A great place to go for rumors and news about the film industry is Fetal Films. Their notes for Indy 4 (dated May 7) project that it may come out in Summer 2003.
Speed limits are not laws, but are regulations. When you speed, you are not breaking a law or commiting a crime, you are committing a violation. Crimes have names like misdemeanor or felony.
Posters in this topic have pointed out that they do not click through, but instead mentally catalog the site, and return later. I know that when I'm browsing a page, my attention is on that page. I see the ads, but I'm not going to suddenly change my focus by clicking on the ad banner. Just like in real life -- if I see an ad for Levi's on a billboard while I'm driving, I'm not going to get off at the next exit and rush to the store for new pants. But, the next time I need some pants, Levi's are going to stick in my mind. Same with TV ads, magazine and newspaper, etc. Same with the web.
Banner ad campaigns need to be evaluated in the same way as campaigns in other media. Clickthrough rate is simply not a good indicator of the effectiveness of the ad. Businesses using IRL advertisements gauge success by comparing statistics like visitors, sales, requests for information, etc. from before and after the campaign.
If they want to know how effective particular parts of the campaign were, they survey the customers (where did you hear about us? billboard, yellow pages, newspaper, tv?) Many sites ask this question during registration. This gives some indication of where exposure is coming from. What this fails to give is statistics on what sites generate interest, but not sales; how the campaigns affect repeat customers, etc. But, as shown above, clickthrough rate isn't an accurate indicator, either.
Napster will only block a song only if the copyright owner requests them to.
Then what is the purpose of using the CDDB? Napster will have to create its own database of song titles in any case -- otherwise, how will they filter unblocked songs out of the CDDB results?
when we would hear the FBI drone on and on about how they can't fight the drug war without export controls on high encryption
Well, damn, I'd hate to see the FBI unable to combat drugs. If those cartels nabbed some encryption, boy -- we might even start to lose that war! Can't be having that. Must... fight... drugs... Citizens... have no... willpower...
"Put em up, pu-put em up!" "If I were the king of the forrrest..."
Milosevic might learn that if you run diagonally, you go faster. Bad news all around.
What's to keep any foreign national from chartering a flight to the US, wandering into Egghead, getting what they want, and returning to any of the Tier 4 countries?
I have a feeling the software export restrictions were not instated to keep the kind of software Egghead sells from leaving American soil. I mean, who really cares if some fascist dictator gets his filthy hands on The Sims, Word Perfect, or Clean Sweep 2000? That's right, nobody. A very jingoistic individual might make a case for Quake 3 and the like ("They might learn advanced battle tactics!"), but... c'mon.
These restrictions are as far as I can tell focused on the kinds of software that you can't buy in the store. As the parent post pointed out: snooping software, high-level encryption, and weapon-focused CAD (a stretch). The kind of stuff that's sold by contract, is usually highly customized and proprietary, and remains in use by organizations for more than 15 years.
I suppose one could make a case with browsers, what with built-in encryption and what-not. I guess my point stands, because you can't buy that crap in stores anymore.:)
Platform games == games in which the main character jumps from platform to platform.
Examples of platform games:
Super Mario Bros.
Commander Keen
Rayman
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider is on Gamespot's list. It's arguable whether Tomb Raider is a platform game because platformers are usually cartoony whereas Tomb Raider approaches realism, with natural ledges and realistic, though slighty exaggerated, proportions. Some people would say the realism puts it in its own genre, but I consider TR a platform game, because you jump from platform (ledge) to platform (pillar).
The 3D platformer started, as far as I know, with Mario 64, and the differences between it and Tomb Raider can all be traced to the fact that TR is grounded in the real world. Thus Tomb Raider is not influential because the style broke new ground -- it's on the list simply because it popularized the genre and expanded the audience, allowing great games like Soul Reaver and Indy & the Infernal Machine to exist, and because Lara Croft had such a huge spillover into the mass media -- arguably the biggest ever.
The reason that no other platformers are mentioned is because the PC hasn't produced any other influential or ground-breaking platform games. Commander Keen and all of Apogee's stuff is great, sure, but you can't say it hadn't been done before. Consoles and arcade machines are the source of ground-breaking platform games. This is part of the reason why people confuse 'platform games' with 'console games.'
This is some off-topic editorial advice for web authors.
One should not use an 'l' (el, L), when one means to use a '1' (one). On some fonts, the difference is unnoticable, but on others it is quite annoying. And as you know, on the web, you have no control over which font your user will see.
Warning: tangential thread. May cause blindness, stomach upset, diarreah, headache, coma, death, or itchy itchy rash.
Money itself isn't the problem. The problem is the way it's allocated.
A school's budget for any given year is determined by how much money they spent the previous year. A school can get by for a year under budget. But then they have to spend the rest of the budgeted money, or else next year's budget is cut.
Here's a scenario: the school goes along for a year -- paying the faculty and staff, buying a few new books, repairing most of the broken desks, replacing the beakers in the science labs and the basketballs in the gym, and there's not much else that urgently needs to get done. So they've come in under budget. But the administration knows that next year, they're going to need to upgrade the computer lab. There's not enough money in the budget to upgrade now, but if they don't spend that extra money they do have, the budget allowance will go down, and they won't have enough money next year, either. So, they buy a beautiful 5 foot tall brick wall, with the school's name in embossed bronze. I mean, it's nice, but not really necessary, if you know what I mean. Such are the decisions that get made under pressure.
Or maybe the computer lab doesn't need upgrading; maybe they'd just like some leeway in case the boiler explodes, or if there's some other emergency -- my former high school had a couple real bad fires last year. A school may get by under budget this year, but it doesn't tell anything about what will happen next year. Unfortunately, the system for determining budgets thinks it tells a lot.
So progressively, even while attendance steadily grows, budget steadily drops.
If budgets were actually determined in a sensible way, or if the school was allowed to invest budget surpluses and earn interest, or something... Schools could save up money for several years to build the much-needed new wing; they could keep current editions of textbooks; they could buy replacement tiles that match the original tiles' color.
The violence scare is doing nothing to help matters. During my senior year of high school, the school hired a staff of six (6!) security guards, and installed a number of cameras around the school. This is for a school with about 1600 kids, in a predominately upper middle class neighborhood, with four churches and a retirement home within a minute's walk. We were lucky to have one hallway fight a month. The security guards' job consisted of stopping the infrequent fights after a minute or two, trying to keep people from skipping class, and hassling folks. (Once, a dried boutinierre that a friend of mine had hung in his locker was confiscated.)[/rant]
Jupiter Research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster.
Can someone please translate this sentence to English for me? The best I can do with it is: 45% of Napster users buy more music than the average non-Napster user (which would mean that 55% buy the same amount or less). This doesn't sound like a positive thing.
It seems to me that if Napster users bought the same amount of music as non-Napster users, that 50% of Napster users would be above the average non-Napster user and 50% would be below. It follows that if Napster users bought more music than non-Napster users, more than 50% would be above the average non-Napsterino, and less than 50% below. This particular statistic (45% are more likely) tells me that Napster users buy approximately 5% less music than non-Napster users. I haven't examined any of Katz's other statistics in detail, but just this one leads me to distrust that the numbers are being interpreted accurately.
I don't like this statistic, because I find Napster a useful tool to find great music. I discovered Nick Cave and Tom Waits through music sharing, and have since purchased 7 albums by each. I also discovered Guster, and have purchased all 3 of their CDs. Without music sharing, I probably would still not know about these fabulous artists, and it saddens me that I may lose this tool in the future.
I remember hearing that he did something similar for A League of Their Own. In that, he had to play a baseball manager, and the director wanted him to be out of shape and overweight. Hanks said that first he had to avoid staying in shape, then had to push himself out of shape by eating wrong.
I guess the ability to get his weight way up or way down is just an innate talent for Hanks.
Slashdot Mirror
A great place to go for rumors and news about the film industry is Fetal Films. Their notes for Indy 4 (dated May 7) project that it may come out in Summer 2003.
Note that these are merely rumors.
Speed limits are not laws, but are regulations. When you speed, you are not breaking a law or commiting a crime, you are committing a violation. Crimes have names like misdemeanor or felony.
Posters in this topic have pointed out that they do not click through, but instead mentally catalog the site, and return later. I know that when I'm browsing a page, my attention is on that page. I see the ads, but I'm not going to suddenly change my focus by clicking on the ad banner. Just like in real life -- if I see an ad for Levi's on a billboard while I'm driving, I'm not going to get off at the next exit and rush to the store for new pants. But, the next time I need some pants, Levi's are going to stick in my mind. Same with TV ads, magazine and newspaper, etc. Same with the web.
Banner ad campaigns need to be evaluated in the same way as campaigns in other media. Clickthrough rate is simply not a good indicator of the effectiveness of the ad. Businesses using IRL advertisements gauge success by comparing statistics like visitors, sales, requests for information, etc. from before and after the campaign.
If they want to know how effective particular parts of the campaign were, they survey the customers (where did you hear about us? billboard, yellow pages, newspaper, tv?) Many sites ask this question during registration. This gives some indication of where exposure is coming from. What this fails to give is statistics on what sites generate interest, but not sales; how the campaigns affect repeat customers, etc. But, as shown above, clickthrough rate isn't an accurate indicator, either.
Online merchants just need some more experience.
You're trying way too hard.
*cough* Schizopolis *cough*
Then what is the purpose of using the CDDB? Napster will have to create its own database of song titles in any case -- otherwise, how will they filter unblocked songs out of the CDDB results?
Well, damn, I'd hate to see the FBI unable to combat drugs. If those cartels nabbed some encryption, boy -- we might even start to lose that war! Can't be having that. Must... fight... drugs... Citizens... have no... willpower...
"Put em up, pu-put em up!"
"If I were the king of the forrrest..."
Milosevic might learn that if you run diagonally, you go faster. Bad news all around.
I have a feeling the software export restrictions were not instated to keep the kind of software Egghead sells from leaving American soil. I mean, who really cares if some fascist dictator gets his filthy hands on The Sims, Word Perfect, or Clean Sweep 2000? That's right, nobody. A very jingoistic individual might make a case for Quake 3 and the like ("They might learn advanced battle tactics!"), but... c'mon.
These restrictions are as far as I can tell focused on the kinds of software that you can't buy in the store. As the parent post pointed out: snooping software, high-level encryption, and weapon-focused CAD (a stretch). The kind of stuff that's sold by contract, is usually highly customized and proprietary, and remains in use by organizations for more than 15 years.
I suppose one could make a case with browsers, what with built-in encryption and what-not. I guess my point stands, because you can't buy that crap in stores anymore. :)
Platform games != Console/arcade games
Platform games == games in which the main character jumps from platform to platform.
Examples of platform games:
Tomb Raider is on Gamespot's list. It's arguable whether Tomb Raider is a platform game because platformers are usually cartoony whereas Tomb Raider approaches realism, with natural ledges and realistic, though slighty exaggerated, proportions. Some people would say the realism puts it in its own genre, but I consider TR a platform game, because you jump from platform (ledge) to platform (pillar).
The 3D platformer started, as far as I know, with Mario 64, and the differences between it and Tomb Raider can all be traced to the fact that TR is grounded in the real world. Thus Tomb Raider is not influential because the style broke new ground -- it's on the list simply because it popularized the genre and expanded the audience, allowing great games like Soul Reaver and Indy & the Infernal Machine to exist, and because Lara Croft had such a huge spillover into the mass media -- arguably the biggest ever.
The reason that no other platformers are mentioned is because the PC hasn't produced any other influential or ground-breaking platform games. Commander Keen and all of Apogee's stuff is great, sure, but you can't say it hadn't been done before. Consoles and arcade machines are the source of ground-breaking platform games. This is part of the reason why people confuse 'platform games' with 'console games.'
This is what sessions are for.
This is some off-topic editorial advice for web authors.
One should not use an 'l' (el, L), when one means to use a '1' (one). On some fonts, the difference is unnoticable, but on others it is quite annoying. And as you know, on the web, you have no control over which font your user will see.
Compare:
the l960s (L)
the 1960s (one)
Warning: tangential thread. May cause blindness, stomach upset, diarreah, headache, coma, death, or itchy itchy rash.
Money itself isn't the problem. The problem is the way it's allocated.
A school's budget for any given year is determined by how much money they spent the previous year. A school can get by for a year under budget. But then they have to spend the rest of the budgeted money, or else next year's budget is cut.
Here's a scenario: the school goes along for a year -- paying the faculty and staff, buying a few new books, repairing most of the broken desks, replacing the beakers in the science labs and the basketballs in the gym, and there's not much else that urgently needs to get done. So they've come in under budget. But the administration knows that next year, they're going to need to upgrade the computer lab. There's not enough money in the budget to upgrade now, but if they don't spend that extra money they do have, the budget allowance will go down, and they won't have enough money next year, either. So, they buy a beautiful 5 foot tall brick wall, with the school's name in embossed bronze. I mean, it's nice, but not really necessary, if you know what I mean. Such are the decisions that get made under pressure.
Or maybe the computer lab doesn't need upgrading; maybe they'd just like some leeway in case the boiler explodes, or if there's some other emergency -- my former high school had a couple real bad fires last year. A school may get by under budget this year, but it doesn't tell anything about what will happen next year. Unfortunately, the system for determining budgets thinks it tells a lot.
So progressively, even while attendance steadily grows, budget steadily drops.
If budgets were actually determined in a sensible way, or if the school was allowed to invest budget surpluses and earn interest, or something... Schools could save up money for several years to build the much-needed new wing; they could keep current editions of textbooks; they could buy replacement tiles that match the original tiles' color.
The violence scare is doing nothing to help matters. During my senior year of high school, the school hired a staff of six (6!) security guards, and installed a number of cameras around the school. This is for a school with about 1600 kids, in a predominately upper middle class neighborhood, with four churches and a retirement home within a minute's walk. We were lucky to have one hallway fight a month. The security guards' job consisted of stopping the infrequent fights after a minute or two, trying to keep people from skipping class, and hassling folks. (Once, a dried boutinierre that a friend of mine had hung in his locker was confiscated.)[/rant]
Sorry, I'm done.
Jupiter Research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster.
Can someone please translate this sentence to English for me? The best I can do with it is: 45% of Napster users buy more music than the average non-Napster user (which would mean that 55% buy the same amount or less). This doesn't sound like a positive thing.
It seems to me that if Napster users bought the same amount of music as non-Napster users, that 50% of Napster users would be above the average non-Napster user and 50% would be below. It follows that if Napster users bought more music than non-Napster users, more than 50% would be above the average non-Napsterino, and less than 50% below. This particular statistic (45% are more likely) tells me that Napster users buy approximately 5% less music than non-Napster users. I haven't examined any of Katz's other statistics in detail, but just this one leads me to distrust that the numbers are being interpreted accurately.
I don't like this statistic, because I find Napster a useful tool to find great music. I discovered Nick Cave and Tom Waits through music sharing, and have since purchased 7 albums by each. I also discovered Guster, and have purchased all 3 of their CDs. Without music sharing, I probably would still not know about these fabulous artists, and it saddens me that I may lose this tool in the future.
I remember hearing that he did something similar for A League of Their Own. In that, he had to play a baseball manager, and the director wanted him to be out of shape and overweight. Hanks said that first he had to avoid staying in shape, then had to push himself out of shape by eating wrong.
I guess the ability to get his weight way up or way down is just an innate talent for Hanks.