I remember pulling all-nighters with Civilization, but usually my eyes stopped working right about noon the next day, and my hands would start rebelling, so I'd stop. I never forgot to eat, though.
Maybe I was just a wuss.
I can't imagine a game more addictive than that one was, always asking you to do the NEXT THING, then do this, your city has completed a temple, what would you like to do now? There was never a natural stopping point, so you just kept going, to see what you would build or discover on the next turn, or which nation's ass you would have to kick.
I had a friend who had no computer that would come over to our dorm room and start playing in the afternoon. We'd pretty much just ignore him or hang out with him, and then I'd have to kick him out when the sun came up the next morning. I was too nice a guy back then.
Then the RIAA lawsuit would have proceeded to fruition. The judgment would be for hundreds of millions of dollars. Napster would still at that point have been a company with no revenue. It would have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, its few assets (probably including the name) would have been auctioned and it would have ceased to exist. It could, perhaps, have sold ads to create revenue, but it would have done just as well to sign the checks over to the RIAA.
How, exactly, does this result in a different outcome?
You may say that Napster could have held out long enough to get distribution agreements with the record companies. That's ridiculous. First, the RIAA would never have done this; they still haven't, even with other file-trading concerns. Even on the file-download sites endorsed by the record companies, the complications of selling music online(sorting out rights issues, royalty issues and such)have made those services spotty at best so far. Napster never stood a chance.
Napster had to change something. The change it made didn't help it survive, certainly. In hindsight, it's pretty clear that the key was to move offshore and sell advertising and push spyware. And even that model isn't really proven yet.
One aspect of this that's unfortunate: It would have been nice to see the legal matters taken to conclusion. Clarifying "fair use" doctrine would be extraordinarily valuable.
The notion that the death of a business is no big thing ignores the human element and several economic facts.
First of all, the death of a business creates all kinds of collateral damage, from employees who lose their jobs to creditors and shareholders who never get paid. When the going is good, wealth is created, which creates benefits not only for the company, its shareholders and its employees, but also for its vendors, the municipality it resides in, and surrounding businesses where employees shop (this is known as the "multiplier effect," if you've studied economics). Many, many people and entities gain from a healthy business.
Second, the idea that a business should "quit while the going is good" is ridiculous on its face. Businesses are started to create wealth. They are best at creating wealth "when the going is good." It makes no sense to start a business at all if you're planning to close up shop when you start to be successful. "We just made our first profit! Time to liquidate!" Sure...
Businesses certainly can quite easily become irrelevant, but when that happens, there are real costs associated with that, to many consituencies. A business dying is quite far from a neutral event.
There are teachers interviewed in the Times article that don't seem to mind seeing such writing. One even had students cobble together a cheat sheet so she could understand what the hell they were writing about.
I would submit that perhaps if the teacher can't understand your writing, then it's not very effective writing. But maybe that's just me being picky.
The number one champion Slashdot thread will be being unstoppably modern in its execution, while looking to the future to make a revolution here in the present. Frappes for all!
Yahoo has made a serious mistake by including the word "Search" in the title of this service. The new service essentially sounds like Lexis-Nexis or InfoTrac -- a place where you can broadly search the full text of a broad number of publications at once. It's a database of information that they're selling, not the searching of it. It's not a search engine at all.
Many of the opinions here are being misled by the name, hence the debates about search engine technology. But this isn't a search of the Internet; it's a search of a finite database of publications, a database that's under the control of Yahoo! Any searchable corporate database would be similar, and making such an animal easy and effective isn't nearly as hard as making a good Internet search.
The ultimate question is whether there would be enough users. The price isn't half bad, if it's 50 documents for $4.95 and not 50 searches for $4.95. If you don't have easy access to InfoTrac or Lexis-Nexis or other such sources, that's a great deal; it's certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than buying your own Lexis-Nexis account.
But Yahoo is making a major marketing mistake by calling it "premium search." People who see that phrase make the immediate assumption that they'll be charged to use a search engine. Nobody would pay for that. But if they can deliver quality proprietary information at a cost that makes it more convenient than a trip to any library, they should change the name. Because they would then have a winner.
"The methodology is flawed."
Jeez, eCompany will have to fire all their scientists now.
The piece was supposed to be funny, and I think it mostly succeeded. The excesses of the first generation dot-coms are akin to the tulip mania in the Netherlands and worthy of lampooning. Certainly, businesses that can make money will last.
I first read an article about this movie the other day, and I wondered whether it was a movie tied to the game. The article gave no indication that it was, but the confusion that the title generated in my mind fits the definition of what a trademark is intended to protect. I would argue that since both the game and the movie are entertainment properties, the use of the name "Diablo" in a movie probably isn't sufficiently unrelated a field to prevent confusion.
I also question why the producers would seek to cause this confusion. I imagine one look at the advertisements would indicate that it isn't a movie based on the game. And if the ads do look like Blizzard's creation, then they're perfectly justified in protecting their trademark.
The human factor is still paramount in medicine. Perhaps the most vexing problem many patients face is the difficulty of getting ahold of a doctor when questions or concerns arise. E-mail could help fix this, but only if the doctors set aside a certain period each day when patients can rely on him or her to respond to e-mail. This lets a doctor respond to concerns individually, in an efficient manner. Of course, this assumes the doctor is good at communicating clearly with the written word. In my experience, many are not; they're not professional writers, of course. It would be nice if technology can fix annoying and dangerous aspects of our health care system, but right now, the biggest problems are human, and they don't go away no matter how much technology you throw at them. Don't forget that when designing your clinic.
From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition:
zero-sum adj (1944): Of, relating to or being a situation (as a game or relationship) in which a gain for one side entails a corresponding loss for the other side.
Under this definition, you are arguably right about my first point. However, my second point perfectly fits the definition of zero-sum.
Perhaps it's a difference of perspective: under your view, a game is zero-sum if it is internally zero-sum. Under my view, a game is zero-sum if the result is zero-sum. In the end, how many points have been scored is irrelevant; the only important thing is the win or the loss.
Actually, sports with scores are zero-sum, for two reasons:
A) Any point scored it a point allowed by the other team, and
B) The result is a victory for one team and a loss for the other.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I was just a wuss.
I can't imagine a game more addictive than that one was, always asking you to do the NEXT THING, then do this, your city has completed a temple, what would you like to do now? There was never a natural stopping point, so you just kept going, to see what you would build or discover on the next turn, or which nation's ass you would have to kick.
I had a friend who had no computer that would come over to our dorm room and start playing in the afternoon. We'd pretty much just ignore him or hang out with him, and then I'd have to kick him out when the sun came up the next morning. I was too nice a guy back then.
Then the RIAA lawsuit would have proceeded to fruition. The judgment would be for hundreds of millions of dollars. Napster would still at that point have been a company with no revenue. It would have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, its few assets (probably including the name) would have been auctioned and it would have ceased to exist. It could, perhaps, have sold ads to create revenue, but it would have done just as well to sign the checks over to the RIAA.
How, exactly, does this result in a different outcome?
You may say that Napster could have held out long enough to get distribution agreements with the record companies. That's ridiculous. First, the RIAA would never have done this; they still haven't, even with other file-trading concerns. Even on the file-download sites endorsed by the record companies, the complications of selling music online(sorting out rights issues, royalty issues and such)have made those services spotty at best so far. Napster never stood a chance.
Napster had to change something. The change it made didn't help it survive, certainly. In hindsight, it's pretty clear that the key was to move offshore and sell advertising and push spyware. And even that model isn't really proven yet.
One aspect of this that's unfortunate: It would have been nice to see the legal matters taken to conclusion. Clarifying "fair use" doctrine would be extraordinarily valuable.
The notion that the death of a business is no big thing ignores the human element and several economic facts.
...
First of all, the death of a business creates all kinds of collateral damage, from employees who lose their jobs to creditors and shareholders who never get paid. When the going is good, wealth is created, which creates benefits not only for the company, its shareholders and its employees, but also for its vendors, the municipality it resides in, and surrounding businesses where employees shop (this is known as the "multiplier effect," if you've studied economics). Many, many people and entities gain from a healthy business.
Second, the idea that a business should "quit while the going is good" is ridiculous on its face. Businesses are started to create wealth. They are best at creating wealth "when the going is good." It makes no sense to start a business at all if you're planning to close up shop when you start to be successful. "We just made our first profit! Time to liquidate!" Sure
Businesses certainly can quite easily become irrelevant, but when that happens, there are real costs associated with that, to many consituencies. A business dying is quite far from a neutral event.
There are teachers interviewed in the Times article that don't seem to mind seeing such writing. One even had students cobble together a cheat sheet so she could understand what the hell they were writing about.
I would submit that perhaps if the teacher can't understand your writing, then it's not very effective writing. But maybe that's just me being picky.
I weep for the republic.
The number one champion Slashdot thread will be being unstoppably modern in its execution, while looking to the future to make a revolution here in the present. Frappes for all!
Yahoo has made a serious mistake by including the word "Search" in the title of this service. The new service essentially sounds like Lexis-Nexis or InfoTrac -- a place where you can broadly search the full text of a broad number of publications at once. It's a database of information that they're selling, not the searching of it. It's not a search engine at all.
Many of the opinions here are being misled by the name, hence the debates about search engine technology. But this isn't a search of the Internet; it's a search of a finite database of publications, a database that's under the control of Yahoo! Any searchable corporate database would be similar, and making such an animal easy and effective isn't nearly as hard as making a good Internet search.
The ultimate question is whether there would be enough users. The price isn't half bad, if it's 50 documents for $4.95 and not 50 searches for $4.95. If you don't have easy access to InfoTrac or Lexis-Nexis or other such sources, that's a great deal; it's certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than buying your own Lexis-Nexis account.
But Yahoo is making a major marketing mistake by calling it "premium search." People who see that phrase make the immediate assumption that they'll be charged to use a search engine. Nobody would pay for that. But if they can deliver quality proprietary information at a cost that makes it more convenient than a trip to any library, they should change the name. Because they would then have a winner.
I worked at a daily newspaper from 1994 on, and it wasn't until maybe 1996-97 that we were able to refer to the Internet without defining the term.
"The methodology is flawed." Jeez, eCompany will have to fire all their scientists now. The piece was supposed to be funny, and I think it mostly succeeded. The excesses of the first generation dot-coms are akin to the tulip mania in the Netherlands and worthy of lampooning. Certainly, businesses that can make money will last.
I first read an article about this movie the other day, and I wondered whether it was a movie tied to the game. The article gave no indication that it was, but the confusion that the title generated in my mind fits the definition of what a trademark is intended to protect. I would argue that since both the game and the movie are entertainment properties, the use of the name "Diablo" in a movie probably isn't sufficiently unrelated a field to prevent confusion. I also question why the producers would seek to cause this confusion. I imagine one look at the advertisements would indicate that it isn't a movie based on the game. And if the ads do look like Blizzard's creation, then they're perfectly justified in protecting their trademark.
Microsoft is threatening my freedom to innovate!
The human factor is still paramount in medicine. Perhaps the most vexing problem many patients face is the difficulty of getting ahold of a doctor when questions or concerns arise. E-mail could help fix this, but only if the doctors set aside a certain period each day when patients can rely on him or her to respond to e-mail. This lets a doctor respond to concerns individually, in an efficient manner. Of course, this assumes the doctor is good at communicating clearly with the written word. In my experience, many are not; they're not professional writers, of course. It would be nice if technology can fix annoying and dangerous aspects of our health care system, but right now, the biggest problems are human, and they don't go away no matter how much technology you throw at them. Don't forget that when designing your clinic.
From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition: zero-sum adj (1944): Of, relating to or being a situation (as a game or relationship) in which a gain for one side entails a corresponding loss for the other side. Under this definition, you are arguably right about my first point. However, my second point perfectly fits the definition of zero-sum. Perhaps it's a difference of perspective: under your view, a game is zero-sum if it is internally zero-sum. Under my view, a game is zero-sum if the result is zero-sum. In the end, how many points have been scored is irrelevant; the only important thing is the win or the loss.
Actually, sports with scores are zero-sum, for two reasons: A) Any point scored it a point allowed by the other team, and B) The result is a victory for one team and a loss for the other.