...quite frankly I was just amazed they managed to make a game that wasn't complete rubbish - normally a THQ game is a mediocre game...
Making people pay for content that would normally be free (an extra level/map etc would happen sooner or later with the PC's moding community) seems about inline with the THQ school of thought.
Xbox live had the promise of "free exclusive online content" but who honestly believed that?
Business is business and if there's a buck to be made sales and marketing folks will happily screw the customer to get that buck...
At the end of the day I can't think of any real "success stories" for xbox live where the online content has just flowed and flowed once the game has been paid for without a second subscription cost.
Most of the time the only extra content people see is the stuff that was over-hyped at launch and even then they have to wait and wait for them to actually "finish" the content that they hyped as being "almost ready to ship" when the game launched.
I bought the DVD set the other day, when I went to check out the demo it did indeed update itself with no prompts...
However looking at the end results it appears that all that the changes relate to xbox-live (ie it's now on my dashboard, it wasnt before) so I'm assuming that either something about the demo required a element of the updated xbox live package, or that MS cut a deal to get the xbox dashboard update pushed out.
That's just some cheap-ass javascript trick from the wonderful people at Vibrant Media... nothing a good proxy can't strip out before it hits your browser.
Personally I think this type of marketing is just tacky as hell and cheapens the brand of the websites that use it.
"I don't know why the archaeologists aren't complaining more."
Let's see... is it because most of the current crop of big "artists" aren't really going to be considered classics by any stretch of the word in a few years once they've faded into obscurity?
For instance take away Britneys/JLos/Justins looks and you ain't left with a whole lot else.:)
Mine was on an old berkley system that was being used for testing, and being the naive young pup that I was I thought they wouldn't have anything amusing on there (apart from the MOTD with offensive items enabled).
How wrong I was... many a lunchhour was lost due to nethack and those damned grues!
Also has the advantage of not requiring new gizmos to be installed on each machine, as all the machines on one network can access the same filtering proxy.
(damn/.'s lack of edit button for really good ideas!)
...or just use one of the many open-source advert filtering proxies, neatly avoiding the need to re-educate the rest of the family in how they do things with the new browser.
I don't think the sorts of movies which feature a "best boy" show clips at award shows... they're normally the sort of flick that ends up on PPV adult channels.:)
They still used to enforce this rule even before they got into the satelite marketplace. Their satelite channels run adverts as well...
The problem is essentially that the people who enforce TV licences take the view that;
1) If you have any equipment capable of displaying a TV signal you need to pay the licence. It's more about having the capability to watch rather than the intent.
2) Even if you don't have a TV they will harass you continually because they generally don't tend to believe people in this day and age can live without a TV.
Yes I know it's fucked up. But hey all this is possible thanks to "the unique way the BBC is funded".
Just because you don't understand what a phrase means doesn't make it something wrong...
Double opt-in is when you ensure that the user relly does want to be sent an email (ie they have to physically do something to get email - it wont happen by default).
That's the first stage of opt-in.
Next you verify that they gave you the correct email address by sending a test email which asks them if they still actually want to recieve your email.
Again to continue they must physically do something - if they do nothing then wont be added to the list.
This is the second stage of opt-in.
There were two opt-in processes so that's why it gets called "double opt-in" - it's not rocket science.
NT/2000/XP ships with the AT scheduling service installed by default, with this you can quite happily run a task of your choice whenever your want it to run.
From here it doesn't take a leap of genius to make it run something to delete logfiles.
Admittedly it does lack a decent, relevant, name like "CRON" but if it does the job then who am I to complain!
Photos of him aren't *that* rare - I bought one of his intron depot books as a grey import and aside from being one of the coolest collection of anime sketches and notes I've *ever* seen......I seem to remember it did include a photo of him either at the start or at the end. If I had the book to hand (its at home, im not) I'd tell you for sure.
Most of us with jobs will probably 'fess up that we could walk to a few more places instead of driving a few minutes down the road.
All that exercise adds up and in combination with a few lifestyle tweaks helps keep you healthy at the end of the day, not to mention saving you gas money for more important things like alcohol!
Also have you considered swimming - great full body exercise and if you don't feel that energetic just lazing around in a pool is a great relaxer at the end of a day.
The sky digital system deployed in the UK featured a built-in modem which would accept incoming calls to allow upgrading and updating of the "digi-box" (a fancy name for their reciever) by the service provider.
The two-way technology is getting there very slowly...
Are we talking about the same film? Island 8JO, pirates, texas air rangers, low budget HK-esque appearance with very retro mecha...
I bought this a couple of years ago and I would best describe it as a b-grade film similar to those the US was cranking out in the 70s and 80s in terms of cheesy plot and special effects.
It seemed apparent at the time that large parts of the screenplay had been cut, mostly relating to the character development, leaving you with a sense of being puzzled as to why the characters worked like they did.
It's not that it was a bad film, just too cheap, cheesy and attempting to do things which were too grand for its budget.
I never saw the anime version they released a few years later so I have no idea if this was an improvement or not...
"According to Brightmail spokesperson Francois Lavaste, an unidentified Internet marketer overwhelmed Brightmail's filtering system with messages, slowing down all e-mail delivery."
Why not name and shame them?
If they used their own servers then you know who they are, and if they didnt (although the sheer volume means it is very unlikely they could have used an open-relay unnoticed) then trace them back and make an example of them.
They are clearly a professional operation so bad press is going to make them look really bad in front of their existing clients, and if you tried hard enough you could have great fun suing them for all they were worth...
Who thinks that a paid search with the current level of technology just will not work?
People only going to be paying for documents that can be found, and every failed search is going to lose them money.
Given that these are technical/research documents it is a fair bet that the target audience already know how to get access to them, probably for free as well.
How do you compete with that and make money out of it?
Well you could license in better technology to improve your hit rate - Google is one of the best search engines out there and yet that still has holes in its ability to get what everyone wants every time...
e.g.
Try searching for a phrase in quotes and watch as good strips out the common words rendering your phrase useless. (yes i know you can counter this by using +'s but why should i have to do this for a phrase search?)
If you try hard enough you can find a phrase that when google is done with it results in just one word. And i'll be damned if i can remember the phrase i wanted searched for...
At the moment IMHO search engine technology is very good but it is just being outgrown by the increase in content that needs to be captured to provide a top-notch search-to-hit ratio.
Maybe the solution is to have a two tiered search concept;
the free searches are just like they are now - you get a response in real-time and take your chances that the results do not match what you actually wanted.
the paid searches are not real-time, but depending on how much you are willing to pay you get a corresponding fast result ranging anywhere from a few hours up to a few days.
for your money you get a better service (including the ever popular boolean searches, regular expressions etc if you just want to use this like a big full-text index) which you could focus much tighter than is currently possible to get a decent set of urls, summaries, and reports at the end of the process.
We've all been there - we want something very hard to find and which results in a lot of mis-matches on search engines. if someone said they could get me a few urls which are directly related to my search in a few days then I'd pay a few dollars for that!
But I would imagine that everytime a new kernal is released that world+dog go to view the site. I serious doubt that everyone who goes to the site downloads, most just read - lots of people reading still requires a fair old chunk of bandwidth.
As we saw earlier in the week the/. effect seemed to bring that site to its knees, but as regular news sites see linux as more and more relevant to their audience they too will link people in, adding to the problem.
Realistically they are victims of their own success - people want information about the new kernal and doubtlessly they want to download stuff too.
As these once limited interest sites become more mainstream, then it's clear that they need to maintain quality of service, and that means no/. effects which stop people going to your site and could potentially discourage them from going there in the future.
Let's look at the computer games industry, they who made releasing patches a religion, plus their model closely follows the more generic model of patches in that they will get issued when it either makes the manufacturer money or when the product is getting bad press because of defect X.
Scenario #1:
Project XYZ is months beyond the deadline, it would cost too much to scrap the project, so slap on some "eye candy", tidy up the rougher edges and we could sucker people into buying it on brand-recognition-value alone, not to mention the hype we generated over the last three years while it was under development.
Once its out it generates much needed positive revenue (as opposed to negative revenue) and we can patch all the left over bugs out of it, or add the extra features which were stripped to get it ready.
Scenario #2
Despite your best efforts your game becomes an overnight success, but the network portion of the game was tested at a much lower level of stress.
By releasing a patch you ensure that more people buy the game and play it online there-by increasing your revenue flow.
Slashdot Mirror
...quite frankly I was just amazed they managed to make a game that wasn't complete rubbish - normally a THQ game is a mediocre game...
Making people pay for content that would normally be free (an extra level/map etc would happen sooner or later with the PC's moding community) seems about inline with the THQ school of thought.
Xbox live had the promise of "free exclusive online content" but who honestly believed that?
Business is business and if there's a buck to be made sales and marketing folks will happily screw the customer to get that buck...
At the end of the day I can't think of any real "success stories" for xbox live where the online content has just flowed and flowed once the game has been paid for without a second subscription cost.
Most of the time the only extra content people see is the stuff that was over-hyped at launch and even then they have to wait and wait for them to actually "finish" the content that they hyped as being "almost ready to ship" when the game launched.
I bought the DVD set the other day, when I went to check out the demo it did indeed update itself with no prompts...
However looking at the end results it appears that all that the changes relate to xbox-live (ie it's now on my dashboard, it wasnt before) so I'm assuming that either something about the demo required a element of the updated xbox live package, or that MS cut a deal to get the xbox dashboard update pushed out.
That's just some cheap-ass javascript trick from the wonderful people at Vibrant Media ... nothing a good proxy can't strip out before it hits your browser.
Personally I think this type of marketing is just tacky as hell and cheapens the brand of the websites that use it.
Macross plus ... most of the YF fighter vs. YF fighter combat scenes were pretty spectacular, as was the finale.
"I don't know why the archaeologists aren't complaining more."
... is it because most of the current crop of big "artists" aren't really going to be considered classics by any stretch of the word in a few years once they've faded into obscurity?
:)
Let's see
For instance take away Britneys/JLos/Justins looks and you ain't left with a whole lot else.
This Warhol fellows name seems to crop up now and again, I mean his site was google's first result so clearly he's the culprit!
...playing nethack!
Mine was on an old berkley system that was being used for testing, and being the naive young pup that I was I thought they wouldn't have anything amusing on there (apart from the MOTD with offensive items enabled).
How wrong I was... many a lunchhour was lost due to nethack and those damned grues!
Also has the advantage of not requiring new gizmos to be installed on each machine, as all the machines on one network can access the same filtering proxy.
/.'s lack of edit button for really good ideas!)
(damn
...or just use one of the many open-source advert filtering proxies, neatly avoiding the need to re-educate the rest of the family in how they do things with the new browser.
No, no, no... You buy for $15 dollars and then once the hype wears off and the price has crashed you end up selling for $1 if you're lucky.
:)
Thats the way it worked with my lastminute.com and boo.com shares so that's how it's supposed to work right?
(and before you ask, yes I am joking)
Find MCP, MCSE, MCAD and A+ certifications in your local area
I don't think the sorts of movies which feature a "best boy" show clips at award shows ... they're normally the sort of flick that ends up on PPV adult channels. :)
- Tony
They still used to enforce this rule even before they got into the satelite marketplace. Their satelite channels run adverts as well...
The problem is essentially that the people who enforce TV licences take the view that;
1) If you have any equipment capable of displaying a TV signal you need to pay the licence. It's more about having the capability to watch rather than the intent.
2) Even if you don't have a TV they will harass you continually because they generally don't tend to believe people in this day and age can live without a TV.
Yes I know it's fucked up. But hey all this is possible thanks to "the unique way the BBC is funded".
- Tony
The actual sites are...
i ne.org.uk/w ww.emps.org/
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/
http://www.fpsonl
http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/
http://
FWIW fax spam to consumers is already illegal under the same legislation which created these opt-out lists in 1995.
In all honesty the eMPS isn't worth a damn since most junk emails come from people who don't have to/wont follow best practice.
- Tony
Just because you don't understand what a phrase means doesn't make it something wrong...
Double opt-in is when you ensure that the user relly does want to be sent an email (ie they have to physically do something to get email - it wont happen by default).
That's the first stage of opt-in.
Next you verify that they gave you the correct email address by sending a test email which asks them if they still actually want to recieve your email.
Again to continue they must physically do something - if they do nothing then wont be added to the list.
This is the second stage of opt-in.
There were two opt-in processes so that's why it gets called "double opt-in" - it's not rocket science.
NT/2000/XP ships with the AT scheduling service installed by default, with this you can quite happily run a task of your choice whenever your want it to run.
From here it doesn't take a leap of genius to make it run something to delete logfiles.
Admittedly it does lack a decent, relevant, name like "CRON" but if it does the job then who am I to complain!
- Tony
1) Get a spammer to publically complain about being sent unsolicited junk.
2) Wait for RIAA for get busted for music piracy then try to appeal on the grounds that this was just "fair use" of that music.
Well #2 might not happen but hell I'd have said that about #1 as well! After all it is almost xmas and if I wish hard enough it might just happen...
- Tony
Photos of him aren't *that* rare - I bought one of his intron depot books as a grey import and aside from being one of the coolest collection of anime sketches and notes I've *ever* seen... ...I seem to remember it did include a photo of him either at the start or at the end. If I had the book to hand (its at home, im not) I'd tell you for sure.
- Tony
Hmmm... Since Hollywood execs are greedy and clearly have no grasp of history I'd suggest either some sort of explosive or a jack-hammer.
Most of us with jobs will probably 'fess up that we could walk to a few more places instead of driving a few minutes down the road.
All that exercise adds up and in combination with a few lifestyle tweaks helps keep you healthy at the end of the day, not to mention saving you gas money for more important things like alcohol!
Also have you considered swimming - great full body exercise and if you don't feel that energetic just lazing around in a pool is a great relaxer at the end of a day.
The sky digital system deployed in the UK featured a built-in modem which would accept incoming calls to allow upgrading and updating of the "digi-box" (a fancy name for their reciever) by the service provider.
The two-way technology is getting there very slowly...
Are we talking about the same film? Island 8JO, pirates, texas air rangers, low budget HK-esque appearance with very retro mecha...
I bought this a couple of years ago and I would best describe it as a b-grade film similar to those the US was cranking out in the 70s and 80s in terms of cheesy plot and special effects.
It seemed apparent at the time that large parts of the screenplay had been cut, mostly relating to the character development, leaving you with a sense of being puzzled as to why the characters worked like they did.
It's not that it was a bad film, just too cheap, cheesy and attempting to do things which were too grand for its budget.
I never saw the anime version they released a few years later so I have no idea if this was an improvement or not...
Quote:
"According to Brightmail spokesperson Francois Lavaste, an unidentified Internet marketer overwhelmed Brightmail's filtering system with messages, slowing down all e-mail delivery."
Why not name and shame them?
If they used their own servers then you know who they are, and if they didnt (although the sheer volume means it is very unlikely they could have used an open-relay unnoticed) then trace them back and make an example of them.
They are clearly a professional operation so bad press is going to make them look really bad in front of their existing clients, and if you tried hard enough you could have great fun suing them for all they were worth...
Who thinks that a paid search with the current level of technology just will not work?
People only going to be paying for documents that can be found, and every failed search is going to lose them money.
Given that these are technical/research documents it is a fair bet that the target audience already know how to get access to them, probably for free as well.
How do you compete with that and make money out of it?
Well you could license in better technology to improve your hit rate - Google is one of the best search engines out there and yet that still has holes in its ability to get what everyone wants every time...
e.g.
Try searching for a phrase in quotes and watch as good strips out the common words rendering your phrase useless. (yes i know you can counter this by using +'s but why should i have to do this for a phrase search?)
If you try hard enough you can find a phrase that when google is done with it results in just one word. And i'll be damned if i can remember the phrase i wanted searched for...
At the moment IMHO search engine technology is very good but it is just being outgrown by the increase in content that needs to be captured to provide a top-notch search-to-hit ratio.
Maybe the solution is to have a two tiered search concept;
the free searches are just like they are now - you get a response in real-time and take your chances that the results do not match what you actually wanted.
the paid searches are not real-time, but depending on how much you are willing to pay you get a corresponding fast result ranging anywhere from a few hours up to a few days.
for your money you get a better service (including the ever popular boolean searches, regular expressions etc if you just want to use this like a big full-text index) which you could focus much tighter than is currently possible to get a decent set of urls, summaries, and reports at the end of the process.
We've all been there - we want something very hard to find and which results in a lot of mis-matches on search engines. if someone said they could get me a few urls which are directly related to my search in a few days then I'd pay a few dollars for that!
But I would imagine that everytime a new kernal is released that world+dog go to view the site. I serious doubt that everyone who goes to the site downloads, most just read - lots of people reading still requires a fair old chunk of bandwidth.
/. effect seemed to bring that site to its knees, but as regular news sites see linux as more and more relevant to their audience they too will link people in, adding to the problem.
/. effects which stop people going to your site and could potentially discourage them from going there in the future.
As we saw earlier in the week the
Realistically they are victims of their own success - people want information about the new kernal and doubtlessly they want to download stuff too.
As these once limited interest sites become more mainstream, then it's clear that they need to maintain quality of service, and that means no
Just my 2c
Simple.
Let's look at the computer games industry, they who made releasing patches a religion, plus their model closely follows the more generic model of patches in that they will get issued when it either makes the manufacturer money or when the product is getting bad press because of defect X.
Scenario #1:
Project XYZ is months beyond the deadline, it would cost too much to scrap the project, so slap on some "eye candy", tidy up the rougher edges and we could sucker people into buying it on brand-recognition-value alone, not to mention the hype we generated over the last three years while it was under development.
Once its out it generates much needed positive revenue (as opposed to negative revenue) and we can patch all the left over bugs out of it, or add the extra features which were stripped to get it ready.
Scenario #2
Despite your best efforts your game becomes an overnight success, but the network portion of the game was tested at a much lower level of stress.
By releasing a patch you ensure that more people buy the game and play it online there-by increasing your revenue flow.