For me, I don't really have a problem paying taxes on stuff I buy on the Internet. Sure, I'd rather not, but I understand that eventually it's probably going to happen. However, where I have the problem is who gets to collect. I mean, if I live in Michigan, a place that has a horrible infrastructure and does so little to create business (other than claim it does a lot while offering very little incentive for businesses), the State of Michigan should NOT benefit from something I ended up buying from a company in California that has the infrastructure to foster an actual business that was able to put the products online. If the State of California wants to charge me sales tax for something I buy from California, then the right entities actually benefit. Some fat cat bureaucrats in Detroit or Lansing shouldn't be benefiting from my tax dollars for doing absolutely nothing to foster business but voting a tax benefit for themselves. Sure, that money COULD help my state, but because my state doesn't do anything to foster business, it WON'T do anything to help my state but will probably end up with more 8 figure salaries for state and local government cronies who serve themselves at the behest of the state citizens.
As a writer who has tried to go it alone (without a publisher), it didn't take long to realize how much harder it is without a legitimate publisher. I had gone the publishing route before, and because I wasn't a household name already, it was a negative experience. But going alone didn't do much better either because I was still required to do practically everything myself, and without the assistance of a staff of people who know what they're doing, it was a lot more difficult. The ebook route has a lot going for it in the future, but until writers can figure out how to get books into bookstores (or at least seen on searches), we're still held back by the power that publishers have over the ability to be seen and observed.
Publishing has never been the problem. The problem has always been after publishing, where most writers end up being as unknown as they were before they wrote anything.
I joined Google Plus with an invite in the beginning stages, and right off the start, I began to realize that no one I knew was on it. There were a couple of high profile people on it, and then there were a bunch of people making names for themselves to up and coming profile people. To this day, I can't find hardly a friend or two on the whole site. Everyone else on the site is unknown or some big time celebrity I don't really care to read their narcisstic posts. I was checking the recommended friends list almost every day and to be honest, I heard of none of them, so finally I just realized that Google Plus might become big one day, but it would probably be without me.
I'm usually not a very reactive kind of customer. I tend to let things go and not really give them much thought. However, I remember some time ago, I got upset that Netflix was raising its prices. So, I switched to only one dvd at a time from three. Quickly, Netflix reversed its decision, and I went back to three dvds.
Then they decided to raise prices again and immediately split the company into two. I found myself somewhat insulted by all of the ceo's comments in response, almost as if he was an adult talking to little children. So, I closed out my account and left. Now, they're trying to fix this faux pas again, and unfortunately, many people like me aren't going to come back. It wasn't really the price increase or even the splitting of the company. It was being talked down to like a child by a company I have given business for many years now. I decided they can do well without me. From what I now see, they're realizing they can't. But when you lose a customer, you lose a customer. Sorry, but that's how business works sometimes.
I have no desire for Spotify, so this isn't really in response to that, other than a recognition that I don't like having to use one service in order to do something else I might want to do. However, what I have noticed is that other services have a tendency to want to be linked with Facebook, and that drives me nuts. Goodreads is an example. When I sign onto it, it usually wants to do so by accessing my Facebook profile, and then spams my Facebook account. Yeah, I could configure it not to do that, but who wants to go through that kind of trouble for something so mundane? Recently, I have been writing articles on Viewshound, which ONLY gives me the choice to sign in through Facebook. I really dislike this, but I have no choice as part of my revenue steam somewhat relies on services like Viewshound.
I worry that more and more companies are going to go this route. Where it really bothers me is that my workplace has put Facebook off limits, so I have difficulty connecting to a lot of other services I use on a daily basis because I have to sign onto Facebook FIRST in order to use them. Sure, I could be a good soldier and not goof off during the day, but this isn't about being an employee who has no free time at work but about some of the complications for those of us who do have some free time at work.
While I'll never qualify for this, I still find myself having to criticize Comcast for doing everything possible to avoid helping as many people as they can. The very last line of the stipulation is what ruins it for me, when they state: "and they can't have had Comcast Internet in the last 90 days." If people qualify for it because they NEED it, stop doing everything possible to keep people from being able to qualify for it. Having had Comcast in the last 90 days doesn't somehow make someone who is on the list of those in poverty from being any less poor. Just give them the damn benefit like everyone else who falls into the "need" demographic. Yeah, I know no one really "needs" it, but if they're going through and pretending to be helpful, at least be helpful.
I received the same email this morning and immediately thought to myself that this was someone playing damage control, not someone with a plan and vision. I'm currently going through the process of finishing up a season of a television show I wanted to watch. And then I'll cancel both services. This whole Quikster thing rings of desperation, not a solid plan, almost as if they queried the fry guy at McDonalds and asked him what he would choose if he had to come up with something and then went with the first thing they heard. I don't think they realize that their customers are slowly pushing away from them, and that the damage has yet to be felt (it's going to occur during the next few months as the impact of the increase arrives and then the realization that Netflix is no longer the company it once was, as they pay two bills to get the same thing they used to get under one, even if it is the same price).
With all of the patronizing that Netflix did, what they haven't focused on is the group of people who are probably going to be cancelling one to two months out. People don't generally cancel upon the announcement, but once they start to realize how much they're NOW paying, the impact gets felt, and then they start to cancel. I've loved Netflix from day one, but that announcement left a really bad taste in my mouth (like when they tried to raise prices before and received a backlash from customers who cut down on their service). They literally acted like they were so brilliant in their decisions that ANY RESPONSE from customers was irrelevant.
I felt the impact this month when my fees went up for the same service I've received since day one with no added benefit. Sure, it's still cheaper than other stuff out there, but it's never been a necessity for me, and I was one of the early adopters because you always, until now, felt Netflix was at least on your side. Instead, it's just another business that feels customers are necessary evils in order to get insane profits.
I've been watching a series on streaming that has me in the 5th of 7 seasons right now. When the 7th season finishes streaming, I will cancel Netflix forever. You see, they thought that people would jump over to one of their two choices (streaming or DVDs) once forced to pay for both, so they accounted for that. What they've not prepared for are the people who will jump ship completely and NEVER COME BACK. Those are lost customers that they can't win back through empty promises, special deals or whatever. A lost opportunity is a lost revenue stream, no matter how you look at it. If they profit because of the rest of the sheep who stay, great. If they fail, it was their own greedy fault.
The karma idea is the greatest, in my opinion, but of a different variation. I think a rating system by players on other players would immediately be exploited by griefers and cliques to the point where it would be useless, unless they did something to really make it work right. However, I would love to see something more aligned with what was done back in the day with Ultima Online when you got karma (both good and bad) for doing certain things and killing certain types of monsters. Having titles that reflected that immediately gave you an indication that the guy you ran across might not be the most trustworthy fellow on the planet. Sometimes you got fooled, but not as often as you would think.
I'll add the disclaimer right off the start that I play WoW and will continue to play it for years to come. But I'm one of the hard core players that has played since day one. Now, having said that, one thing I've always realized was a danger was the desire to make WoW big, as in creating a huge player base. It was always thrilling to hear the numbers go up (3 million, 7 million, 12 million....) but there was always the realization that this was catering to a casual crowd that doesn't play hard core MMOs. It was great that they got a lot of non-players into playing the game, but then that meant that they had to keep them. And THAT was the problem. Casual players rarely become hard core players, and when they get bored, they leave and don't come back. A hard core player who gets bored tries something else for a month or so and then come back. What happened was they kept those numbers climbing but common sense tells you that a lot of those millions weren't playing the game any longer. So each "new" subscription or starter was not adding to the numbers but replacing many casuals who left.
Such a model is not sustainable for growth. It's sustainable for playing, as long as you realize that the numbers can't keep increasing forever. But because MMOers are famous for loving the demise of the strong, any loss of growth is immediately seen as a failing game, which common sense should tell you otherwise.
WoW will continue strong for some years to come, but if they think they can keep attracting new people (or even the people they already had), they're chasing after false profits, and every goblin knows that there's no profit in that.
I'm not really angry at what Netflix is doing, but I don't see an added value to the additional cost, and I've been thinking of canceling for quite some time now. This gives me the reason I've probably needed. Years ago, Netflix tried to raise their prices at once, and the customers rebelled, not by quitting but by cutting down their services (if they were on 3 disks at a time, they cut down to 1 at a time, so that Netflix's profit was cut even further). Netflix realized the mistake they made and went back on their cost increase and discontinued it. Customers slowly returned to their normal services. Not long ago, Netflix did it again, but they did it quietly, and most people went along with it, figuring the cost increase was inevitable. This, however, was so blatant that I would not be surprised if this is the thing that defeats Netflix like Blockbuster and Redbox never could.
After I finish watching the TV show I'm currently watching, I'll cancel. I'll always be grateful to what Netflix was, but it was a business, and what Netflix and the studios haven't figured out is that they're not a necessity but an alternative form of entertainment. I can find other avenues of entertainment without them. Thank you.
Personally, I hope the game does great. I think more choices for MMORPGs is great. However, I would like to point out a problem that exists with the industry, and that's that any problem that occurs right from the start can doom a project forever. An MMO has pretty much one chance to make it, and if it doesn't succeed right out of the gate, it's going to move at a snail pace until the owners finally cancel it. Bioware has a lot riding on this because they're taking an intellectual property that failed miserably in the past and has actually become the standard of how to destroy an MMO (Star Wars Galaxies did so many things wrong that they teach it in computer business classes now). Therefore, Bioware needs it to be a massive hit right out of the gate, or it will fail horribly. The fan base of an MMO can so easily launch it into the stratosphere or doom it to obscurity forever, and it will happen overnight.
This really doesn't surprise me at all. Sony has historically had a horrible customer service model in pretty much all of its products and services. I remember the days of dealing with Sony Online Entertainment, and realizing this was the wrong way to do business with people. The company has always been top down directed, in that they respond only when faced with a scandal or its customers start leaving in mass, which was done in the early days of Everquest due to some horrid PR decisions they were making. Fast forward to so many of their stupid responses and actions in other areas, like trying to maintain control over the music market, and now this debacle of PR with the playstation, and it really shouldn't surprise anyone else either. Sony historically thinks of Sony first, and the customers are only there to pay the salaries of those who feel they are unreproachable.
Duane Gundrum
http://www.duanegundrum.com/
I'm a novelist who has been published by legacy publishers (old style of publishing). As a writer who has moved over to the e-reader market, I've been doing a lot of networking with a lot of writers who are writing specifically for Kindle and Nook markets. What's interesting is that publishers still want to force their tiny royalty schedule onto writers, even though the costs to the publishers have gone to practically nothing. Sure, in the beginning, a publisher puts forth a bit of the upfront costs (including an advance), but what then happens is that the writer receives a tiny fraction of the profit. This was somewhat fine with the legacy model, but now with e-readers, publishers STILL want to keep 90 percent of the profit. One of my publishers sent me an email informing me that because my sales were good, they were going to "reward" me with 20 percent of ebook sales.
Yet, when I put books directly onto the Kindle, I received 70 percent of the profit (Amazon keeps 30 percent). Until publishers start moving into the future of this dynamic, the industry is going to make a move much like the music industry did. Right now, publishers are scrambling to maintain control, because the only real positive they have in their favor is that they used to be able to get your books into a bookstore. Now, anyone can get onto the Internet and Amazon. All they have left to offer is marketing, and strangely enough, about ten years ago, unless you were a Stephen King level of writer, they weren't doing any marketing for lower level writers. Which means, the publishing industry is about to implode.
If something like this were to pass, one of the real problems we'd create (and yes, we'd be creating the problem) is that people would be scared about actually reporting their habits to their doctors, especially if they're smokers. So when a doctor starts prescribing a process for a patient to follow, that doctor is going to be absent certain information that might actually assist a person in future living. Yeah, you can condemn the person for being dishonest, and throw up a whole bunch of Darwin jokes, but the fact of the matter is, the job of a doctor is to help someone become healthy, and they can't do their jobs if they're not armed with all of the information.
Bad plan. Good intentions. Bad plan.
I've been using Twitter for a while now, and it's very frustrating to try to use it for what for which it claims to be its purpose. As the article points out, mostly everyone seems to follow a very small number of people who seem to generate most of the comments. The rest of us, trying to use it as an actual social vehicle, find it fails in that because for what it's worth, no one wants to communicate back if they ever achieve a social level of achievement with Twitter. It's like being part of a social club that has barriers on the doors, but everyone wants to get in, even though there's really nothing going on in the back room.
As a mid-level writer (meaning my following is dismal at best), Twitter mainly serves as a device for me to receive information rather tahn to project it. When I project, it's really not much of a sensation (aside from a few of my stuffed animals who follow me religiously). So, it leaves me following trends, rather than actually being able to participate in them.
What I do find fascinating about Twitter, however, is the tendency to see people who are celebrities attempt to defend their celebrity by trying to play their part, even though their capabilities are completely lacking. A good example is Mindy Kaling (the woman who plays the Indian girl on The Office). Her tweets are kind of sad, because she's very much an example of someone who wants to be seen as cool and funny, but all she really has to her name is the credit she made from The Office. Now, I understand she's a very talented writer and actress, but her tweets don't reveal that. She comes off as trying way too hard, and for someone who is one of those listeners (rather than someone followed), I find it to be hilarious because it shows the social phenomenon for what it really is.
What it really seems to be is that Twitter hasn't found its true groove yet. It feels like it's on the edge of finding it, however, and I suspect that it's going to evolve into something much more interactive (where you do communicate with celebrity), or it is going to be the jumping off point for the next technology that actually does it, possibly emerging with a technology that allows for people to become celebrities, rather than as a vehicle to communicate with, or receive communication from.
Yeah, but I'm seeing this from the perspective of someone who works in the part of the industry that actually tries to heal people, not the insurance agency that works to make money. Sure, there are people who do this just for money, but that doesn't mean the rest of us aren't looking at something like this to see how we might actually save people in their futures rather than use it to discriminate against them.
Unfortunately, I can't control for the problems that happen, but I can sure use the positives in the best way possible. Thinking the worst of everyone means we don't move forward ever, convinced that every move forward is two steps backwards.
As a healthcare professional who does data analysis for a number of hospitals, this sounds like a great idea, but at the same time I also realize the limitations of conducting this algorithm process. To begin with, HIPAA compliance laws make it very difficult to share specific data about patients, which means someone trying to put together this type of information, or statistical based program process, is going to have to do it sans data, creating false data that isn't actually real case information. Which then means that even if you are capable of providing an algorithm that fulfills the functionality, the designers of the prize program are most likely going to stand up and say that it's not transferrable to real cases because you didn't account for the specific variables that are present in real world data (meaning you can't predict data that is actually already there due to the amount of errors in guesswork involved).
If they made available the actual data they want extracted, this might be a possible process. But until they do, it is like guessing statistical outcomes of a presidential race without knowing anything about the people who might be actually running.
I started watching Dr. Who with the brand new television series (which is aptly referred to as Season 1. This is the latest version of the property, and in it, you'll watch at least 3 Doctors, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, it will help make sense of what exactly is going on with the doctor in teh first place.
After I watched the current edition of the series, all the way to the current doctor, I then started going back and watching the older versions of the doctor and got a great sense of what was going on, and enjoyed it. I realize having done it this way that if I would have started from the very beginning, it's very possible I never would have made it a few episodes further just because of the age of the show. But now I was able to go back and watch those earlier ones through a sense of nostalgia, and then enjoy them just as much.
That's my advice, seeing as that's how I did it. I, too, was one of those who never watched it, convinced it wasn't going to be something I'd enjoy. I was wrong.
If this saves any lives, then I'm all for it. I just hope it's not another makeshift technology that some company designed to make money but doesn't actually do anything useful but make rich people richer at the expense of American soldiers.
Practically none of those titles, aside from Cowboys & Aliens, really seems all that exciting. There are so many great science fiction IPs out there that could develop into such great movies, yet we keep seeing the same old, tired crap. And don't even get me started on remakes, or sequels that are excuses to essentially do a remake decades after the original.
Every now and then a director comes along who just gets it, but then a decade or so will go by while we have to wait for someone else to get it again. It's not about the technology that makes science fiction the attractive factor. It's the story, the impact of the drama and the process of seeing our own selves through the lenses of futuristic settings. Roddenberry got it right a long time ago, and every now and then someone figured it out with his idea. Lucas got it right and then immediately forgot what he was doing. It would be so much nicer if great ideas were followed with great writing by people who understand the genre and really appreciate it. But I suspect because it's all about money we end up with people who know very little bit about it who are trying to reproduce what did great once without ever understanding why the crowds flocked to the successes in the first place.
I definitely agree. When I attended West Point, one of the requirements at that time was that you were required to read the New York Times every morning (it was delivered to every cadet room, so you shared it with your roommates). Since then, I've always tended to steer towards the newspaper, thinking of it as a quality one, but the fact is it's gotten horribly bad over the years (specifically the time you pointed out).
To make matters worse, the NYT still thinks it is the newspaper it used to be in the 1960s, even trying to charge the highest amount for a newspaper that is printed. Even on Kindle, it demands $20, whereas a newspaper like The Washington Post (which I do subscribe to now) is only $12 a month. For reasons that have long been gone, the NYT keeps trying to live in an era where it was the newspaper of quality, but it has relaxed its editorial process so much over the years to where there are times I see it as a little better than some blogs and containing no more content than the AP wires.
I keep reading these "reports" of the state of games in how they're "dying", and in reality everything is really cyclical. PC games will be big because some great innovatiion has emerged at one particular time (like the whole "rebirth of the PC" when World of Warcraft was suddenly showing up on everyone's computer). Consoles have always had that claim of the impetus to destroy the PC game, but it never really did. It just offered an alternative method of playing games. So people embraced consoles because that was where people were making games.
Vesterbacka is another one of those parasitic developers who copied schema from one type of game, like the old Atari concepts that emerged from Missile Command, and then produced his "idea" for smartphones. But just because a bunch of people found it a gratuitous distraction while waiting for the bus doesn't somehow translate to a new paradigm of game playing for the future. It's a step up from a point and click game that requires no actual thinking. To compare that to some of the games out there that require hours and hours of investment in strategic thought and processing is ludicrous. Granted, in some point and click game it makes a bit of sense, but Vesterbacka is being a bit pretentious to think that what he does is in any way comparable to the higher end work of the discipline.
I used to work as a pc technician, which automatically caused friends, family, acquaintainces, wandering gypsies and anyone else who came across me to think that meant they could contact me to get free (and immediate) services for their computers. So after I stopped being a professional technician, I made a point to never reveal that I could actually fix a computer, or any other computer component. As someone who can actually take apart and fix a printer (something most techs generally can't do, even though they say they can), I found myself one day at the computer lab for the graduate department where I was a grad assistant. Needing a paper printed before class started, I was faced with a printer that was on the fritz. Making sure no one else was around, I opened up the printer, fixed it, and then printed what I needed. What I didn't realize was that some random girl in the grad department was hovering around outside the door, upset that she couldn't print her journal or whatever. When I went to class, she then told everyone I had fixed the printer, and for the rest of my time in grad school, I was known as the guy who fixed the printer, so I couldn't stop people from contacting me over and over about the damn thing.
NEVER reveal you're a tech, or people will constantly try to get free work out of you, even when you completely ignore and turn them down over and over again.
Slashdot Mirror
For me, I don't really have a problem paying taxes on stuff I buy on the Internet. Sure, I'd rather not, but I understand that eventually it's probably going to happen. However, where I have the problem is who gets to collect. I mean, if I live in Michigan, a place that has a horrible infrastructure and does so little to create business (other than claim it does a lot while offering very little incentive for businesses), the State of Michigan should NOT benefit from something I ended up buying from a company in California that has the infrastructure to foster an actual business that was able to put the products online. If the State of California wants to charge me sales tax for something I buy from California, then the right entities actually benefit. Some fat cat bureaucrats in Detroit or Lansing shouldn't be benefiting from my tax dollars for doing absolutely nothing to foster business but voting a tax benefit for themselves. Sure, that money COULD help my state, but because my state doesn't do anything to foster business, it WON'T do anything to help my state but will probably end up with more 8 figure salaries for state and local government cronies who serve themselves at the behest of the state citizens.
Publishing has never been the problem. The problem has always been after publishing, where most writers end up being as unknown as they were before they wrote anything.
I joined Google Plus with an invite in the beginning stages, and right off the start, I began to realize that no one I knew was on it. There were a couple of high profile people on it, and then there were a bunch of people making names for themselves to up and coming profile people. To this day, I can't find hardly a friend or two on the whole site. Everyone else on the site is unknown or some big time celebrity I don't really care to read their narcisstic posts. I was checking the recommended friends list almost every day and to be honest, I heard of none of them, so finally I just realized that Google Plus might become big one day, but it would probably be without me.
I'm usually not a very reactive kind of customer. I tend to let things go and not really give them much thought. However, I remember some time ago, I got upset that Netflix was raising its prices. So, I switched to only one dvd at a time from three. Quickly, Netflix reversed its decision, and I went back to three dvds. Then they decided to raise prices again and immediately split the company into two. I found myself somewhat insulted by all of the ceo's comments in response, almost as if he was an adult talking to little children. So, I closed out my account and left. Now, they're trying to fix this faux pas again, and unfortunately, many people like me aren't going to come back. It wasn't really the price increase or even the splitting of the company. It was being talked down to like a child by a company I have given business for many years now. I decided they can do well without me. From what I now see, they're realizing they can't. But when you lose a customer, you lose a customer. Sorry, but that's how business works sometimes.
I have no desire for Spotify, so this isn't really in response to that, other than a recognition that I don't like having to use one service in order to do something else I might want to do. However, what I have noticed is that other services have a tendency to want to be linked with Facebook, and that drives me nuts. Goodreads is an example. When I sign onto it, it usually wants to do so by accessing my Facebook profile, and then spams my Facebook account. Yeah, I could configure it not to do that, but who wants to go through that kind of trouble for something so mundane? Recently, I have been writing articles on Viewshound, which ONLY gives me the choice to sign in through Facebook. I really dislike this, but I have no choice as part of my revenue steam somewhat relies on services like Viewshound. I worry that more and more companies are going to go this route. Where it really bothers me is that my workplace has put Facebook off limits, so I have difficulty connecting to a lot of other services I use on a daily basis because I have to sign onto Facebook FIRST in order to use them. Sure, I could be a good soldier and not goof off during the day, but this isn't about being an employee who has no free time at work but about some of the complications for those of us who do have some free time at work.
While I'll never qualify for this, I still find myself having to criticize Comcast for doing everything possible to avoid helping as many people as they can. The very last line of the stipulation is what ruins it for me, when they state: "and they can't have had Comcast Internet in the last 90 days." If people qualify for it because they NEED it, stop doing everything possible to keep people from being able to qualify for it. Having had Comcast in the last 90 days doesn't somehow make someone who is on the list of those in poverty from being any less poor. Just give them the damn benefit like everyone else who falls into the "need" demographic. Yeah, I know no one really "needs" it, but if they're going through and pretending to be helpful, at least be helpful.
I received the same email this morning and immediately thought to myself that this was someone playing damage control, not someone with a plan and vision. I'm currently going through the process of finishing up a season of a television show I wanted to watch. And then I'll cancel both services. This whole Quikster thing rings of desperation, not a solid plan, almost as if they queried the fry guy at McDonalds and asked him what he would choose if he had to come up with something and then went with the first thing they heard. I don't think they realize that their customers are slowly pushing away from them, and that the damage has yet to be felt (it's going to occur during the next few months as the impact of the increase arrives and then the realization that Netflix is no longer the company it once was, as they pay two bills to get the same thing they used to get under one, even if it is the same price).
With all of the patronizing that Netflix did, what they haven't focused on is the group of people who are probably going to be cancelling one to two months out. People don't generally cancel upon the announcement, but once they start to realize how much they're NOW paying, the impact gets felt, and then they start to cancel. I've loved Netflix from day one, but that announcement left a really bad taste in my mouth (like when they tried to raise prices before and received a backlash from customers who cut down on their service). They literally acted like they were so brilliant in their decisions that ANY RESPONSE from customers was irrelevant. I felt the impact this month when my fees went up for the same service I've received since day one with no added benefit. Sure, it's still cheaper than other stuff out there, but it's never been a necessity for me, and I was one of the early adopters because you always, until now, felt Netflix was at least on your side. Instead, it's just another business that feels customers are necessary evils in order to get insane profits. I've been watching a series on streaming that has me in the 5th of 7 seasons right now. When the 7th season finishes streaming, I will cancel Netflix forever. You see, they thought that people would jump over to one of their two choices (streaming or DVDs) once forced to pay for both, so they accounted for that. What they've not prepared for are the people who will jump ship completely and NEVER COME BACK. Those are lost customers that they can't win back through empty promises, special deals or whatever. A lost opportunity is a lost revenue stream, no matter how you look at it. If they profit because of the rest of the sheep who stay, great. If they fail, it was their own greedy fault.
The karma idea is the greatest, in my opinion, but of a different variation. I think a rating system by players on other players would immediately be exploited by griefers and cliques to the point where it would be useless, unless they did something to really make it work right. However, I would love to see something more aligned with what was done back in the day with Ultima Online when you got karma (both good and bad) for doing certain things and killing certain types of monsters. Having titles that reflected that immediately gave you an indication that the guy you ran across might not be the most trustworthy fellow on the planet. Sometimes you got fooled, but not as often as you would think.
Wouldn't that be $15 million a month, not $1.5 million? Or does only every tenth person pay for their account?
I'll add the disclaimer right off the start that I play WoW and will continue to play it for years to come. But I'm one of the hard core players that has played since day one. Now, having said that, one thing I've always realized was a danger was the desire to make WoW big, as in creating a huge player base. It was always thrilling to hear the numbers go up (3 million, 7 million, 12 million....) but there was always the realization that this was catering to a casual crowd that doesn't play hard core MMOs. It was great that they got a lot of non-players into playing the game, but then that meant that they had to keep them. And THAT was the problem. Casual players rarely become hard core players, and when they get bored, they leave and don't come back. A hard core player who gets bored tries something else for a month or so and then come back. What happened was they kept those numbers climbing but common sense tells you that a lot of those millions weren't playing the game any longer. So each "new" subscription or starter was not adding to the numbers but replacing many casuals who left. Such a model is not sustainable for growth. It's sustainable for playing, as long as you realize that the numbers can't keep increasing forever. But because MMOers are famous for loving the demise of the strong, any loss of growth is immediately seen as a failing game, which common sense should tell you otherwise. WoW will continue strong for some years to come, but if they think they can keep attracting new people (or even the people they already had), they're chasing after false profits, and every goblin knows that there's no profit in that.
I'm not really angry at what Netflix is doing, but I don't see an added value to the additional cost, and I've been thinking of canceling for quite some time now. This gives me the reason I've probably needed. Years ago, Netflix tried to raise their prices at once, and the customers rebelled, not by quitting but by cutting down their services (if they were on 3 disks at a time, they cut down to 1 at a time, so that Netflix's profit was cut even further). Netflix realized the mistake they made and went back on their cost increase and discontinued it. Customers slowly returned to their normal services. Not long ago, Netflix did it again, but they did it quietly, and most people went along with it, figuring the cost increase was inevitable. This, however, was so blatant that I would not be surprised if this is the thing that defeats Netflix like Blockbuster and Redbox never could. After I finish watching the TV show I'm currently watching, I'll cancel. I'll always be grateful to what Netflix was, but it was a business, and what Netflix and the studios haven't figured out is that they're not a necessity but an alternative form of entertainment. I can find other avenues of entertainment without them. Thank you.
Personally, I hope the game does great. I think more choices for MMORPGs is great. However, I would like to point out a problem that exists with the industry, and that's that any problem that occurs right from the start can doom a project forever. An MMO has pretty much one chance to make it, and if it doesn't succeed right out of the gate, it's going to move at a snail pace until the owners finally cancel it. Bioware has a lot riding on this because they're taking an intellectual property that failed miserably in the past and has actually become the standard of how to destroy an MMO (Star Wars Galaxies did so many things wrong that they teach it in computer business classes now). Therefore, Bioware needs it to be a massive hit right out of the gate, or it will fail horribly. The fan base of an MMO can so easily launch it into the stratosphere or doom it to obscurity forever, and it will happen overnight.
This really doesn't surprise me at all. Sony has historically had a horrible customer service model in pretty much all of its products and services. I remember the days of dealing with Sony Online Entertainment, and realizing this was the wrong way to do business with people. The company has always been top down directed, in that they respond only when faced with a scandal or its customers start leaving in mass, which was done in the early days of Everquest due to some horrid PR decisions they were making. Fast forward to so many of their stupid responses and actions in other areas, like trying to maintain control over the music market, and now this debacle of PR with the playstation, and it really shouldn't surprise anyone else either. Sony historically thinks of Sony first, and the customers are only there to pay the salaries of those who feel they are unreproachable. Duane Gundrum http://www.duanegundrum.com/
I'm a novelist who has been published by legacy publishers (old style of publishing). As a writer who has moved over to the e-reader market, I've been doing a lot of networking with a lot of writers who are writing specifically for Kindle and Nook markets. What's interesting is that publishers still want to force their tiny royalty schedule onto writers, even though the costs to the publishers have gone to practically nothing. Sure, in the beginning, a publisher puts forth a bit of the upfront costs (including an advance), but what then happens is that the writer receives a tiny fraction of the profit. This was somewhat fine with the legacy model, but now with e-readers, publishers STILL want to keep 90 percent of the profit. One of my publishers sent me an email informing me that because my sales were good, they were going to "reward" me with 20 percent of ebook sales. Yet, when I put books directly onto the Kindle, I received 70 percent of the profit (Amazon keeps 30 percent). Until publishers start moving into the future of this dynamic, the industry is going to make a move much like the music industry did. Right now, publishers are scrambling to maintain control, because the only real positive they have in their favor is that they used to be able to get your books into a bookstore. Now, anyone can get onto the Internet and Amazon. All they have left to offer is marketing, and strangely enough, about ten years ago, unless you were a Stephen King level of writer, they weren't doing any marketing for lower level writers. Which means, the publishing industry is about to implode.
If something like this were to pass, one of the real problems we'd create (and yes, we'd be creating the problem) is that people would be scared about actually reporting their habits to their doctors, especially if they're smokers. So when a doctor starts prescribing a process for a patient to follow, that doctor is going to be absent certain information that might actually assist a person in future living. Yeah, you can condemn the person for being dishonest, and throw up a whole bunch of Darwin jokes, but the fact of the matter is, the job of a doctor is to help someone become healthy, and they can't do their jobs if they're not armed with all of the information. Bad plan. Good intentions. Bad plan.
I've been using Twitter for a while now, and it's very frustrating to try to use it for what for which it claims to be its purpose. As the article points out, mostly everyone seems to follow a very small number of people who seem to generate most of the comments. The rest of us, trying to use it as an actual social vehicle, find it fails in that because for what it's worth, no one wants to communicate back if they ever achieve a social level of achievement with Twitter. It's like being part of a social club that has barriers on the doors, but everyone wants to get in, even though there's really nothing going on in the back room. As a mid-level writer (meaning my following is dismal at best), Twitter mainly serves as a device for me to receive information rather tahn to project it. When I project, it's really not much of a sensation (aside from a few of my stuffed animals who follow me religiously). So, it leaves me following trends, rather than actually being able to participate in them. What I do find fascinating about Twitter, however, is the tendency to see people who are celebrities attempt to defend their celebrity by trying to play their part, even though their capabilities are completely lacking. A good example is Mindy Kaling (the woman who plays the Indian girl on The Office). Her tweets are kind of sad, because she's very much an example of someone who wants to be seen as cool and funny, but all she really has to her name is the credit she made from The Office. Now, I understand she's a very talented writer and actress, but her tweets don't reveal that. She comes off as trying way too hard, and for someone who is one of those listeners (rather than someone followed), I find it to be hilarious because it shows the social phenomenon for what it really is. What it really seems to be is that Twitter hasn't found its true groove yet. It feels like it's on the edge of finding it, however, and I suspect that it's going to evolve into something much more interactive (where you do communicate with celebrity), or it is going to be the jumping off point for the next technology that actually does it, possibly emerging with a technology that allows for people to become celebrities, rather than as a vehicle to communicate with, or receive communication from.
Yeah, but I'm seeing this from the perspective of someone who works in the part of the industry that actually tries to heal people, not the insurance agency that works to make money. Sure, there are people who do this just for money, but that doesn't mean the rest of us aren't looking at something like this to see how we might actually save people in their futures rather than use it to discriminate against them. Unfortunately, I can't control for the problems that happen, but I can sure use the positives in the best way possible. Thinking the worst of everyone means we don't move forward ever, convinced that every move forward is two steps backwards.
As a healthcare professional who does data analysis for a number of hospitals, this sounds like a great idea, but at the same time I also realize the limitations of conducting this algorithm process. To begin with, HIPAA compliance laws make it very difficult to share specific data about patients, which means someone trying to put together this type of information, or statistical based program process, is going to have to do it sans data, creating false data that isn't actually real case information. Which then means that even if you are capable of providing an algorithm that fulfills the functionality, the designers of the prize program are most likely going to stand up and say that it's not transferrable to real cases because you didn't account for the specific variables that are present in real world data (meaning you can't predict data that is actually already there due to the amount of errors in guesswork involved). If they made available the actual data they want extracted, this might be a possible process. But until they do, it is like guessing statistical outcomes of a presidential race without knowing anything about the people who might be actually running.
I started watching Dr. Who with the brand new television series (which is aptly referred to as Season 1. This is the latest version of the property, and in it, you'll watch at least 3 Doctors, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, it will help make sense of what exactly is going on with the doctor in teh first place. After I watched the current edition of the series, all the way to the current doctor, I then started going back and watching the older versions of the doctor and got a great sense of what was going on, and enjoyed it. I realize having done it this way that if I would have started from the very beginning, it's very possible I never would have made it a few episodes further just because of the age of the show. But now I was able to go back and watch those earlier ones through a sense of nostalgia, and then enjoy them just as much. That's my advice, seeing as that's how I did it. I, too, was one of those who never watched it, convinced it wasn't going to be something I'd enjoy. I was wrong.
If this saves any lives, then I'm all for it. I just hope it's not another makeshift technology that some company designed to make money but doesn't actually do anything useful but make rich people richer at the expense of American soldiers.
Practically none of those titles, aside from Cowboys & Aliens, really seems all that exciting. There are so many great science fiction IPs out there that could develop into such great movies, yet we keep seeing the same old, tired crap. And don't even get me started on remakes, or sequels that are excuses to essentially do a remake decades after the original. Every now and then a director comes along who just gets it, but then a decade or so will go by while we have to wait for someone else to get it again. It's not about the technology that makes science fiction the attractive factor. It's the story, the impact of the drama and the process of seeing our own selves through the lenses of futuristic settings. Roddenberry got it right a long time ago, and every now and then someone figured it out with his idea. Lucas got it right and then immediately forgot what he was doing. It would be so much nicer if great ideas were followed with great writing by people who understand the genre and really appreciate it. But I suspect because it's all about money we end up with people who know very little bit about it who are trying to reproduce what did great once without ever understanding why the crowds flocked to the successes in the first place.
I definitely agree. When I attended West Point, one of the requirements at that time was that you were required to read the New York Times every morning (it was delivered to every cadet room, so you shared it with your roommates). Since then, I've always tended to steer towards the newspaper, thinking of it as a quality one, but the fact is it's gotten horribly bad over the years (specifically the time you pointed out). To make matters worse, the NYT still thinks it is the newspaper it used to be in the 1960s, even trying to charge the highest amount for a newspaper that is printed. Even on Kindle, it demands $20, whereas a newspaper like The Washington Post (which I do subscribe to now) is only $12 a month. For reasons that have long been gone, the NYT keeps trying to live in an era where it was the newspaper of quality, but it has relaxed its editorial process so much over the years to where there are times I see it as a little better than some blogs and containing no more content than the AP wires.
I keep reading these "reports" of the state of games in how they're "dying", and in reality everything is really cyclical. PC games will be big because some great innovatiion has emerged at one particular time (like the whole "rebirth of the PC" when World of Warcraft was suddenly showing up on everyone's computer). Consoles have always had that claim of the impetus to destroy the PC game, but it never really did. It just offered an alternative method of playing games. So people embraced consoles because that was where people were making games. Vesterbacka is another one of those parasitic developers who copied schema from one type of game, like the old Atari concepts that emerged from Missile Command, and then produced his "idea" for smartphones. But just because a bunch of people found it a gratuitous distraction while waiting for the bus doesn't somehow translate to a new paradigm of game playing for the future. It's a step up from a point and click game that requires no actual thinking. To compare that to some of the games out there that require hours and hours of investment in strategic thought and processing is ludicrous. Granted, in some point and click game it makes a bit of sense, but Vesterbacka is being a bit pretentious to think that what he does is in any way comparable to the higher end work of the discipline.
I used to work as a pc technician, which automatically caused friends, family, acquaintainces, wandering gypsies and anyone else who came across me to think that meant they could contact me to get free (and immediate) services for their computers. So after I stopped being a professional technician, I made a point to never reveal that I could actually fix a computer, or any other computer component. As someone who can actually take apart and fix a printer (something most techs generally can't do, even though they say they can), I found myself one day at the computer lab for the graduate department where I was a grad assistant. Needing a paper printed before class started, I was faced with a printer that was on the fritz. Making sure no one else was around, I opened up the printer, fixed it, and then printed what I needed. What I didn't realize was that some random girl in the grad department was hovering around outside the door, upset that she couldn't print her journal or whatever. When I went to class, she then told everyone I had fixed the printer, and for the rest of my time in grad school, I was known as the guy who fixed the printer, so I couldn't stop people from contacting me over and over about the damn thing. NEVER reveal you're a tech, or people will constantly try to get free work out of you, even when you completely ignore and turn them down over and over again.