I have always refered to these as the Stickers of Shame. Occasionally I have bought a shamed box from Fry's when there was no other option... and every time it was DOA. When will I learn?
Now I live in Seattle, where there is no Fry's. I hate it and miss it at the same time.
this is without a doubt an improvement but why record the commercials at all and use up the extra tape if it's technically possible to not record (or pause recording) during the commercials.
'cuz that way it isn't fail-safe. According to people with CA gadgets (VCRs and ReplayTVs) it gets it right about 19/20 times. Keeping all the data means you can go manual if you need to. It isn't a perfect system so that makes sense to me.
In the vegan lifestyle is there any situation when meat is OK? Take hunting, for example; in some parts of the world, deer hunters are an important population control. Without them, the deer may multiply too much and begin to starve... thinning the herd is critical to the health of the population as a whole. How does a vegan see this situation?
Is it better to let nature take its course even if that's bad for the animals?
Can humans and their tools ever be seen as part of nature?
Is there ever a time when a human can kill an animal and not be "exploiting" it?
Is it acceptable to "exploit" an individual animal for the benefit of the group?
Lastly, a hypothetical scenario for you: assume that there exists a tasty animal. This strange creature is not raised on farms... the only way it is "harvested" is when it is found dead in the wild of natural causes. For the sake of argument, if this kind of carrion was good eats, would consuming it be consistent with the vegan lifestyle?
Notice that the Tivo boxes that get sold through AT&T Broadband don't have the "commercial skip" button on the remote?
I could be wrong, but I though NO Tivo had "commercial skip" on the remote. Tivos have FF/REW functions, and there is a hack for a 30 sec skip, but they have no dedicated 30 sec skip-ahead button like a ReplayTV does. My buddy's Philips Tivo certainly has no such button.
Better yet ask why no one has ever marketed a VCR that edits out the commercials.
They have, the feature is called Commercial Advance and it's the same tech used in the Reply 4000 series. Here is just one VCR that has it, for the princely sum of $120.
There is realistically no way for them to make money from these devices. (Unlike with the VCR).
The heck there's not! If I were running a big broadcasting company, I would cut a deal with Tivo/Replay to put my ads in their devices. There is a lot of ad-ready real estate in those devices' interfaces... pause screens, config screens, choose-your-recording screens... You could even have the ads be contextually relevant; if you pause the show during Friends, you see a still ad from a Friends sponsor.
There are ways to monetize these devices, but Newthink is scary, so the broadcasters are trying to crush the technology.
And if none of those ideas prove to work out, the damn broadcasters will have to find some other way of making money. Poor babies!
It's not cheating if the league rules allow it. And that's what I am suggesting: the game provider build support in, or even sell in-game items or abilities for cold hard cash.
If it's the system, it isn't cheating. It's the way the game is played.
I'm NOT fixated on that, but everyone in this thread keeps talking about people being "owed for their work in the game," and I am trying to illustrate how that is not a good way to look at it.
I don't think it's like that at all. It isn't a spectator sport. No one is betting on the outcome. Nothing is produced. Time spent in DAOC or EQ is utterly unproductive, besides the intangible "fun factor."
It may infringe the integrity of the game, but the game is a self-contained system that exists for no other purpose than to occupy your time -- so how wrong can it go?
All the online games should allow the sale of in-game items/characters. Hell, they should FACILITATE it.
Why not allow people to sell off EQ characters? It makes the game MORE FUN for some people, and it doesn't hurt anyone else. The company could even make some money by taking a cut of the transaction. People wouldn't even mind that, because if the sales were facilitated by the game's provider, they could engineer a no-scam system, and people would gladly pay for that safety blanket.
The only conceivable balance issue is that over time the population of high-level characters would increase on the server, because people could make them and sell them, over and over over. But I doubt that this would impact the overall demographics of the game world much, because most people won't be willing to pay. If the game was well-designed (COUGH) it wouldn't even matter, because you have to solve overpopulation/camping problems ANYWAY.
For that matter, why shouldn't the company allow people to buy items and levels directly from the game? "Close to that next level? Bump up your XP for $10! Lagging the pack? Level 50 on sale today for just $100!"
If it ended up being a polarizing issue, the company could run some servers as commerce-enabled and others as old-school. Everyone's happy (except for some purist crybabies, who will write poems about the travesty in their EQ guild message boards, with lots of *hugs*, god, I hate those people!), and the company makes more money.
(I'd rather inject Drano into my eyes than play EQ again, but I find the whole MMO genre fascinating from a game design and peoplewatching perspective.)
Re:Works great if you have a clean room available
on
Clear Hard Drive Mods
·
· Score: 2
(Now I send the watch to someone who changes the cell in a clean, nitrogen atmosphere box, like it's supposed to be done.)
Where? I have a sealed watch that needs a battery replaced and I haven't done it because I don't trust the Mall Watch Shop Morons.
Re:What Difference Does It Make In The Long Run?
on
Palm OS 5.0 Preview
·
· Score: 2
...all because they cant see past the idea of using their hardware for anything more than a $200 equivalent of a 39 cent paper note pad.
If you really think a PDA is no better than a notepad, you haven't learned to use one properly.
While Palm may have some strategic problems for the future, you can't argue with their past success. Either there are a lot of stupid people out there who should have bought notepads instead, or maybe a PDA IS an improvement after all... I know which way I'd vote.
THey check for a pulse, I believe. Which can be faked I'm sure, but probably not easily if you have to work quick and look smooth as you do your breakin.
I know the palm scanner at my (former) company's Exodus colo facility had pulse detection. Neat.
These guys get 4 or 5K an hour and have franchises with major record labels.
Wouldn't you say that's the exception instead of the rule? I've been to plenty of clubs where the DJ wasn't A Big Name and the music has been just fine.
For me, in the end, it all comes down to value. If I perceive a piece of shareware to be a "deal," I'll buy it.
I have a Mac, I like games, and I also wouldn't buy EV:O for the reasons you quoted. However, I would (and did) buy LimeWire Pro for $6. At $6, I feel good for doing the Right Thing AND I feel like I got a deal. I also bought the Beam screen saver for my PC, because $12 seemed like a fair price at the time, and it was (is) supercool. (I was employed then, my threshold was higher.) I have probably bought ~$120 of shareware in the last few years. Not a lot, and nothing was $25.
More shareware should be in the $5 range -- that's the only kind I will support, unless it's a really killer title. (I keep thinking about that Black Cat ham radio app that does all the digital decoding. Neat stuff. But $100.)
Quite frankly, I don't see the NEED to buy yet another PC (which is pretty much what it is) to do something that my current PC could probabally do, if someone put the time to it.
Look what you just said: "I don't need to buy a gadget to do something that my computer can't do yet." I'm not sure where you are going with that.
When there is one tarred up app at Sourceforge that lets me turn a computer into a Tivo/Replay, I'll think about abandoning my ReplayTV 3030. Until then, I will keep getting 45 minutes of my life back, skipping all the crap in BattleBots and just watching the fightin'.
The ReplayTV units had some SERIOUS QC issues. I haven't heard about this in the new 4000 series, but my 3030 was DOA. AND you have to pay to ship it in for repair/replacement. Weak.
It's a neat idea but "micropayments" are impossible/impractical with today's financial system. If there was an easy way to charge $0.001 for clicking on a link, it would have already taken the web by storm.
Too bad, it WOULD be nice for a lot of things, but we're going to have to wait.
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected?
on
AOL vs. Trillian
·
· Score: 2
Why do you think TiVo doesn't let you completely strip away ads and watch programmes seamlessly?
The ReplayTV 4000 series has auto commercial skipping. I doubt it will destroy the television industry. And if it does, I don't care, as long as it happens after 24 is over.
Remember when CD-ROM drives first became common on computers? For a while it seemed like all the games being made were stupid "interactive movies."
Not that I am less annoyed than you are... I hate those stupid animations, too. It's from the same corporate mindset that gives us bad Flash web sites. It looks neat in the meetings, sure, but did the guy who approved it try to USE it?
Slashdot Mirror
I have always refered to these as the Stickers of Shame. Occasionally I have bought a shamed box from Fry's when there was no other option... and every time it was DOA. When will I learn?
Now I live in Seattle, where there is no Fry's. I hate it and miss it at the same time.
this is without a doubt an improvement but why record the commercials at all and use up the extra tape if it's technically possible to not record (or pause recording) during the commercials.
'cuz that way it isn't fail-safe. According to people with CA gadgets (VCRs and ReplayTVs) it gets it right about 19/20 times. Keeping all the data means you can go manual if you need to. It isn't a perfect system so that makes sense to me.
In the vegan lifestyle is there any situation when meat is OK? Take hunting, for example; in some parts of the world, deer hunters are an important population control. Without them, the deer may multiply too much and begin to starve... thinning the herd is critical to the health of the population as a whole. How does a vegan see this situation?
Is it better to let nature take its course even if that's bad for the animals?
Can humans and their tools ever be seen as part of nature?
Is there ever a time when a human can kill an animal and not be "exploiting" it?
Is it acceptable to "exploit" an individual animal for the benefit of the group?
Lastly, a hypothetical scenario for you: assume that there exists a tasty animal. This strange creature is not raised on farms... the only way it is "harvested" is when it is found dead in the wild of natural causes. For the sake of argument, if this kind of carrion was good eats, would consuming it be consistent with the vegan lifestyle?
Just curious. Not trying to get in yer face.
Lord knows that if Network TV died, I certainly wouldn't miss it, and I doubt the rest of the world would miss it either.
:)
Guess you haven't been watching "24."
Notice that the Tivo boxes that get sold through AT&T Broadband don't have the "commercial skip" button on the remote?
I could be wrong, but I though NO Tivo had "commercial skip" on the remote. Tivos have FF/REW functions, and there is a hack for a 30 sec skip, but they have no dedicated 30 sec skip-ahead button like a ReplayTV does. My buddy's Philips Tivo certainly has no such button.
Better yet ask why no one has ever marketed a VCR that edits out the commercials.
They have, the feature is called Commercial Advance and it's the same tech used in the Reply 4000 series. Here is just one VCR that has it, for the princely sum of $120.
There is realistically no way for them to make money from these devices. (Unlike with the VCR).
The heck there's not! If I were running a big broadcasting company, I would cut a deal with Tivo/Replay to put my ads in their devices. There is a lot of ad-ready real estate in those devices' interfaces... pause screens, config screens, choose-your-recording screens... You could even have the ads be contextually relevant; if you pause the show during Friends, you see a still ad from a Friends sponsor.
There are ways to monetize these devices, but Newthink is scary, so the broadcasters are trying to crush the technology.
And if none of those ideas prove to work out, the damn broadcasters will have to find some other way of making money. Poor babies!
I'm looking forward to the fall of TV when ads will start appearing in my books...
;)
Those are called "magazines."
...who in slashdot actually COOKS stuff???
Cooking is science you can eat. There's a lot to like there.
But we also learned that they are susceptible to damage from chemically-powered projectile weapons. Whew!
It's not cheating if the league rules allow it. And that's what I am suggesting: the game provider build support in, or even sell in-game items or abilities for cold hard cash.
If it's the system, it isn't cheating. It's the way the game is played.
I'm NOT fixated on that, but everyone in this thread keeps talking about people being "owed for their work in the game," and I am trying to illustrate how that is not a good way to look at it.
I don't think it's like that at all. It isn't a spectator sport. No one is betting on the outcome. Nothing is produced. Time spent in DAOC or EQ is utterly unproductive, besides the intangible "fun factor."
It may infringe the integrity of the game, but the game is a self-contained system that exists for no other purpose than to occupy your time -- so how wrong can it go?
All the online games should allow the sale of in-game items/characters. Hell, they should FACILITATE it.
Why not allow people to sell off EQ characters? It makes the game MORE FUN for some people, and it doesn't hurt anyone else. The company could even make some money by taking a cut of the transaction. People wouldn't even mind that, because if the sales were facilitated by the game's provider, they could engineer a no-scam system, and people would gladly pay for that safety blanket.
The only conceivable balance issue is that over time the population of high-level characters would increase on the server, because people could make them and sell them, over and over over. But I doubt that this would impact the overall demographics of the game world much, because most people won't be willing to pay. If the game was well-designed (COUGH) it wouldn't even matter, because you have to solve overpopulation/camping problems ANYWAY.
For that matter, why shouldn't the company allow people to buy items and levels directly from the game? "Close to that next level? Bump up your XP for $10! Lagging the pack? Level 50 on sale today for just $100!"
If it ended up being a polarizing issue, the company could run some servers as commerce-enabled and others as old-school. Everyone's happy (except for some purist crybabies, who will write poems about the travesty in their EQ guild message boards, with lots of *hugs*, god, I hate those people!), and the company makes more money.
(I'd rather inject Drano into my eyes than play EQ again, but I find the whole MMO genre fascinating from a game design and peoplewatching perspective.)
mod this guy up to 10,000
(Now I send the watch to someone who changes the cell in a clean, nitrogen atmosphere box, like it's supposed to be done.)
Where? I have a sealed watch that needs a battery replaced and I haven't done it because I don't trust the Mall Watch Shop Morons.
...all because they cant see past the idea of using their hardware for anything more than a $200 equivalent of a 39 cent paper note pad.
If you really think a PDA is no better than a notepad, you haven't learned to use one properly.
While Palm may have some strategic problems for the future, you can't argue with their past success. Either there are a lot of stupid people out there who should have bought notepads instead, or maybe a PDA IS an improvement after all... I know which way I'd vote.
THey check for a pulse, I believe. Which can be faked I'm sure, but probably not easily if you have to work quick and look smooth as you do your breakin.
I know the palm scanner at my (former) company's Exodus colo facility had pulse detection. Neat.
These guys get 4 or 5K an hour and have franchises with major record labels.
Wouldn't you say that's the exception instead of the rule? I've been to plenty of clubs where the DJ wasn't A Big Name and the music has been just fine.
For me, in the end, it all comes down to value. If I perceive a piece of shareware to be a "deal," I'll buy it.
I have a Mac, I like games, and I also wouldn't buy EV:O for the reasons you quoted. However, I would (and did) buy LimeWire Pro for $6. At $6, I feel good for doing the Right Thing AND I feel like I got a deal. I also bought the Beam screen saver for my PC, because $12 seemed like a fair price at the time, and it was (is) supercool. (I was employed then, my threshold was higher.) I have probably bought ~$120 of shareware in the last few years. Not a lot, and nothing was $25.
More shareware should be in the $5 range -- that's the only kind I will support, unless it's a really killer title. (I keep thinking about that Black Cat ham radio app that does all the digital decoding. Neat stuff. But $100.)
Quite frankly, I don't see the NEED to buy yet another PC (which is pretty much what it is) to do something that my current PC could probabally do, if someone put the time to it.
Look what you just said: "I don't need to buy a gadget to do something that my computer can't do yet." I'm not sure where you are going with that.
When there is one tarred up app at Sourceforge that lets me turn a computer into a Tivo/Replay, I'll think about abandoning my ReplayTV 3030. Until then, I will keep getting 45 minutes of my life back, skipping all the crap in BattleBots and just watching the fightin'.
The ReplayTV units had some SERIOUS QC issues. I haven't heard about this in the new 4000 series, but my 3030 was DOA. AND you have to pay to ship it in for repair/replacement. Weak.
My replacement has been going great guns though.
It's a neat idea but "micropayments" are impossible/impractical with today's financial system. If there was an easy way to charge $0.001 for clicking on a link, it would have already taken the web by storm.
Too bad, it WOULD be nice for a lot of things, but we're going to have to wait.
Why do you think TiVo doesn't let you completely strip away ads and watch programmes seamlessly?
The ReplayTV 4000 series has auto commercial skipping. I doubt it will destroy the television industry. And if it does, I don't care, as long as it happens after 24 is over.
Remember when CD-ROM drives first became common on computers? For a while it seemed like all the games being made were stupid "interactive movies."
Not that I am less annoyed than you are... I hate those stupid animations, too. It's from the same corporate mindset that gives us bad Flash web sites. It looks neat in the meetings, sure, but did the guy who approved it try to USE it?