Over the past week all I have seen is this bald douchebag telling me how games are going to take a "new direction" and microsoft is going to be there for it. The ONLY thing xbox has going for it is xbox live, and that's not all that great.
PLaying a puzzle game to make food for your Halo army? WTF? Does this guy not understand that these types of forced roles have been attempted before? I am not playing ANY game where I might have to handle some remedial task over and over again so my team can win. I'm not talking holding a position that no one comes to for a little while, or distributing healthpacks during a clash - I'm talking Halo: Pizza Puzzle Online. Yeah, that's neato.
Hearing him talk about multi access portals is even worse. Mr. J - have you even thought of the technical requirements for playing in the same game world from a phone, PC, and console? It's called lowest common denominator and it will sink that dream like a stone. You could have multiple different games in the same world on different platforms but that would be the same thing we have today. Way to blow smoke dumb ass.
I have yet to hear a Japanese Third party developer gush over your machine. Mostly I hear corp speak from a rep, not a developer. Not good dude.
You say you're a fan of persistent worlds? Then why did you guys purchase Bungie and change their dream of what HALO was supposed to be, a persistent online fragfest warzone, into a mediocre FPS with no tactical elements to it. Oh, probably because you don't know what your talking about.
This guy even has a writeup in POPSCI magazine about how innovative his console is. Yeah, no hard drive, selective backwards compatability, a release lineup where all the games aren't available yet, and a flawed DESIGN resulting in overheating - innovative in that maybe no one has tried to screw themselves over this hard with a new console release since the Jaguar.
You're publicist called, she says you sound like a moron.
Tom would like to sell me his idea, right? OK with me, but I only buy things I don't have. If by looking at Tom's orange peeler I can't figure out his idea, then Tom indeed has something to sell me. If I can, it means that I now have this idea, too, and therefore don't need to buy it from Tom.
Whatever the original intent of the patent was, it is now used as a means to protect your designs. If someone can reverse engineer your design and then develop a different method to get that same result a patent won't protect you from that.
If you want to go and market your idea or design to larger entities you get a patent to protect your design before you take it to anyone. You still have to get the same agreement for them to produce it.
I understand why alot of software patents are idiotic, I mean come on how many different ways can you code a simple loop? But when it gets more advanced than that, such as developing a new filesystem, why should that immediately be available to everyone if you don't wish it to be?
I believe in design patents, not really patents on concepts. If you are arguing that you shouldn't be able to patent raw ideas, which I think you are, then I agree. Yet, if I get pas that point and develop a superior design, I do not want anybody just taking an exact carbon copy of my work and profiting from it. Change it enough to be unique or fulfill a different function and it's all yours, rip me off and get ready for court.
Tom the orange lover eats so many oranges that he develops his own custom orange peeler at home. The thing is so kick ass that he decides he should try and sell it to an orange peeler manufacturer. In order to protect his design he needs to get a patent.
By your statement, he shouldn't be able to patent his design. Why? So some entity bigger than Tom can flex its financial muscle and profit of of his ingenuity. That's bullshit. If the orange peeler manufacturer had an engineer worth a damn they would have already developed a design that accomplished the same thing. But they don't, becuase it doesn't exist.
I understand that patents don't apply everywhere, and I certainly am not for all software patents, but to take the stance that they are all worthless is rubbish. People complain about the lack of engineers in America today, but that's not the problem. The real issue is with having no creative engineers and people desparately trying to cling to relevance.
Everyone wants everything to be open sourced and free so that they don't have to do any "real" work. If you want to give your creation to the world, be my guest, but don't expect everyone to allow themselves to be co-opted because you can only develop according to the prescribed steps taught to you.
If I can concieve of something that fulfills a need that no one else has been able to fulfill - I want to be compensated. The greater the positive impact on society, the greater I want my compensation to be. If some young turk comes behind me and develops something better, well, that's the way it's supposed to work. Boo hoo for me. Shit, if that happened, it would be in everyones best interest if I released my invention to the public. My invention has been outclassed, so you guys go ahead and use it as a springboard to make your own.
If I understand your statement correctly, the Dyson guy should still be doing whatever it was he was doing before he came up with his vacuum while Hoover makes the big bucks because of their resources.
Going hand in hand with your comment, whatever happened to cross referencing?
I usually don't take something as a fact until multiple credible sources state the same thing. I use wikipedia to see if one of my hypothesis' are correct, and then I go out and look for more reference information to solidify my argument.
There is a flaw in your analogy. You didn't build a new store across town, you built it right next door to your original one. Not only that, but the city has laws against shop owners building their locations too close to each other.
It is entirely possible that this man was penalized for running duplicate ads for duplicate products concurrently. Google states that this IS NOT allowed. If they allowed this strategy, a business with deep enough pockets could bid their ads at differnt price teirs to effectively own every ad slot on the first page. This is not something google wants to allow.
Cringley doesn't recognize this, nor does he recognize the site age factor. There are ALOT of undefined aspects here. Did the tester register the new domain name as himself? Would a simple automated whois lookup discover that both sites belonged to the same man? If so, google may have become suspicious of the activity.
This experiment is flawed. In order to test the bidding algo, you need to have identical ads and landing pages so that only one variable changes, the bids. From an automated systems perspective, that appears suspiciously like ad spam. Why does no one recognize this. This may have occured because google was attempting to keep their product legit. A couple of scenarios for you:
Google is trying to protect your investment. If you were advertising a product on adWords and began to do very well, how would you feel if a competitor came along, cut and pasted your ads into their own and then began to overbid you? You would be screaming at the top of your lungs that google needed to do something to stop that behavior. In an attempt to prevent this from happening they penalize anyone who behaves this way.
They are protecting the integrity of their model Google doesn't want someone to come in and purchase all the advertising space for a set of keywords. To prevent a "monopoly" type situation, each advertiser is allowed to bid for one slot. Now the bidding, and quite likely other undefined elements, detirmines how high that slot is. If you begin to create separate accounts so that you can appear to be different advertisers, but in reality are the same company - you have just gamed the system. If this happens, google loses credibility, marketshare, and most importantly money. It is in their best interest to prevent this from happening. Trying to stick to the "Do no evil" policy as close as they can , and also not piss off a potential revenue source, they penalize you for your behavior instead of banning you outright.
BTW, I'm no Google fanboi. I recognze that they are moving into a position where a watchful eye is close to becoming a neccesity. I'm just not to quick to jump to a "Google is scamming you" position based on a test that is fundamentally flawed.
I may be mistaken, but I also believe that he may have tripped a dupe content type filter. If he created another website with completely duplicate content, and then created an adwords account with completely duplicate ads, google could interpret that as attempting to game the adwords.
It may appear that he is trying to own the advertising space to the right by paying for the same ads at differnt levels, effectively owning all positions. Google does not want that to happen as it will allow those with larger budgets to effectively take all first result page slots.
TFA doesn't give timeframe from launch to bid change, so it is possible that at the same time he changed his bid, google penalized the new adWords account for running parallel to his original one.
I set the text on my website to be a shade off white. This seems to soften the contrast difference in White on Black.
On a side note, I know my site is built like crap - I am using divs and tables in a bad combinaton. I am trying to migrate away from table layout and slowly working towards using CSS properly. I have just begun to play with container divs (not implemented live) so that I can control my layout better across browsers. Can anyone tell me if it breaks when using ctrl+mousewheel?
Having said all that, where do you stop? If someone is standing there and literally telling me the sky is red, and I'm saying Ok, In Your World Its Red, is that not just basic intellectual dishonesty?
I think I may have misinterpreted your original statement. I agree whole heartedly that sometimes there are undeniable facts that define an absolute. In these cases, to capitulate to arguments that are obviously ignorant or misinformed is a ridiculous exercise. That having been said, I agree with the clarification of your point.
In the matter of video game content and regulation I am quick (maybe too much so) to prevent people from attempting to establish their opinion as an absolute, I don't believe the issue will be solved that way. Your last post clarified that you actually hold an opinion pretty close to mine, there is no definitive study on the matter.
With no definitive data to go on, and plenty of antecdotal evidence to draw from, people are forced to take a position consisting mostly of opinion. When forced to defend their stance against any opposing argument, they also feel personally assaulted. Now this is true of any ad hominem stance, but this one is unique in the composition of its facets.
Child wellness, government regulation, self gratification, and an emerging media format combine to form a really confusing issue. Other subjects approaching child wellness are easier to deal with. Alcohol and drugs stymie proper development, guns can lead to early death, TV can result in mimictry - which is more rude than culturally shifting in my opinion. The interactivity of this medium adds a new twist that is not easily quantifiable.
With children, and to a degree society, perceivably at stake I can understand how no one would want to give in on their side - "facts" be damned.
Now, I am not saying that this means kids who play GTA will go out and kill pedestrians. But I also think it's ignorant to set aside scientific evidence that violence in media has no effect on people's behaviour. It does, both in kids and adults, and both in males and females. If gamers are going to defend themselves against overly zealous politicians, it makes sense to educate oneself about the science. By flippantly setting it all aside, this article does nothing to address it.
Man, I'm glad someone else agrees with me. I'm constantly getting reamed here for acknowledging things that offend or threaten the group perspective here on slashdot.
If you are going to protect the things you love, you have to be honest with yourself about what they are.
NO. No no no no. There are not always two sides. By that statement no one is ever right. You've been watching too much cable news.
You know the story about the blind guys describing an elephant. One guy touches a leg and says it's like a tree, another the trunk and says its a snake and so on. Well, all of them are right.
The same applies to this subject. People ARE affected by the media they ingest, to what degree and how much of a problem it is are yet undefined. Some video game content has the player emulate actions that some people would consider immoral and is clearly defined as illegal in most places. Based on these points you have three major camps:
People who don't care about the content or who ingests it. I perceive this group as comprised mostly of people who personally enjoy the content.
People who do not want to stop the content from being produced, but would like to make sure that children do not get a hold of it. This group would like to see a more critical or comprehensive rating scale. They would also like to see parents pay more attention. This group seems to include people who like and people that dislike the content.
People who think the content is horrible and and want to stop it from being created in the first place. Not a shocker that these people find the content repulsive.
Now, according to your argument, two of these groups are wrong. There is no way to make that call here without injecting your perspective as a fact. Every one of these camps has "fact" to back up their argument and counter arguments for the other two positions. There is no clear and absolute truth of the matter as far as we know.
I'm not arguing your point that without comprehensive facts you're left with opinion, because I agree. I just think it's more important to find the truth than to "be right". In most of the cases where I have found the truth, it required me to let go of the concept of "I'm right, they're wrong."
I cannot argue with this mentality from a business perspective, but there will be reprocussions. You cannot expect to be taken seriously as an artform if your precursor all design decisions with "In regard to the target market."
Is it no wonder that FPS players sent a loud ass noise to their opponent when they won? It is standard fare to talk shit and taunt someone you just "pwned" in that genre. Those games are played online, and then when you emulate that environment you get results that are the same, what a shock.
What I would really like to see are the results broken down by these players favorite genre. Who sent more blasts, RPG guys or RTS guys?
Either this guy didn't know enough about the online FPS gaming subculture to know it would skew his results - meaning his results are not qualified, or he did know and created this study so he would get the desired outcome.
Re:Education decaying into retold legends of glory
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You're right, this is getting usenet length. You make very interesting points, and I would like to continue this discussion through email if you are interested. hatemail@binarydeathtrap.com is where you can reach me. That's not a joke. To cover some key points...
Someone who dares to say killing prostitutes is personally distasteful to publish fantasies about shouldn't so deeply offend you in return. Disliking wonton murder is not so controversial as you may fear. Don't impose silence on the discussion of fantasy-stories' effects because you feel its taboo to discuss.
OK, I may have jumped the gun on this a little bit. The reason for this is that most people who argue against violent and questionable content in games are often proponents of censoring that content. Rereading your posts, and your statements about "mental junk food" and diabetes, has lead me to believe that this is not the case with your opinion. I personally do not find your disdain for this type of content controversial, but I do attemt to prevent anyone from using their sense of taste as a reason for censorship. To add to that, I do not believe that accurate content ratings or regulating the sale of content to minors is censorship. I am genuinely interested in hearing the stance of someone who can give me honest reasons for why they dislike content while still respecting my decision to enjoy it. No subject is taboo with me, but I do fight real hard against censorship. I apologize for misinterpreting you and categorizing you prematurely and innacurately.
The rest of this discussion has multiple tangents as far as I can see:
The effect of media on the population over the long term
How the media vehicle effects its content
What motivates the media controllers to favor certain content
What hurdles do media controllers face in delivering more moral content
As I stated before, I am genuinely interested in hearing your views on these subjects. My email once again is hatemail@binarydeathtrap.com, I really hope you wish to continue this dialog.
Re:Education decaying into retold legends of glory
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I think you may have misinterpreted my statements.
I genuinely remain surprised that you (who may, in principle, support GTA: *) are worried about controversy. What a strange world you live in that the media makes you so worried about opinions!!
If you took my statement as a whole, you would see that I was attempting to explain the business decision behind not implementing this type of scoring system. It's a touchy subject for alot of people. It's actually easier to fight on a front where the lines have been clearly drawn and the battles have been fought before (violence, coruption of youth).
I don't worry about people who have opinions, I worry about the actions of some who attempt to inflict their opinions on others. I don't force anyone to play the games I enjoy, and I actually support keeping the material out of childrens hands - what I won't support is someone defining my morals and attitudes as unhealthy and twisting them so I look like a fascist loving idiot. I genuinely remained suprised that someone can mistake an attempt at explaining a third group's behavior as my own stance.
Isn't it obvious that the media reports on something "amazing" or at least "shocking"?? Maybe they do so because video games genuinely represent a departure from everyday practice, life, trust, culture and even may remind people of very real and very scary times of history.
The media makes it amazing and shocking, that's my stance. Very few events are actually shocking or amazing, and if they are they generally arent actually reported on because they aren't "news worthy." Almost all media represents a departure from everyday practice, life, trust, and culture. Science fiction often employs distopias to get their point across. Movies use disturbing imagry that often makes reference to horrible events in our history. The difference with video games is the interactivity. That element is scary to alot of people, especially those who control the media, it's foreign to them. Much like the Radio was to paper reporters and TV to Radio reporters. The medium is in it's infant stage. You could say anything about it and it could possibly be true. When this attitude is acted upon by others I balance out that action with my own. People make their own decisions, I don't make them for them.
It is the highest joke that you feel no real moral code exists for some and yet at the same time you feel "Rational people" are everywhere.
How the hell you got this is beyond me. Where do I infer that I have no moral code? Where do I say that no moral code exists? I stated that multiple codes axist and to choose one as a scoring system for a game was a dangerous business decision. It's much easier to choose none and let the consumers apply their own within the context of their play.
Still, trust me... the endless arguments of "There's no real morality at all" are a solid source of laughter for me. Hypocrisy unending! Everyone maintains morality codes, often nearly the exact same ones as their friends. Morality codes form politics.
This I agree with, yet how this applies to anything I said is beyond me. Once again I was attempting to explain the difficulty of the business related decision, not my own decision. I do not have these issues. The media will not go ape shit over my personal morals until they directly clash with anothers in a manner that could generate revenue by reporting on it, then they will care.
As an example, a "moral" game consisting of a being a combat photographer could still be extremely violent, yet you would not be commiting those acts of violence. But then comes the decision of who the "bad" party is in the conflict. For a story to progress there needs to be a protagonist and an antagonist. Some one is going to get their panties in a wad when you start applying those elements to their group. If you focus on "terrorists" as being the bad guy, certain groups are going to get angry that they are portrayed commiting the heinous acts you ta
Re:Education decaying into retold legends of glory
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Reading about those Civ games now has me interested. I usually stay away from those types of games because the ones I messed with early on incorporated RTS elements, and I really don't jive with those games.
You bring up an interesting point about the Sims and Tycoon games. Another interesting fact about those games is they are huge with girls. I guess the whole kill everything you can deal doesn't appeal to the emotionally based part of the species. I tried playing the sims when it first came out, but after 15 minutes of taking out the garbage and going to the bathroom I decided I had my own garbage to take out and didn't want to do virtual chores too. Maybe I should give it another chance and delve a little deeper into it.
I've never heard of Restraunt Empire,the title sounds interesting, is it any good? I did a google search on it but would like a first hand opinion from someone who doesn't get paid to give them.
Re:Education decaying into retold legends of glory
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yeah, but the thing about those games is that the "morality" is deciding who you are going to kill. That's pretty much it.
I do agree that Ultima did attempt to make a game where "moral" behavior was rewarded, but you still went around and killed stuff - you didn't exactly try to form a commitee to discuss why the antagonist was so antagonizing.
I have never played a Civ game, but in those empire building games I would think that having a diplomatic route is neccesary to flesh out the concept. Beyond that, I can't really comment due to lack of experience with the titles.
Re:binarydeathtrap.com is looking for educated, cy
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To be honest, I know absolutely nothing of X-Ray tech. SO no, I have no idea if it is plausable or not. I guess I could have googled it, but I'm really too lazy.
Re:Free Punch Card -- Then Capitalism Takes Over
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Only to be used when outsized and out classed.
The reality of the matter is that most "fights" aren't really fights at all. Thy consist of one person sucker punching another and then pounding on them while they're down.
A "real" fight is rare and dangerous. Two combatants squared up with no rules is not pretty. It goes VERY fast and tactics tend to be gruesome.
Re:Free Punch Card -- Then Capitalism Takes Over
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And, honestly, if people get into serious fights they usually don't just punch and kick. A crowbar is a great equalizer.;)
As is my patented "bite a chunk out of your face" move.
Re:Education decaying into retold legends of glory
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Not a single game *I've* ever seen has declared its sim-king to be morally skilled by a moral maze of moral obstacles... maximizing the goodness of all at the sacrifice of the fewest violations of principles
You have no clue what your talking about do you? The reason games don't attempt to score things on a moral basis is because the media would have a shit fit if games took that trend. What moral set are you using? Who decides the weight of those moral choices? What's immoral? These are matters that to this day have not been agreed upon, and you want a scoring system based on it? Ridiculous. The media will latch onto any angle they can get to sell advertising. If that means they will crucify video games one minute for being to violent and teaching our children to kill, and they will crucify them the next for attempting to force a moral ruleset on them. You cannot win that fight. And companies looking for a profit don't want to pick it.
Now the fruits are falling off the tree in larger numbers (Columbine). The game industry needs to find a book somewhere (SOMEWHERE) and realize what exists outside a gun's barrel... what the consequences are for asking everyone to enjoy being a Barbarian for an hour. Rome falls.
Quit getting your numbers from the media, they are over sensationalizing things to sell advertising - that's it. Check out the numbers , especially chart 1.1 where you can clearly see the amount of fatal violence going down. The real problem lie in those children, and their parents. If you are susceptable to being turned into a killing machine from a video game, you are one weak willed fool. If your parents didn't teach you the difference between pretend and reality, then they suck as a whole.
Don't give me the bullshit that "Everyone Knows Its A Game". The evidence is mounting high right in that article that more than a few take the metaphor very seriously... and our current political shift... blowing off debt and lives without care... show it is growing indeed. Shallow, mindless politics from shallow mindless ethics.
Everyone does know it's a game. Just becuase someone takes the metaphor seriously doesn't mean that they will actually go out and kill everyone who disagrees with them. Rational people don't do that. They realize that in order to make the world as they see fit, that would probably be the most efficient and quickest way, but probably not the BEST way. Even you are exhibiting behavior, unilaterally deciding what politics are shallow and what ethics are mindless. In a free society if somebody wants to watch football all day, ruin their credit, and vote the way they want - they can. You seem to abhor that behavior, and allude to anyone who behaves in this manner as inferior. Am I to assume that if given the chance to change things you wouldn't? And how would you realistically do that without becoming a facist?
All the games referred to are huge, complex body count simulation systems to tell a story.
That's the point, they are cathartic. I love my tactical stealth games and squad shooters because I NEVER WANT TO ACTUALLY DO THAT SHIT! I would like a decent simulation though where the only person who gets hurt is a non-existent internet man. A bunch of ones and zeros fabricated from someones mimagination and brought to life through a console conduit. To say that this type of material in the hands of an adult is going to be the downfall of our rome is assanine. Rome didn't fall because the actors were putting on violent or Facist plays. It fell because a small handful of power weilders tried to manipulate the whole for thier own gain - and that mentality did not come from any media they ingested.
Re:Free Punch Card
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I hope your just kidding, if not - you're an ass.
Messing with reproductive rights as if you're a fucking authority on anything is not only criminal, its sociopathic.
And if I caught anyone pointing anything at my kids, they would be a stain in 10 seconds.
If you want to be an artist, your work is its own reward.
If you want to be well known, well I think your priorities shouldn't be aligned with artistic.
The choice comes back to the person (or group) making the choice. Eventually they have to decide whether the art is the focus or money and fame. If you opt for money and fame, I don't blame you - but you're no artist at that point. You need to deal with the fact that you are now in the business of manufacturing a product.
Slashdot Mirror
No shit.
Over the past week all I have seen is this bald douchebag telling me how games are going to take a "new direction" and microsoft is going to be there for it. The ONLY thing xbox has going for it is xbox live, and that's not all that great.
PLaying a puzzle game to make food for your Halo army? WTF? Does this guy not understand that these types of forced roles have been attempted before? I am not playing ANY game where I might have to handle some remedial task over and over again so my team can win. I'm not talking holding a position that no one comes to for a little while, or distributing healthpacks during a clash - I'm talking Halo: Pizza Puzzle Online. Yeah, that's neato.
Hearing him talk about multi access portals is even worse. Mr. J - have you even thought of the technical requirements for playing in the same game world from a phone, PC, and console? It's called lowest common denominator and it will sink that dream like a stone. You could have multiple different games in the same world on different platforms but that would be the same thing we have today. Way to blow smoke dumb ass.
I have yet to hear a Japanese Third party developer gush over your machine. Mostly I hear corp speak from a rep, not a developer. Not good dude.
You say you're a fan of persistent worlds? Then why did you guys purchase Bungie and change their dream of what HALO was supposed to be, a persistent online fragfest warzone, into a mediocre FPS with no tactical elements to it. Oh, probably because you don't know what your talking about.
This guy even has a writeup in POPSCI magazine about how innovative his console is. Yeah, no hard drive, selective backwards compatability, a release lineup where all the games aren't available yet, and a flawed DESIGN resulting in overheating - innovative in that maybe no one has tried to screw themselves over this hard with a new console release since the Jaguar.
You're publicist called, she says you sound like a moron.
You have just reiterated my point back to me.
Tom would like to sell me his idea, right? OK with me, but I only buy things I don't have. If by looking at Tom's orange peeler I can't figure out his idea, then Tom indeed has something to sell me. If I can, it means that I now have this idea, too, and therefore don't need to buy it from Tom.
Whatever the original intent of the patent was, it is now used as a means to protect your designs. If someone can reverse engineer your design and then develop a different method to get that same result a patent won't protect you from that.
If you want to go and market your idea or design to larger entities you get a patent to protect your design before you take it to anyone. You still have to get the same agreement for them to produce it.
I understand why alot of software patents are idiotic, I mean come on how many different ways can you code a simple loop? But when it gets more advanced than that, such as developing a new filesystem, why should that immediately be available to everyone if you don't wish it to be?
I believe in design patents, not really patents on concepts. If you are arguing that you shouldn't be able to patent raw ideas, which I think you are, then I agree. Yet, if I get pas that point and develop a superior design, I do not want anybody just taking an exact carbon copy of my work and profiting from it. Change it enough to be unique or fulfill a different function and it's all yours, rip me off and get ready for court.
Tom the orange lover eats so many oranges that he develops his own custom orange peeler at home. The thing is so kick ass that he decides he should try and sell it to an orange peeler manufacturer. In order to protect his design he needs to get a patent.
By your statement, he shouldn't be able to patent his design. Why? So some entity bigger than Tom can flex its financial muscle and profit of of his ingenuity. That's bullshit. If the orange peeler manufacturer had an engineer worth a damn they would have already developed a design that accomplished the same thing. But they don't, becuase it doesn't exist.
I understand that patents don't apply everywhere, and I certainly am not for all software patents, but to take the stance that they are all worthless is rubbish. People complain about the lack of engineers in America today, but that's not the problem. The real issue is with having no creative engineers and people desparately trying to cling to relevance.
Everyone wants everything to be open sourced and free so that they don't have to do any "real" work. If you want to give your creation to the world, be my guest, but don't expect everyone to allow themselves to be co-opted because you can only develop according to the prescribed steps taught to you.
If I can concieve of something that fulfills a need that no one else has been able to fulfill - I want to be compensated. The greater the positive impact on society, the greater I want my compensation to be. If some young turk comes behind me and develops something better, well, that's the way it's supposed to work. Boo hoo for me. Shit, if that happened, it would be in everyones best interest if I released my invention to the public. My invention has been outclassed, so you guys go ahead and use it as a springboard to make your own.
If I understand your statement correctly, the Dyson guy should still be doing whatever it was he was doing before he came up with his vacuum while Hoover makes the big bucks because of their resources.
Going hand in hand with your comment, whatever happened to cross referencing?
I usually don't take something as a fact until multiple credible sources state the same thing. I use wikipedia to see if one of my hypothesis' are correct, and then I go out and look for more reference information to solidify my argument.
It is entirely possible that this man was penalized for running duplicate ads for duplicate products concurrently. Google states that this IS NOT allowed. If they allowed this strategy, a business with deep enough pockets could bid their ads at differnt price teirs to effectively own every ad slot on the first page. This is not something google wants to allow.
Cringley doesn't recognize this, nor does he recognize the site age factor. There are ALOT of undefined aspects here. Did the tester register the new domain name as himself? Would a simple automated whois lookup discover that both sites belonged to the same man? If so, google may have become suspicious of the activity.
This experiment is flawed. In order to test the bidding algo, you need to have identical ads and landing pages so that only one variable changes, the bids. From an automated systems perspective, that appears suspiciously like ad spam. Why does no one recognize this. This may have occured because google was attempting to keep their product legit. A couple of scenarios for you:
BTW, I'm no Google fanboi. I recognze that they are moving into a position where a watchful eye is close to becoming a neccesity. I'm just not to quick to jump to a "Google is scamming you" position based on a test that is fundamentally flawed.
I may be mistaken, but I also believe that he may have tripped a dupe content type filter. If he created another website with completely duplicate content, and then created an adwords account with completely duplicate ads, google could interpret that as attempting to game the adwords.
It may appear that he is trying to own the advertising space to the right by paying for the same ads at differnt levels, effectively owning all positions. Google does not want that to happen as it will allow those with larger budgets to effectively take all first result page slots.
TFA doesn't give timeframe from launch to bid change, so it is possible that at the same time he changed his bid, google penalized the new adWords account for running parallel to his original one.
I set the text on my website to be a shade off white. This seems to soften the contrast difference in White on Black.
On a side note, I know my site is built like crap - I am using divs and tables in a bad combinaton. I am trying to migrate away from table layout and slowly working towards using CSS properly. I have just begun to play with container divs (not implemented live) so that I can control my layout better across browsers. Can anyone tell me if it breaks when using ctrl+mousewheel?
If it's a legitamtely debatable topic, there is no clearly defined truth. That's why there is a debate.
Having said all that, where do you stop? If someone is standing there and literally telling me the sky is red, and I'm saying Ok, In Your World Its Red, is that not just basic intellectual dishonesty?
I think I may have misinterpreted your original statement. I agree whole heartedly that sometimes there are undeniable facts that define an absolute. In these cases, to capitulate to arguments that are obviously ignorant or misinformed is a ridiculous exercise. That having been said, I agree with the clarification of your point.
In the matter of video game content and regulation I am quick (maybe too much so) to prevent people from attempting to establish their opinion as an absolute, I don't believe the issue will be solved that way. Your last post clarified that you actually hold an opinion pretty close to mine, there is no definitive study on the matter.
With no definitive data to go on, and plenty of antecdotal evidence to draw from, people are forced to take a position consisting mostly of opinion. When forced to defend their stance against any opposing argument, they also feel personally assaulted. Now this is true of any ad hominem stance, but this one is unique in the composition of its facets.
Child wellness, government regulation, self gratification, and an emerging media format combine to form a really confusing issue. Other subjects approaching child wellness are easier to deal with. Alcohol and drugs stymie proper development, guns can lead to early death, TV can result in mimictry - which is more rude than culturally shifting in my opinion. The interactivity of this medium adds a new twist that is not easily quantifiable.
With children, and to a degree society, perceivably at stake I can understand how no one would want to give in on their side - "facts" be damned.
Now, I am not saying that this means kids who play GTA will go out and kill pedestrians. But I also think it's ignorant to set aside scientific evidence that violence in media has no effect on people's behaviour. It does, both in kids and adults, and both in males and females. If gamers are going to defend themselves against overly zealous politicians, it makes sense to educate oneself about the science. By flippantly setting it all aside, this article does nothing to address it.
Man, I'm glad someone else agrees with me. I'm constantly getting reamed here for acknowledging things that offend or threaten the group perspective here on slashdot.
If you are going to protect the things you love, you have to be honest with yourself about what they are.
You know the story about the blind guys describing an elephant. One guy touches a leg and says it's like a tree, another the trunk and says its a snake and so on. Well, all of them are right.
The same applies to this subject. People ARE affected by the media they ingest, to what degree and how much of a problem it is are yet undefined. Some video game content has the player emulate actions that some people would consider immoral and is clearly defined as illegal in most places. Based on these points you have three major camps:
Now, according to your argument, two of these groups are wrong. There is no way to make that call here without injecting your perspective as a fact. Every one of these camps has "fact" to back up their argument and counter arguments for the other two positions. There is no clear and absolute truth of the matter as far as we know.
I'm not arguing your point that without comprehensive facts you're left with opinion, because I agree. I just think it's more important to find the truth than to "be right". In most of the cases where I have found the truth, it required me to let go of the concept of "I'm right, they're wrong."
I cannot argue with this mentality from a business perspective, but there will be reprocussions. You cannot expect to be taken seriously as an artform if your precursor all design decisions with "In regard to the target market."
Is it no wonder that FPS players sent a loud ass noise to their opponent when they won? It is standard fare to talk shit and taunt someone you just "pwned" in that genre. Those games are played online, and then when you emulate that environment you get results that are the same, what a shock.
What I would really like to see are the results broken down by these players favorite genre. Who sent more blasts, RPG guys or RTS guys?
Either this guy didn't know enough about the online FPS gaming subculture to know it would skew his results - meaning his results are not qualified, or he did know and created this study so he would get the desired outcome.
Someone who dares to say killing prostitutes is personally distasteful to publish fantasies about shouldn't so deeply offend you in return. Disliking wonton murder is not so controversial as you may fear. Don't impose silence on the discussion of fantasy-stories' effects because you feel its taboo to discuss.
OK, I may have jumped the gun on this a little bit. The reason for this is that most people who argue against violent and questionable content in games are often proponents of censoring that content. Rereading your posts, and your statements about "mental junk food" and diabetes, has lead me to believe that this is not the case with your opinion. I personally do not find your disdain for this type of content controversial, but I do attemt to prevent anyone from using their sense of taste as a reason for censorship. To add to that, I do not believe that accurate content ratings or regulating the sale of content to minors is censorship. I am genuinely interested in hearing the stance of someone who can give me honest reasons for why they dislike content while still respecting my decision to enjoy it. No subject is taboo with me, but I do fight real hard against censorship. I apologize for misinterpreting you and categorizing you prematurely and innacurately.
The rest of this discussion has multiple tangents as far as I can see:
As I stated before, I am genuinely interested in hearing your views on these subjects. My email once again is hatemail@binarydeathtrap.com, I really hope you wish to continue this dialog.
I think you may have misinterpreted my statements.
I genuinely remain surprised that you (who may, in principle, support GTA: *) are worried about controversy. What a strange world you live in that the media makes you so worried about opinions!!
If you took my statement as a whole, you would see that I was attempting to explain the business decision behind not implementing this type of scoring system. It's a touchy subject for alot of people. It's actually easier to fight on a front where the lines have been clearly drawn and the battles have been fought before (violence, coruption of youth).
I don't worry about people who have opinions, I worry about the actions of some who attempt to inflict their opinions on others. I don't force anyone to play the games I enjoy, and I actually support keeping the material out of childrens hands - what I won't support is someone defining my morals and attitudes as unhealthy and twisting them so I look like a fascist loving idiot. I genuinely remained suprised that someone can mistake an attempt at explaining a third group's behavior as my own stance.
Isn't it obvious that the media reports on something "amazing" or at least "shocking"?? Maybe they do so because video games genuinely represent a departure from everyday practice, life, trust, culture and even may remind people of very real and very scary times of history.
The media makes it amazing and shocking, that's my stance. Very few events are actually shocking or amazing, and if they are they generally arent actually reported on because they aren't "news worthy." Almost all media represents a departure from everyday practice, life, trust, and culture. Science fiction often employs distopias to get their point across. Movies use disturbing imagry that often makes reference to horrible events in our history. The difference with video games is the interactivity. That element is scary to alot of people, especially those who control the media, it's foreign to them. Much like the Radio was to paper reporters and TV to Radio reporters. The medium is in it's infant stage. You could say anything about it and it could possibly be true. When this attitude is acted upon by others I balance out that action with my own. People make their own decisions, I don't make them for them.
It is the highest joke that you feel no real moral code exists for some and yet at the same time you feel "Rational people" are everywhere.
How the hell you got this is beyond me. Where do I infer that I have no moral code? Where do I say that no moral code exists? I stated that multiple codes axist and to choose one as a scoring system for a game was a dangerous business decision. It's much easier to choose none and let the consumers apply their own within the context of their play.
Still, trust me... the endless arguments of "There's no real morality at all" are a solid source of laughter for me. Hypocrisy unending! Everyone maintains morality codes, often nearly the exact same ones as their friends. Morality codes form politics.
This I agree with, yet how this applies to anything I said is beyond me. Once again I was attempting to explain the difficulty of the business related decision, not my own decision. I do not have these issues. The media will not go ape shit over my personal morals until they directly clash with anothers in a manner that could generate revenue by reporting on it, then they will care.
As an example, a "moral" game consisting of a being a combat photographer could still be extremely violent, yet you would not be commiting those acts of violence. But then comes the decision of who the "bad" party is in the conflict. For a story to progress there needs to be a protagonist and an antagonist. Some one is going to get their panties in a wad when you start applying those elements to their group. If you focus on "terrorists" as being the bad guy, certain groups are going to get angry that they are portrayed commiting the heinous acts you ta
Reading about those Civ games now has me interested. I usually stay away from those types of games because the ones I messed with early on incorporated RTS elements, and I really don't jive with those games.
You bring up an interesting point about the Sims and Tycoon games. Another interesting fact about those games is they are huge with girls. I guess the whole kill everything you can deal doesn't appeal to the emotionally based part of the species. I tried playing the sims when it first came out, but after 15 minutes of taking out the garbage and going to the bathroom I decided I had my own garbage to take out and didn't want to do virtual chores too. Maybe I should give it another chance and delve a little deeper into it.
I've never heard of Restraunt Empire,the title sounds interesting, is it any good? I did a google search on it but would like a first hand opinion from someone who doesn't get paid to give them.
yeah, but the thing about those games is that the "morality" is deciding who you are going to kill. That's pretty much it.
I do agree that Ultima did attempt to make a game where "moral" behavior was rewarded, but you still went around and killed stuff - you didn't exactly try to form a commitee to discuss why the antagonist was so antagonizing.
I have never played a Civ game, but in those empire building games I would think that having a diplomatic route is neccesary to flesh out the concept. Beyond that, I can't really comment due to lack of experience with the titles.
To be honest, I know absolutely nothing of X-Ray tech. SO no, I have no idea if it is plausable or not. I guess I could have googled it, but I'm really too lazy.
Only to be used when outsized and out classed.
The reality of the matter is that most "fights" aren't really fights at all. Thy consist of one person sucker punching another and then pounding on them while they're down.
A "real" fight is rare and dangerous. Two combatants squared up with no rules is not pretty. It goes VERY fast and tactics tend to be gruesome.
And, honestly, if people get into serious fights they usually don't just punch and kick. A crowbar is a great equalizer. ;)
As is my patented "bite a chunk out of your face" move.
Not a single game *I've* ever seen has declared its sim-king to be morally skilled by a moral maze of moral obstacles... maximizing the goodness of all at the sacrifice of the fewest violations of principles
You have no clue what your talking about do you? The reason games don't attempt to score things on a moral basis is because the media would have a shit fit if games took that trend. What moral set are you using? Who decides the weight of those moral choices? What's immoral? These are matters that to this day have not been agreed upon, and you want a scoring system based on it? Ridiculous. The media will latch onto any angle they can get to sell advertising. If that means they will crucify video games one minute for being to violent and teaching our children to kill, and they will crucify them the next for attempting to force a moral ruleset on them. You cannot win that fight. And companies looking for a profit don't want to pick it.
Now the fruits are falling off the tree in larger numbers (Columbine). The game industry needs to find a book somewhere (SOMEWHERE) and realize what exists outside a gun's barrel... what the consequences are for asking everyone to enjoy being a Barbarian for an hour. Rome falls.
Quit getting your numbers from the media, they are over sensationalizing things to sell advertising - that's it. Check out the numbers , especially chart 1.1 where you can clearly see the amount of fatal violence going down. The real problem lie in those children, and their parents. If you are susceptable to being turned into a killing machine from a video game, you are one weak willed fool. If your parents didn't teach you the difference between pretend and reality, then they suck as a whole.
Don't give me the bullshit that "Everyone Knows Its A Game". The evidence is mounting high right in that article that more than a few take the metaphor very seriously... and our current political shift... blowing off debt and lives without care... show it is growing indeed. Shallow, mindless politics from shallow mindless ethics.
Everyone does know it's a game. Just becuase someone takes the metaphor seriously doesn't mean that they will actually go out and kill everyone who disagrees with them. Rational people don't do that. They realize that in order to make the world as they see fit, that would probably be the most efficient and quickest way, but probably not the BEST way. Even you are exhibiting behavior, unilaterally deciding what politics are shallow and what ethics are mindless. In a free society if somebody wants to watch football all day, ruin their credit, and vote the way they want - they can. You seem to abhor that behavior, and allude to anyone who behaves in this manner as inferior. Am I to assume that if given the chance to change things you wouldn't? And how would you realistically do that without becoming a facist?
All the games referred to are huge, complex body count simulation systems to tell a story.
That's the point, they are cathartic. I love my tactical stealth games and squad shooters because I NEVER WANT TO ACTUALLY DO THAT SHIT! I would like a decent simulation though where the only person who gets hurt is a non-existent internet man. A bunch of ones and zeros fabricated from someones mimagination and brought to life through a console conduit. To say that this type of material in the hands of an adult is going to be the downfall of our rome is assanine. Rome didn't fall because the actors were putting on violent or Facist plays. It fell because a small handful of power weilders tried to manipulate the whole for thier own gain - and that mentality did not come from any media they ingested.
I hope your just kidding, if not - you're an ass.
Messing with reproductive rights as if you're a fucking authority on anything is not only criminal, its sociopathic.
And if I caught anyone pointing anything at my kids, they would be a stain in 10 seconds.
50 Cent and Sug Knight. Real Commandment following fellows.
I have no mod points to give you, but that shit is funny.
Yeah.
If you want to be an artist, your work is its own reward.
If you want to be well known, well I think your priorities shouldn't be aligned with artistic.
The choice comes back to the person (or group) making the choice. Eventually they have to decide whether the art is the focus or money and fame. If you opt for money and fame, I don't blame you - but you're no artist at that point. You need to deal with the fact that you are now in the business of manufacturing a product.