There's spectaters for about anything. And sponsors will follow.
People watch bowling. Pool. Pro Paintball. Once late at night I caught a demolition style "race" of trucks pulling campers (the drivers had sponsors).
It doesn't really take much of an audience to get sponsors. The key to lining them up is for the event organizers to make it clear to the sponsors who will be seeing their ads. If the spectaters interests and the sponsors are in agreement, then the deal works. I'd bet one could find sponsors for snail racing because there will be someone watching.
So I see no reason why computer games can't be either.
For years, the hospitals have been collecting DNA from every live birth. They also have records of hand and foot prints. So I don't see whats the point of resisting this. The gov is collecting data on us left and right from the time we are born.
I wonder if the speculation may be more on target than credit is given. If a drug or chemial or w/e doesn't have patent, then the price of it is open to stiff competition since anyone can bring it to market. That means lower margins. Not necessarily a bad thing, until one starts to consider lawsuits. Drug companies get a lot of attention from the lawyers. Since the prospect of lawsuits is high, and the prospect of profit is low, there is not much incentive, imo, to market it. Why risk losing $ over it?
Microsoft isn't the only bad company here. Hollywood studios and the recording industry wanted these DRM changes. They hate it that right now we can have systems at home that parrelle the quality of their studios. The DRM in Vista is a big win for them.
Im commenting this from my failing mind, so its possibly wrong:
I believe this "product" came out of DARPA as a result of the military wanting nonlethal means of exerting influence in the US, if called to do so. AKA riot, bio panic attack, etc....
Not sure this all that exciting. Vista wont be released to the general masses until Jan 2007. Microsoft estimates around 10% adoption rate, mostly from the sale of new computers. So most people wont be affected.
There was an ice age. The last ice age, even the last mini, was well before any industrial revolution. The environment had to significantly warm to bring an end to such a period.
Where I struggle with the global warming apologists, is that they haven't sufficently answered for me an number of questions. Here's a few:
1) why do we keep seeing science like this. If global warming is real, shouldnt this information be debunked as false?
2) Or this (from a link below btw):
Reports in the late 1980s found the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface had declined by 4 to 6 percent since 1960. Suddenly, around 1990, that appears to have reversed. "When we looked at the more recent data, lo and behold, the trend went the other way," said Charles Long, senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
3) Is global warming necessarily bad? If the earth getting warmer, that means more areas, such as Canada could have longer growing seasons which would produce more food for the world. Ok sure some coastly areas might get flooded. Is that bad? Is it possible that the fish would have more environment to live in and therefore better thrive? And is a 4" rise in the ocean really even noticable? A warmer environment would mean a growth in plant life, in general. Isn't that a good thing since plants are known to remove CO2 from the air?
4) The sun is geting warmer. It is affected other planets, most recently noted on Mars. Can we even theorectically counter the effects of the sun? The sun is huge and powerful. We cannot realistic predict let alone counter the effects of a warmer sun.
There is a lot of hypocracy and conflicting information in the global warming research. Its really hard for me to buy into that its a people problem and that its even a problem at all until all of this gets sorted out.
It is sad that the US is not closer to the top of defending privacy.
I was reading an article today on Foxnews (link as of 11.02.06 4:45 pm). On the surface it just sounds like cops doing their jobs. Until I read this line:
Those totals represent a fraction of doors knocked on, liquor store drive-bys, construction site surveillances and tips chased down by agents during the weeklong sweep.
To me, sounds very gestapo. Can't even go get a beer now without risk of being stopped by a cop. Bad news imo....
Yes, you may have to pay real money to get into SL (there are free accounts). However I argue that it does actually have worth.
Two points:
1) Lindens (currency in SL) can be converted to IRL currency. A small subset of the players that run shops and islands actually turn a RL profit every month. So, for these people there is a monetary worth.
2) Its a world where friendships can be made, creativity expressed and other forms of joy experienced. This can have value to people. Such value cannot be measured but that doesn't negate its worth to the people that appreciate it.
Personally, I've concluded that Best Buy has lost their focus on the customer and will soon go the way of dinosaurs. The only thing that is keeping them going is demand for high priced ticket items. With gas prices rising, and inflation on the rise, this could change and could very well dink BB.
My observations/thoughts:
a) I learned from a friend of mine that the secret shoppers they hire are instructed to "buy candy and get a receipt". How in the world does buying candy from BB evaluate a retail organization whose primary market is electronics? I realize buying a $2000 tv is expensive for mystery shoppers. However buying candy doesn't accurately measure them either.
b) At the BB closest to me, I cannot buy a tube TV anymore. They do not stock them. Everything is LCD/Plasma. Those are great items to have but not everyone can afford $1000 or more for a TV. Heck I wouldn't want to put that kinda TV in my kids rooms. So at that BB, people w/o the $ (or willingness to spend the $) for high item TV probably don't even shop there.
c) Sales of computer hardware and software, movies and music simply do not have the margins to sustain them. Music (and increasingly movies) are being bought via electronic channels (aka iTunes etc...).
d) downright aweful customer service included (especially) Geek Squad
These things just makes me think they (aka CEOs and BOD) have just lost touch with how to run a good electronics retailer. Patronizing BB isn't going to help them or hurt them IMO. They are already on the path of failure.
Normally, I would concur. It does seem like these agencies (and those like them) and even more mundane agencies just dont give a rip about protecting peoples rights, respecting privacy and preserving free speech etc....but I struggle with believing that these agencies are malicously overridding the rights of my country.
These agencies are run by people who are, for the most part, citizens of the USA. As citizens, I'm sure most of them care very much for and certainly hope for a very free country where the rights of the consitution are not trampled on.
I can't reason that becoming employed by such an agency means to throw out those ideals. Therefore I have to believe that, for the most part, the people employed these agencies really do care about our privacy and work hard to keep it that way. I have a hard time believing that thousand and thousands of people just throw those ideals away at the start of the work day to go home again and suddenly care about privacy.
I never have worked for such an agency (that I can admit.:winks:.) so I can only imagine the some of the intensity of meetings that take place as these citizens try to protect the rest of us and protect the rights endowed in the consitution. It seems like it would be a very hard to job to make those decisions, walking that fine line between protecting the consitution and protecting the people who the consitution applies to.
Was it a medieval game and you were actually his servant?
Yes. DAOC is Dark Ages of Camelot. There were 3 worlds in a DAOC server. One of which was very much on the lines of paladins and castles and etc...(I think Abilaon was the name??)
I think the laywers won't allow us to release that information for fear of making lawsuits that much easier.
I work for a commerical software developer (hence unnamed to protect blah blah). Yes we do ship with known defects. Our lawyers look over everything to the nth degree. They look at every screen we developed. They look at every report the program generates. They look at every help link. The list is pretty long.
Yes BoD is about ensuring the company is profitable. But profitable doesnt have to mean shoddy and many companies honesty try to deliver quality products. So I feel its a bit contrived to suggest that the BoD primarily responsible.
If anything releasing bug information would make the company more reputable therefore more profitable because more customers would be interested in dealing with a sincere and honest company (my program managers hold that view anyways).
This reminds me of an encounter I had years ago playing DAOC. I was not part of group and a group leader approached me about joining his group. I asked him what does it gain for me to join your group. He mentioned various things about how the group works together and stuff. He also said "we are into roleplaying". So I asked him, "how should I address you? as my lord?". His response "Just call me Tom {w/e his char name was}".
Which brings me to my point of writing this: I think that in todays environment the true sense of roll playing is lost. Roll playing is "Im a orge so my guy looks like an orge as the game graphics show" and thats about it.
Lost are the days of sitting around a table with some dice and graph paper and, maybe even, a few pewter knicknacks where real group dynamics and game play made real roll playing possible and even enjoyable.
Today, the games pretty control how our characters look, with permitted customizations. Talking is the form of IM where details are easily lost and its more effective to use:=) faces. And so it looses that ability to really have a good sense of role play.
So then it is a lost "way", so to speak", of true role playing. The environment doesn't really support it in the purest sense.
My friend and I were talking about this exact topic at lunch--except we were talking about the XBox 360. I have not bought a 360 yet because there are no 360 based games that I am dying to play. I have no incentive to shell out $400 for a console that, atm, doesnt give anything better than what I currently own.
Back in the early-mid 90s my friends and I tried a similar approach to email. At that time, MS offer Outlook Express for free. It was a pretty crappy product.
We constructed our email client (emailmax). It offered a lot of features that OE didnt have at that time. We still found it hard to sell our product. Biggest reason: why pay for something when I get something similar for free?
I suspect that will be case with antivirus/spy-sweeping software as well. For most people, the fact that they have something, regardless of quality or effectiveness, will be sufficent.
plus they have shitty customer service. BF2 I had to buy the European maps to get the latest patch. If I didnt get the latest patch I wasnt able to play online on ranked servers anymore because they had the latest patch.
Slashdot Mirror
There's spectaters for about anything. And sponsors will follow.
People watch bowling. Pool. Pro Paintball. Once late at night I caught a demolition style "race" of trucks pulling campers (the drivers had sponsors).
It doesn't really take much of an audience to get sponsors. The key to lining them up is for the event organizers to make it clear to the sponsors who will be seeing their ads. If the spectaters interests and the sponsors are in agreement, then the deal works. I'd bet one could find sponsors for snail racing because there will be someone watching.
So I see no reason why computer games can't be either.
For years, the hospitals have been collecting DNA from every live birth. They also have records of hand and foot prints. So I don't see whats the point of resisting this. The gov is collecting data on us left and right from the time we are born.
I wonder if the speculation may be more on target than credit is given. If a drug or chemial or w/e doesn't have patent, then the price of it is open to stiff competition since anyone can bring it to market. That means lower margins. Not necessarily a bad thing, until one starts to consider lawsuits. Drug companies get a lot of attention from the lawyers. Since the prospect of lawsuits is high, and the prospect of profit is low, there is not much incentive, imo, to market it. Why risk losing $ over it?
Microsoft isn't the only bad company here. Hollywood studios and the recording industry wanted these DRM changes. They hate it that right now we can have systems at home that parrelle the quality of their studios. The DRM in Vista is a big win for them.
Im commenting this from my failing mind, so its possibly wrong:
I believe this "product" came out of DARPA as a result of the military wanting nonlethal means of exerting influence in the US, if called to do so. AKA riot, bio panic attack, etc....
Any one have more details....?
Actually they scraped the plan to give away 2b1 computers in exchange for giving away 3b2s ;)
A different person for the movie may well have made a difference.
A big problem with Al Gore is his trustworthiness. He made the claim, publically, that he invented the internet. Plus a few other snaffus.
He is not believable.
Not sure this all that exciting. Vista wont be released to the general masses until Jan 2007. Microsoft estimates around 10% adoption rate, mostly from the sale of new computers. So most people wont be affected.
There was an ice age. The last ice age, even the last mini, was well before any industrial revolution. The environment had to significantly warm to bring an end to such a period.
Where I struggle with the global warming apologists, is that they haven't sufficently answered for me an number of questions. Here's a few:
1) why do we keep seeing science like this.
If global warming is real, shouldnt this information be debunked as false?
2) Or this (from a link below btw):
3) Is global warming necessarily bad? If the earth getting warmer, that means more areas, such as Canada could have longer growing seasons which would produce more food for the world. Ok sure some coastly areas might get flooded. Is that bad? Is it possible that the fish would have more environment to live in and therefore better thrive? And is a 4" rise in the ocean really even noticable? A warmer environment would mean a growth in plant life, in general. Isn't that a good thing since plants are known to remove CO2 from the air?
4) The sun is geting warmer. It is affected other planets, most recently noted on Mars. Can we even theorectically counter the effects of the sun? The sun is huge and powerful. We cannot realistic predict let alone counter the effects of a warmer sun.
There is a lot of hypocracy and conflicting information in the global warming research. Its really hard for me to buy into that its a people problem and that its even a problem at all until all of this gets sorted out.
It is sad that the US is not closer to the top of defending privacy.
I was reading an article today on Foxnews (link as of 11.02.06 4:45 pm). On the surface it just sounds like cops doing their jobs. Until I read this line:
Those totals represent a fraction of doors knocked on, liquor store drive-bys, construction site surveillances and tips chased down by agents during the weeklong sweep.
To me, sounds very gestapo. Can't even go get a beer now without risk of being stopped by a cop. Bad news imo....
Yes, you may have to pay real money to get into SL (there are free accounts). However I argue that it does actually have worth.
Two points:
1) Lindens (currency in SL) can be converted to IRL currency. A small subset of the players that run shops and islands actually turn a RL profit every month. So, for these people there is a monetary worth.
2) Its a world where friendships can be made, creativity expressed and other forms of joy experienced. This can have value to people. Such value cannot be measured but that doesn't negate its worth to the people that appreciate it.
Um. Wasn't Ultima Online the first?
Personally, I've concluded that Best Buy has lost their focus on the customer and will soon go the way of dinosaurs. The only thing that is keeping them going is demand for high priced ticket items. With gas prices rising, and inflation on the rise, this could change and could very well dink BB.
My observations/thoughts:
a) I learned from a friend of mine that the secret shoppers they hire are instructed to "buy candy and get a receipt". How in the world does buying candy from BB evaluate a retail organization whose primary market is electronics? I realize buying a $2000 tv is expensive for mystery shoppers. However buying candy doesn't accurately measure them either.
b) At the BB closest to me, I cannot buy a tube TV anymore. They do not stock them. Everything is LCD/Plasma. Those are great items to have but not everyone can afford $1000 or more for a TV. Heck I wouldn't want to put that kinda TV in my kids rooms. So at that BB, people w/o the $ (or willingness to spend the $) for high item TV probably don't even shop there.
c) Sales of computer hardware and software, movies and music simply do not have the margins to sustain them. Music (and increasingly movies) are being bought via electronic channels (aka iTunes etc...).
d) downright aweful customer service included (especially) Geek Squad
These things just makes me think they (aka CEOs and BOD) have just lost touch with how to run a good electronics retailer. Patronizing BB isn't going to help them or hurt them IMO. They are already on the path of failure.
sl.me.com too
so how long will it before there are lawsuits against laptop manufactors because someone hurts their back lifting a laptop?
so glad Im living in 2006. Sounds boring no women in the workplace. No mini skirts.
As I look around I see no girls in my workplace. No miniskirts either. I hate being a programmer.
Normally, I would concur. It does seem like these agencies (and those like them) and even more mundane agencies just dont give a rip about protecting peoples rights, respecting privacy and preserving free speech etc....but I struggle with believing that these agencies are malicously overridding the rights of my country.
.:winks:.) so I can only imagine the some of the intensity of meetings that take place as these citizens try to protect the rest of us and protect the rights endowed in the consitution. It seems like it would be a very hard to job to make those decisions, walking that fine line between protecting the consitution and protecting the people who the consitution applies to.
These agencies are run by people who are, for the most part, citizens of the USA. As citizens, I'm sure most of them care very much for and certainly hope for a very free country where the rights of the consitution are not trampled on.
I can't reason that becoming employed by such an agency means to throw out those ideals. Therefore I have to believe that, for the most part, the people employed these agencies really do care about our privacy and work hard to keep it that way. I have a hard time believing that thousand and thousands of people just throw those ideals away at the start of the work day to go home again and suddenly care about privacy.
I never have worked for such an agency (that I can admit
haven't you tried curling naked?
Yes. DAOC is Dark Ages of Camelot. There were 3 worlds in a DAOC server. One of which was very much on the lines of paladins and castles and etc...(I think Abilaon was the name??)
I disagree.
I think the laywers won't allow us to release that information for fear of making lawsuits that much easier.
I work for a commerical software developer (hence unnamed to protect blah blah). Yes we do ship with known defects. Our lawyers look over everything to the nth degree. They look at every screen we developed. They look at every report the program generates. They look at every help link. The list is pretty long.
Yes BoD is about ensuring the company is profitable. But profitable doesnt have to mean shoddy and many companies honesty try to deliver quality products. So I feel its a bit contrived to suggest that the BoD primarily responsible.
If anything releasing bug information would make the company more reputable therefore more profitable because more customers would be interested in dealing with a sincere and honest company (my program managers hold that view anyways).
This reminds me of an encounter I had years ago playing DAOC. I was not part of group and a group leader approached me about joining his group. I asked him what does it gain for me to join your group. He mentioned various things about how the group works together and stuff. He also said "we are into roleplaying". So I asked him, "how should I address you? as my lord?". His response "Just call me Tom {w/e his char name was}".
Which brings me to my point of writing this: I think that in todays environment the true sense of roll playing is lost. Roll playing is "Im a orge so my guy looks like an orge as the game graphics show" and thats about it.
Lost are the days of sitting around a table with some dice and graph paper and, maybe even, a few pewter knicknacks where real group dynamics and game play made real roll playing possible and even enjoyable.
Today, the games pretty control how our characters look, with permitted customizations. Talking is the form of IM where details are easily lost and its more effective to use
So then it is a lost "way", so to speak", of true role playing. The environment doesn't really support it in the purest sense.
My friend and I were talking about this exact topic at lunch--except we were talking about the XBox 360. I have not bought a 360 yet because there are no 360 based games that I am dying to play. I have no incentive to shell out $400 for a console that, atm, doesnt give anything better than what I currently own.
Back in the early-mid 90s my friends and I tried a similar approach to email. At that time, MS offer Outlook Express for free. It was a pretty crappy product.
We constructed our email client (emailmax). It offered a lot of features that OE didnt have at that time. We still found it hard to sell our product. Biggest reason: why pay for something when I get something similar for free?
I suspect that will be case with antivirus/spy-sweeping software as well. For most people, the fact that they have something, regardless of quality or effectiveness, will be sufficent.
plus they have shitty customer service. BF2 I had to buy the European maps to get the latest patch. If I didnt get the latest patch I wasnt able to play online on ranked servers anymore because they had the latest patch.
Have you noticed that WOPR, the computer broken into to play the war games, has a "speaking" part in the latest ATT/SBC commerical?