Give me Lynx Emulation and I'm all over one of these!
I've actually been holding off on buying one because no stores I've been to, have a demo unit. They all claim "it sells itself, and Sony won't give us floor units". Maybe it's just me, but if I'm going to drop $250 (plus the cost of accessories, games, etc) on something, I would like to see it, feel it, play it before I do so. I guess hitting the ripe old age of 30 has changed my views and my general impulsiveness.
Man, looking through the pictures I saw my old desk there! I may just go up there and buy all my old machines and furniture, set it up at home and pretend Im working there again.
That was the worst 3 years of my life.
With the push to accept and switch to Firefox, why do we need another browser, based on the FF core to confuse the masses? How will Netscape stand out from FF? It seems pretty pointless (except from a corporate marketing standpoint, to make $)
Having worked for 2 seperate video game publishers over the last 10 years, I'll just toss in my two cents. My last job was with iGames Publishing/S2 Game who did "Savage: The Battle for Newerth". The games was released for Windows and Linux, and there was an OS X port underway (maybe it still is, who knows). The biggest thing I see when deciding the publish for the non 'win' platforms is the sales motivation. All the trending and reporting point at the windows market, how many people have pc's, how many buy games, how many games sell for these genre's. This helps the publisher determine how many copies they can sell and how much money they can make.
With the OS X/ Linux community, it's more difficult. It's not considered to be an established (from the perception of a publisher, looking to make $) market. There are unknowns and it's a potential money losing situation. It's a vicious loop. No one will make the "big" games for OS X, because there isn't a good history to indicate sales, but that is what prevents that histopry from being made. Someone needs to break the cycle.
Again, this is my 2cents, having seen it from the publishing side of the fence. It's ultimately always about how much money can be made, and how many units will sell through. If the Mac community can show enough demand (which I think is starting to happen more and more) I think the future will be very bright for Mac Gaming.
with my ipaq and NEVO. It's more fun to mess with peoples heads by changing channels, and turning it off and on. I did it in the ER waiting room last week, while I was waiting to get stitches. Ok, maybe I'm cruel. but I had fun while I sat there for 3 hours.
The original price of the download was $10 cheaper than the retail. After the price was dropped to $29 from ($49 retail, $39 online) the $29 is the low point, you start going lower than that, and you don't have a company anymore:)
Just to throw my two cents into this arena. I recently (currently) worked for a startup game publisher, who decided to offer their game via download, as well as retail chains (EB, GameStop, BestBuy, etc.) The initial thought process on our end was similar, how many people really want to download the game, and not have a box? Well, I would have to say, that the results so far are pretty good. After a few thousand online purchases/downloads, we're still going strong. Granted, we've run into a handful of problems (but what fun would it be if we didn't?) The largest problem of all...AOL. It's a 50/50 crap shoot with them somtimes. We send out a confirmation email with the CD-key for the user, with download locations for the linux, windows, ISO and manual, but for some reason, AOL would block mail sometimes, and not others.
Overall, I would say that there are just as many people out there who want the "instant gratification" of buying it and downloading it immediately, instead of waiting for the boxed version to arrive. We do offer the original manual in a pdf format, but not the CD sleve (which we could, but there really haven't been many requests for it.) We also suggest that people download the ISO version, which has both the linux and windows installer, and burn it to CD, so they will always have it handy (although the download servers will be up for as long as the game survives).
point was, their normal return policy wasn't in effect. Normally they told me it's 30 days, instead I had 9 from Xmas eve, as the gift receiprt said up until Jan 3rd. That to me seems like they knew why and what they were doing. That's all. Had they not shrouded everything in such mystery about releasing new ipods, I would have given a gift certificate and said "wait till the new one comes out, a week after Xmas" That's why I'm pissed.. Oh, and I called the store, and they admitted that is why they did it.. whether the kid there just said that or not, that's an entirely different story.
So after buying a 10gb ipod for an Xmas gift for my dad, I see the 15GB announced today, to replace the 10gb. I promptly pulled out my gift receipt, to find that it says it can only be returned until Jan 3rd. Frankly, this would apprear extremely calculated, and incredibly disturbing. Bad business move I think.. I wonder how long it will take for some class action on this one. I'll never buy from apple again, that's for sure.
Not to be self serving here at all, seriously. I work for a company (happypuppy.com), whose business model is the same as the subscription services (we were subscription also, until a week or two ago). The software we use for download acceleration, was developed and licensed from Onion Networks (who've been mentioned on./ before). One of the differences with our technology (FileSwarmer as we call it) is that we have multiple servers, East and West, populated with the game demos already. This coutners some of the issues I've personally noted with torrents. We can guarnatee that there will be locations for people to get the file from, and don't solely rely on the P2P functionality (which greatly increases the reliability and speed of the whole process). I think that sites like Gametab are great, I think that using P2P technologies for facilitating, and bypassing the subscription models, will help to continue the growth of the VG industry.
A year ago I started a new job, as CTO for a company who needed to distribute files, randomly sized, and never with the ability to predict what day any give file would be available. So the first thing I did was look at the Akami type companies. I ultimately went with a company called SpeedEra. They offered a similar service, but cheaper. They handle the east and west coast distribution of our files, and we have them set up as two "distinct" points of presence. I then went with a local NYC ISP, and locked in at a very good rate, for 25Mbit/CIR. Knowing that my 95th percentile is about 23mbit for the web servers and our "primary" file distribution servers. So combine this, with our subscription level of service, which includes a file download tool (swarming tool, with p2p capabilities like bitconjurer) we have a nice robust infrastructure. We have continued to use more and more bandwidth, but knowing our 95%, I can up our CIR before the end of any month, and save on overage charges, etc.
There are other options too, like throttling bandwidth from within Apache, or at the switch port level. Aa for monitoring, I use JFFNMS (jffnms.sourceforge.net), and my ISP offers similar monitoring, so I can double check my data.
I held back on getting the game, mainly because of all the negative reviews. So last night, I jumped over to happypuppy.com (again, I subscribe to their FileSwarm - aka Onion WebRAID CDN, and got the file at about 670/Kb). Installed it, and played it for 30 minutes.
I think the biggest problem is the gaming community (me and all of you) are very demanding. Technologically, I think it's an excellent game. Story wise it's hard to say in just a demo. It did draw me in and keep me playing for a bit, I just wish the demo let you play over the LAN or net on this map, even just in a deathmatch mode. I guess since they weren't even going to release a demo in the first place, this is better than nothing..right?
http://www.happypuppy.com/games/index.jsp?gid=411, I actually subscribe to the fileswarm service (which uses the OnionNetwork CDN technology). Luvin the fact that on my cable modem I can get 750~800K !! Go Opt Online!
I got my copy last week, and have been flipping through it for a few days now. My company recently launched their new web presence (shameless plug: iGames.com) on Tomcat (with SQL 2000 Enterprise on the backend). I have been using tomcat for quite a long time, but mostly in the "out of the box" mode. Now that I needed to delve into it a bit further (like trying to figure out how to get it to log to one damn log file, instead of doing Daily logs! ). I was also under the impression that this book would help me with the "finer" tuning and tweaking of the JVM for Tomcat. It has helped somewhat, but I still get occasional hanging, which is easily remidied by restarting tomcat (not the solution I need, next step, connection pooling!). Overall, I think the book is a good reference, it covers some topics that I have searched far and wide to find on the newsgroups, and couldnt.
1 hour? how about reboot, at lilo type linux single, hit enter, and you're in the system as root.
physical security is where most of my sys admins have made their mistakes. As a tech director, I like to see if they fail on security like this, and I will change the root password on them, to freak them out/prove a point. Nasty? maybe, but they learn FAST.
Slashdot Mirror
That they're running "The Sims" ? And this is news?
Can they counter sue to have Jack Thompson labelled a 'public nuisance'?
It would be nice if they got one product to work FIRST, then launched another.
Give me Lynx Emulation and I'm all over one of these! I've actually been holding off on buying one because no stores I've been to, have a demo unit. They all claim "it sells itself, and Sony won't give us floor units". Maybe it's just me, but if I'm going to drop $250 (plus the cost of accessories, games, etc) on something, I would like to see it, feel it, play it before I do so. I guess hitting the ripe old age of 30 has changed my views and my general impulsiveness.
netcraft says its IIS 5... they are tricking us!!
Man, looking through the pictures I saw my old desk there! I may just go up there and buy all my old machines and furniture, set it up at home and pretend Im working there again. That was the worst 3 years of my life.
With the push to accept and switch to Firefox, why do we need another browser, based on the FF core to confuse the masses? How will Netscape stand out from FF? It seems pretty pointless (except from a corporate marketing standpoint, to make $)
With the OS X/ Linux community, it's more difficult. It's not considered to be an established (from the perception of a publisher, looking to make $) market. There are unknowns and it's a potential money losing situation. It's a vicious loop. No one will make the "big" games for OS X, because there isn't a good history to indicate sales, but that is what prevents that histopry from being made. Someone needs to break the cycle.
Again, this is my 2cents, having seen it from the publishing side of the fence. It's ultimately always about how much money can be made, and how many units will sell through. If the Mac community can show enough demand (which I think is starting to happen more and more) I think the future will be very bright for Mac Gaming.
with my ipaq and NEVO. It's more fun to mess with peoples heads by changing channels, and turning it off and on. I did it in the ER waiting room last week, while I was waiting to get stitches. Ok, maybe I'm cruel. but I had fun while I sat there for 3 hours.
Coincidence or Chance.... You decide!
http://www.happypuppy.com/e3/photos.jsp
Sorry couldn't resist, since there are entire sites dedicated to the E3 Booth Babes :)
The original price of the download was $10 cheaper than the retail. After the price was dropped to $29 from ($49 retail, $39 online) the $29 is the low point, you start going lower than that, and you don't have a company anymore :)
Overall, I would say that there are just as many people out there who want the "instant gratification" of buying it and downloading it immediately, instead of waiting for the boxed version to arrive. We do offer the original manual in a pdf format, but not the CD sleve (which we could, but there really haven't been many requests for it.) We also suggest that people download the ISO version, which has both the linux and windows installer, and burn it to CD, so they will always have it handy (although the download servers will be up for as long as the game survives).
Just my two cents.
Rob
iGames.com
EB says 7/14/2004, Gamestop says 5/3/2004 and BestBuy says 4/1/2004. Any bets on which date will realistically be the ship date?
point was, their normal return policy wasn't in effect. Normally they told me it's 30 days, instead I had 9 from Xmas eve, as the gift receiprt said up until Jan 3rd. That to me seems like they knew why and what they were doing. That's all. Had they not shrouded everything in such mystery about releasing new ipods, I would have given a gift certificate and said "wait till the new one comes out, a week after Xmas" That's why I'm pissed.. Oh, and I called the store, and they admitted that is why they did it.. whether the kid there just said that or not, that's an entirely different story.
So after buying a 10gb ipod for an Xmas gift for my dad, I see the 15GB announced today, to replace the 10gb. I promptly pulled out my gift receipt, to find that it says it can only be returned until Jan 3rd. Frankly, this would apprear extremely calculated, and incredibly disturbing. Bad business move I think.. I wonder how long it will take for some class action on this one. I'll never buy from apple again, that's for sure.
Savage is a great multiplayer linux game. I have run it on RedHat, Mandrake and Debian and it runs great. There is a demo as well. s2games.com
Not to be self serving here at all, seriously. I work for a company (happypuppy.com), whose business model is the same as the subscription services (we were subscription also, until a week or two ago). The software we use for download acceleration, was developed and licensed from Onion Networks (who've been mentioned on ./ before). One of the differences with our technology (FileSwarmer as we call it) is that we have multiple servers, East and West, populated with the game demos already. This coutners some of the issues I've personally noted with torrents. We can guarnatee that there will be locations for people to get the file from, and don't solely rely on the P2P functionality (which greatly increases the reliability and speed of the whole process). I think that sites like Gametab are great, I think that using P2P technologies for facilitating, and bypassing the subscription models, will help to continue the growth of the VG industry.
Why dont we get SCO to join the RIAA, and anyone using Linux to swap songs, they can just nail them with a double suit.
A year ago I started a new job, as CTO for a company who needed to distribute files, randomly sized, and never with the ability to predict what day any give file would be available. So the first thing I did was look at the Akami type companies. I ultimately went with a company called SpeedEra. They offered a similar service, but cheaper. They handle the east and west coast distribution of our files, and we have them set up as two "distinct" points of presence. I then went with a local NYC ISP, and locked in at a very good rate, for 25Mbit/CIR. Knowing that my 95th percentile is about 23mbit for the web servers and our "primary" file distribution servers. So combine this, with our subscription level of service, which includes a file download tool (swarming tool, with p2p capabilities like bitconjurer) we have a nice robust infrastructure. We have continued to use more and more bandwidth, but knowing our 95%, I can up our CIR before the end of any month, and save on overage charges, etc.
There are other options too, like throttling bandwidth from within Apache, or at the switch port level. Aa for monitoring, I use JFFNMS (jffnms.sourceforge.net), and my ISP offers similar monitoring, so I can double check my data.
Just my 2 cents.
I held back on getting the game, mainly because of all the negative reviews. So last night, I jumped over to happypuppy.com (again, I subscribe to their FileSwarm - aka Onion WebRAID CDN, and got the file at about 670/Kb). Installed it, and played it for 30 minutes. I think the biggest problem is the gaming community (me and all of you) are very demanding. Technologically, I think it's an excellent game. Story wise it's hard to say in just a demo. It did draw me in and keep me playing for a bit, I just wish the demo let you play over the LAN or net on this map, even just in a deathmatch mode. I guess since they weren't even going to release a demo in the first place, this is better than nothing..right?
http://www.happypuppy.com/games/index.jsp?gid=411, I actually subscribe to the fileswarm service (which uses the OnionNetwork CDN technology). Luvin the fact that on my cable modem I can get 750~800K !! Go Opt Online!
Of course, you can get the file for free from here, but I subscribe to them, and managed to get it at about 650kb/sec.. god I love my cable modem :)
I got my copy last week, and have been flipping through it for a few days now. My company recently launched their new web presence (shameless plug: iGames.com) on Tomcat (with SQL 2000 Enterprise on the backend). I have been using tomcat for quite a long time, but mostly in the "out of the box" mode. Now that I needed to delve into it a bit further (like trying to figure out how to get it to log to one damn log file, instead of doing Daily logs! ). I was also under the impression that this book would help me with the "finer" tuning and tweaking of the JVM for Tomcat. It has helped somewhat, but I still get occasional hanging, which is easily remidied by restarting tomcat (not the solution I need, next step, connection pooling!). Overall, I think the book is a good reference, it covers some topics that I have searched far and wide to find on the newsgroups, and couldnt.
1 hour? how about reboot, at lilo type linux single, hit enter, and you're in the system as root.
physical security is where most of my sys admins have made their mistakes. As a tech director, I like to see if they fail on security like this, and I will change the root password on them, to freak them out/prove a point. Nasty? maybe, but they learn FAST.