You bet I remember that one. A buddy and I used to go to the arcade and play every other weekend. A good amount of the time the machine was broke - it just couldn't take the abuse. Too bad - it was cool!
The only complaint about it really, was that we'd keep putting in quarters, and beating the hell out of the machine - eventually, our knuckles couldn't take it. The rubberized surface on the buttons begins to tear up the skin, and makes ya look like you've taken on a brick wall recently. Ouch.;-)
Or you could look at the flip side of this - instead of it being an attack by activists, it could have also been an attack created by someone else. By timing it right, and adding the right message (and the right target), blame is easily passed to someone else completely.
Or, you could go with the theory that our own law enforcement agencies have set this up as a way of deeping the distrust of the Internet within the rest of the government (US, for those Non-US readers) so that harder CyberCrime laws are passed and larger budgets allocated.
I love the conspiracy game - it's so easy to find multiple targets for something like this!;-)
I think it should be noted that your comment really only applies to the games that make it to the shelves. There are a TON of fun games out there, that happen to have the same gameplay level as some of the old C64, Apple II, etc. games. Go hit VideoGameDownloads.com sometime and take a look around - not every game is done in 3D, and quite a few a good games with solid gameplay (however, separating the wheat from the chaff is a problem sometimes.) Yeah, I know - these aren't games offered on the shelves. But ya know - you can complain all you want about what's on the shelves, but you can't compain there aren't good games out there - there are.
And the situation is only getting better. Brian Hook, IIRC, is now changing his focus on develoment. Instead of trying to make the next multi-player extraviganza in 3D or money munching MMORPG, he's going after the classic games. (Of course, he's also refocusing what platform he's working on - Mac.) MidnightRyder.Com (that would be my company;-) is resurecting old gameplay in the form of Jumpman: 2049 and Trajectory (think Scorched Earth, but a bit more modern.) Trajectory may see shelves, but, Jumpman: 2049 probably never will, dispite the fact that IMHO it's going to have considerably more depth of play and actual play time than a good 3/4th of the stuff on the shelves these days.
As for the actual substance of modern games - well, I'll avoid the normal flame war that starts with these particular discussions;-) But - it's definitly a case of to each his own. I don't mind all the glitz - I love UT, for instance. But I also can't set down and enjoy it nearly as much as some of the stuff I did back in the C64 era. That's just me.
I hate to inform you of this, but, your conspiracy theory fall apart when you start to read the posts on/. Too many of them have somewhere between excellent and decent grammar, and most words are spelled correctly. Heck, even the tenses of words are correct. As has been proved time and time again, CmdrTaco cannot spell, use proper grammer, and tenses are a complete mystery to him.
Of course, I could just as easily be CmdrTaco in disguise. The whole spelling and grammar thing - it's all a ruse. I just post article... er, HE just post articles with bad spelling to produce a distinctive writing style, while using a totally different, almost sane, style while Astroturfing here on/.
More than that - you have to drink it EVERY DAY according to the novization. The reason why the knight had grown so old was from the times where his faith wavered, and he failed to drink from the Grail, which caused normal aging to resume.
I don't think that part of the expliation made it into the movie - for some reason, the book adaptation managed to stick in my head better than the movie (which is saying something - I thought the movie was great!)
As for Henry Jones, Jr (Indy) - if ya ever get the chance, check out the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He didn't age well at all, and is one seriously grumpy bastard.
(Just noticed how bad my spelling sucked - the heck with the spell checker today...)
The next step will be have to be a lemmings-based office application, or maybe a combat flight simulator-based intrusion detection system.
Lemmings-based office application? Ya know, Microsoft already has some office based applications that depend on lemmings buying them... It shouldn't be much of a streach from there.
(Ok, I don't normally take pot shots at Microsoft (they have treated me well on the only deal I've done with them), but I had to...)
Ya know, I'm surprised that I haven't seen any insightful commentary here on this - AmigaDE (NOT AmigaOS, there's a difference) actually does hold at least one interesting promise.
While JavaVM presents the ability to be cross-platform, it really only does so with a single language - Java. Not one of my favorites. AmigaDE, on the other hand, is more like C# in the idea that it isn't nessisarily tied to a single language. But even that isn't THAT Earth shattering.
The real issue here is a single methodology for all platforms, and basically a single 'desktop' environment for all platforms. Yes, there are ways of doing this now, but quite a few of them are far from being slick, and many of them aren't ready for things like being plopped into a PDA OR a desktop machine - one or the other. AmigaDE is designed to be ready for both (does it really live up to that? Well, that's a different story - I can't really vouch for it!)
Many persist that Amiga is a dead platform. Well, in some ways they are right - going out and buying an A1200 or A4000 right now probably isn't the wisest course of action (I'm sure some Amiga advocates will jump me about that because of the PCI connectors and PPC cards, etc. But seriously...!) But on the flip side of that, there's the AmigaDE which is a run-anywhere 'OS' (or application framework really), and then the whole roadmap for AmigaOS 4 & 5. Amiga seems to have a fairly good head of steam behind them, and a fairly good plan. I'm acutally planning on buying one of the new AmigaOS based G4 boxes when they come out - AmigaOS 4 + a nice speedy processor and the Matrox video card onboard should really make for a machine to make people drool again when they see how snappy it's UI is (and, hopefully, it once again raises the bar on 'multimedia'). The original Amiga is dead - but, that's not a bad thing. How many people have whined that x86 machines suck because of all the legacy support behind them, and that we should just chuck it all and start from scratch. Well, Amiga got that chance really, and is taking it.
They are a company to watch - but, just don't expect them to be taking on Microsoft really. More likely than not, they are going to be picking up the nitche market that Be held for a while, chipping at the Macs, and probably even getting in the road of Linux a little. Sounds like a good thing to me - everyone get forced to be a little more competitive again.
Ok, I put on the flame retardant suit. Do your worst.
When you put it this way, I can't help but think of BlipVerts from Max Headroom - time-compressed advertisements that were so intense (more than just a visual experience to) that sometimes the couch potatoes the ads were directed at exploded!
Somehow, I don't think any of us are going to explode from them, but, the way that ads are getting these days, BlipVerts may become a reality;-)
(Jesus - I'm wondering if anyone on here even REMEMBERS the Max Headroom series! Strange but good show:-)
If you follow FuckedCompany.Com you can get a rundown on all the companies that IdeaLab owns - and the fact that damned near all of them have failed or are failing as of late. In fact, I can't think of any of them offhand that is anything more than a spectacular failure, costing between $20 and $100 million each. These include: eToys.Com, Referer.Com, Cooking.Com, CarsDirect.Com, PetSmart.Com (yes, that's an IdeaLab funded one), Modo.Net, FIrstLook.Com, eve.com, and more...
Heck, here's the FuckedCompany search results on IdeaLab based companies - the funniest being the fact that IdeaLab owns the domain DogCrap.Com. Go fig.
In other words - this is move by IdeaLab to look like some sort of industry leader. Don't expect it to happen, or of it does, don't expect it to last very long - or for IdeaLab to last much longer. You can only pump so much money into a loosing situation before people completely give up.
OK, go to your favorite search engine, or shareware search engine. Pick a game style, say.... puzzle games. Now then, how many hits do you get back? As a consumer, how long will you spend looking? While it's cheesy (and I DON'T do this) quite a few people just keep re-submitting thier game so that in a dated list, it shows up first. Or they do things like put '++' at the beginning of the name to try and make it show up first (that was the case back in the BBS days, but, no longer really works that well.) So, if you are looking for a game, how long do you expect to spend clicking 'next' to find a game that you like? Not very damned long on the Internet anymore.
The problem isn't just getting your name out there - I don't do any 'brand recognition' advertising. It's trying to compete with the miriad of other programs of the same genre to capture the prospective customer's attention. I advertise in places where people look for games (two game search engines, a game fansite, and a game news portal.) So, the idea that someone just pops into a game search engine and finds something interesting is a bit of a problem - have you done that lately? This helps those who really want to push thier product stand out just a little. That's why I advertise instead of just putting it in the search engines and shareware game engines. Other people's reasons may vary. And if you don't like ads - well, I'm sure you know the address for Junkbuster!;-)
Ok, it REALLY hates fake HTML tags, no matter HOW you put them... it should have been (SARCASAM) and (/SARCASAM), with the appropriate >'s in the right places!
That's wierd... there should be a "" in there at the beginning, and "" at the end of the first paragraph. Apparently,/. hates fake HTML tags llike that....
OK, all kidding aside - while the SatireWire link did it to the extreme, there are some websites that are really starting to look like that, and I've seen a couple of news articles that looked much more like advertisements based on the way they were linked (see my sarcasam above.) Yeah, I pay for advertising - not much, mainly cause I can't afford it. But, you know, I don't think I *EVER* want to see my product stuck in the middle of an article on CNN.com or News.COm, etc., where it ends up smack-dab in the middle of an article - I figure if that starts being the case, people will start to associate my name and my games with BAD, ANNOYING THINGS! What I can't understand is - why don't other advertisers start seeing it this way? I understand the concept of 'brand recognition', but, if it starts to become negative, what the hell good is it doing?
*SIGH* - I know the rules, don't feed the trolls... but... I gotta respond to this one.
yeah and in a clump of shit there are carbon chains but guess what it is still a clump of shit
Yep. And you know what's interesting about that statement? A "clump of shit" would indicate the presence of life - ya can't have a clump of shit without someone to take a dump. Think about it...
It is well known that everyone ignore banner ads these days, as everyone is inured to them and filters them out of their mental bandwidth.
Not everyone ignores them. I say this, cause I'm one of the offenders - I buy ad space. Would I buy a 250 x 250 pixel popup? HELL NO. I don't want to annoy people, just little ways of catching thier attention, and get them to check out my product(s). (More on that in a minute.) Do people click-through on banners and button ads? Well, my limited experience so far - yep. But there's more to it than that...
We should be encouraging the banner ad makers to be inventive, and use flash and the like, rather than just being more obvious and intruding.
I *SO* disagree with this. First off, one of the reasons why ads are failing for most people is simple - they are missplaced (when is the last time you even noticed an ad on a chat area like/.? You aren't LOOKING for information on, oh, XML, so O'Reilly's ad for XML in a nutshell is mentally filtered.) I program games - so, the places I'm advertising are all game related (two shareware sites, one gaming site.) People are looking for games to download, or information on games - thier eyes are open to this sort of ad suddenly.
Second, unless it's cross-platform, and works on all browsers, why would you use it to create an advertisement you can't garantee will show up? You are just wasting money then. And for the ones that DO show it, you'll just end up waisting thier time as they download the ad - something else I learned, people don't wait for ads to load, unless the page is structured so that the ad has to be fully loaded before the page displays.
Whatever you do, it needs to be tight, quick loading, and viewable everywhere. But even more importantly, it needs to be targeted at the right place. Since advertisers are desperite at the moment, well, they will happily sell you space on Breast Cancer Discussion areas, even though your product is a First Person Shooter.
More focused ads, better advertising, etc. would improve the current problems. However, most advertisers are looking for 'eyeballs' more than anything else, trying to build brand recognition at any cost. Me, I just try and focus on selling the product at hand.
And, PLEASE, let's not get to the point where not only are there full-motion, sterio sound ads, but, that we have 3 or 4 of them per site battling it out! When it gets to that point, well, I guess I'll start resorting to junk buster:-(
I'm using PHPSlash for my Developer's Diaries section of MidnightRyder.Com. Actually, it runs the entire site:-) Anyway - it makes life simple to do something like a quick entry - just type it up in plain text or HTML, and hit submit - and your page is updated. I like it, you might want to check it out.
There are, however, some downsides - requires PHP4 (no big deal) and a MySQL database to power it (which might be a bigger deal for ya, depending on your ISP / Host). And it's probably a little over powered for just running an online-diary. But it sure saves you tons of time on updating pages!
And, of course, there are tons of other alternatives to that -/.'s engine can be used for the same thing (PHPSlash is a somewhat direvitive of the Slashcode - not much anymore, but, still the same idea). Look around a little bit at those two sites, and if they just look like too much effort, search for 'Blog' or 'Online Diary' in google or yahoo, and find all the rest of the cool little scripts for doing this out there!
Cool - nice to see you on here trying to put those who wonder in the know! But, this comment presents a problem:
Anyway, hope this clears up any concern.
Man, you must be kidding. Does that clear up the idea that SourceForge is going to loose a lot of people in the short term (IE, next 3-6 months)? Yep. Does that clear up the idea that in the longer term (1 - 2 years) SourceForge is going to have serious problem? Nope. I like the idea of SourceForge and all, but, it's still hard to see where all of this outlay is really getting VA it's money back. Sure, some of the projects get a fairly direct return back to VA when even nearly completed. But, take a look at the contents of SourceForge - very little of it really seems to apply. I mean, take a look at all those projects listed - a good number are half-ass thought out projects that are going to fail within the first two months because the creator of the project can't find people to help out or just plain old can develop the idea they came up with. Heck if I get another offer to join so-and-so's VB game project, complete with a link to a SourceForge project, I'm going to SHOOT SOMEONE! (Especially when I look, and there's not even a 'design' behind the game yet. *SIGH*)
It's hard to see where that much, well... random crap that SourceForge is having to support in terms of bandwidth, storage, and support requests really do much to contribute to VA's business. I'd probably have more faith in it if there was an approval process or something - IE, users submit a written request for the privilage of hosting a project on SourceForge. Something that makes them stop and think about what they are doing, instead of letting SourceForge become the GeoCities of Open Source projects. For every good project like CrystalSpace3D, there's now 3 projects in the 'pre-alpha' stage with no chance of getting any farther.
Anyway - I don't mean to sound like a troll or flamer who's saying it can't ever work, etc. Just pointing out what I've been seeing and have been heavily concerned about on SourceForge. On the flipside of those concerns, I think it's great that SourceForge exists, and provides access to a collaborative environment for Open Source developers with a minimum of hastle!
I didn't say to copy the content. In no way do I contend that needs to be done. I don't COMPLETELY agree with your opinon of what ends up on Kuro5hin, but, it does end up redundant bitching at times.
What I meant was, the stories that DO go up there normally are designed to inspire intelligent discussion, and often do!/. could use a lot more of stories designed do the same thing. Looking at how those stories create discussion, and the tone of how they are written could give good insight into what could change to produce more positive results on/. I don't want/. to be Kuro5hin, and I don't want Kuro5hin to be/. If I did, I'd be reading one or the other, and not bothering to express my opinion on the other one;-)
Definitely beating a deal horse there... But, there's more modification to the current content:
Less posting of stories without bothering to do ANY content checking
A little less hypocritical stories (daily outages of/. don't even get a 'whoops, we're having problems!', but God forbid MS's site goes down...)
A few less personal slams against the various companies mentioned in the posts - you know, if you don't like it, do like everyone else, and POST a comment inside the story!
(This falls in with the last one)Less MS bashing - you know, some of us actually *GASP* like some (not all) of the MS products:-)
And on the positive side:
More interactivity with the/. readers - don't like a story / company / technology / etc.? Then step down here with us little people, and talk about it.
More FACT CHECKING!
More interviews! (some of these have been awsome!)
More brains when selecting which stories do and don't get selected for posting - it's like/. uses a randomize to determine which stories are posted!
More FACT CHECKING!
More stories that are geared towards discussion - I've seen way too many that were flamebait, or, didn't really have any way of producing real discussions!
More brainpower being used to improve/.!
Heck, maybe it's even time to look over at Kuro5hin.org and see how things are done there to produce better conversations. No, not the article voting system - I'm talking about the articles themselves, the tone they are written in, and how the content is normally designed to create meaningfull discussion. (Of course, the fact the community it's self acts as a filter helps.) They don't get paid to write the stuff, and the quality is a great deal higher at times, and definitely contributes to meaningful discussion.
To ensure open standards remain open, I think all profit-driven members of standards committies should be banned. It's the only way.
I disagree with that viewpoint. Not all profit driven companies are scumbags. There is more than one ligitimate way to derive profit from a situation like this - pulling stunts like RAMBUS'es isn't nessisary. In fact, it's the really fscking lazy way to do it, or a last resort option.
And even funnier - how do you propose to determine which companies involved are simply profit driven, and which ones have a very ligitimate desire to be involved in the creation of an open standard? Or do ypu contend that all for-profit organizations (individuals, companies, etc.) should simply be banned - and anyone with any real stake in the subject be left out of it?
I could ramble on and on about this one - but I won't Yes, companies like RAMBUS piss me off, but, what are the realistic alternatives?
Read a couple of the articles, and you'll notice that the 'experts' seem to belive that it's the console it's self and the marketing efforts that go with it that are producing the drain on Sega's resources. Thus, Sega kills the console, and continues to produce what is profitable for them: Games. As for 1000's of people burning games and never paying for them, I think you don't realize exactly how little money each title ends up resulting in when all is said and done. 1000 games worth of lost revenue would be piddly compaired to Sega's cash flow (for me, however, 1000 units would be a big deal! It's all a matter of scale and what precise market you are in...)
I'm guessing I'm just feeding a troll here, but, I replied just in case it was someone who honestly believed what they were saying;-)
They may be very involved and addictive, but they're just games. I guarantee you that there are people who are gamers who also brag about their sexual exploits, and having been in a combat zone myself, I can tell you I'd much rather tell war stories than describe cheats I came up with for Myth II.
To hear some people talk, you'd think they were in a real combat zone. Some people live and breath gaming now - if they gave a story to tell, it's gaming related. (And usually bores the fuck outta me. "Friendship is..." listening to some lame game-related story from a friend, and feigning interest!) Seriously, there's a good number of people who talk about games just as seriously as they talk about life. For me, talking about a video game is pretty boring - but get me started on tales of pen, paper, and dice role playing games, and you'd wonder if maybe my sanity is a little twisted based on the fact it almost sounds like *I* was there. This is just my experience , mind ya - but, people really do rave over thier exploits in games. (Geez - I have one friend who keeps relaying stories of his last games of Masters of Magic. Blow by blow. *SIGH*)
I know people who watch movies continuously. I know people who play pencil and paper role playing games for hours on end. Are they also taking part in some kind of hitherto never witnessed revolution in creativity?
Agreed. I think Jon missed something - online games aren't that much of a revolution, in many ways, and the fact that some people damned near live them is definitely not new. Some people do the same things with books, movies, role playing games, card games, majhong, etc. There's always a diversion to obsess over for anyone who's interested. It's no great revolution in thought or creativity - it's just an extension of what humans have always done in the past. Find something interesting, and dive in with both feet.
Slashdot Mirror
You bet I remember that one. A buddy and I used to go to the arcade and play every other weekend. A good amount of the time the machine was broke - it just couldn't take the abuse. Too bad - it was cool!
The only complaint about it really, was that we'd keep putting in quarters, and beating the hell out of the machine - eventually, our knuckles couldn't take it. The rubberized surface on the buttons begins to tear up the skin, and makes ya look like you've taken on a brick wall recently. Ouch. ;-)
Or you could look at the flip side of this - instead of it being an attack by activists, it could have also been an attack created by someone else. By timing it right, and adding the right message (and the right target), blame is easily passed to someone else completely.
Or, you could go with the theory that our own law enforcement agencies have set this up as a way of deeping the distrust of the Internet within the rest of the government (US, for those Non-US readers) so that harder CyberCrime laws are passed and larger budgets allocated.
I love the conspiracy game - it's so easy to find multiple targets for something like this! ;-)
I think it should be noted that your comment really only applies to the games that make it to the shelves. There are a TON of fun games out there, that happen to have the same gameplay level as some of the old C64, Apple II, etc. games. Go hit VideoGameDownloads.com sometime and take a look around - not every game is done in 3D, and quite a few a good games with solid gameplay (however, separating the wheat from the chaff is a problem sometimes.) Yeah, I know - these aren't games offered on the shelves. But ya know - you can complain all you want about what's on the shelves, but you can't compain there aren't good games out there - there are.
And the situation is only getting better. Brian Hook, IIRC, is now changing his focus on develoment. Instead of trying to make the next multi-player extraviganza in 3D or money munching MMORPG, he's going after the classic games. (Of course, he's also refocusing what platform he's working on - Mac.) MidnightRyder.Com (that would be my company ;-) is resurecting old gameplay in the form of Jumpman: 2049 and Trajectory (think Scorched Earth, but a bit more modern.) Trajectory may see shelves, but, Jumpman: 2049 probably never will, dispite the fact that IMHO it's going to have considerably more depth of play and actual play time than a good 3/4th of the stuff on the shelves these days.
As for the actual substance of modern games - well, I'll avoid the normal flame war that starts with these particular discussions ;-) But - it's definitly a case of to each his own. I don't mind all the glitz - I love UT, for instance. But I also can't set down and enjoy it nearly as much as some of the stuff I did back in the C64 era. That's just me.
I hate to inform you of this, but, your conspiracy theory fall apart when you start to read the posts on /. Too many of them have somewhere between excellent and decent grammar, and most words are spelled correctly. Heck, even the tenses of words are correct. As has been proved time and time again, CmdrTaco cannot spell, use proper grammer, and tenses are a complete mystery to him.
Of course, I could just as easily be CmdrTaco in disguise. The whole spelling and grammar thing - it's all a ruse. I just post article... er, HE just post articles with bad spelling to produce a distinctive writing style, while using a totally different, almost sane, style while Astroturfing here on /.
More than that - you have to drink it EVERY DAY according to the novization. The reason why the knight had grown so old was from the times where his faith wavered, and he failed to drink from the Grail, which caused normal aging to resume.
I don't think that part of the expliation made it into the movie - for some reason, the book adaptation managed to stick in my head better than the movie (which is saying something - I thought the movie was great!)
As for Henry Jones, Jr (Indy) - if ya ever get the chance, check out the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He didn't age well at all, and is one seriously grumpy bastard.
(Just noticed how bad my spelling sucked - the heck with the spell checker today...)
The next step will be have to be a lemmings-based office application, or maybe a combat flight simulator-based intrusion detection system.
Lemmings-based office application? Ya know, Microsoft already has some office based applications that depend on lemmings buying them... It shouldn't be much of a streach from there.
(Ok, I don't normally take pot shots at Microsoft (they have treated me well on the only deal I've done with them), but I had to...)
Good think I'm using ANSI 'encoded' text on my BBS - I can keep my checkbook in my pocket ;-)
Yes, it's a joke. That's why it says "It's Funny. Laugh" under the subject ;-)
Ya know, I'm surprised that I haven't seen any insightful commentary here on this - AmigaDE (NOT AmigaOS, there's a difference) actually does hold at least one interesting promise.
While JavaVM presents the ability to be cross-platform, it really only does so with a single language - Java. Not one of my favorites. AmigaDE, on the other hand, is more like C# in the idea that it isn't nessisarily tied to a single language. But even that isn't THAT Earth shattering.
The real issue here is a single methodology for all platforms, and basically a single 'desktop' environment for all platforms. Yes, there are ways of doing this now, but quite a few of them are far from being slick, and many of them aren't ready for things like being plopped into a PDA OR a desktop machine - one or the other. AmigaDE is designed to be ready for both (does it really live up to that? Well, that's a different story - I can't really vouch for it!)
Many persist that Amiga is a dead platform. Well, in some ways they are right - going out and buying an A1200 or A4000 right now probably isn't the wisest course of action (I'm sure some Amiga advocates will jump me about that because of the PCI connectors and PPC cards, etc. But seriously...!) But on the flip side of that, there's the AmigaDE which is a run-anywhere 'OS' (or application framework really), and then the whole roadmap for AmigaOS 4 & 5. Amiga seems to have a fairly good head of steam behind them, and a fairly good plan. I'm acutally planning on buying one of the new AmigaOS based G4 boxes when they come out - AmigaOS 4 + a nice speedy processor and the Matrox video card onboard should really make for a machine to make people drool again when they see how snappy it's UI is (and, hopefully, it once again raises the bar on 'multimedia'). The original Amiga is dead - but, that's not a bad thing. How many people have whined that x86 machines suck because of all the legacy support behind them, and that we should just chuck it all and start from scratch. Well, Amiga got that chance really, and is taking it.
They are a company to watch - but, just don't expect them to be taking on Microsoft really. More likely than not, they are going to be picking up the nitche market that Be held for a while, chipping at the Macs, and probably even getting in the road of Linux a little. Sounds like a good thing to me - everyone get forced to be a little more competitive again.
Ok, I put on the flame retardant suit. Do your worst.
When you put it this way, I can't help but think of BlipVerts from Max Headroom - time-compressed advertisements that were so intense (more than just a visual experience to) that sometimes the couch potatoes the ads were directed at exploded!
Somehow, I don't think any of us are going to explode from them, but, the way that ads are getting these days, BlipVerts may become a reality ;-)
(Jesus - I'm wondering if anyone on here even REMEMBERS the Max Headroom series! Strange but good show :-)
If you follow FuckedCompany.Com you can get a rundown on all the companies that IdeaLab owns - and the fact that damned near all of them have failed or are failing as of late. In fact, I can't think of any of them offhand that is anything more than a spectacular failure, costing between $20 and $100 million each. These include: eToys.Com, Referer.Com, Cooking.Com, CarsDirect.Com, PetSmart.Com (yes, that's an IdeaLab funded one), Modo.Net, FIrstLook.Com, eve.com, and more...
Heck, here's the FuckedCompany search results on IdeaLab based companies - the funniest being the fact that IdeaLab owns the domain DogCrap.Com. Go fig.
FuckedCompany search for IdeaLab
In other words - this is move by IdeaLab to look like some sort of industry leader. Don't expect it to happen, or of it does, don't expect it to last very long - or for IdeaLab to last much longer. You can only pump so much money into a loosing situation before people completely give up.
I totally disagree with that. Why?
OK, go to your favorite search engine, or shareware search engine. Pick a game style, say.... puzzle games. Now then, how many hits do you get back? As a consumer, how long will you spend looking? While it's cheesy (and I DON'T do this) quite a few people just keep re-submitting thier game so that in a dated list, it shows up first. Or they do things like put '++' at the beginning of the name to try and make it show up first (that was the case back in the BBS days, but, no longer really works that well.) So, if you are looking for a game, how long do you expect to spend clicking 'next' to find a game that you like? Not very damned long on the Internet anymore.
The problem isn't just getting your name out there - I don't do any 'brand recognition' advertising. It's trying to compete with the miriad of other programs of the same genre to capture the prospective customer's attention. I advertise in places where people look for games (two game search engines, a game fansite, and a game news portal.) So, the idea that someone just pops into a game search engine and finds something interesting is a bit of a problem - have you done that lately? This helps those who really want to push thier product stand out just a little. That's why I advertise instead of just putting it in the search engines and shareware game engines. Other people's reasons may vary. And if you don't like ads - well, I'm sure you know the address for Junkbuster! ;-)
Ok, it REALLY hates fake HTML tags, no matter HOW you put them... it should have been (SARCASAM) and (/SARCASAM), with the appropriate >'s in the right places!
That's wierd... there should be a "" in there at the beginning, and "" at the end of the first paragraph. Apparently, /. hates fake HTML tags llike that....
I really don't understand why advertisers like myself (MidnightRyder.Com) get such a bad name. I mean, how else am I supposed to tell people about the games I produce without advertising it somewhere? Heck, sometimes it's not even a matter of trying to sell a game, but, instead trying to generate site traffic. So what is we throw money at websites that will link to us for a fee?
OK, all kidding aside - while the SatireWire link did it to the extreme, there are some websites that are really starting to look like that, and I've seen a couple of news articles that looked much more like advertisements based on the way they were linked (see my sarcasam above.) Yeah, I pay for advertising - not much, mainly cause I can't afford it. But, you know, I don't think I *EVER* want to see my product stuck in the middle of an article on CNN.com or News.COm, etc., where it ends up smack-dab in the middle of an article - I figure if that starts being the case, people will start to associate my name and my games with BAD, ANNOYING THINGS! What I can't understand is - why don't other advertisers start seeing it this way? I understand the concept of 'brand recognition', but, if it starts to become negative, what the hell good is it doing?
*SIGH* - I know the rules, don't feed the trolls... but... I gotta respond to this one.
yeah and in a clump of shit there are carbon chains but guess what it is still a clump of shit
Yep. And you know what's interesting about that statement? A "clump of shit" would indicate the presence of life - ya can't have a clump of shit without someone to take a dump. Think about it...
It is well known that everyone ignore banner ads these days, as everyone is inured to them and filters them out of their mental bandwidth.
Not everyone ignores them. I say this, cause I'm one of the offenders - I buy ad space. Would I buy a 250 x 250 pixel popup? HELL NO. I don't want to annoy people, just little ways of catching thier attention, and get them to check out my product(s). (More on that in a minute.) Do people click-through on banners and button ads? Well, my limited experience so far - yep. But there's more to it than that...
We should be encouraging the banner ad makers to be inventive, and use flash and the like, rather than just being more obvious and intruding.
I *SO* disagree with this. First off, one of the reasons why ads are failing for most people is simple - they are missplaced (when is the last time you even noticed an ad on a chat area like /.? You aren't LOOKING for information on, oh, XML, so O'Reilly's ad for XML in a nutshell is mentally filtered.) I program games - so, the places I'm advertising are all game related (two shareware sites, one gaming site.) People are looking for games to download, or information on games - thier eyes are open to this sort of ad suddenly.
Second, unless it's cross-platform, and works on all browsers, why would you use it to create an advertisement you can't garantee will show up? You are just wasting money then. And for the ones that DO show it, you'll just end up waisting thier time as they download the ad - something else I learned, people don't wait for ads to load, unless the page is structured so that the ad has to be fully loaded before the page displays.
Whatever you do, it needs to be tight, quick loading, and viewable everywhere. But even more importantly, it needs to be targeted at the right place. Since advertisers are desperite at the moment, well, they will happily sell you space on Breast Cancer Discussion areas, even though your product is a First Person Shooter.
More focused ads, better advertising, etc. would improve the current problems. However, most advertisers are looking for 'eyeballs' more than anything else, trying to build brand recognition at any cost. Me, I just try and focus on selling the product at hand.
And, PLEASE, let's not get to the point where not only are there full-motion, sterio sound ads, but, that we have 3 or 4 of them per site battling it out! When it gets to that point, well, I guess I'll start resorting to junk buster :-(
I'm using PHPSlash for my Developer's Diaries section of MidnightRyder.Com. Actually, it runs the entire site :-) Anyway - it makes life simple to do something like a quick entry - just type it up in plain text or HTML, and hit submit - and your page is updated. I like it, you might want to check it out.
There are, however, some downsides - requires PHP4 (no big deal) and a MySQL database to power it (which might be a bigger deal for ya, depending on your ISP / Host). And it's probably a little over powered for just running an online-diary. But it sure saves you tons of time on updating pages!
And, of course, there are tons of other alternatives to that - /.'s engine can be used for the same thing (PHPSlash is a somewhat direvitive of the Slashcode - not much anymore, but, still the same idea). Look around a little bit at those two sites, and if they just look like too much effort, search for 'Blog' or 'Online Diary' in google or yahoo, and find all the rest of the cool little scripts for doing this out there!
Cool - nice to see you on here trying to put those who wonder in the know! But, this comment presents a problem:
Anyway, hope this clears up any concern.
Man, you must be kidding. Does that clear up the idea that SourceForge is going to loose a lot of people in the short term (IE, next 3-6 months)? Yep. Does that clear up the idea that in the longer term (1 - 2 years) SourceForge is going to have serious problem? Nope. I like the idea of SourceForge and all, but, it's still hard to see where all of this outlay is really getting VA it's money back. Sure, some of the projects get a fairly direct return back to VA when even nearly completed. But, take a look at the contents of SourceForge - very little of it really seems to apply. I mean, take a look at all those projects listed - a good number are half-ass thought out projects that are going to fail within the first two months because the creator of the project can't find people to help out or just plain old can develop the idea they came up with. Heck if I get another offer to join so-and-so's VB game project, complete with a link to a SourceForge project, I'm going to SHOOT SOMEONE! (Especially when I look, and there's not even a 'design' behind the game yet. *SIGH*)
It's hard to see where that much, well... random crap that SourceForge is having to support in terms of bandwidth, storage, and support requests really do much to contribute to VA's business. I'd probably have more faith in it if there was an approval process or something - IE, users submit a written request for the privilage of hosting a project on SourceForge. Something that makes them stop and think about what they are doing, instead of letting SourceForge become the GeoCities of Open Source projects. For every good project like CrystalSpace3D, there's now 3 projects in the 'pre-alpha' stage with no chance of getting any farther.
Anyway - I don't mean to sound like a troll or flamer who's saying it can't ever work, etc. Just pointing out what I've been seeing and have been heavily concerned about on SourceForge. On the flipside of those concerns, I think it's great that SourceForge exists, and provides access to a collaborative environment for Open Source developers with a minimum of hastle!
I didn't say to copy the content. In no way do I contend that needs to be done. I don't COMPLETELY agree with your opinon of what ends up on Kuro5hin, but, it does end up redundant bitching at times.
What I meant was, the stories that DO go up there normally are designed to inspire intelligent discussion, and often do! /. could use a lot more of stories designed do the same thing. Looking at how those stories create discussion, and the tone of how they are written could give good insight into what could change to produce more positive results on /. I don't want /. to be Kuro5hin, and I don't want Kuro5hin to be /. If I did, I'd be reading one or the other, and not bothering to express my opinion on the other one ;-)
I like that list, except for possibly:
Discussions on why Jarjar sucked
Definitely beating a deal horse there... But, there's more modification to the current content:
And on the positive side:
Heck, maybe it's even time to look over at Kuro5hin.org and see how things are done there to produce better conversations. No, not the article voting system - I'm talking about the articles themselves, the tone they are written in, and how the content is normally designed to create meaningfull discussion. (Of course, the fact the community it's self acts as a filter helps.) They don't get paid to write the stuff, and the quality is a great deal higher at times, and definitely contributes to meaningful discussion.
To ensure open standards remain open, I think all profit-driven members of standards committies should be banned. It's the only way.
I disagree with that viewpoint. Not all profit driven companies are scumbags. There is more than one ligitimate way to derive profit from a situation like this - pulling stunts like RAMBUS'es isn't nessisary. In fact, it's the really fscking lazy way to do it, or a last resort option.
And even funnier - how do you propose to determine which companies involved are simply profit driven, and which ones have a very ligitimate desire to be involved in the creation of an open standard? Or do ypu contend that all for-profit organizations (individuals, companies, etc.) should simply be banned - and anyone with any real stake in the subject be left out of it?
I could ramble on and on about this one - but I won't Yes, companies like RAMBUS piss me off, but, what are the realistic alternatives?
Damn... I can't help it. Seeing Bill Nye the Science Guy mentioned on here means I have to post this:
Bill Nye killed in Experement!
Yes - it's a joke (it's at The Onion, of course it's a joke!)
Read a couple of the articles, and you'll notice that the 'experts' seem to belive that it's the console it's self and the marketing efforts that go with it that are producing the drain on Sega's resources. Thus, Sega kills the console, and continues to produce what is profitable for them: Games. As for 1000's of people burning games and never paying for them, I think you don't realize exactly how little money each title ends up resulting in when all is said and done. 1000 games worth of lost revenue would be piddly compaired to Sega's cash flow (for me, however, 1000 units would be a big deal! It's all a matter of scale and what precise market you are in...)
I'm guessing I'm just feeding a troll here, but, I replied just in case it was someone who honestly believed what they were saying ;-)
They may be very involved and addictive, but they're just games. I guarantee you that there are people who are gamers who also brag about their sexual exploits, and having been in a combat zone myself, I can tell you I'd much rather tell war stories than describe cheats I came up with for Myth II.
To hear some people talk, you'd think they were in a real combat zone. Some people live and breath gaming now - if they gave a story to tell, it's gaming related. (And usually bores the fuck outta me. "Friendship is..." listening to some lame game-related story from a friend, and feigning interest!) Seriously, there's a good number of people who talk about games just as seriously as they talk about life. For me, talking about a video game is pretty boring - but get me started on tales of pen, paper, and dice role playing games, and you'd wonder if maybe my sanity is a little twisted based on the fact it almost sounds like *I* was there. This is just my experience , mind ya - but, people really do rave over thier exploits in games. (Geez - I have one friend who keeps relaying stories of his last games of Masters of Magic. Blow by blow. *SIGH*)
I know people who watch movies continuously. I know people who play pencil and paper role playing games for hours on end. Are they also taking part in some kind of hitherto never witnessed revolution in creativity?
Agreed. I think Jon missed something - online games aren't that much of a revolution, in many ways, and the fact that some people damned near live them is definitely not new. Some people do the same things with books, movies, role playing games, card games, majhong, etc. There's always a diversion to obsess over for anyone who's interested. It's no great revolution in thought or creativity - it's just an extension of what humans have always done in the past. Find something interesting, and dive in with both feet.