way too grindy for my taste, so impatient kids will not tolerate it. But something like it might do OK...
Nah, you can ignore the numbers and still do a lot. Hell, obsessing over numbers doesn't dictate the winner.
Problem with EVE (though I do play it all the time) is it tests your patience more than anything. It's like 90% waiting for something to happen, even when something's happening. Not for the novelty-seekers.
I'm shocked that it's been allowed to progress this far. I always thought that it was a war crime to use robots in this fashion. It's great to keep people out of harms way when it's your people. But when the bots are on the other side it's a different story. Not just that, but without an actual person there, it gets really hard to ascertain what's going on. Not to mention, the increased likelihood of a Terminator style robots running amok scenario.
It wasn't too long ago that people were there to "ascertain the situation" with a couple of gunships that wiped out a group of innocents.
I was kidding. But one can only hope something shuts down that huge pile of crap.
Does Facebook hurt you? Are other people not allowed to choose what to do with their time? Is it wrong that hundreds of millions of people blindly give away their personal information while Facebook wildly profits from it? Are you somehow harmed by those hundreds of millions of people helping to effectively justify privacy invasion and a slow erosion of civil rights?
It's like back when analog was around and trying to find the right position for the cheap antenna because you couldn't afford something better... except with SETI you can't be reasonably sure there's something to be found or the Intergalactic Space Government hasn't forced people to switch to digital yet.
MD5s don't hold information, they're a trap-door. It's perfectly possible that another combination of characters would lead to the same MD5, but it's incredibly unlikely that those characters would be lingually meaningful.
Passwords are often "stored" server-side as a hash. Why I quote "stored" is because the password isn't stored at all! The server doesn't know the actual password, you would have to digest every possible combination of characters to find a hash that exactly matches the one stored on the server, but by knowing a string that already does (your password) you're already there.
MD5 alone is a poor choice for trapping important strings because it is possible to "plan" a collision... for example, if a web-site offered you a file and an MD5 hash to test the source of that file, with enough cleverness and computing power another party could give you a different file with the same MD5 hash.
It falls plumb between trademark and copyright stools, but take a look at the uncropped picture of the laser. Ask 12 good men and true if it's not blindingly (ho ho) obvious that this device has been deliberately designed to look like a lightsaber, and I think you'll get an answer in the affirmative.
Whether that's actionable or not is a more nuanced question, but can we please be honest about the design remit at work here. This is a lightsaber clone, with enough small differences that they can make a fight of it, grabbing more publicity all the way.
Even if it was specifically meant to look like a "lightsaber" it can be argued that the shape is the most practical for handling and mounting and if there wasn't a beam of fucking light coming out of it it could be mistaken for a dozen other things.
Unless she was planning on never having her C&D's known about, I think she has a distorted perception on what the public understands to be a "Dick Move", politically speaking.
I have to agree Apple is getting a tone of slashdot attention. Knowing Apple's reputation they probably plan and want the publicity. But lately they been getting a lot of negative attention which is not a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
This type of software schema has been in effect in MMO's for years... Although the microtransactions that you are referring to are usually called "expansions" (sarc) ala EQ, EQ2, WOW, GW, etc.
EVE Online doesn't toy with you like that. You pay for game time, not for a boxed copy and then monthly and then for expansions and then for every little fucking "mount" and shit.
They're already pulling this shit. The new Price of Persia game doesn't really end and it is painfully obvious it's that way to sell you the "DLC", which is essentially the ending of the game. I got the game for 14, I would have murdered someone if I paid 60 and had to pay another 10 to witness the climax. For the PC version you can't even buy "Epilogue".
Fucking whores.
Which is why it won't happen. Here's how I predict things going down:
I like the Microsoft process:
Simple and direct.
I agree, however it's hard to emulate in my own life. I was committed for about a month after attempting the chair throwing and walking out. The reason it was only a month was because I pulled off the Jobsian Mind Warp much better, bringing out some graphs detailing the historical usage of chair-throwing by plenty of other sane people while having some of the other in-patients sneak some oxy into my doctors` drinks.
Perhaps a combination of the two, the Jobs/Ballmer Maneuver, where you softly placate the crowd a while before having someone come up and making an example out of them.
s/steal/steel
Apparently you understood what they meant, so why are you correcting them?
Looks like they beat Tivo on this one. Doesn't GPLv3 forbid this? Oh, right, Linus didn't want to bother with that...
It only did everything!
Why this push for everything to be 3-D? It was a stupid novelty years ago, and its no less stupid now.
Some gimmicks live longer than others. Some are undead monsters from the depths of Hell who, despite the attempts of the righteous, will always return, invincible. Some evils are less corrupting when embraced.
Saw that article, problem is I fear I'm one of the worst about "picking up on social cues".
you said "defacto" and "with all their fancy latin words"... I lolled
That's 'merican talk. We done liberated it fer us.
Unless expressly stated otherwise we already assume you're not a lawyer. ;)
Says you, I don't assume there's any lawyers, physicists, mathematicians or any of that higher education stuff on Slashdot. Everyone on the internet lacks credentials by design of anonyminity.
It's all one big networked lie completely lacking any veracity!
I sincerely hope you're being a devils advocate and not really a douche.
Neither. Well, douche maybe, but it's better than advocating all those things I obviously didn't mean seriously.
*sighs* I hate Slashdot. There used to be people that could detect sarcasm.
If someone figures out a way to get past rudimentary math skills in a game (Inventory space / x bullets per y clips) then you'll have a winner but I can't think of any situation where you're going to challenge kids enough for them to do it in game and no so much that they feel frustrated with the game and look up the answer.
EVE online? Which is basically a spreadsheet with a fancy 3d screen saver? Its way too grindy for my taste, so impatient kids will not tolerate it. But something like it might do OK...
Nah, you can ignore the numbers and still do a lot. Hell, obsessing over numbers doesn't dictate the winner.
Problem with EVE (though I do play it all the time) is it tests your patience more than anything. It's like 90% waiting for something to happen, even when something's happening. Not for the novelty-seekers.
I'm shocked that it's been allowed to progress this far. I always thought that it was a war crime to use robots in this fashion. It's great to keep people out of harms way when it's your people. But when the bots are on the other side it's a different story. Not just that, but without an actual person there, it gets really hard to ascertain what's going on. Not to mention, the increased likelihood of a Terminator style robots running amok scenario.
It wasn't too long ago that people were there to "ascertain the situation" with a couple of gunships that wiped out a group of innocents.
I was kidding. But one can only hope something shuts down that huge pile of crap.
Does Facebook hurt you? Are other people not allowed to choose what to do with their time? Is it wrong that hundreds of millions of people blindly give away their personal information while Facebook wildly profits from it? Are you somehow harmed by those hundreds of millions of people helping to effectively justify privacy invasion and a slow erosion of civil rights?
WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA!?
It's like back when analog was around and trying to find the right position for the cheap antenna because you couldn't afford something better... except with SETI you can't be reasonably sure there's something to be found or the Intergalactic Space Government hasn't forced people to switch to digital yet.
Thanks for the admonishment, you're truly a benefit to this community.
MD5s don't hold information, they're a trap-door. It's perfectly possible that another combination of characters would lead to the same MD5, but it's incredibly unlikely that those characters would be lingually meaningful.
Passwords are often "stored" server-side as a hash. Why I quote "stored" is because the password isn't stored at all! The server doesn't know the actual password, you would have to digest every possible combination of characters to find a hash that exactly matches the one stored on the server, but by knowing a string that already does (your password) you're already there.
MD5 alone is a poor choice for trapping important strings because it is possible to "plan" a collision... for example, if a web-site offered you a file and an MD5 hash to test the source of that file, with enough cleverness and computing power another party could give you a different file with the same MD5 hash.
How can you prove it was specifically intended to resemble a lightsaber?
It falls plumb between trademark and copyright stools, but take a look at the uncropped picture of the laser. Ask 12 good men and true if it's not blindingly (ho ho) obvious that this device has been deliberately designed to look like a lightsaber, and I think you'll get an answer in the affirmative.
Whether that's actionable or not is a more nuanced question, but can we please be honest about the design remit at work here. This is a lightsaber clone, with enough small differences that they can make a fight of it, grabbing more publicity all the way.
Slashdotted, here's another one... http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/The-Skin-Melting-Spyder-III-Pro-Arctic-Laser-Is-a-Real-Life-Lightsaber.jpeg
Even if it was specifically meant to look like a "lightsaber" it can be argued that the shape is the most practical for handling and mounting and if there wasn't a beam of fucking light coming out of it it could be mistaken for a dozen other things.
Everything they touch dies a horrible death.
You've probably ate a "Monsanto patented" food product already today. It's impossible to avoid on accident.
Where's the "-1 Didn't get it"?
Unless she was planning on never having her C&D's known about, I think she has a distorted perception on what the public understands to be a "Dick Move", politically speaking.
I have to agree Apple is getting a tone of slashdot attention. Knowing Apple's reputation they probably plan and want the publicity. But lately they been getting a lot of negative attention which is not a good thing.
News for Apples, Stuff that Apples.
Or a large number of people can go in as a single entity.
No... more... analogies...