It's too short a season to grapple with so harsh a critique of this minor a transgression.
Sorry. I guess that was a bit like scratching a chalkboard, but I personally rather like this particular grammatical construct. It's efficient and it front loads the subjective point the author is trying to make, making comprehension easier. Compare: "The season is too short to grapple with a critique that's so harsh of a transgression that's this minor."
There are a zillion gift shops with toys but NO BOOKS.
There are three. With books. There are also aquariums, tidal pools, ant colonies, Darwin's finches, Foulcault's pendulum. A library. Labs with great big plate glass windows. Skulls. It's a museum. With science.
Get over yourself.
History repeats itself.
on
All Things iPhone
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
The only possible benefit of not requiring ink is the implied savings in not having to pay a hojillion billion dollars per picaliter of the stuff. So now we have a printer that requires no ink, but only works on proprietary paper. Wonder how much that's gonna cost.
Even if it is reusable, how often do you plan to print something on a piece of paper that's been handed around, smudged, creased, and sneezed on, over and over again? These days, the only things I see printed are documents that are meant to be a bit more permanent than e-mail, and I'm willing to bet that Xerox expects to see a lot of this paper being printed once, then put into a three ring binder somewhere or printed once, then used as a coaster and discarded.
In short, this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem looking for a profit margin.
Until the only way to listen to music is to walk up to a music booth through a metal detector to prevent you from bringing in any recording equipment, and up to a music booth. At this music booth you will insert five dollar bills. You will then select a song using a touchscreen. You will then take paper headphone covers from a dispenser on the wall. You will place the headphone covers over the public headphones, connected to the booth by a flexible metal tube. You will then listen to your music until your credit has expired. Rocking out or playing air guitar will be discouraged, although singing along in a quiet voice will be tolerated, unless there's somebody wihtin earshot.
Paragraph two, referring to the offering of video game design programs: Schools of higher learning are simply cashing in on a fad that is destructive to society.
Paragraph four: Video games are big business--rivaling the movie industry. In 2004, video game sales totaled $9.9 billion. Electronic Arts alone employs 4,300 video game makers.
Make up your mind! Passing fad, or major industry. You can't have both.
He goes on to present some random evidence that seems to purport that some games aree violent and that some young gamers prefer these violent games. Brilliant, Sherlock.
And then the final paragraph:
Offering degrees in video game design is to kidnap American education. Higher education needs to be rescued from such destructive nonsense.
Ted Reuter is apparently a graduate of the Jack Thompson School for Jingoist Rhetoric. His assertion that video game design should not be taught because video games are bad, m'kay, makes much less sense than saying that nuclear physics should not be taught because some applications of it can cause big explosions, or that biochemistry should not be taught because mustard gas exists. Got news for you, Ted: What you don't know can and will hurt you.
If you want a chuckle, read up on Mr. Reuter's quixotic battle against. ..wait for it. ..sound.
It was a pen and paper game store mind, and it didn't last, but the most important thing you can possibly do is to create a community.
This means embracing your customer base, and getting them involved in the success of your enterprise. When you find that you have a customer who is enthisiastic about a certain genre, get him or her involved in organizing tournaments or leagues. Offer prizes. Give people a reason to keep coming back. New games cost the same pretty much everywhere you go. Even large chain stores won't undercut you much. If you want to add value, you need people to come back over and over again for a reason. Put some playable machines out there. Let people play. Remember, just because they're not buying something from you today doesn't mean that they won't tomorrow.
Also, try to appeal to niche markets. Simply having a few imports, for example, gives people the idea that your store is a little more exclusive. You might not sell much, and if you do you might not make much money out of it, but people will appreciate the fact that you have something other stores don't and come back over ad over to see what's new.
In short, I think the only way that a small, independant store can survive is by appealing to the people who are outside of the mainstream. Offer at least something other people don't offer, give your customers reasons to keep coming back, and do your best to make casual customers into enthusiasts. Ad mos importantly, be persistant. If you start organizing gaming nights, for example, tomorrow, it could be months before you start seeing any R.O.I. Don't misinterpret a lack of immediate success as an immediate failure.
I used to watch the Wizbits religiously on Saturday mornings, but I haven't seen any reruns in a long time. They say there's a DVD on the way, but I can't find it on Amazon. Anybody know of any torrents?
This scam was fairly elaborate, true, but it's not the biggest heist ever pulled off en eve, not by a long shot. The guiding hand social club once infiltrated one of the most powerful corporations in the game, Ubiqua Seraph, in order to carry out a 1 billion ISK assasination contract. It took them a year to gain access to almost all of the corp's resources. When all was said and done, they took off with resources valued at 30 billion isk, at the time nearly $15,000 dollars worth. The entire writeup can be found here:
I've tried two different images of airplanes; one of a bright red flying car on bright green grass and one of SpaceShip One against a deep blue sky. Both times, the results looked surprisingly like my query images in color composition only. Red planes on grass and white planes against a blue sky. Inauspicious start.
Next experiment: I took a picture of a highly distinctive plane, a harrier, climbing at a steep angle and viewed in profile. I got, in return, a list of passenger jets, and even a helicopter. Hardly surprisingly, all of the result pictures had the same bluish white sky as my original image. That was literally the only similarity.
According to the introduction on the search page the heuristics used compares colors, contrast and shapes in the images themselves. I saw no correlation whatsoever between shapes, and any correlation in contrast seems to be to be the result of the search engine simply looking for images that contain the same colors in a similar ratio to the original. In short, nothing to see here, move along.
On the other hand, one of the projects listed under the Penn State University link looks fairly fascinating. The Riemann a-LIP project (automatic linguistic indexing of pictures) doesn't allow user input of images, unfortunately, but it does show some fairly fascinating attempts at verbally qualifying image data. For example, it describes a blue and orange mandelbrot as pattern agate shimer abstract scene, and a sunset over a lake as Berlin Devon Namibia landscape lake scene. Okay, it may still need some work, but it sure beats the hell out of the "find the same color airplane engine".
You do have a point, of course, but a game like this needs to cater to many types of people. WoW has always been very friendly to the more casual players; much of the content can be taken on solo, and the rest state bonus even gives casual players a bit of a leg up by giving players who aren't online as frequently as some an experience bonus for their kills. As you've said, even as a casual player, you will be able to take on all of the challenges the game has to offer and acquire all of the uber-loot eventually.
Having said that, I think it's perfectly valid to reward the hardcore players for their efforts as well. The gear and perks you can acquire in the PVP honor system are pretty cool, granted, but they're hardly essential to your continued enjoyment of the game. There are people out there who play WoW for 40 hours a week or more, and I think it's fully justified to reward people who put a lot of time and effort into the game with some unique items, benefits, and perks. Simply letting them get the stuff everybody else will eventually get as well, only faster, just won't hold a player's attention. Bear in mind that it doesn't actually take that long to reach the level cap at 60, especially if you're a dedicated player. Until now there hasn't been much of a mechanism to keep players engrossed once they've hit the cap. I think the new honor system should fit the bill nicely without any serious drawbacks to more casual players like us.
I agree that the shuttle does need to be replaced but it is not the same shuttle that flew in the early 80s.
No it's not. Those both exploded.
As a matter of fact, they both exploded because something seemingly trivial went wrong, something that nobody in a million years would have thought could endanger the orbiter. Something like a tiny crack in the foam on the external fuel tank. All the processing power in the world won't help one iota if sloppy security procedures and pressure to push the launch through cause yet another seemingly trivial thing to go wrong. I just hope NASA knows what it's doing.
It's somehow sad that a name that used to mean so much to me and my generation has become such a base commodity. Most brand names live on or fade into oblivion, but somebody keeps coming up with a reason to flog the dead C=. Having been a huge C= fanboi in the eighties, even I think it's time to just let it rest. Of course, whenever I read anything even vaguely Commodore related I get all nostalgic regardless. The Zzap 64 archive is often just the tonic I need at times like that.
If this were ture then the Redskins would have won the game by scoring a touchdown with four minutes of play left in the fourth quarter of their october 30th, 2000 game against the Titans while the referee wasn't watching. ESPN would have reported that the Redskins had won two minutes after the end of the game, but Fox Sports would clain that the game was too close to call until midnight, when they'd claim that the Titans had been victorious.
Two days after the game, Jeff Fisher, the Titan's coach, would have mailed a red flag to NFL headquarters, thereby challenging the play. The NFL commisionner would have informed him that the referee on the field that day had final discretion. The referee would have been Jeff Fisher's brother, Jeb Fisher. Jeb would have claimed that the tocuhdown never happened.
Steve Spurrier would then appeal the decision with Paul Tagliabue who, after long deliberation, would have ruled that the final decision lies with the scorekeeper. The scorekeeper would have been found to be keeping tally of the score using marbles. He would eventually admit that he wasn't quite sure how many marbles had been on his table and how many of them had been in which team's box. He would however claim that he was almost entirely certain that there had been more marbles in the Titan's box than in the Redskin's. Eventually everybody would have been confused to the point of desperation and the Titans would have been handed the victory by the gist of having won three of the four quarters.
I'm not a native speaker, mind, but should be a little less incomprehensible than what the fish churns out;) -- Marburg Consortium plans mars mission before 2009
A German consortium of scientists, engineers, and technicians wants to prove that private groups are also in the race for interplanetary flights. By 2009, the group plans to send a probe and a satellite to Mars.
The Amsat consortium has approximately 1200 members working largely as volunteers on the rpoject. The mission of exploration will cost around 700 million Euros, according to Amsat in Bochum, Saturday.
The goal of the mission is to prove that private organizations can make space flights within the solar system possible, according to Karl Meinzer, professor of Space Flight Technology at the University of Stuttgart. The 500 kilogram probe will be put into earth orbit on board an Arianne rocket.
The space flight organization intends to purchase spare capacity on a rocket that would not be filled enitrely by other satellites. Later the probe would be brought into an orbit around Mars where it would serve as a communications relay.
Ground Control in Bochum
Meinzer says, We'd be able to receive signals from transmitters already on Mars". The Observatory in Bochum would serve as ground control. Before the actual flight to Mars could commence, the probe will have to be placed into orbit around the Earth. "We can't set a term for the rocket launch, but we must begin the flight to Mars within a limited timeframe." In 2007 and 2009 Mars will be in a beneficial location for the flight.
After the nine month flight to the neighbouring planet the probe will begin sending signals from Mars to Earth. The signals will be broadcast on amateur radio frequencies, so that anybody with a transceiver will be able to receive them.
Another goal of the mission will be investigation of the Martian atmosphere. To achieve this, the Munich Mars Society, also an organization of scholars and technicians, wants to send along the "Archimedes" probe on the mission to the red planet. "Once in Martian orbit, a 14 meter diameter balloon will inflate above the probe", said Hannes Gabriel of the Mars Society. The balloon will slow down substantially as it glides through the atmosphere towards the surface of the planet with its landing craft. The researchers hope this will yield better opportunities to collect data.
The 30 year old Amsat consortium has succesfully lanched satellites into space, according to Meinzer. Since the eightiies they have participated in a total of nine missions.
It seems to me that Vivendi is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. There's no doubt that they need the revenue, and I'm sure they have every intention of being able to put that revenue on their Q4 books. Q4 is what makes or breaks software publishers.
Their options right now are to either release to retail and see a significant amount of that revenue go directly in to Valve's pockets. Many, many people will be buying this game on Steam if that happens. This isn't the Sims we're talking about. A significant percentage of potential cusomers have high-end machines with broadband connections, and since Steam has been pushing content to its users for a while now, I suspect many of them will just click the button that says 'instant gratification' instead of trundling out to the nearest big box retailer to buy this.
On the other hand, if Vivendi delays release beyond the Christmas season, and somehow manages to prohibit Valve form releasing on Steam, they will not be able to post that revenue in Q4 and there's a real chance sales will be lower than they would have been had the game been released in time for Christmas.
The only way Vivendi can win this is by compelling Valve not to release on Steam and still getting the game out in time for Christmas. What they're doing now is simply attempting to buy some time for their lawyers to attempt to achieve this. I suspect that, if no agreement has been reached within the next six to eight weeks, Valve will have effectively called Vivendi's bluff and Vivendi will be forced to release in time for Christmas rather than risk missing the holidays and losing a significant percentage of potential sales to Steam.
Slashdot Mirror
Well - at least they found a buyer for the sign. That's something, right?
It's too short a season to grapple with so harsh a critique of this minor a transgression.
Sorry. I guess that was a bit like scratching a chalkboard, but I personally rather like this particular grammatical construct. It's efficient and it front loads the subjective point the author is trying to make, making comprehension easier. Compare: "The season is too short to grapple with a critique that's so harsh of a transgression that's this minor."
There are a zillion gift shops with toys but NO BOOKS.
There are three. With books. There are also aquariums, tidal pools, ant colonies, Darwin's finches, Foulcault's pendulum. A library. Labs with great big plate glass windows. Skulls. It's a museum. With science.
Get over yourself.
No 3G, less memory than an iPod. Lame.
The only possible benefit of not requiring ink is the implied savings in not having to pay a hojillion billion dollars per picaliter of the stuff. So now we have a printer that requires no ink, but only works on proprietary paper. Wonder how much that's gonna cost.
Even if it is reusable, how often do you plan to print something on a piece of paper that's been handed around, smudged, creased, and sneezed on, over and over again? These days, the only things I see printed are documents that are meant to be a bit more permanent than e-mail, and I'm willing to bet that Xerox expects to see a lot of this paper being printed once, then put into a three ring binder somewhere or printed once, then used as a coaster and discarded.
In short, this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem looking for a profit margin.
5) Karma whoring other posts (eg mod parent up please!)
That's really Karma pimping, isn't it?
Until the only way to listen to music is to walk up to a music booth through a metal detector to prevent you from bringing in any recording equipment, and up to a music booth. At this music booth you will insert five dollar bills. You will then select a song using a touchscreen. You will then take paper headphone covers from a dispenser on the wall. You will place the headphone covers over the public headphones, connected to the booth by a flexible metal tube. You will then listen to your music until your credit has expired. Rocking out or playing air guitar will be discouraged, although singing along in a quiet voice will be tolerated, unless there's somebody wihtin earshot.
Maybe then, the RIAA will stop whining.
Other way around. The first paragraph of the article was copied into wikipedia in the last few hours. The article was published yesterday.
Paragraph two, referring to the offering of video game design programs:
.wait for it. . .sound.
Schools of higher learning are simply cashing in on a fad that is destructive to society.
Paragraph four:
Video games are big business--rivaling the movie industry. In 2004, video game sales totaled $9.9 billion. Electronic Arts alone employs 4,300 video game makers.
Make up your mind! Passing fad, or major industry. You can't have both.
He goes on to present some random evidence that seems to purport that some games aree violent and that some young gamers prefer these violent games. Brilliant, Sherlock.
And then the final paragraph:
Offering degrees in video game design is to kidnap American education. Higher education needs to be rescued from such destructive nonsense.
Ted Reuter is apparently a graduate of the Jack Thompson School for Jingoist Rhetoric. His assertion that video game design should not be taught because video games are bad, m'kay, makes much less sense than saying that nuclear physics should not be taught because some applications of it can cause big explosions, or that biochemistry should not be taught because mustard gas exists. Got news for you, Ted: What you don't know can and will hurt you.
If you want a chuckle, read up on Mr. Reuter's quixotic battle against. .
It was a pen and paper game store mind, and it didn't last, but the most important thing you can possibly do is to create a community.
This means embracing your customer base, and getting them involved in the success of your enterprise. When you find that you have a customer who is enthisiastic about a certain genre, get him or her involved in organizing tournaments or leagues. Offer prizes. Give people a reason to keep coming back. New games cost the same pretty much everywhere you go. Even large chain stores won't undercut you much. If you want to add value, you need people to come back over and over again for a reason. Put some playable machines out there. Let people play. Remember, just because they're not buying something from you today doesn't mean that they won't tomorrow.
Also, try to appeal to niche markets. Simply having a few imports, for example, gives people the idea that your store is a little more exclusive. You might not sell much, and if you do you might not make much money out of it, but people will appreciate the fact that you have something other stores don't and come back over ad over to see what's new.
In short, I think the only way that a small, independant store can survive is by appealing to the people who are outside of the mainstream. Offer at least something other people don't offer, give your customers reasons to keep coming back, and do your best to make casual customers into enthusiasts. Ad mos importantly, be persistant. If you start organizing gaming nights, for example, tomorrow, it could be months before you start seeing any R.O.I. Don't misinterpret a lack of immediate success as an immediate failure.
I'm willing to spend a few karma points to say "bra-fucking-vo to Original Poster here. Well said.
I used to watch the Wizbits religiously on Saturday mornings, but I haven't seen any reruns in a long time. They say there's a DVD on the way, but I can't find it on Amazon. Anybody know of any torrents?
This scam was fairly elaborate, true, but it's not the biggest heist ever pulled off en eve, not by a long shot. The guiding hand social club once infiltrated one of the most powerful corporations in the game, Ubiqua Seraph, in order to carry out a 1 billion ISK assasination contract. It took them a year to gain access to almost all of the corp's resources. When all was said and done, they took off with resources valued at 30 billion isk, at the time nearly $15,000 dollars worth. The entire writeup can be found here:
http://www.mmodig.com/?p=155
. . .with episode 5. Unfortunately Lucas had to make four more.
I only have three words for you: Chomp my shorts.
I've tried two different images of airplanes; one of a bright red flying car on bright green grass and one of SpaceShip One against a deep blue sky. Both times, the results looked surprisingly like my query images in color composition only. Red planes on grass and white planes against a blue sky. Inauspicious start.
Next experiment: I took a picture of a highly distinctive plane, a harrier, climbing at a steep angle and viewed in profile. I got, in return, a list of passenger jets, and even a helicopter. Hardly surprisingly, all of the result pictures had the same bluish white sky as my original image. That was literally the only similarity.
According to the introduction on the search page the heuristics used compares colors, contrast and shapes in the images themselves. I saw no correlation whatsoever between shapes, and any correlation in contrast seems to be to be the result of the search engine simply looking for images that contain the same colors in a similar ratio to the original. In short, nothing to see here, move along.
On the other hand, one of the projects listed under the Penn State University link looks fairly fascinating. The Riemann a-LIP project (automatic linguistic indexing of pictures) doesn't allow user input of images, unfortunately, but it does show some fairly fascinating attempts at verbally qualifying image data. For example, it describes a blue and orange mandelbrot as pattern agate shimer abstract scene, and a sunset over a lake as Berlin Devon Namibia landscape lake scene. Okay, it may still need some work, but it sure beats the hell out of the "find the same color airplane engine".
You do have a point, of course, but a game like this needs to cater to many types of people. WoW has always been very friendly to the more casual players; much of the content can be taken on solo, and the rest state bonus even gives casual players a bit of a leg up by giving players who aren't online as frequently as some an experience bonus for their kills. As you've said, even as a casual player, you will be able to take on all of the challenges the game has to offer and acquire all of the uber-loot eventually.
Having said that, I think it's perfectly valid to reward the hardcore players for their efforts as well. The gear and perks you can acquire in the PVP honor system are pretty cool, granted, but they're hardly essential to your continued enjoyment of the game. There are people out there who play WoW for 40 hours a week or more, and I think it's fully justified to reward people who put a lot of time and effort into the game with some unique items, benefits, and perks. Simply letting them get the stuff everybody else will eventually get as well, only faster, just won't hold a player's attention. Bear in mind that it doesn't actually take that long to reach the level cap at 60, especially if you're a dedicated player. Until now there hasn't been much of a mechanism to keep players engrossed once they've hit the cap. I think the new honor system should fit the bill nicely without any serious drawbacks to more casual players like us.
Worldofwar also has the patch notes.
I agree that the shuttle does need to be replaced but it is not the same shuttle that flew in the early 80s.
No it's not. Those both exploded.
As a matter of fact, they both exploded because something seemingly trivial went wrong, something that nobody in a million years would have thought could endanger the orbiter. Something like a tiny crack in the foam on the external fuel tank. All the processing power in the world won't help one iota if sloppy security procedures and pressure to push the launch through cause yet another seemingly trivial thing to go wrong. I just hope NASA knows what it's doing.
It turns out you can watch these eggs live over at the It's fascinating stuff, although it feels a bit overly dramatic. It keeps making heartbeat sounds, and whenever a statistical deviation exceeds a certain boundary it goes 'ping'.
So not only is it a website that predicts the future, it's a website that goes 'ping' that predicts the future. what more could a geek want?
1. Poke 95830,1
2. ?????
3. Profit!
It's somehow sad that a name that used to mean so much to me and my generation has become such a base commodity. Most brand names live on or fade into oblivion, but somebody keeps coming up with a reason to flog the dead C=. Having been a huge C= fanboi in the eighties, even I think it's time to just let it rest. Of course, whenever I read anything even vaguely Commodore related I get all nostalgic regardless. The Zzap 64 archive is often just the tonic I need at times like that.
If this were ture then the Redskins would have won the game by scoring a touchdown with four minutes of play left in the fourth quarter of their october 30th, 2000 game against the Titans while the referee wasn't watching. ESPN would have reported that the Redskins had won two minutes after the end of the game, but Fox Sports would clain that the game was too close to call until midnight, when they'd claim that the Titans had been victorious.
Two days after the game, Jeff Fisher, the Titan's coach, would have mailed a red flag to NFL headquarters, thereby challenging the play. The NFL commisionner would have informed him that the referee on the field that day had final discretion. The referee would have been Jeff Fisher's brother, Jeb Fisher. Jeb would have claimed that the tocuhdown never happened.
Steve Spurrier would then appeal the decision with Paul Tagliabue who, after long deliberation, would have ruled that the final decision lies with the scorekeeper. The scorekeeper would have been found to be keeping tally of the score using marbles. He would eventually admit that he wasn't quite sure how many marbles had been on his table and how many of them had been in which team's box. He would however claim that he was almost entirely certain that there had been more marbles in the Titan's box than in the Redskin's. Eventually everybody would have been confused to the point of desperation and the Titans would have been handed the victory by the gist of having won three of the four quarters.
The mission of exploration will cost around 700 million Euros
Oops. That was supposed to read 10 million Euros, not 700 million Euros. I do apologize.
I'm not a native speaker, mind, but should be a little less incomprehensible than what the fish churns out ;)
--
Marburg Consortium plans mars mission before 2009
A German consortium of scientists, engineers, and technicians wants to prove that private groups are also in the race for interplanetary flights. By 2009, the group plans to send a probe and a satellite to Mars.
The Amsat consortium has approximately 1200 members working largely as volunteers on the rpoject. The mission of exploration will cost around 700 million Euros, according to Amsat in Bochum, Saturday.
The goal of the mission is to prove that private organizations can make space flights within the solar system possible, according to Karl Meinzer, professor of Space Flight Technology at the University of Stuttgart. The 500 kilogram probe will be put into earth orbit on board an Arianne rocket.
The space flight organization intends to purchase spare capacity on a rocket that would not be filled enitrely by other satellites. Later the probe would be brought into an orbit around Mars where it would serve as a communications relay.
Ground Control in Bochum
Meinzer says, We'd be able to receive signals from transmitters already on Mars". The Observatory in Bochum would serve as ground control. Before the actual flight to Mars could commence, the probe will have to be placed into orbit around the Earth. "We can't set a term for the rocket launch, but we must begin the flight to Mars within a limited timeframe." In 2007 and 2009 Mars will be in a beneficial location for the flight.
After the nine month flight to the neighbouring planet the probe will begin sending signals from Mars to Earth. The signals will be broadcast on amateur radio frequencies, so that anybody with a transceiver will be able to receive them.
Another goal of the mission will be investigation of the Martian atmosphere. To achieve this, the Munich Mars Society, also an organization of scholars and technicians, wants to send along the "Archimedes" probe on the mission to the red planet. "Once in Martian orbit, a 14 meter diameter balloon will inflate above the probe", said Hannes Gabriel of the Mars Society. The balloon will slow down substantially as it glides through the atmosphere towards the surface of the planet with its landing craft. The researchers hope this will yield better opportunities to collect data.
The 30 year old Amsat consortium has succesfully lanched satellites into space, according to Meinzer. Since the eightiies they have participated in a total of nine missions.
It seems to me that Vivendi is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. There's no doubt that they need the revenue, and I'm sure they have every intention of being able to put that revenue on their Q4 books. Q4 is what makes or breaks software publishers.
Their options right now are to either release to retail and see a significant amount of that revenue go directly in to Valve's pockets. Many, many people will be buying this game on Steam if that happens. This isn't the Sims we're talking about. A significant percentage of potential cusomers have high-end machines with broadband connections, and since Steam has been pushing content to its users for a while now, I suspect many of them will just click the button that says 'instant gratification' instead of trundling out to the nearest big box retailer to buy this.
On the other hand, if Vivendi delays release beyond the Christmas season, and somehow manages to prohibit Valve form releasing on Steam, they will not be able to post that revenue in Q4 and there's a real chance sales will be lower than they would have been had the game been released in time for Christmas.
The only way Vivendi can win this is by compelling Valve not to release on Steam and still getting the game out in time for Christmas. What they're doing now is simply attempting to buy some time for their lawyers to attempt to achieve this. I suspect that, if no agreement has been reached within the next six to eight weeks, Valve will have effectively called Vivendi's bluff and Vivendi will be forced to release in time for Christmas rather than risk missing the holidays and losing a significant percentage of potential sales to Steam.