Yeah, I was misinformed about the extent to which Blizzard was acquired. I read up on the relationship a bit more since. I thought it was more a partnership than an acquisition, but it seems like Vivendi just rebranded itself under the Blizzard name to avoid being Vivendi-Activision.
Except Origin Systems was a player in a comparatively tiny niche industry. Blizzard has made money hand over fist in an industry that rivals or surpasses other popular entertainments like music and movies, and managed to expand a particular genre to an entirely new demographic.
Comparing UO and Origin Systems to WoW and Blizzard is comparing apples and oranges... or comparing Daimler Motor Company in the 1900s to Toyota and Honda in the modern world.
Blizzard is not just a developer that had a big success... they're a powerhouse. It'll take more than a couple missteps to bring them down. They'd have to MASSIVELY fuck up in ways that WoW wouldn't even factor into. They've undoubtedly got a sizable enough warchest of capital built up that they could eat a couple failures, even massive ones.
In short, any scenario where Blizzard crashed and burned... couldn't possibly be attributed just to WoW, or even mostly to WoW. They'd need massive mismanagement on a company-wide scale and consistent lack of business vision. Sure, they COULD fail, but there's nothing to this "WoW could kill Blizzard" talk but baseless speculation that has nothing actually to do with WoW.
To date, as far as I can tell, Blizzard has never made a bad (debatable, based on personal taste) or unsuccessful (not up for debate) game. They've got a perfect record. And they're raking in more money every month. If that's a recipe for disaster, sign me up!
Troika was always an overly ambitious company. Their writing and setting development was top notch, but all their releases demonstrated an apparent lack of management oversight and nitty-gritty game programming/scripting expertise. Bloodlines is a great example: the first two and a half areas are brilliant, with rich characters and excellent writing and comparatively few bugs. It was among the best FPSRPGs I'd ever played.
Then the rest of the game is increasingly a trainwreck, until the last level is just a silly run and gun through a repetitive skyscraper, which was so regressive in terms of design that it smacked of FPS games pre-Half-Life. Tons of stuff was obviously cut from the game, and it seems quite likely they had to rush it out the door to make deadline, with stuff unfinished.
Arcanum had many of the same flaws as Bloodlines - stronger early game than endgame, cut or abandoned gameplay elements, bugs and a lack of fine-tuning - but on nowhere near the same scale.
"With respect to the government’s ability to compel disclosure, the most significant distinction made by the SCA is between communications held in electronic communications services, which require a search warrant and probable cause, and those in remote computing services, which require only a subpoena or court order, with prior notice. This lower level of protection is essentially the same as would be provided by the Fourth Amendment—or potentially less, since notice can be delayed indefinitely in 90-day increments."
So no warrant is needed, just subpoena and notice. As the wiki article points out, this is essentially the "third party doctrine," which already exists for the Fourth Amendment. The third party doctrine basically states that if you reveal information to a third party, you can't make a fourth amendment claim against that info.
You're acting like India is Somalia, rather than a G-20 nation with a hugely diverse sector of industries, universities, and research. Indian companies can charge (and pay) less because the cost of living is considerably less than in the US, not because they're hiring the little street kids from Slumdog Millionaire to code your CMS platform. "Every once in a while a hard-working family can afford an education?" Yeah, right, and it's amazing that they have such diverse cuisine given that they have to hunt for food with nothing but rocks and sticks!
I think you're assuming I'm saying something good or bad about Apple in general, but in fact all I'm doing is observing that their media strategy would not work for most companies.
Media is a business, and as much as the media likes to portray itself as gung ho and unconventional, you can't play rough unless you're so big (or so influential) that rejecting you is going to hurt them. Again, this is why Apple's size (and influence, more importantly) lets them get away with it.
Most of the time, the business of news is run by pretty convention business etiquette. Just like a reporter can't repeatedly ambush sources and expect to keep getting interviews (unless they're hugely influential), a company can't constantly play hardball and expect to get coverage (again, unless they're very influential, like Apple is).
Dodgy leaks and questionable denials may seem like a good business strategy, but try it as a more low-key player from a smaller company and see how far you get with your PR strategy.
It's worth noting that if Apple were a smaller company, this sort of behavior would (or should, you can always find more shills) get doors slammed in its face at media outlets pretty fast. There's two reasons why it doesn't: 1. They're probably well-connected enough that they could always find someone else to leak their supposed "info," either through naievete or just apathy, and 2. They're so big that exclusive Apple news is a big plus, even if it turns out to be false or misleading.
Mod parent up! All these other posts are acting like having to get a warrant means police can't do it.
Warrants are routinely obtained for all sorts of things on relatively little evidence. If the police want to spy on someone with thermal cameras, let 'em convince a judge that it's reasonable to think you may be doing something illegal. That's what the warrant process is there for--trying to circumvent it defeats the purpose.
Napster absolutely revolutionized the way mp3s were used. Prior to Napster, most mp3s were shared directly through websites or through FTP sites. Most people didn't have the patience for it. Napster made it possible to find absolutely any song, ever. It was one of the first steps to the all-info-accessible-find-anything internet we've got today. People nowadays don't remember that ten years ago, it was tough as hell to find particular things on the internet.
It's like video clips before youtube. Now you can find any popular moment from pretty much any popular show, event, whatever in seconds. Before youtube (and sites like it), you'd be sorting through page after page of google listings hoping to find what you were looking for.
Anyone who doubts the importance of napster isn't old enough to remember the internet before it came about.
On a more serious note, the fact that this is seen as significant in terms of job replacement nicely highlights the over-reliance on press releases in modern journalism. Then again, it's hard to avoid, since most companies tightly control all information about themselves and won't hesitate to fire an employee who speaks about internal matters, even incredibly trivial ones. Incidentally, a big part of the reason major publications (or websites, or blogs) get the major stories they do (at least concerning business matters) is because companies decide to release previously-sensitive information to them based on their readership or prestige.
Genuine business news developments that don't originate in a calculated corporate PR move tend to be the result of somebody willing to risk getting fired or blackballed, for whatever reason.
The reason things break down this way is because of the fundamental dynamics of the game, not specifically because of class design. The classes exist this way because the games are designed around gameplay the necessitates it. Even if you broke classes out of this mold, you'd still have the same basic objectives: kill something, don't die. Since "don't die" breaks down into "stay alive, keep your friends alive" and kill something is "do damage," you've got three clearly defined tasks. Even if you made all classes capable of doing anything, you've got the same objectives to do, and it's much easier to coordinate if you've got a specific role to perform than if you're just playing it by ear. Hence, even with flexible classes, you'd still have the same basic three roles.
The key is to change the fundamental design of the games to not depend on DPS, HP, and armor. Maybe make it dependent on tactical positioning or being outnumbered or whatever. I don't know, there's plenty of other directions you can go. Observe the MMOFPS: Planetside had healing, heavy armor, and damage-dealing, but it was not critical to have designated healers and tanks and so on because you were not in an environment where you benefitted from that kind of thing (and you can't tank a player-controlled opponent). EverQuest, FFXI, CoH, WoW, whatever MMORPG you care to mention, they all have the same fundamental gameplay, just with comparatively minor variations. Not that they're all particularly similar, they just all have a similar core gameplay concept.
The same gameplay scheme rewards the same tactics, whether your game is set on Azeroth or Earth.
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times? That nonsense has made me jump out of my damn seat a couple times, now.
Also, on a less serious note, ban commercials from using that one blaring alarm clock stock sound that they all love to use. You know, the one that sounds exactly like the alarm clock I had for years, and always makes me feel miserable and pissed off.
I think a bigger issue in terms of their status as a source of news and analysis is the fact that Arrington is covering it at all. I know Arrington has never been particularly objective or (as far as I know) made claims that he is, but it seems a little irresponsible to use your news site as a way to air personal grievances, at least if you want to continue to be regarded as a site for news.
At the very least, one of the other TC writers should be covering it.
Oral contacts are, in general, just as valid as written ones, assuming you can prove their existence. I agree that it'd be silly if it turns out there's no clearly outlined and dually signed written agreement, but depending on the exact nature of it, an oral contract may be all he needs.
That's what you're supposed to do in a lawsuit. You throw whatever you can and see what sticks.
That may be what you're supposed to do within the confines of legal proceedings, but as far as I know it's generally not advisable to make such public (and fairly inflammatory) statements about your opponents in ongoing legal proceedings.
I trust scientists, in general, but you're reading my comment wrong. There's no reason to trust a scientist by default. Studying biology for years makes you more qualified to observe and comment on matters of biology, but it doesn't necessarily make you right all the time.
As you say, argument and evidence are what you should trust. That was my whole point.
Science shouldn't be "accorded automatic stature and respect" any more than politics should. There's no reason to trust a scientist any more than you'd trust your barber.
The problem isn't that people aren't automatically believing science, it's almost the exact opposite: people are automatically doubting science. And that's quite another thing entirely.
I think the answer to your original question is going to be a personal one that comes down to more than just the public perception of the organization. It's a lot different working inside a news organization than looking in on the outside, and I have no idea what Fox's editorial policies are actually like.
Personally, I'd be disinclined to work there, based on what I know and what I've seen. I wouldn't presume to apply my ethics to everyone else, but my impression is that it's a commentary network and not a news network. I guess if you want to be a commentator (nothing wrong with that), it'd be a good place for you.
I believe that the Metro does this, although it's not strictly an American newspaper. A large amount of the content is the same in every city it runs in, while a smaller amount of specific to the city it's actually being printed in.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I was misinformed about the extent to which Blizzard was acquired. I read up on the relationship a bit more since. I thought it was more a partnership than an acquisition, but it seems like Vivendi just rebranded itself under the Blizzard name to avoid being Vivendi-Activision.
Asus Says Stuff You Already Bought Is Dead, Hello Stuff We Want You To Buy Soon.
Except Origin Systems was a player in a comparatively tiny niche industry. Blizzard has made money hand over fist in an industry that rivals or surpasses other popular entertainments like music and movies, and managed to expand a particular genre to an entirely new demographic.
Comparing UO and Origin Systems to WoW and Blizzard is comparing apples and oranges... or comparing Daimler Motor Company in the 1900s to Toyota and Honda in the modern world.
Blizzard is not just a developer that had a big success... they're a powerhouse. It'll take more than a couple missteps to bring them down. They'd have to MASSIVELY fuck up in ways that WoW wouldn't even factor into. They've undoubtedly got a sizable enough warchest of capital built up that they could eat a couple failures, even massive ones.
In short, any scenario where Blizzard crashed and burned... couldn't possibly be attributed just to WoW, or even mostly to WoW. They'd need massive mismanagement on a company-wide scale and consistent lack of business vision. Sure, they COULD fail, but there's nothing to this "WoW could kill Blizzard" talk but baseless speculation that has nothing actually to do with WoW.
To date, as far as I can tell, Blizzard has never made a bad (debatable, based on personal taste) or unsuccessful (not up for debate) game. They've got a perfect record. And they're raking in more money every month. If that's a recipe for disaster, sign me up!
Came here to post this very game.
Troika was always an overly ambitious company. Their writing and setting development was top notch, but all their releases demonstrated an apparent lack of management oversight and nitty-gritty game programming/scripting expertise. Bloodlines is a great example: the first two and a half areas are brilliant, with rich characters and excellent writing and comparatively few bugs. It was among the best FPSRPGs I'd ever played.
Then the rest of the game is increasingly a trainwreck, until the last level is just a silly run and gun through a repetitive skyscraper, which was so regressive in terms of design that it smacked of FPS games pre-Half-Life. Tons of stuff was obviously cut from the game, and it seems quite likely they had to rush it out the door to make deadline, with stuff unfinished.
Arcanum had many of the same flaws as Bloodlines - stronger early game than endgame, cut or abandoned gameplay elements, bugs and a lack of fine-tuning - but on nowhere near the same scale.
Rather... no warrant is needed for cloud computing services, which I'd say is the very definition of a remote computing service.
t, way back in 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act
"With respect to the government’s ability to compel disclosure, the most significant distinction made by the SCA is between communications held in electronic communications services, which require a search warrant and probable cause, and those in remote computing services, which require only a subpoena or court order, with prior notice. This lower level of protection is essentially the same as would be provided by the Fourth Amendment—or potentially less, since notice can be delayed indefinitely in 90-day increments."
So no warrant is needed, just subpoena and notice. As the wiki article points out, this is essentially the "third party doctrine," which already exists for the Fourth Amendment. The third party doctrine basically states that if you reveal information to a third party, you can't make a fourth amendment claim against that info.
You're acting like India is Somalia, rather than a G-20 nation with a hugely diverse sector of industries, universities, and research. Indian companies can charge (and pay) less because the cost of living is considerably less than in the US, not because they're hiring the little street kids from Slumdog Millionaire to code your CMS platform. "Every once in a while a hard-working family can afford an education?" Yeah, right, and it's amazing that they have such diverse cuisine given that they have to hunt for food with nothing but rocks and sticks!
I think you're assuming I'm saying something good or bad about Apple in general, but in fact all I'm doing is observing that their media strategy would not work for most companies.
Media is a business, and as much as the media likes to portray itself as gung ho and unconventional, you can't play rough unless you're so big (or so influential) that rejecting you is going to hurt them. Again, this is why Apple's size (and influence, more importantly) lets them get away with it.
Most of the time, the business of news is run by pretty convention business etiquette. Just like a reporter can't repeatedly ambush sources and expect to keep getting interviews (unless they're hugely influential), a company can't constantly play hardball and expect to get coverage (again, unless they're very influential, like Apple is).
Dodgy leaks and questionable denials may seem like a good business strategy, but try it as a more low-key player from a smaller company and see how far you get with your PR strategy.
And by smaller company, I mean a much smaller company. Obviously, any fairly substantial corporation can get away with the same thing (and does).
It's worth noting that if Apple were a smaller company, this sort of behavior would (or should, you can always find more shills) get doors slammed in its face at media outlets pretty fast. There's two reasons why it doesn't: 1. They're probably well-connected enough that they could always find someone else to leak their supposed "info," either through naievete or just apathy, and 2. They're so big that exclusive Apple news is a big plus, even if it turns out to be false or misleading.
Mod parent up! All these other posts are acting like having to get a warrant means police can't do it.
Warrants are routinely obtained for all sorts of things on relatively little evidence. If the police want to spy on someone with thermal cameras, let 'em convince a judge that it's reasonable to think you may be doing something illegal. That's what the warrant process is there for--trying to circumvent it defeats the purpose.
Napster absolutely revolutionized the way mp3s were used. Prior to Napster, most mp3s were shared directly through websites or through FTP sites. Most people didn't have the patience for it. Napster made it possible to find absolutely any song, ever. It was one of the first steps to the all-info-accessible-find-anything internet we've got today. People nowadays don't remember that ten years ago, it was tough as hell to find particular things on the internet.
It's like video clips before youtube. Now you can find any popular moment from pretty much any popular show, event, whatever in seconds. Before youtube (and sites like it), you'd be sorting through page after page of google listings hoping to find what you were looking for.
Anyone who doubts the importance of napster isn't old enough to remember the internet before it came about.
On a more serious note, the fact that this is seen as significant in terms of job replacement nicely highlights the over-reliance on press releases in modern journalism. Then again, it's hard to avoid, since most companies tightly control all information about themselves and won't hesitate to fire an employee who speaks about internal matters, even incredibly trivial ones. Incidentally, a big part of the reason major publications (or websites, or blogs) get the major stories they do (at least concerning business matters) is because companies decide to release previously-sensitive information to them based on their readership or prestige.
Genuine business news developments that don't originate in a calculated corporate PR move tend to be the result of somebody willing to risk getting fired or blackballed, for whatever reason.
"The latest iteration of NewsScope 'scans and automatically extracts critical pieces of information' from US corporate press releases"
Extracting useful info from press releases? This must be absolutely amazing software.
The reason things break down this way is because of the fundamental dynamics of the game, not specifically because of class design. The classes exist this way because the games are designed around gameplay the necessitates it. Even if you broke classes out of this mold, you'd still have the same basic objectives: kill something, don't die. Since "don't die" breaks down into "stay alive, keep your friends alive" and kill something is "do damage," you've got three clearly defined tasks. Even if you made all classes capable of doing anything, you've got the same objectives to do, and it's much easier to coordinate if you've got a specific role to perform than if you're just playing it by ear. Hence, even with flexible classes, you'd still have the same basic three roles.
The key is to change the fundamental design of the games to not depend on DPS, HP, and armor. Maybe make it dependent on tactical positioning or being outnumbered or whatever. I don't know, there's plenty of other directions you can go. Observe the MMOFPS: Planetside had healing, heavy armor, and damage-dealing, but it was not critical to have designated healers and tanks and so on because you were not in an environment where you benefitted from that kind of thing (and you can't tank a player-controlled opponent). EverQuest, FFXI, CoH, WoW, whatever MMORPG you care to mention, they all have the same fundamental gameplay, just with comparatively minor variations. Not that they're all particularly similar, they just all have a similar core gameplay concept.
The same gameplay scheme rewards the same tactics, whether your game is set on Azeroth or Earth.
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times? That nonsense has made me jump out of my damn seat a couple times, now.
Also, on a less serious note, ban commercials from using that one blaring alarm clock stock sound that they all love to use. You know, the one that sounds exactly like the alarm clock I had for years, and always makes me feel miserable and pissed off.
I think a bigger issue in terms of their status as a source of news and analysis is the fact that Arrington is covering it at all. I know Arrington has never been particularly objective or (as far as I know) made claims that he is, but it seems a little irresponsible to use your news site as a way to air personal grievances, at least if you want to continue to be regarded as a site for news.
At the very least, one of the other TC writers should be covering it.
Oral contacts are, in general, just as valid as written ones, assuming you can prove their existence. I agree that it'd be silly if it turns out there's no clearly outlined and dually signed written agreement, but depending on the exact nature of it, an oral contract may be all he needs.
That's what you're supposed to do in a lawsuit. You throw whatever you can and see what sticks.
That may be what you're supposed to do within the confines of legal proceedings, but as far as I know it's generally not advisable to make such public (and fairly inflammatory) statements about your opponents in ongoing legal proceedings.
I trust scientists, in general, but you're reading my comment wrong. There's no reason to trust a scientist by default. Studying biology for years makes you more qualified to observe and comment on matters of biology, but it doesn't necessarily make you right all the time.
As you say, argument and evidence are what you should trust. That was my whole point.
Haven't seen Sweeney Todd, have you? There's plenty the tonsorial-industrial complex doesn't want you finding out.
Science shouldn't be "accorded automatic stature and respect" any more than politics should. There's no reason to trust a scientist any more than you'd trust your barber.
The problem isn't that people aren't automatically believing science, it's almost the exact opposite: people are automatically doubting science. And that's quite another thing entirely.
I think the answer to your original question is going to be a personal one that comes down to more than just the public perception of the organization. It's a lot different working inside a news organization than looking in on the outside, and I have no idea what Fox's editorial policies are actually like.
Personally, I'd be disinclined to work there, based on what I know and what I've seen. I wouldn't presume to apply my ethics to everyone else, but my impression is that it's a commentary network and not a news network. I guess if you want to be a commentator (nothing wrong with that), it'd be a good place for you.
I believe that the Metro does this, although it's not strictly an American newspaper. A large amount of the content is the same in every city it runs in, while a smaller amount of specific to the city it's actually being printed in.