The gentleman from EA is right to blame consumers for the cost problem. We like to buy expensive-looking games even if they turn out to be not all that fun. Game design has taken a back seat to shelf appeal, and we've done it to ourselves. Meanwhile, high profile games are becoming less and less fun to play. How many FPS games do we really need? You might as well slap a "100% recycled content" sticker on every game sold in the US.
How much money does it actually cost to develop a fun game? Contrast that with costs of licensing movie characters or (worse) putting your entire production staff on the task of reworking animations for yet another Madden sequel. I'd argue that the real cost here is risk. Rather than assemble a number of small teams to make a bizarre game that could turn into a franchise, EA opts (more and more often) to play it safe by spending scads of cash on a sure thing.
Then again, maybe he's pining for the old days when he could order up a cash cow sequel much cheaper.
Either way, the next time you throw down your controler in dusgust at that $50 worth of deja vu you just purchased, we have only ourselves to blame.
I deal with people in your situation all the time. I don't doubt that you have a handle on what engineers will buy (NOTE: not "what they want" because for me that's very different) but I really don't think this is a reflection of what consumers want or will buy. It seems like you're blaming consumers for not buying the sets- as if it's just a matter of ponying up the cash. As we've seen throughout this thread, the issues for consumers are a tangled mess of technical concerns that they should not and will not handle on their own. For our corporate customers and folks wanting to shoot film on a skinnier budget, HD is a great production option, but it's a suckers bet from a consumer's standpoint in 2006. In 2008 things could be different. By then, however, a lot of people in your position could be out of business.
Personally I know of several companies in my area that bet heavily on products you probably sell and they're no longer in business. So, I can appreciate how consumers are a bit apprehensive even though you seem to think they're stupid for being that way. Good luck pushing the pixels!
As an editor, I work with SD/HD material all day, and I still don't own an HD set. I think my stupid logic might help explain why so many people are avoiding HD at the moment:
As luck would have it, our old 27" SD tube died last week and I really wrestled with the decision before opting to buy a cheap replacement rather than opting for HD. An entry level HD set was only twice as expensive, so hardware cost is becoming less and less of an issue. The biggest hurdle, the deal killer, was content. I don't want to double my already ridiculously high cable bill (basic+ at $60 per month) for TV I don't have time to watch. My kids watch a moderate amount, and it's all SD. I don't want to have to buy a BluRay unit in its first year and all the expensive headaches that come along with it. I cannot believe how bad SD looks on most HD sets. From what I've seen tubes do a much better job in scaling up SD to HD, but you see less and less of that these days since TFT and LCD big screens are a better deal for manufacturers. On the plasmas and LCDs I've seen running SD content (still a major part of what you're going to watch) it looks like a very large plate of crap.
So, I'm being asked to pay three times as much for a set and double my monthly costs to support it (and it may not even be compatible!) and people are surprised that I would opt for plain old 720x486? Hardly. I could buy an HD set now and opt for HD content down the road- but why? If pricing trends are any indication, I could buy a set in three years and pay half of what I would now- and without having to suffer through pricey-and-crappy standard def viewing for the interim.
The in-store demos are more compelling than they used to be, but essentially the HD industry is in the same spot it has been for the past five years, "on the cusp." The fault for that lies solely at the feet of manufacturers and broadcasters. Consumers have indicated that they're willing to buy into HD, but only when it makes sense for them. No amount of highly-compressed HD Sopranos episodes will change that.
LOS ANGELES, CA- At last week's E3 tradeshow, SONY executives proudly announced that their feature-packed Playstation3 game console would be priced at around $600 when it finally hits stores later this year. At twice the cost of Microsoft's XBox 360 and nearly three times that of Nintento's Wii, some worry that SONY's pricing target might push many gamers out of the market and create a stratified social system of the game-haves and the game-have-nots.
"A price tag is just a bit of paper- with a very, very large number printed on it," said Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. "All it just means is that the P3 is twice as good as that stinky Xbox. And who wants to buy a Microsoft console, anyway? Those greedy jerks don't care about their customers at all."
Sensing a need for a bold large-scale solution, Senator Hillary Clinton (D. New York) has championed a new approach: nationalizing the consumer electronics industry.
"For our nation to succeed in the new millennium, we must find a way to control the skyrocketing cost of videogames," said Clinton at a recent rally. "Sure, critics will say that such a move would stifle innovation, but are you willing to tell a low-income child that they can't play Madden 2007 HD just because their dad never went to college?"
Name: John "Wayne" Occuation: Entertainer Hobbies: Making new friends, excavation, "sad clown" collectables. Motto: Want to know how many friends are in MyCrawlSpace? I could tell you but then I'd have to... well, you get the idea.
This has been a very bad week indeed for famed stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-Suk. Not only has the crowning achievement of his scientific career been completely dismantled, but now editors at The Smoking Gun have posted evidence that Hwang's memoir about his misspent youth as a gender-bending, drug-addicted hustler may also be fraudulent.
Million Little Protein Strings topped the New York Times Best Sellers list for a significant chunk of 2005 after talk show host Oprah Winfrey selected the taudry tell-all for book club last September.
"I really identified with Hwang as a person who had experienced terrible things, made horrible choices, and somehow found a way to rise above," said Winfrey. "It was just the sort of tripe my audience loves to wallow in. Now that I discover that the story is just as genuine as a marriage proposal from Stedman Graham. As you might imagine, I'm a little pissed."
As if that weren't shocking enough, now comes news that even the fakery itself may not be genuine. Experts say the signatures on his lab notebook during the period of alleged data fudging are drastically dissimilar to ones plastered on earlier pages, and in recent interviews with the stem cell pioneer he appears to be a completely different person according to those who know him well.
Sources deep inside the isolated North Korean government are hinting that the whole embarassing episode may be an attempt to discredit the work going on at Seoul National University. For their part South Korean officials scoff at the accusation, claiming that their economically depressed neighbors to the North lack the resources to pull off such a stunt. Also, Kim Jung Il's government is so notoriously secretive that a leak of this magnitude just doesn't make sense unless it was an intentional rouse.
Hwang's supporters stand by their claim that the faked fakery is the real fake and not the original fakery committed when- oh, crap. Now I'm all confused.
It'd be a real shame if something happened to it. from the article:
REDMOND, WA- For years Windows users have lived under a blanket of fear, constantly checking their computers for malicious programs that take advantage of critical security flaws in the operating system lest they lose their hardware, their data, or even their identities. Thankfully those days might soon be over thanks to a new subscription service aimed at cleaning up Microsoft's mess. Even better, this new utility comes from the most trusted name in computing: Microsoft.
In truth, anti-spyware and anti-virus programs flood the market already, but they all share a common flaw: they're free. With freeware it is difficult, if not impossible, for consumers to know if it's really working. Experts say it takes a financial sting to make the software's real value apparent. While it would certainly be innovative for Microsoft to charge for the freely available service, the forward-thinking software company is not content to stop there. They plan to ask customers to pay for these features every year.
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA- When astrophysicists first ran calculations on the observed rotational speeds of nearby galaxies in the 1970's, they ran into a bit of a problem when the numbers didn't add up. According to the familiar laws of Newtonian mechanics, these meta bodies should be much heavier than the number of solar objects would imply. This gap led to one of the most controversial inferences in modern science, that the universe contains a massive amount of non-radiating "dark matter" hidden among the stars. For decades scientists were satisfied with this notion. Lectures were delivered, textbooks were printed, and tenure was granted.
A new paper from the University of Victoria, however, casts doubt on all of this. It argues that the whole notion "dark mattter" may be the byproduct of a miscalculation [someone forgot to carry the six] and demonstrates how a proper application of Einstein's principles of general relativity can fully account for a galaxy's rotation and mass without considering this unobserved dark matter. Such contrary ideas often run into resistance, but this theory has engendered far more scientific vitriol than anyone expected.
In fact, when researchers arrived to deliver the paper at a conference last weekend, they were met by an angry mob of civil rights protesters headed by Julian Bond of the NAACP.
"It's fairly clear what's going on here," said Bond through a bullhorn. "Just because it's dark they're saying it doesn't count. I, for one, will not stand for this sort of disenfranchisement. We demand that CERN count all the matter."
WARNING: Prolonged use may result in sleepless nights, the inability to shut up about Katamari, and the loss of friendships.
I love this game way too much.:(
A selection of casual games
on
Millions of Games
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Carnyville : You wake at 3am to find a carnival has moved in next door. Find a way to get them to move on before your property value plummets! This point-and-click adventure blew up my bandwidth last month so please be gentle.
Swinger: a weird arcade style game where you swing from dot to dot- like Clockwerkz w/ physics.
Figure Five Frenzy: My favorite math geek game. Play others online to prove yourself nerdy.
Sudoku Shuffle: A sudoku puzzler where you race the clock and other players in real time.
Unfortunately, the heartsick CEO shows no sign of moving on or adhering to the strict restraining order issued earlier this week. According to eyewitnesses, Ballmer showed up at Google's headquarters on Monday afternoon with a bundle of wilted flowers in one hand and an open bottle of an unidentified intoxicant in the other.
For the poor intern who discovered the Microsoft CEO peering through windows and shouting up at the third floor offices for Lee, it must have been both thrilling and stultifyingly creepy. Thankfully, security cameras captured the whole thing:
Ballmer: I'm here to see Kai-Fu Lee.
Intern: Mr. Lee left for the day, sir.
Ballmer: Come on, I know he's here. Just let me talk to him. I just want to make things right.
Intern: He's unavailable at the moment. I can take a message, though. What'd you want me to ask him?
Ballmer: Ask him this: When did you stop loving me?
Intern: Mr. Ballmer, you're drunk.
Ballmer: OK, I'm not going home alone. [addressing the gathering crowd of Google employees] Who wants to work at Microsoft? I can double your salary.
Intern: Um, can you pay me in Google stock?
Ballmer: I'm leaving now. [passes out]
Friends say Ballmer's position at the top of the world's largest and most established technology company has left him feeling isolated, defensive and perhaps more than a little jealous at being beaten again and again by younger, more agile rivals.
"Microsoft is not a young company, and I recognize that," said Ballmer in a late night voice mail to Lee's new office. "I want you to know that Microsoft can still do those things you like, those special business maneuvers. Eric doesn't know you like I do. Sure, Google looks sexy with its flexibility and high profile innovations, but before long you'll get bored with that, too, and want to move to the next large-cap tech company, and then what will you be? A whore! Oh, God. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that- well, I did, but not that way. I love you. [click]"
Don't use his posting status to try to defensively invalidate his point. If the category of material on the site can be had other places for free, people won't pay for it. End of story. Oh, you can argue that "it's unique content etc." but if people would rather use bugmenot than register with the Times for free, you're going to have a hell of a time getting paid.
The best bet I've found is licensing the content to other, better circulated outlets. I've seen people pay decent cash for articles that are picked up stringer style by periodicals and college textbooks. Non-text content is more likely to be licensed: games, music, movies, etc.
There are still innovative games like Katamari Damashi coming out, but I'm beginning to see web-based games (yes, Flash is severely limited in some ways) as analogous to indie cinema, cheap to make and free to play so there's less risk- and in some cases the production value is really good.
Sure, the web is full of SameGame & Lights Out variations just like the indie film scene is choked with copycats & also-rans, but there are new ideas out there, too.
I think we all loved the Red Room puzzles & the strange one with the mossy planet.
This one just came out yesterday: Carnyville- very weird.
CRAWFORD, TEXAS- For decades the United States has been lagging behind other countries when it comes to education, particularly in the sciences. Mainly this has been blamed on a lack of funding and national attention, but some pedagogical experts like President George W. Bush feel that other factors might be at work. For example, the President says that biology textbooks are horribly out of date, based on the 19th century writings of a man who wasn't even an American citizen.
If the US is to remain competitive in the world market, its young people are going to need an updated understanding of the world around them. To this end, the President today proposed a federal funding mechanism to encourage local schools to replace the antiquated notions of evolution and cosmology with the a origination theory making waves in Internet-based think tanks all over Middle America: Intelligent Design.
Tired of battling with copyright theives and complaints from consumer groups over its pricing practices, Microsoft has elected to offer its next-generation operating system for free when Vista (formerly known as Longhorn) hits the streets in early 2006.
"In the half decade or more of development on this product we've had a lot of time to think about our business practices and the kind of company we want to be," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "For example, we learned from the Open Source community that we really needed to reconnect with our users. Letting people use Vista for free is just one step in that direction.
To offset the cost of development, the company will begin charging for security patches and bug fixes, according to executives.
Even so, the customer-centric company would only charge an average of $10 or so for each patch, a great deal for consumers according to industry watchdogs.
"I can't see any ill will behind the move at all," said consumer advocate Ralph Nader. "Honestly, it looks like Microsoft has really learned their lesson. The only way profit motive would be to release really awful software in the hopes that people feel trapped enough to pay for the fixes, but why would they do that?"
(other than the continual confusion of "backup" and "archive") is that the same people who talk about how unreliable CDR/DVDR discs are for longterm archival purposes seem to be the same ones who advocate buying a portable firewire drive for every project and putting it on a shelf until the client calls with changes.
SAN FRANSISCO, CA- Years of rumors culminated in an electric moment at this year's Apple Developer's Conference on Monday when Steve Jobs, the brooding turtleneck-clad CEO of Apple Computer, announced that the company would be switching from IBM's PowerPC to an Intel-based architecture over the next two years. Not only will the move save the company money and potentially expand its user base, it will also do a great deal to stop the teasing the company has endured for so long.
"You people don't know what it's like," said Jobs told the mainstream press. "Being different from everybody else, being the oddball, is no picnic." Jobs went on to describe in detail the petty acts of torture and revenge inflicted upon himself and his staff: Apple Stores defaced with binary graffiti, the wedgies in the bathroom at last year's CES convention, the hateful slam book hosted on a backwater page of Microsoft's website. No wonder the sensitive computer company decided to join the rest of the world.
"It's been a good run with PowerPC," said Jobs. "We tried so hard and got so far but in the end it doesn't really matter."
For years, he said the pressure to conform had been the greatest incentive to do just the opposite, but with age has come a certain level of wisdom for the computer executive who advises his company to "grow up and get practical."
The CEO's inspirational words have already had a direct impact on Apple's legions of loyal fans. Mark Patsy, a 20-year-old art student from Rhode Island removed his piercings and enrolled in accounting courses at his local community college after hearing Jobs' keynote address.
"Steve helped me realize that I'm not really Vlad, Prince of Melancholy," he said. "I want a nice house, a wife and kids just like anybody else. There's a tax consultant in me struggling to get out. Thanks to Steve, I'm able to live as I really am."
Far beyond embracing ubiquity, users have plenty of reasons to be excited about the change. After all these years of deriding Intel's architecture, they finally have the chance to argue over why CISC is better than RISC after all. Also, in the middle of all this change users will be able to enjoy the same performance level to which they've grown used accustomed. While the last chip change meant an enormous speed boost, the move to Intel represents an opportunity to buy a whole new computer that runs just as fast, or perhaps a little slower, than their current setup.
"Just imagine," mused one Apple fanatic after the press event, "a Mac with 'Intel Inside(TM)' booting into WindowsXP, running Office and sporting a bigass Apple logo on the side. I'm going to MSPaint like the wind."
Even more than the company's customer base, the biggest winner in all of this would have to be the developers, as evidenced by this transcript from Monday's announcement:
Apple: OK, I know you guys could have abandoned us years ago and sunk the Mac ship. God knows we never gave you much to work with, OS7-9 stuck in stasis for seven years, next to no install base for your products, etc.
Developers: Yay. Huzzah for us.
Apple: Well, we're on the brink of an exciting new era, an era in which we require you to create a whole new code base to support a cost-based chip switch.
Developers: Hurray.
Apple: Not only that, you'll have the insanely great opportunity to maintain two code bases to support both chips.
Developers:...
Apple: Not only does it mean more work for you guys, it means lower costs and higher margins for us.
Developers: Um, OK.
Apple fans still clinging to non-conformity need not despair over the ch
Summary for the link deprived: Parents are furious with a math teacher for refusing to present Biblical cubit-based mathematics alongside higher math concepts, and not allowing children with strong faith objections to opt out of certain classes. They also want textbooks to carry warning stickers: Calculus is just a theory and not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
Slashdot Mirror
The gentleman from EA is right to blame consumers for the cost problem. We like to buy expensive-looking games even if they turn out to be not all that fun. Game design has taken a back seat to shelf appeal, and we've done it to ourselves. Meanwhile, high profile games are becoming less and less fun to play. How many FPS games do we really need? You might as well slap a "100% recycled content" sticker on every game sold in the US.
How much money does it actually cost to develop a fun game? Contrast that with costs of licensing movie characters or (worse) putting your entire production staff on the task of reworking animations for yet another Madden sequel. I'd argue that the real cost here is risk. Rather than assemble a number of small teams to make a bizarre game that could turn into a franchise, EA opts (more and more often) to play it safe by spending scads of cash on a sure thing.
Then again, maybe he's pining for the old days when he could order up a cash cow sequel much cheaper.
Either way, the next time you throw down your controler in dusgust at that $50 worth of deja vu you just purchased, we have only ourselves to blame.
I deal with people in your situation all the time. I don't doubt that you have a handle on what engineers will buy (NOTE: not "what they want" because for me that's very different) but I really don't think this is a reflection of what consumers want or will buy. It seems like you're blaming consumers for not buying the sets- as if it's just a matter of ponying up the cash. As we've seen throughout this thread, the issues for consumers are a tangled mess of technical concerns that they should not and will not handle on their own. For our corporate customers and folks wanting to shoot film on a skinnier budget, HD is a great production option, but it's a suckers bet from a consumer's standpoint in 2006. In 2008 things could be different. By then, however, a lot of people in your position could be out of business.
Personally I know of several companies in my area that bet heavily on products you probably sell and they're no longer in business. So, I can appreciate how consumers are a bit apprehensive even though you seem to think they're stupid for being that way. Good luck pushing the pixels!
As an editor, I work with SD/HD material all day, and I still don't own an HD set. I think my stupid logic might help explain why so many people are avoiding HD at the moment:
As luck would have it, our old 27" SD tube died last week and I really wrestled with the decision before opting to buy a cheap replacement rather than opting for HD. An entry level HD set was only twice as expensive, so hardware cost is becoming less and less of an issue. The biggest hurdle, the deal killer, was content. I don't want to double my already ridiculously high cable bill (basic+ at $60 per month) for TV I don't have time to watch. My kids watch a moderate amount, and it's all SD. I don't want to have to buy a BluRay unit in its first year and all the expensive headaches that come along with it. I cannot believe how bad SD looks on most HD sets. From what I've seen tubes do a much better job in scaling up SD to HD, but you see less and less of that these days since TFT and LCD big screens are a better deal for manufacturers. On the plasmas and LCDs I've seen running SD content (still a major part of what you're going to watch) it looks like a very large plate of crap.
So, I'm being asked to pay three times as much for a set and double my monthly costs to support it (and it may not even be compatible!) and people are surprised that I would opt for plain old 720x486? Hardly. I could buy an HD set now and opt for HD content down the road- but why? If pricing trends are any indication, I could buy a set in three years and pay half of what I would now- and without having to suffer through pricey-and-crappy standard def viewing for the interim.
The in-store demos are more compelling than they used to be, but essentially the HD industry is in the same spot it has been for the past five years, "on the cusp." The fault for that lies solely at the feet of manufacturers and broadcasters. Consumers have indicated that they're willing to buy into HD, but only when it makes sense for them. No amount of highly-compressed HD Sopranos episodes will change that.
SONY's P3 Pricing Prompts Call for Nationalized Game Industry
LOS ANGELES, CA- At last week's E3 tradeshow, SONY executives proudly announced that their feature-packed Playstation3 game console would be priced at around $600 when it finally hits stores later this year. At twice the cost of Microsoft's XBox 360 and nearly three times that of Nintento's Wii, some worry that SONY's pricing target might push many gamers out of the market and create a stratified social system of the game-haves and the game-have-nots.
"A price tag is just a bit of paper- with a very, very large number printed on it," said Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. "All it just means is that the P3 is twice as good as that stinky Xbox. And who wants to buy a Microsoft console, anyway? Those greedy jerks don't care about their customers at all."
Sensing a need for a bold large-scale solution, Senator Hillary Clinton (D. New York) has championed a new approach: nationalizing the consumer electronics industry.
"For our nation to succeed in the new millennium, we must find a way to control the skyrocketing cost of videogames," said Clinton at a recent rally. "Sure, critics will say that such a move would stifle innovation, but are you willing to tell a low-income child that they can't play Madden 2007 HD just because their dad never went to college?"
Here's one I did not too long ago called
Eric the Power-Mad DM about playing D&D back in the early 80's with a megalomaniac dongeon master.
Here's a Javascipt interpreter for the Old School Scott Adams games
-- doesn't mean it still makes me laugh like an idiot.
Duke Nukem: Sometime
Pray I alter it no further.
Anybody notice that all this happened just a month or two after the premiere of their slightly less Death-Star-ish logo?
Here's the new one:
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/stock/att_logo.jpg
I saw this on /. and could not stop laughing. I put this pic together for a dumb Vista parody last night and had no idea it was actually real-
5 25
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=1
check out this myCrawlSpace profile:
... well, you get the idea.
Name: John "Wayne"
Occuation: Entertainer
Hobbies: Making new friends, excavation, "sad clown" collectables.
Motto: Want to know how many friends are in MyCrawlSpace? I could tell you but then I'd have to
Not fitting in at school? You're certain to fit in myCrawlSpace
This has been a very bad week indeed for famed stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-Suk. Not only has the crowning achievement of his scientific career been completely dismantled, but now editors at The Smoking Gun have posted evidence that Hwang's memoir about his misspent youth as a gender-bending, drug-addicted hustler may also be fraudulent.
Million Little Protein Strings topped the New York Times Best Sellers list for a significant chunk of 2005 after talk show host Oprah Winfrey selected the taudry tell-all for book club last September.
"I really identified with Hwang as a person who had experienced terrible things, made horrible choices, and somehow found a way to rise above," said Winfrey. "It was just the sort of tripe my audience loves to wallow in. Now that I discover that the story is just as genuine as a marriage proposal from Stedman Graham. As you might imagine, I'm a little pissed."
As if that weren't shocking enough, now comes news that even the fakery itself may not be genuine. Experts say the signatures on his lab notebook during the period of alleged data fudging are drastically dissimilar to ones plastered on earlier pages, and in recent interviews with the stem cell pioneer he appears to be a completely different person according to those who know him well.
Sources deep inside the isolated North Korean government are hinting that the whole embarassing episode may be an attempt to discredit the work going on at Seoul National University. For their part South Korean officials scoff at the accusation, claiming that their economically depressed neighbors to the North lack the resources to pull off such a stunt. Also, Kim Jung Il's government is so notoriously secretive that a leak of this magnitude just doesn't make sense unless it was an intentional rouse.
Hwang's supporters stand by their claim that the faked fakery is the real fake and not the original fakery committed when- oh, crap. Now I'm all confused.
the new Kolchak. Yikes!
Anyway, I vote for number 6 and pretend it makes a difference. I wouldn't want to appear unmutual, now would I?
from the article:
OK, not really. Just thoght it would be fun.
WARNING: Prolonged use may result in sleepless nights, the inability to shut up about Katamari, and the loss of friendships.
:(
I love this game way too much.
Carnyville : You wake at 3am to find a carnival has moved in next door. Find a way to get them to move on before your property value plummets! This point-and-click adventure blew up my bandwidth last month so please be gentle.
Swinger: a weird arcade style game where you swing from dot to dot- like Clockwerkz w/ physics.
Figure Five Frenzy: My favorite math geek game. Play others online to prove yourself nerdy.
Sudoku Shuffle: A sudoku puzzler where you race the clock and other players in real time.
more...
and thus have to pay Nintendo a hefty licensing fee.
Don't use his posting status to try to defensively invalidate his point. If the category of material on the site can be had other places for free, people won't pay for it. End of story. Oh, you can argue that "it's unique content etc." but if people would rather use bugmenot than register with the Times for free, you're going to have a hell of a time getting paid.
The best bet I've found is licensing the content to other, better circulated outlets. I've seen people pay decent cash for articles that are picked up stringer style by periodicals and college textbooks. Non-text content is more likely to be licensed: games, music, movies, etc.
There are still innovative games like Katamari Damashi coming out, but I'm beginning to see web-based games (yes, Flash is severely limited in some ways) as analogous to indie cinema, cheap to make and free to play so there's less risk- and in some cases the production value is really good.
Sure, the web is full of SameGame & Lights Out variations just like the indie film scene is choked with copycats & also-rans, but there are new ideas out there, too.
I think we all loved the Red Room puzzles & the strange one with the mossy planet.
This one just came out yesterday: Carnyville- very weird.
Tired of battling with copyright theives and complaints from consumer groups over its pricing practices, Microsoft has elected to offer its next-generation operating system for free when Vista (formerly known as Longhorn) hits the streets in early 2006.
"In the half decade or more of development on this product we've had a lot of time to think about our business practices and the kind of company we want to be," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "For example, we learned from the Open Source community that we really needed to reconnect with our users. Letting people use Vista for free is just one step in that direction.
To offset the cost of development, the company will begin charging for security patches and bug fixes, according to executives.
Even so, the customer-centric company would only charge an average of $10 or so for each patch, a great deal for consumers according to industry watchdogs.
"I can't see any ill will behind the move at all," said consumer advocate Ralph Nader. "Honestly, it looks like Microsoft has really learned their lesson. The only way profit motive would be to release really awful software in the hopes that people feel trapped enough to pay for the fixes, but why would they do that?"
(other than the continual confusion of "backup" and "archive") is that the same people who talk about how unreliable CDR/DVDR discs are for longterm archival purposes seem to be the same ones who advocate buying a portable firewire drive for every project and putting it on a shelf until the client calls with changes.
Something about that seems horribly backward.
That said, Exabyte still rocks my socks
SAN FRANSISCO, CA- Years of rumors culminated in an electric moment at this year's Apple Developer's Conference on Monday when Steve Jobs, the brooding turtleneck-clad CEO of Apple Computer, announced that the company would be switching from IBM's PowerPC to an Intel-based architecture over the next two years. Not only will the move save the company money and potentially expand its user base, it will also do a great deal to stop the teasing the company has endured for so long.
"You people don't know what it's like," said Jobs told the mainstream press. "Being different from everybody else, being the oddball, is no picnic." Jobs went on to describe in detail the petty acts of torture and revenge inflicted upon himself and his staff: Apple Stores defaced with binary graffiti, the wedgies in the bathroom at last year's CES convention, the hateful slam book hosted on a backwater page of Microsoft's website. No wonder the sensitive computer company decided to join the rest of the world.
"It's been a good run with PowerPC," said Jobs. "We tried so hard and got so far but in the end it doesn't really matter."
For years, he said the pressure to conform had been the greatest incentive to do just the opposite, but with age has come a certain level of wisdom for the computer executive who advises his company to "grow up and get practical."
The CEO's inspirational words have already had a direct impact on Apple's legions of loyal fans. Mark Patsy, a 20-year-old art student from Rhode Island removed his piercings and enrolled in accounting courses at his local community college after hearing Jobs' keynote address.
"Steve helped me realize that I'm not really Vlad, Prince of Melancholy," he said. "I want a nice house, a wife and kids just like anybody else. There's a tax consultant in me struggling to get out. Thanks to Steve, I'm able to live as I really am."
Far beyond embracing ubiquity, users have plenty of reasons to be excited about the change. After all these years of deriding Intel's architecture, they finally have the chance to argue over why CISC is better than RISC after all. Also, in the middle of all this change users will be able to enjoy the same performance level to which they've grown used accustomed. While the last chip change meant an enormous speed boost, the move to Intel represents an opportunity to buy a whole new computer that runs just as fast, or perhaps a little slower, than their current setup.
"Just imagine," mused one Apple fanatic after the press event, "a Mac with 'Intel Inside(TM)' booting into WindowsXP, running Office and sporting a bigass Apple logo on the side. I'm going to MSPaint like the wind."
Even more than the company's customer base, the biggest winner in all of this would have to be the developers, as evidenced by this transcript from Monday's announcement:
Apple fans still clinging to non-conformity need not despair over the ch
Oh, God. Have you seen this one?
The evolution/creationism debate has gone to the next level in a small Pennsylvania town
Summary for the link deprived: Parents are furious with a math teacher for refusing to present Biblical cubit-based mathematics alongside higher math concepts, and not allowing children with strong faith objections to opt out of certain classes. They also want textbooks to carry warning stickers: Calculus is just a theory and not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
Apple released iTunes for Windows to prevent an anti-trust suit?