I ultimately wonder what that means for Facebook's privacy issues - knowing that essentially the developer gets a lot of un-needed info, Zynga essentially has as much power to abuse Facebook's privacy policy as Mark Zuckerberg but everyone just likes to hate on Z since he's the one who started it all.
I remember there was a big issue a while back when EA wanted to put adverts into its games (I believe Battlefield 2142 was their prime pilot candidate) - and everyone made a big deal because it was like they were able to target you better because they knew what kind of games you played and it would be another venue for kids to get bombarded. There was a supposed rumour that the game was going to go through your browsing cookies looking for info but ultimately that wasn't the case (I don't think EA was stupid enough to try pulling that off without some backlash).
But here you've got what essentially amounts to an even bigger invasion of privacy - and people don't even notice because the blame game currently points at someone else. Many sources have supposedly caught Pincus (CEO of Zynga) saying that scamming users was part of their business model, though its usually small articles on places like techcrunch, so I take it with a bit of salt. Anyways, the point is that everyone seems to be mad at Zuckerberg for creating this monstrosity designed to pluck your personal info - meanwhile someone else who is probably worse in moral integrity also has access to it.
See this is where people say Facebook is the next Myspace. I don't think they've realized that Facebook elevated the game entirely, it's not just 12-30 year olds using it now - it's not just a fad social network for teenagers - its everybody, in almost every age group, and simple applications built into the platform have made their way into 711. So Facebook Apps are too addictive for most people to drop, so they don't want Facebook to go down. If Facebook isn't in threat of going down, Zuckerberg doesn't have to worry much. If Zuckerberg doesn't have to worry, then Pincus doesn't have to worry. Its a vicious circle where they both support each other and no one can stop them.
But Cliffhangers don't always make bad endings though - look at movies like Inception.
Empire Strikes back is at least as much of a story as A New Hope or Return of the Jedi, seriously you can twist any little bit of the movies to sound small and insignificant if you want. All they manage to do in the first one is blow up a second station. Then they do it all again in the third one.
It is a whole story, so much more happens because the characters are split up - you just don't think its an ending because the conflict wasn't resolved. Technically it wasn't resolved in the first one either but they just spun it that way.
Here in Canada we saw one of the Google Cars parked outside a Tim Hortons for a really long time, turns out the winter months were so cold the fuel line froze up. We sent the Engineers back to the States telling them we'd drive it back once it warmed up, but we've actually set it up so we can recieve all the wireless traffic between Alaska and the rest of the states.
The point is, Star Wars is the best Star Wars movie. Empire is flashy and necessary to continuing the story, but is still just a sequel and certainly not superior.
Why not, you make some claims but don't really defend them at all. Empire had actual character development, they were actually dynamic, which lends itself to be a much better story than the original. If you don't understand the conflict, it's in the title - it's the Empire striking back. The story of Darth Vader hunting down and capturing the leaders of the Rebel Alliance is ultimately just as good a story as the Rebel Alliance destroying a space station.
Don't get me wrong, I love the original as much as the next Star Wars fan, but I don't think you're giving Empire it's due credit. It deliberately ended where it was because it had already developed the story to an excellent Arc -Leia and Han profess their love, Han Solo Captured, Luke learns his heritage, any more story you try to push in there would over do it!
You know... If you sound just a LITTLE disinterested, you might be able to get them to throw in a lightsaber. But a No-deal off the bat... They'll go to the next customer.
You don't consider Linux Desktop a success? I think Ubuntu is a huge success. Just because it's not the one on top doesn't mean it isn't successful, my whole point.
They aren't saying that they're dying as in going under, they specifically say its no longer a "consumer brand" - meaning that only your University Campuses, Corporations, and other services are going to be using Microsoft products, not your "at home consumers" so to speak.
Their money makers are windows, xbox, office etc.. none of which are mentioned in the article.
It's like saying Intel is dying.. oh wait I saw that the other day too!
Well, they mentioned Windows and the Xbox in the article, but there is always a positive notion but the writer tried to spin everything in a negative way. It mentions that Windows 7 has been the fastest selling OS to date... but thats because companies didn't want to upgrade to vista, so they held out... It says that the Xbox was an innovative idea, but because it was outsold by the Wii it ultimately means Microsoft is no longer a consumer brand. There's so much false logic in that I don't even know where they started.
Seriously, this article is such a fail at trolling. I'm disappointed it made it onto CNN.
I don't understand how people like you are judging these statistics.
So the Wii has sold more units than the 360 or the PS3 - which ultimately makes both of them failures, right? I mean, there's no POSSIBLE way either of them could be a success if they weren't number one, right?
Look at that, almost 44 Million units sold. That can't possibly be any indicator of how well its doing on its own. No, you HAVE to look at Nintendo's statistics to gauge success. You can't be making money if you don't sell more than your competitor! You can't both be making money.
Because NO household has EVER purchased more than ONE console.
And also... looking just a bit further down the page... Second place in the weekly hardware chart... and the #1 top selling game was a 360 game!
You said it best: It's actually not about having a computer available to kids, but having the internet available to them.
There's no need to upgrade the wireless to support 2 devices per child, no kids going to need the INTERNET on two devices at once. It's a horrible idea.
Letting a kid use a computer when its got nothing but office productivity software on it and no internet hookup doesn't function as much of a distraction.
Halo gives you the options to make the game incredibly difficult - not only are there the 4 difficulty settings but there's a whole slew of skulls you can activate to make things harder (Limitted Ammo, Enemies like to use grenades more often, and of course Iron mode (any death by you or a team mate if you are playing co op means you restart the whole level, no checkpoints).
So if he is complaining about Halo 3 or Reach not being difficult enough, I challenge him to legendary with all skulls on, and try beating that in anything less than 6 hours and I will bow down and call him the gamer king.
He is just reminiscing the days of difficult platformers where every moving object on the screen was trying to kill you, and one touch meant you were dead and lost a life, and you only got 3 to start.
Don't get me wrong, games ARE getting easier, but that's not a bad thing. When I first played the new Halo Reach - it was with a buddy of mine and we were trying it on Legendary, no skulls. We got about half way through in one night - and its only because we've played all the halos through since the DEMO of Halo 1 - so our skills in those games are rather refined. When I was playing the game for myself, I wanted to jump in on multiplayer as soon as possible, but I also wanted to finish the campaign, just for the storyline - I would do Legendary another time when I felt like the challenge. Being able to breeze through the campaign on easy was a good thing, like an added feature to the game. When a game is storyline driven, as most games try to be now-a-days, its not a bad thing to have an easy difficulty setting where you can progress the game more like a movie.
They asked him how he addressed balance issues, they asked him about upcoming tools, they asked lots of questions that a software engineer could have answered in a software development kind of way, but that wouldn't make for an interesting interview for anyone who doesn't do software programming.
I think you were more disappointed in the responses than you were the questions.
Even that you need to have logged into Bnet at least once every 30 days.
Fact is, you can't buy it in store and install it from a disc and play it that evening if you don't have an internet connection. Even using Steam as a digital download service for games, once you've got them you can play them offline indefinately. It's far better than Blizzard's model, which requires a solid network connection all the time. Mine is flaky right now, so I wouldn't bother joining an online game anyways from fear of disconnection. Honestly if I could get a refund for SC2 I would - I thought that the gameplay and story would somehow offset the bad DRM model, but it didn't, so I'm not going to bother with the expansions till it changes. When I bought it, I was in the middle of moving from 1 house to another so I didn't have a network connection. I had logged in at my parent's house and activated my key, and started into the campaign, thinking "Obviously the game is active now" - when I moved my PC to my new place without internet yet, I couldn't even play offline. No guest mode, no account, says it needed activation. This was a bug that they fixed in the last patch, but I couldn't get the patch until I had a network connection. I should have returned it right then and there.
That sounds more like it would get in the way - perhaps I've come up with a more secure and robust algorithm than they've thought of and all it requires is a bit of data transfer from one section to another - but its deemed insecure due to their constraints - even though I've handled security in a different section.
On top of that - his initial statement basically makes no difference:
Our defenses improve only after they have been successfully penetrated
So you expect all programmers to switch to Fabric just overnight? Who's going to go through the hassle of learning a new language for security reasons if you haven't had any security reasons already? It's like - if I am concerned with security - it'll already have made its way into the code. If I'm not concerned with security - why would I go learn Fabric?
Windows Mobile has seriously SUCKED the life out of me, like my life sucks because of it. (I could have won concert tickets but my phone couldn't even preform a simple speed dial in under 10 seconds).
I don't know anyone who actually owns a zune, but lets just say my only run-in with it has been the zune apps on the Xbox - which is actually worse at managing my media than the original Xbox way of just navigating a filestructure. Thanks!
I could name a handful of other Non-PC products that Microsoft has, but really, whats the point? None of them can actually compare to their competitors on the market, at least from a users perspective. I think I would much prefer it if they focused SOLELY on the PC and made Windows 8 actually something worth buying - get rid of those issues with backwards compatibility.
But then you don't have the utility of being able to angle the light source in different ways. Sometimes its better for angled reflective objects if the light is above the object to reflect into your eye, as opposed to coming from your head and then reflecting away.
Slashdot Mirror
If its a genetic trait, shouldn't that make liberals as a group a race minority or something? Thus the same race protection Laws should apply, right?
You think you get racial protection based on your hair or eye colour, or length of your toes, or anything else defined in your genes?
Get back to class.
I ultimately wonder what that means for Facebook's privacy issues - knowing that essentially the developer gets a lot of un-needed info, Zynga essentially has as much power to abuse Facebook's privacy policy as Mark Zuckerberg but everyone just likes to hate on Z since he's the one who started it all.
I remember there was a big issue a while back when EA wanted to put adverts into its games (I believe Battlefield 2142 was their prime pilot candidate) - and everyone made a big deal because it was like they were able to target you better because they knew what kind of games you played and it would be another venue for kids to get bombarded. There was a supposed rumour that the game was going to go through your browsing cookies looking for info but ultimately that wasn't the case (I don't think EA was stupid enough to try pulling that off without some backlash).
But here you've got what essentially amounts to an even bigger invasion of privacy - and people don't even notice because the blame game currently points at someone else. Many sources have supposedly caught Pincus (CEO of Zynga) saying that scamming users was part of their business model, though its usually small articles on places like techcrunch, so I take it with a bit of salt. Anyways, the point is that everyone seems to be mad at Zuckerberg for creating this monstrosity designed to pluck your personal info - meanwhile someone else who is probably worse in moral integrity also has access to it.
See this is where people say Facebook is the next Myspace. I don't think they've realized that Facebook elevated the game entirely, it's not just 12-30 year olds using it now - it's not just a fad social network for teenagers - its everybody, in almost every age group, and simple applications built into the platform have made their way into 711. So Facebook Apps are too addictive for most people to drop, so they don't want Facebook to go down. If Facebook isn't in threat of going down, Zuckerberg doesn't have to worry much. If Zuckerberg doesn't have to worry, then Pincus doesn't have to worry. Its a vicious circle where they both support each other and no one can stop them.
But Cliffhangers don't always make bad endings though - look at movies like Inception.
Empire Strikes back is at least as much of a story as A New Hope or Return of the Jedi, seriously you can twist any little bit of the movies to sound small and insignificant if you want. All they manage to do in the first one is blow up a second station. Then they do it all again in the third one.
It is a whole story, so much more happens because the characters are split up - you just don't think its an ending because the conflict wasn't resolved. Technically it wasn't resolved in the first one either but they just spun it that way.
It's hard for there to be a penalty for something that isn't against the law.
Here in Canada we saw one of the Google Cars parked outside a Tim Hortons for a really long time, turns out the winter months were so cold the fuel line froze up. We sent the Engineers back to the States telling them we'd drive it back once it warmed up, but we've actually set it up so we can recieve all the wireless traffic between Alaska and the rest of the states.
The point is, Star Wars is the best Star Wars movie. Empire is flashy and necessary to continuing the story, but is still just a sequel and certainly not superior.
Why not, you make some claims but don't really defend them at all. Empire had actual character development, they were actually dynamic, which lends itself to be a much better story than the original. If you don't understand the conflict, it's in the title - it's the Empire striking back. The story of Darth Vader hunting down and capturing the leaders of the Rebel Alliance is ultimately just as good a story as the Rebel Alliance destroying a space station.
Don't get me wrong, I love the original as much as the next Star Wars fan, but I don't think you're giving Empire it's due credit. It deliberately ended where it was because it had already developed the story to an excellent Arc -Leia and Han profess their love, Han Solo Captured, Luke learns his heritage, any more story you try to push in there would over do it!
Any way you want it thats the way you need it any way you want it bowdowdowdowdowdowdowdoodoo
Oh hey, sorry, was just playing Rock Band 2, whats up?
You know... If you sound just a LITTLE disinterested, you might be able to get them to throw in a lightsaber. But a No-deal off the bat... They'll go to the next customer.
You don't consider Linux Desktop a success? I think Ubuntu is a huge success. Just because it's not the one on top doesn't mean it isn't successful, my whole point.
Were you making the same joke that I just made then? That no one ever owns more than one console?
What was the joke?
Come on, we're all adults here.
Meaning, you should have a Blastoise by now.
Thank you for exemplifying my exact point.
They aren't saying that they're dying as in going under, they specifically say its no longer a "consumer brand" - meaning that only your University Campuses, Corporations, and other services are going to be using Microsoft products, not your "at home consumers" so to speak.
Their money makers are windows, xbox, office etc.. none of which are mentioned in the article.
It's like saying Intel is dying.. oh wait I saw that the other day too!
Well, they mentioned Windows and the Xbox in the article, but there is always a positive notion but the writer tried to spin everything in a negative way. It mentions that Windows 7 has been the fastest selling OS to date... but thats because companies didn't want to upgrade to vista, so they held out... It says that the Xbox was an innovative idea, but because it was outsold by the Wii it ultimately means Microsoft is no longer a consumer brand. There's so much false logic in that I don't even know where they started.
Seriously, this article is such a fail at trolling. I'm disappointed it made it onto CNN.
I don't understand how people like you are judging these statistics.
So the Wii has sold more units than the 360 or the PS3 - which ultimately makes both of them failures, right? I mean, there's no POSSIBLE way either of them could be a success if they weren't number one, right?
Look at that, almost 44 Million units sold. That can't possibly be any indicator of how well its doing on its own. No, you HAVE to look at Nintendo's statistics to gauge success. You can't be making money if you don't sell more than your competitor! You can't both be making money.
Because NO household has EVER purchased more than ONE console.
And also... looking just a bit further down the page... Second place in the weekly hardware chart... and the #1 top selling game was a 360 game!
But nope: ITS A FAILURE.
You said it best: It's actually not about having a computer available to kids, but having the internet available to them.
There's no need to upgrade the wireless to support 2 devices per child, no kids going to need the INTERNET on two devices at once. It's a horrible idea.
Letting a kid use a computer when its got nothing but office productivity software on it and no internet hookup doesn't function as much of a distraction.
Halo gives you the options to make the game incredibly difficult - not only are there the 4 difficulty settings but there's a whole slew of skulls you can activate to make things harder (Limitted Ammo, Enemies like to use grenades more often, and of course Iron mode (any death by you or a team mate if you are playing co op means you restart the whole level, no checkpoints).
So if he is complaining about Halo 3 or Reach not being difficult enough, I challenge him to legendary with all skulls on, and try beating that in anything less than 6 hours and I will bow down and call him the gamer king.
He is just reminiscing the days of difficult platformers where every moving object on the screen was trying to kill you, and one touch meant you were dead and lost a life, and you only got 3 to start.
Don't get me wrong, games ARE getting easier, but that's not a bad thing. When I first played the new Halo Reach - it was with a buddy of mine and we were trying it on Legendary, no skulls. We got about half way through in one night - and its only because we've played all the halos through since the DEMO of Halo 1 - so our skills in those games are rather refined. When I was playing the game for myself, I wanted to jump in on multiplayer as soon as possible, but I also wanted to finish the campaign, just for the storyline - I would do Legendary another time when I felt like the challenge. Being able to breeze through the campaign on easy was a good thing, like an added feature to the game. When a game is storyline driven, as most games try to be now-a-days, its not a bad thing to have an easy difficulty setting where you can progress the game more like a movie.
Like what?
"Do you use a a while loop for moving units?"
They asked him how he addressed balance issues, they asked him about upcoming tools, they asked lots of questions that a software engineer could have answered in a software development kind of way, but that wouldn't make for an interesting interview for anyone who doesn't do software programming.
I think you were more disappointed in the responses than you were the questions.
Even that you need to have logged into Bnet at least once every 30 days.
Fact is, you can't buy it in store and install it from a disc and play it that evening if you don't have an internet connection. Even using Steam as a digital download service for games, once you've got them you can play them offline indefinately. It's far better than Blizzard's model, which requires a solid network connection all the time. Mine is flaky right now, so I wouldn't bother joining an online game anyways from fear of disconnection. Honestly if I could get a refund for SC2 I would - I thought that the gameplay and story would somehow offset the bad DRM model, but it didn't, so I'm not going to bother with the expansions till it changes. When I bought it, I was in the middle of moving from 1 house to another so I didn't have a network connection. I had logged in at my parent's house and activated my key, and started into the campaign, thinking "Obviously the game is active now" - when I moved my PC to my new place without internet yet, I couldn't even play offline. No guest mode, no account, says it needed activation. This was a bug that they fixed in the last patch, but I couldn't get the patch until I had a network connection. I should have returned it right then and there.
When you find one can you please let me know?
Coffee shops here have trouble repeating my order, let alone serving it.
That sounds more like it would get in the way - perhaps I've come up with a more secure and robust algorithm than they've thought of and all it requires is a bit of data transfer from one section to another - but its deemed insecure due to their constraints - even though I've handled security in a different section.
On top of that - his initial statement basically makes no difference:
Our defenses improve only after they have been successfully penetrated
So you expect all programmers to switch to Fabric just overnight? Who's going to go through the hassle of learning a new language for security reasons if you haven't had any security reasons already? It's like - if I am concerned with security - it'll already have made its way into the code. If I'm not concerned with security - why would I go learn Fabric?
Nope.
They ask why you didn't buy the latest revised edition, at an extra $100.
Was was thinking the same thing.
Windows Mobile has seriously SUCKED the life out of me, like my life sucks because of it. (I could have won concert tickets but my phone couldn't even preform a simple speed dial in under 10 seconds).
I don't know anyone who actually owns a zune, but lets just say my only run-in with it has been the zune apps on the Xbox - which is actually worse at managing my media than the original Xbox way of just navigating a filestructure. Thanks!
I could name a handful of other Non-PC products that Microsoft has, but really, whats the point? None of them can actually compare to their competitors on the market, at least from a users perspective. I think I would much prefer it if they focused SOLELY on the PC and made Windows 8 actually something worth buying - get rid of those issues with backwards compatibility.
What needs asking is what does a time machine look like to the people in "normal" time when it is traveling backwards through time.
It doesn't look like anything. This is like asking you if you recall what something looked like - but it hasn't happened yet.
But then you don't have the utility of being able to angle the light source in different ways. Sometimes its better for angled reflective objects if the light is above the object to reflect into your eye, as opposed to coming from your head and then reflecting away.