If games are so short and unreplayable that people have to buy games that often, then something seriously needs to be rethought.
Huh? From the perspective of the publisher, that sounds like an ideal situation. Maybe a starry-eyed idealist programmer would agree with you, but to the bean counters, expensive frequently purchased trinkets is exactly what should be done.
Right. Through history, a lot of names that originally were "stupid" have lost their insulting nature and turned into respected titles. Actions do in fact speak louder than words, so if this party can actually accomplish something I'd think their choice of words for their name will cease to be a bother.
law that makes owning an electronic device without a serial number equivalent to High Treason.
Gamers are pretty serious about taking care of their stuff. Try to sell them a device that's been defaced and you just might hear some angry words. There might even be discussion of violence. As we all know, once you get to that point high treason is just around the corner.
I'm 40 miles out from downtown Chicago, and about all I can spot anymore is Orion's belt. Some of the planets break through the city glow, too. That's pretty much it.
I grew up in a much more rural region, and only after "citifying" myself did I realize how bad light pollution has become. Would be nice if it was feasible to do something about it.
A lot of my lack of desire to do well in math/science was caused by a complete lack of understanding why any of it mattered, and how I could apply it to things I wanted to do. In general, if I couldn't make use of information I generally got bored with learning it.
Literary classes were a bit easier because it was tied closely to liesure, I liked reading, so it was easy to to do well at it.
Since finishing high school (and dropping out of college), I've gone back and self-taught myself a lot of the math skills I neglected because it is used in a number of my hobbies. It's a lot more interesting when it's a prereq for building a trebuchet or hacking on a 3D engine.;)
"Wind farms cause women to have five periods a month and give them brain cancer."
Even worse, windmills steal energy from the planet, and due to the requirement of the conservation of energy, will slow down earth's rotation, destroy its orbit, and send us crashing into the sun!
I could be wrong, but I just have never seen what your described in your post.
Same here. I grew up in a land that has snow on the ground from October to April, and never once met with anyone giving advice to lock the tires in a slide. Even in the days before ABS, the line was "pump your brakes" when trying to stop on ice.
Tires function kind of funny in that they grip their best when on the threshold of a slide. Lock your tires and you blow past that limit and end up going in a straight line as momentum dictates.. rarely a desireable situation.
Tires only have 100% traction, if you're using all of it to stop you got nothing left for steering. That's what ABS prevents.
Unless of course a scientist is fudging his results to maintain a desired result. Science as a community product isn't faith based, but only a fool would extend that to mean that anyone in a lab coat is an impartial participant.
Not that you were explicitly suggesting otherwise, but I figured it was worth saying anyways.
I toured it too. I think the more interesting part is that this experiment has only been running for a year, when they started it up they were predicting it could take years to get enough data to make conclusions.
They only expected to see one or two neutrinos hit the targets per day, out of billions of particles being shot.
The dumb "level matching" feature between your level and the enemies you encounter. It seems like a decent idea on paper but in practice it results in some bafflingly stupid situations. You'll run across bandits that are geared to the teeth with rare magical stuff, despite the fact you killed them 5-10 levels ago and all they dropped was leather. You never get the feeling that you "found" something, because in the corner of your brain you'll know that with your most recent level you triggered a loot upgrade and the game dutifully dispensed some +1 trinket to you.
Fights never get easier, or harder, as you level. Everything becomes more powerful as you become more powerful, ensuring you come out of a fight exactly the way you did in earlier levels. Good for balance, extremely poor decision for conveying to the player that they are getting stronger.
Thankfully there are mods out that fix this. It truly is a spectacular game, the current pinnacle of the genre. The downside is that this perfection only causes the poorly made decisions to sting stronger.
It's not the rumble that was patented, but the specific implementation of it.
Nintendo has a rumbling implementation as well, yet they never got sued. Only a part of it was that Immersion got their patent a year or so after Nintendo made their implementation.. the other piece is that Nintendo's works much differently than what Immersion patented.
Sony (and Microsoft) however, ripped off Immersion's implementation. Microsoft knew they had no case, so settled. Sony thought they did, and put them where they are now.
Many patents are rediculous, but I don't think this particular case is one of them.
It's not the software google wanted to buy, but the name and the userbase. I mean really, it's a website that lets you post pictures and make comments about them. A blog with pictures.
The company that makes one of the most advanced search engines in the world could surely duplicate such software, and get it done quickly.
Brand recognition though, you can't whip that out whenever you want.
Instead of having Marge carry her in, they composited her in.
They did it for Bart too, within the time Marge cuts in front of him he goes from rushing to his spot to sitting comfortably. Looks really odd once you notice it.
told me that those purple boxes used to sell for ~$125k. Now, he says you can pick up the newer ones for around $25k. That's quite the drop in market dominance.
Actually I'd wager the price drop was to stay in competition with the growing dominance of cheap commodity hardware. Of course it didn't work, but that's besides the point.
Place I'm at used to be a big SGI place.. O2000, 192 cpus, 48 GB memory, was a multi-million monster when it was new. It ran a batch server for user jobs. Then in 2001 they started buying clusters of cheap 2U linux servers, which were also allocated to running batch jobs. The linux nodes were far less stable (was early 2.4 kernel days) but quickly started outperforming the O2000.
Last year it was retired, the biggest argument for the even being the maintenence costs were prohibitive compared to the amount of computing power provided, more power could be bought with the same money by getting cheap linux boxes. Last I heard pieces of it were appearing on ebay for $100 a pop.
SGI's prices simply aren't competitive with your basic intel or athlon box, even at 25k.
I know I saw the TeamSpeak icon on a coworker's laptop the other day, and came very close to asking him what game it was for.
It's a double edged sword. Few years back someone at work caught me browsing an Everquest site, and immediatley asked where I played and how long I'd been doing it. I'm not incapable of participating in idle chat, but discussing +1 shiny swords within earshot of co-workers is beyond the level of geekiness I can tolerate. I grunted out answers to his questions, feigned interest, and as soon as he wandered off hoped he'd never talk to me about it again.
Wasn't to be. At least once a week he stopped by trying to offer me stories about the adventures he'd been going on, asking if I had any stories to tell.
Slashdot Mirror
If games are so short and unreplayable that people have to buy games that often, then something seriously needs to be rethought.
Huh? From the perspective of the publisher, that sounds like an ideal situation. Maybe a starry-eyed idealist programmer would agree with you, but to the bean counters, expensive frequently purchased trinkets is exactly what should be done.
Right. Through history, a lot of names that originally were "stupid" have lost their insulting nature and turned into respected titles. Actions do in fact speak louder than words, so if this party can actually accomplish something I'd think their choice of words for their name will cease to be a bother.
law that makes owning an electronic device without a serial number equivalent to High Treason.
Gamers are pretty serious about taking care of their stuff. Try to sell them a device that's been defaced and you just might hear some angry words. There might even be discussion of violence. As we all know, once you get to that point high treason is just around the corner.
I'm 40 miles out from downtown Chicago, and about all I can spot anymore is Orion's belt. Some of the planets break through the city glow, too. That's pretty much it.
I grew up in a much more rural region, and only after "citifying" myself did I realize how bad light pollution has become. Would be nice if it was feasible to do something about it.
Well at least this version won't get morphed into a 3rd rate Tom Cruise action movie.
So it can't be all bad.
A lot of my lack of desire to do well in math/science was caused by a complete lack of understanding why any of it mattered, and how I could apply it to things I wanted to do. In general, if I couldn't make use of information I generally got bored with learning it.
;)
Literary classes were a bit easier because it was tied closely to liesure, I liked reading, so it was easy to to do well at it.
Since finishing high school (and dropping out of college), I've gone back and self-taught myself a lot of the math skills I neglected because it is used in a number of my hobbies. It's a lot more interesting when it's a prereq for building a trebuchet or hacking on a 3D engine.
How about we patch Windows so it swaps the 'Yes' and 'No' buttons. Problem solved.
They found cut and polished stone blocks.
I found a brick in my backyard once. It was buried under some leaves. There must be a pyramid under there!
"Wind farms cause women to have five periods a month and give them brain cancer."
Even worse, windmills steal energy from the planet, and due to the requirement of the conservation of energy, will slow down earth's rotation, destroy its orbit, and send us crashing into the sun!
I could be wrong, but I just have never seen what your described in your post.
Same here. I grew up in a land that has snow on the ground from October to April, and never once met with anyone giving advice to lock the tires in a slide. Even in the days before ABS, the line was "pump your brakes" when trying to stop on ice.
Tires function kind of funny in that they grip their best when on the threshold of a slide. Lock your tires and you blow past that limit and end up going in a straight line as momentum dictates.. rarely a desireable situation.
Tires only have 100% traction, if you're using all of it to stop you got nothing left for steering. That's what ABS prevents.
Everybody does stupid things, but to be reminded about them every single day must be hell.
Then perhaps he shouldn't have hit the record button.
Feeling bad for the kid is fine, but if someone seeing the things you do is going to cause distress, don't bloody do them in front of a camera.
science is not faith-based
Unless of course a scientist is fudging his results to maintain a desired result. Science as a community product isn't faith based, but only a fool would extend that to mean that anyone in a lab coat is an impartial participant.
Not that you were explicitly suggesting otherwise, but I figured it was worth saying anyways.
If you RTFA, you'd note she hasn't actually agreed to settle yet.
Doesn't completely invalidate his point though, Sony is responsible for many formats over the years that didn't achieve any kind of market dominance.
I toured it too. I think the more interesting part is that this experiment has only been running for a year, when they started it up they were predicting it could take years to get enough data to make conclusions.
They only expected to see one or two neutrinos hit the targets per day, out of billions of particles being shot.
The dumb "level matching" feature between your level and the enemies you encounter. It seems like a decent idea on paper but in practice it results in some bafflingly stupid situations. You'll run across bandits that are geared to the teeth with rare magical stuff, despite the fact you killed them 5-10 levels ago and all they dropped was leather. You never get the feeling that you "found" something, because in the corner of your brain you'll know that with your most recent level you triggered a loot upgrade and the game dutifully dispensed some +1 trinket to you.
Fights never get easier, or harder, as you level. Everything becomes more powerful as you become more powerful, ensuring you come out of a fight exactly the way you did in earlier levels. Good for balance, extremely poor decision for conveying to the player that they are getting stronger.
Thankfully there are mods out that fix this. It truly is a spectacular game, the current pinnacle of the genre. The downside is that this perfection only causes the poorly made decisions to sting stronger.
We all just need more love, that is the answer. =)
The females I try to talk to when doing my laundary at the local coin-op apparently never got that memo.
do you realize how much bitching that would create
Probably equal in proportion to the amount of bitching that not changing it creates.
France, where Mandrake was based and where his employment contract was signed, is not a state of the United States of America.
A regrettable oversight. We'll get to you guys once we're done with Iran.
It's not the rumble that was patented, but the specific implementation of it.
Nintendo has a rumbling implementation as well, yet they never got sued. Only a part of it was that Immersion got their patent a year or so after Nintendo made their implementation.. the other piece is that Nintendo's works much differently than what Immersion patented.
Sony (and Microsoft) however, ripped off Immersion's implementation. Microsoft knew they had no case, so settled. Sony thought they did, and put them where they are now.
Many patents are rediculous, but I don't think this particular case is one of them.
It's not the software google wanted to buy, but the name and the userbase. I mean really, it's a website that lets you post pictures and make comments about them. A blog with pictures.
The company that makes one of the most advanced search engines in the world could surely duplicate such software, and get it done quickly.
Brand recognition though, you can't whip that out whenever you want.
Instead of having Marge carry her in, they composited her in.
They did it for Bart too, within the time Marge cuts in front of him he goes from rushing to his spot to sitting comfortably. Looks really odd once you notice it.
Sounds like a good excuse to weasel out of going to church.
"but honey, what if a patient needs me?"
told me that those purple boxes used to sell for ~$125k. Now, he says you can pick up the newer ones for around $25k. That's quite the drop in market dominance.
Actually I'd wager the price drop was to stay in competition with the growing dominance of cheap commodity hardware. Of course it didn't work, but that's besides the point.
Place I'm at used to be a big SGI place.. O2000, 192 cpus, 48 GB memory, was a multi-million monster when it was new. It ran a batch server for user jobs. Then in 2001 they started buying clusters of cheap 2U linux servers, which were also allocated to running batch jobs. The linux nodes were far less stable (was early 2.4 kernel days) but quickly started outperforming the O2000.
Last year it was retired, the biggest argument for the even being the maintenence costs were prohibitive compared to the amount of computing power provided, more power could be bought with the same money by getting cheap linux boxes. Last I heard pieces of it were appearing on ebay for $100 a pop.
SGI's prices simply aren't competitive with your basic intel or athlon box, even at 25k.
I know I saw the TeamSpeak icon on a coworker's laptop the other day, and came very close to asking him what game it was for.
It's a double edged sword. Few years back someone at work caught me browsing an Everquest site, and immediatley asked where I played and how long I'd been doing it. I'm not incapable of participating in idle chat, but discussing +1 shiny swords within earshot of co-workers is beyond the level of geekiness I can tolerate. I grunted out answers to his questions, feigned interest, and as soon as he wandered off hoped he'd never talk to me about it again.
Wasn't to be. At least once a week he stopped by trying to offer me stories about the adventures he'd been going on, asking if I had any stories to tell.
No, I do not have any stories, you boob.