Passenger: It appears this fatass is preparing to seat herself beside me. Surely not everyone paid the $20 anti-fatass surcharge?
Stewardess: Oh, you're right sir, my apologies. Pardon me ma'am, would you please remove your bag from the overhead storage and come with me?
Proceeding towards the back of the plane...
Passenger 2: No.. NO! WAIT! I HAVE 20 DOLLARS IN MY WALLET! THIS SEAT'S TAKEN! THE LEFT PHALANGES IS MISSING! I'M ON THE WRONG FLIGHT! NOOOOOO!!!!
Passenger 2 becomes locked into place(hell) by the conquering fatass, all hope is lost.
If only to provide comedy, I think the system would work. I would gladly pay $20 to reserve comfort, insult fatties, and watch Passenger 2 and his futile struggle.
AT&T never checks to see if my torrent traffic is legal. I can't participate in the Star Trek MMO beta because the only way to reliably get the client, without slamming the beta's patch servers, is using a torrent. I'd rant about how frustrating this all is, but they're about to disconnect me again for two minutes until I stop trying to not steal a game I was invited to play.
At first when I read the title, I thought mainly the same thing. "Oh great, now there are going to be gigantic nasty farms of these beetles in order to fill every car with cheap, organic antifreeze."
The image was so horrifying... I can't think of a better place to be tortured to death than under a pile of Alaskan beetles in a beetle farm. Maybe it will happen in Saw 31.
Good point, this is why a lot of titles don't make it to the Wii right now, and also why a lot of Wii titles don't make it to other consoles.
But, unlike the Wii which only has the OPTION of using Gamecube controllers for normal games, the PS3 and 360 will have the STANDARD of using controllers for games after their evolved control releases. This is different from the Wii because not every Wii owner, and Nintendo intended it to be this way, owned a Gamecube previously, so not every Wii owner has alternatives to the Wiimote. 100% of PS3 and 360 owners will have alternatives, and while that % may slowly drop, most new-comers will still be picking up bundled consoles which will include a normal controller and thus still have alternative control schemes which developers will tap into when continuing to release cross-platform titles.
So while we're obviously going to see a drop in cross-platform titles, it will be small and probably not enough of a thorn in anyone's side to have a PS3 owner buy a 360 or a 360 owner buy a PS3 unless they already intended to. And even if somebody doesn't like the direction Sony and MS are going now with these new controller designs which will open up new worlds of gaming for many people, they've got to appreciate the fact that this won't totally change game design.
People trying to get rid of the pirate bay act as if removing a tool for sharing will put an end to the desire to share that drives the ability to find new tools to do it.
They broke down and turned their dispute with google into a name calling game? How very disappointing.
You know what's worse? AT&T restricts torrent traffic from most open trackers on their DSL services. I can download anything I want from my favorite private tracker at a constant 300KB/s down and 45KB/s up, thus killing my ratio for the next week without any interference. I can go and get the very same file from an open tracker, any of the nova's or the pirate bay plus some I've never even heard of, and even if it's FREE, UNCOPYRIGHTED content then I still get screwed by AT&T. There can be several hundred more seeders than downloaders, I can be connected to as many peers as possible, and I will still only be able to download at less than 100KB/s. Additionally, my internet connection for the whole house will drop every 5 minutes for about 1 minute like clockwork. Just long enough for nearly every useful active connection service to disconnect you.
This sort of traffic shaping has been going on for about 5 months for me now, it didn't used to be like this for the several years I've been with them. AT&T how about YOU practice net neutrality before pointing fingers like a bitch.
*Additional off-topic ranting below*
For those of you with AT&T's DSL setup, you know how frustrating 2wire routers are when internet connection is lost. The router acts like a virus, it injects itself into your browser to let you know the reason pages aren't loading is because the internet is not functioning. Then, with it's virus-like iron grip on your computer, it lets you know when the internet is okay again and you have to restart your browser in order to continue using the internet. Opening new tabs just leads you to the same notification page. I even have these specific events blocked by Noscript so now it's just a notification via Noscript telling me I told my router to fuck off, but even still I have to restart my browser. Everyone knows how Firefox hates to restart with multiple tabs open on DSL, thanks 2wire for trying to help me by inconveniencing me further.
I'm sure your Facebook analogy is fantastically accurate. But like most people on slashdot, I don't use facebook. Could you rewrite that as a car analogy?
Exactly, the author of the summary is totally confused. He correctly points out that developers are more attracted to consoles right now, but he falsely advocates this as the solution. Remember when the PS3 first came out and the good releases were so slow and spaced out because the processor architecture was so unusual? This multi-monitor gaming thing is different how?
Yes, developers want to make a game that sells. But they also want to make a game that's cost efficient and focuses more on drawing in as much of an audience as possible and not just one factor of that audience. That's why this break through is not going to be an answer, it might help, but it won't change much. Developers aren't going to take the time and resources to make their games fully support multi-monitor gaming. They know the % of people who will have a multi-monitor gaming capable PC (or even more than one monitor), while not having a console at the same time is undeniably insignificant.
The reasons game makers are most apprehensive about PC releases are compatibility issues, lack of predictable adoption due to hardware configurations, and mistakenly they fear piracy. Also you'll find that the established online communities of the Wii, 360, and PS3 are much more natural methods of getting people to buy DLC. The decentralized PC gaming market makes it less easy to distribute and advertise DLC, and unfortunately for developers the most centralized and effective distribution center of DLC for computer games is The Pirate Bay.
The real solutions would be:
Something like Steam to completely take over as a pseudo dashboard / platform for PC gaming, giving unity and simplicity. Developers and publishers should just meet and nominate something for this, doesn't have to be Steam, but it has to be universally accepted and used by gamers and game makers.
A full understanding of piracy and that sales lost due to piracy is significantly less than amount of times pirated. Most people pirate something because they won't pay for it anyway, others pirate as a means to test a game, and piracy means more players which means more advertisement through word of mouth. Piracy is largely not a measure of lost sales, it is a measure of interest and perhaps success if you could survey the amount of people who pirated your content and later bought it.
And of course, the major solution brought up by the parent comment in this article, hardware. The amount of PC owners does not equal the amount of customers in the PC gaming market. Additionally, PC gamers do not equal the potential audience for your game. The closest to a correct assumption a sales department can make is: As the technology requirements are scaled back (thus implying greater efficiency or lesser content), the amount of potential players is undefined. It remains undefined because it increases the amount of people who COULD play and purchase it, but decreases the amount of people who WOULD play and purchase it. Clearly this illustrates a sweet spot, but it's one that developers won't be able to find without getting better market research from customers and pirates alike. How will they better research their pirates? By accepting the piracy and asking them to participate in helping out the people who let them have a free game. Is that a risk people will take? Not likely.
TL;DR version: I agree with the parent comment, catering more to the high-end audience is not a sensible proof that making more games for the PC will be more profitable.
The jerkimeter was at 11? It was so barely used that it probably comes in the least shaky of all shakycam films. To say it was 11 means it's beyond 10, which most people agree means "Cloverfield shaky."
Did you honestly feel it was beyond Cloverfield shaky, or were you just being funny.... honestly?
All I get is Greenday at 4:30.... and 4:35... and 4:40... and 4:45.... and that new song of theirs sounds like a cat slowly spinning in an electric can opener...
Well, that's because it's revenue sharing... not innovation. All they've done is added their % of the market together, which is still the same % of the market that isn't google dominated. And somehow, agreeing to share ad revenue doesn't seem like an effective way to grow your customer base...
Orleans wouldn't have if the government had been doing its job and maintaining the dikes.
So I suppose I should have supported Hilary a little more, since she was running on the "I'm going to maintain the dikes" platform. I misunderstood what she meant, at the time...:(
I'm one of many people who would turn away in disgust.
My speaker's volume adjustment does not work correctly; when I adjust it, I have to tweak the speakers for a long time before I get sound out of both of them. So, I leave it relatively high and I manage my audio with the internal controls. Anyone else who has the same set-up will confirm this for you, anything flash seems to be minimally effected by your PC's audio controls. The result? Those "cute/attention-getting" flash ads with sound, sound as if they're at 50+ on the internal setting even if they're on 2, with nearly 100% on the speakers themselves.
I'd say my speakers are at about 80% but they can entertain all the neighbors on my street with music at 40 internal/80 hardware, and annoy us all with a flash ad that screams, "HEY YOU!!!!!"
What a sense of community my neighborhood used to have, when we all yelled about that banner ad they heard coming from my house. It seems ABP is killing more than just the web...
It's not the hardware that's the issue, it's the emulators. I've run plenty of PS2 games at 60FPS and max quality with no graphics card. You don't actually need something vastly more powerful than the console to emulate it, you need someone who developed the console to sell out and make an efficient emulator for you, or enough geek hobbyists to spend long enough to finally get something good.
No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. Don't punish the innocent with a gas tax.
Punish the guilty with a poor car decision tax.
Rather than damn the innocent and poor, persuade the selfish and rich. Don't make the regulations ask car companies to stop producing what makes them profit, simply make the regulations impose yearly taxes on the owners of gas guzzlers, high enough to persuade the market to "work its magic" as you say.
Any readers don't like it? I don't care. Obviously if you've got the money to buy the expensive car, that consumes the expensive gas at a faster rate than necessary, then you've clearly got the money the government needs to fund the expensive environmental interests that will be taking care of your future.
Apple will still gain more brand recognition. Also, this will be a great reason to pay even MORE for the iPhone, which nobody wants to pay for already.
Why? Because once they own twitter, all twitter widgets/apps for everything but the iPhone and by everyone but Apple will be illegal. The iPhone itself will then cost $50 more dollars (by sneakily reducing the contract subsidy by $50 to declare the same price tag) to have Twitter pre-installed, saving a bundle over the old iPhone users, who will pay $100 for the app alone.
That's always been the Apple idea, encourage people to believe you're allowed to sell at prices way over the competitive pricing, because you do something exclusively but barely different.
Slashdot Mirror
Passenger: Excuse me, stewardess?
Stewardess: Yes, sir?
Passenger: It appears this fatass is preparing to seat herself beside me. Surely not everyone paid the $20 anti-fatass surcharge?
Stewardess: Oh, you're right sir, my apologies. Pardon me ma'am, would you please remove your bag from the overhead storage and come with me?
Proceeding towards the back of the plane...
Passenger 2: No.. NO! WAIT! I HAVE 20 DOLLARS IN MY WALLET! THIS SEAT'S TAKEN! THE LEFT PHALANGES IS MISSING! I'M ON THE WRONG FLIGHT! NOOOOOO!!!!
Passenger 2 becomes locked into place(hell) by the conquering fatass, all hope is lost.
If only to provide comedy, I think the system would work. I would gladly pay $20 to reserve comfort, insult fatties, and watch Passenger 2 and his futile struggle.
AT&T never checks to see if my torrent traffic is legal. I can't participate in the Star Trek MMO beta because the only way to reliably get the client, without slamming the beta's patch servers, is using a torrent. I'd rant about how frustrating this all is, but they're about to disconnect me again for two minutes until I stop trying to not steal a game I was invited to play.
At first when I read the title, I thought mainly the same thing. "Oh great, now there are going to be gigantic nasty farms of these beetles in order to fill every car with cheap, organic antifreeze."
The image was so horrifying... I can't think of a better place to be tortured to death than under a pile of Alaskan beetles in a beetle farm. Maybe it will happen in Saw 31.
Good point, this is why a lot of titles don't make it to the Wii right now, and also why a lot of Wii titles don't make it to other consoles.
But, unlike the Wii which only has the OPTION of using Gamecube controllers for normal games, the PS3 and 360 will have the STANDARD of using controllers for games after their evolved control releases. This is different from the Wii because not every Wii owner, and Nintendo intended it to be this way, owned a Gamecube previously, so not every Wii owner has alternatives to the Wiimote. 100% of PS3 and 360 owners will have alternatives, and while that % may slowly drop, most new-comers will still be picking up bundled consoles which will include a normal controller and thus still have alternative control schemes which developers will tap into when continuing to release cross-platform titles.
So while we're obviously going to see a drop in cross-platform titles, it will be small and probably not enough of a thorn in anyone's side to have a PS3 owner buy a 360 or a 360 owner buy a PS3 unless they already intended to. And even if somebody doesn't like the direction Sony and MS are going now with these new controller designs which will open up new worlds of gaming for many people, they've got to appreciate the fact that this won't totally change game design.
People trying to get rid of the pirate bay act as if removing a tool for sharing will put an end to the desire to share that drives the ability to find new tools to do it.
The engineers behind this are trying to develop an ACTUAL rice rocket.
Step 1 - Build a rocket and attach it to two in-line wheels, COMPLETE!
Step 2 - Make it out of rice
They broke down and turned their dispute with google into a name calling game? How very disappointing.
You know what's worse? AT&T restricts torrent traffic from most open trackers on their DSL services. I can download anything I want from my favorite private tracker at a constant 300KB/s down and 45KB/s up, thus killing my ratio for the next week without any interference. I can go and get the very same file from an open tracker, any of the nova's or the pirate bay plus some I've never even heard of, and even if it's FREE, UNCOPYRIGHTED content then I still get screwed by AT&T. There can be several hundred more seeders than downloaders, I can be connected to as many peers as possible, and I will still only be able to download at less than 100KB/s. Additionally, my internet connection for the whole house will drop every 5 minutes for about 1 minute like clockwork. Just long enough for nearly every useful active connection service to disconnect you.
This sort of traffic shaping has been going on for about 5 months for me now, it didn't used to be like this for the several years I've been with them. AT&T how about YOU practice net neutrality before pointing fingers like a bitch.
*Additional off-topic ranting below*
For those of you with AT&T's DSL setup, you know how frustrating 2wire routers are when internet connection is lost. The router acts like a virus, it injects itself into your browser to let you know the reason pages aren't loading is because the internet is not functioning. Then, with it's virus-like iron grip on your computer, it lets you know when the internet is okay again and you have to restart your browser in order to continue using the internet. Opening new tabs just leads you to the same notification page. I even have these specific events blocked by Noscript so now it's just a notification via Noscript telling me I told my router to fuck off, but even still I have to restart my browser. Everyone knows how Firefox hates to restart with multiple tabs open on DSL, thanks 2wire for trying to help me by inconveniencing me further.
I'm sure your Facebook analogy is fantastically accurate. But like most people on slashdot, I don't use facebook. Could you rewrite that as a car analogy?
Exactly, the author of the summary is totally confused. He correctly points out that developers are more attracted to consoles right now, but he falsely advocates this as the solution. Remember when the PS3 first came out and the good releases were so slow and spaced out because the processor architecture was so unusual? This multi-monitor gaming thing is different how?
Yes, developers want to make a game that sells. But they also want to make a game that's cost efficient and focuses more on drawing in as much of an audience as possible and not just one factor of that audience. That's why this break through is not going to be an answer, it might help, but it won't change much. Developers aren't going to take the time and resources to make their games fully support multi-monitor gaming. They know the % of people who will have a multi-monitor gaming capable PC (or even more than one monitor), while not having a console at the same time is undeniably insignificant.
The reasons game makers are most apprehensive about PC releases are compatibility issues, lack of predictable adoption due to hardware configurations, and mistakenly they fear piracy. Also you'll find that the established online communities of the Wii, 360, and PS3 are much more natural methods of getting people to buy DLC. The decentralized PC gaming market makes it less easy to distribute and advertise DLC, and unfortunately for developers the most centralized and effective distribution center of DLC for computer games is The Pirate Bay.
The real solutions would be:
Something like Steam to completely take over as a pseudo dashboard / platform for PC gaming, giving unity and simplicity. Developers and publishers should just meet and nominate something for this, doesn't have to be Steam, but it has to be universally accepted and used by gamers and game makers.
A full understanding of piracy and that sales lost due to piracy is significantly less than amount of times pirated. Most people pirate something because they won't pay for it anyway, others pirate as a means to test a game, and piracy means more players which means more advertisement through word of mouth. Piracy is largely not a measure of lost sales, it is a measure of interest and perhaps success if you could survey the amount of people who pirated your content and later bought it.
And of course, the major solution brought up by the parent comment in this article, hardware. The amount of PC owners does not equal the amount of customers in the PC gaming market. Additionally, PC gamers do not equal the potential audience for your game. The closest to a correct assumption a sales department can make is: As the technology requirements are scaled back (thus implying greater efficiency or lesser content), the amount of potential players is undefined. It remains undefined because it increases the amount of people who COULD play and purchase it, but decreases the amount of people who WOULD play and purchase it. Clearly this illustrates a sweet spot, but it's one that developers won't be able to find without getting better market research from customers and pirates alike. How will they better research their pirates? By accepting the piracy and asking them to participate in helping out the people who let them have a free game. Is that a risk people will take? Not likely.
TL;DR version: I agree with the parent comment, catering more to the high-end audience is not a sensible proof that making more games for the PC will be more profitable.
The jerkimeter was at 11? It was so barely used that it probably comes in the least shaky of all shakycam films. To say it was 11 means it's beyond 10, which most people agree means "Cloverfield shaky."
Did you honestly feel it was beyond Cloverfield shaky, or were you just being funny.... honestly?
From the summary, "...so they are expected to orbit in the same direction that the star rotates."
Yeah, well there's all kinds of surprises about the way things revolve. I say we name this planet the Australian Sink.
Been watching Ghost In The Shell, haven't we Mr. Laughing Man?
Actually, so easy a caveWOMAN could do it.
I have bad karma anyway. It doesn't matter if you think I'm actually sexist.
You get to listen to Nickelback at 4:30? Lucky :(
All I get is Greenday at 4:30.... and 4:35... and 4:40... and 4:45.... and that new song of theirs sounds like a cat slowly spinning in an electric can opener...
Well, that's because it's revenue sharing... not innovation. All they've done is added their % of the market together, which is still the same % of the market that isn't google dominated. And somehow, agreeing to share ad revenue doesn't seem like an effective way to grow your customer base...
Orleans wouldn't have if the government had been doing its job and maintaining the dikes.
So I suppose I should have supported Hilary a little more, since she was running on the "I'm going to maintain the dikes" platform. I misunderstood what she meant, at the time... :(
I'm one of many people who would turn away in disgust.
My speaker's volume adjustment does not work correctly; when I adjust it, I have to tweak the speakers for a long time before I get sound out of both of them. So, I leave it relatively high and I manage my audio with the internal controls. Anyone else who has the same set-up will confirm this for you, anything flash seems to be minimally effected by your PC's audio controls. The result? Those "cute/attention-getting" flash ads with sound, sound as if they're at 50+ on the internal setting even if they're on 2, with nearly 100% on the speakers themselves.
I'd say my speakers are at about 80% but they can entertain all the neighbors on my street with music at 40 internal/80 hardware, and annoy us all with a flash ad that screams, "HEY YOU!!!!!"
What a sense of community my neighborhood used to have, when we all yelled about that banner ad they heard coming from my house. It seems ABP is killing more than just the web...
If it were a motorcycle, the driver would have better odds to avoid the fatal crash than this less agile car.
@CIA the target is watching TV, looks like an old Price is Right.
@CIA we saw a cat jump out of a box, LOL!
@CIA his life is boring right now, appears to be twittering about it.
I suppose one would continue to get a similar impression if one did not read TFA and saw all the "leave it alone" comments.
It's not the hardware that's the issue, it's the emulators. I've run plenty of PS2 games at 60FPS and max quality with no graphics card. You don't actually need something vastly more powerful than the console to emulate it, you need someone who developed the console to sell out and make an efficient emulator for you, or enough geek hobbyists to spend long enough to finally get something good.
Have faith, there are finally good PS2 emulators.
No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. Don't punish the innocent with a gas tax.
Punish the guilty with a poor car decision tax.
Rather than damn the innocent and poor, persuade the selfish and rich. Don't make the regulations ask car companies to stop producing what makes them profit, simply make the regulations impose yearly taxes on the owners of gas guzzlers, high enough to persuade the market to "work its magic" as you say.
Any readers don't like it? I don't care. Obviously if you've got the money to buy the expensive car, that consumes the expensive gas at a faster rate than necessary, then you've clearly got the money the government needs to fund the expensive environmental interests that will be taking care of your future.
then I accidentally the whole thing!!!
Offsite, offline, and held in my offhand.
That's right.
My external hard drive is a +3 TB enchanted with easy backup.
Apple will still gain more brand recognition. Also, this will be a great reason to pay even MORE for the iPhone, which nobody wants to pay for already.
Why? Because once they own twitter, all twitter widgets/apps for everything but the iPhone and by everyone but Apple will be illegal. The iPhone itself will then cost $50 more dollars (by sneakily reducing the contract subsidy by $50 to declare the same price tag) to have Twitter pre-installed, saving a bundle over the old iPhone users, who will pay $100 for the app alone.
That's always been the Apple idea, encourage people to believe you're allowed to sell at prices way over the competitive pricing, because you do something exclusively but barely different.