Reasons why cell phone companies hate tethering: 1. Youtube. When AT&T did calculations for the iPhone, they initially didn't take youtube into account and once it was available to iPhone customers, their 3 year bandwidth projection was hit in just 3 weeks (I'll look up the citation later, but you'll have to take my word on it). Now that youtube is available to many mobile devices, I would assume that they are worried that other apps (like WoW, Skype, BitTorrent) could suck up a lot of bandwidth
Meanwhile, here in the UK, mobile operators actively encourage you to use this kind of application, to the extent that at least one of them (3) advertises free access to skype (although it blocks skype-out calls, presumably in order to prevent people from ignoring the services that earn them money in favour of ones that don't).
My dictionary says you're wrong. It does state that proceeds is more common, but procedes is considered acceptable. Webster's states it is to be preferred.
While America has a law requiring a model's consent for photographs of them to be used for commercial purposes, this is not generally true in the rest of the world. I don't claim to know anything about Czech law, but I suspect if the story you linked happened there he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
OTOH, it seems in this case the image was also used without a copyright license, so some form of legal redress would be available. The likely procedes, however, are probably too small to be worthwhile: single instance of copyright violation, I'd guess there's no statutory damages in Czech law so you'd have to prove actual losses, which would amount to a reasonable fee for using the photo, which would likely amount to a stock photo licence fee of about $1-500.
I also wonder if Amazon/I-Tunes will have to forfeit the money?
You mean from any legit sales they get? I'd imagine not, but the gang themselves probably wouldn't be allowed to benefit -- the money owed to them would likely be seized using the Proceeds of Crime Act, which gives the government very wide ranging powers to take criminals' posessions without having to actually prove they were obtained illegaly.
On the whole, though, Amazon and iTunes will lose out here. They'll have had thousands (if not more) chargebacks, which will have cost them more to deal with than they earned in the first place.
Admittedly, Betelgeuse is somewhat further away than Jupiter
And if it weren't, we'd be in serious trouble anyway, as it's radius is around 1,000 solar radii == about 47AU == about 4 times the maximum distance between Earth and Jupiter.
Would that be cheaper to do than sticking a solar cell on the phone?
Yes. I imagine it could be achieved with a few diodes and a couple of capacitors and resistors, pennies worth of components. A powerful enough solar cell to get a significant boost would probably cost about ten times as much.
I think the reason those numbers work for a free MMO is there is most likely a small userbase and doesn't take mass network resources. But WoW on the other hand has some high costs associated with a larger game. In the end its still not the same overall numbers but it might nearly be the same net profit gain percentages.
Indeed. Smaller development costs (I don't know much about the game in the article but I think a typical free-to-play MMO has about 3-4 developers for a year or so), smaller running costs (probably only 2 or 3 servers, rather than the huge cluster the big names will need), smaller takings. If that kind of investment can turn $200K+ per month, it's a clear win.
I dunno, the micropayment based systems I've played you could get realistically powerful spending less than you would on a typical subscription game. E.g., I'm playing Galaxy Online these days, where I'm a corps leader of a mid-strata corps and get to have quite a bit of fun, and I'm spending roughly $5 a month on it. I don't see the issue, anless its the somewhat bait-and-switch aspect of how these games are marketed.
With just under 30k accounts, maybe 2,000 of them active in a given month, I'm not really quite "massive" yet but my own experience is that I pull in on average less than $0.50 per account per month, with some fair bit of fluctuation. I'd be jumping for joy at an average of $2/player.
Means your game isn't sticky enough. You need to tweek it to get your players competing against each other more.:)
most people are going to play it like it's free, as in, not paying for anything
This tallies with my experiences of playing free MMOs... e.g., I've been playing Galaxy Online lately, where the vast majority never pay anything, but there's an a kind of inverse-long-tail effect going on where there are one or two players who spend absolutely obscene quantities of money. The mean per paying player may well be $50/month, but I bet you the median is more like $20. And while there may be thousands who spend only a couple of dollars a month, there's probably 10-20 who spend a couple of hundred dollars balancing them out.
Note that my DNS servers are Level3 servers (4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.4) since they are much faster than Comcast DNS.
My last ISP used to give out 4.2.2.4 as the DNS server to use for all requests when you connected. It was fucking slow. I don't know how slow comcast is, but if that's better, they must _really_ suck.:)
Dunno whether you saw it, but about a week or so ago there was a link here to a story about how such games are designed to be addictive. Might interest you.
You know what components need to be written, because they are all in the requirements. (You have requirements, don't you?)
Well, yes, but requirements can change. In this case, before the game was even released they suddenly found they needed to support about twice as many players on their servers as they were expecting in total. This exposed a number of bugs that might otherwise have remained hidden for long enough that they could be fixed one at a time without issue.
You know what functionality is required, because you have a functional spec. (You have a functional spec, don't you?)
AFAIK, functional specs are not usually used in the game development industry. They tend to adopt a more agile approach, developing the game and changing it iteratively until the testers think it's working right.
You know how all your components are going to behave, and how they're laid out, because you have a design spec (You have a design spec, don't you?)
I've never been on a project where the design spec remained constant from the first line of code to the last. Maybe you have, if so you are the exception rather than the rule (I understand such projects are commonplace in the embedded systems market, but outside of it are rather unusual).
You know roughly how long it will take because you are properly staffed, and provided estimates that match reality. (I know, I'm getting ridiculous, now...)
And maybe everyone I've worked with has been incompetent, but I've never found a programming team that can provide realistic estimates reliably. Factor of 2 is about the best you can hope for here.
What happens when the product owner gets to actually see the product for the first time in week 7, and says, "No, this isn't supposed to be how it works. It's supposed to do this..."? Not having working code until the project is 75% to shipping date is a recipe for disaster.
Yeah, this is bad too. Here's a _properly_ managed project:
Week 1: 5 engineers, 40h requirements, designing tests. Week 2: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests. Week 3: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests. Week 4: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests. Week 5: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests....
In a properly managed project you _can_ end up with "crunch time". It happens when the requirements change, or when the team misunderstands the requirements and is close to a shipping deadline. It shouldn't happen for more than one week in a row, and ideally no more than once in the project's lifetime, but realistically it is impossible to manage real world software projects without this happening occasionally.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a sinking feeling that it will probably be Swiss.
Don't be silly. Everyone knows that it's Wensleydale.
Reasons why cell phone companies hate tethering:
1. Youtube. When AT&T did calculations for the iPhone, they initially didn't take youtube into account and once it was available to iPhone customers, their 3 year bandwidth projection was hit in just 3 weeks (I'll look up the citation later, but you'll have to take my word on it). Now that youtube is available to many mobile devices, I would assume that they are worried that other apps (like WoW, Skype, BitTorrent) could suck up a lot of bandwidth
Meanwhile, here in the UK, mobile operators actively encourage you to use this kind of application, to the extent that at least one of them (3) advertises free access to skype (although it blocks skype-out calls, presumably in order to prevent people from ignoring the services that earn them money in favour of ones that don't).
Doesn't change the point, though... model releases are a US concept, and do not apply in most other countries.
the publisher is required to get model releases.
In America. The requirement for model releases is an American law and does not apply in most other countries.
Procedes == not a word
My dictionary says you're wrong. It does state that proceeds is more common, but procedes is considered acceptable. Webster's states it is to be preferred.
Do it right.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002168937_coffeemug03.html
Sue them.
While America has a law requiring a model's consent for photographs of them to be used for commercial purposes, this is not generally true in the rest of the world. I don't claim to know anything about Czech law, but I suspect if the story you linked happened there he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
OTOH, it seems in this case the image was also used without a copyright license, so some form of legal redress would be available. The likely procedes, however, are probably too small to be worthwhile: single instance of copyright violation, I'd guess there's no statutory damages in Czech law so you'd have to prove actual losses, which would amount to a reasonable fee for using the photo, which would likely amount to a stock photo licence fee of about $1-500.
I also wonder if Amazon/I-Tunes will have to forfeit the money?
You mean from any legit sales they get? I'd imagine not, but the gang themselves probably wouldn't be allowed to benefit -- the money owed to them would likely be seized using the Proceeds of Crime Act, which gives the government very wide ranging powers to take criminals' posessions without having to actually prove they were obtained illegaly.
On the whole, though, Amazon and iTunes will lose out here. They'll have had thousands (if not more) chargebacks, which will have cost them more to deal with than they earned in the first place.
But if it is at all possible to shuffle money between bank accounts in an anonymous way (I have no idea whether it really is?)
Yes it is. You use an advanced mechanism that isn't very popular these days, called "cash".
Admittedly, Betelgeuse is somewhat further away than Jupiter
And if it weren't, we'd be in serious trouble anyway, as it's radius is around 1,000 solar radii == about 47AU == about 4 times the maximum distance between Earth and Jupiter.
Let's hope Zaphod or Ford weren't visiting relatives at the time.
600 years ago. We're probably just now seeing light from the collapsing hrung disaster of Betelgeuse 7.
Something's only a social networking site if the poor layouts are the fault of the users, not the site administrators.
Why can't they come up with a plausible theory of apocalypse by snu-snu?
Unfortunately, it seems, the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.
Would that be cheaper to do than sticking a solar cell on the phone?
Yes. I imagine it could be achieved with a few diodes and a couple of capacitors and resistors, pennies worth of components. A powerful enough solar cell to get a significant boost would probably cost about ten times as much.
I think the reason those numbers work for a free MMO is there is most likely a small userbase and doesn't take mass network resources. But WoW on the other hand has some high costs associated with a larger game. In the end its still not the same overall numbers but it might nearly be the same net profit gain percentages.
Indeed. Smaller development costs (I don't know much about the game in the article but I think a typical free-to-play MMO has about 3-4 developers for a year or so), smaller running costs (probably only 2 or 3 servers, rather than the huge cluster the big names will need), smaller takings. If that kind of investment can turn $200K+ per month, it's a clear win.
I dunno, the micropayment based systems I've played you could get realistically powerful spending less than you would on a typical subscription game. E.g., I'm playing Galaxy Online these days, where I'm a corps leader of a mid-strata corps and get to have quite a bit of fun, and I'm spending roughly $5 a month on it. I don't see the issue, anless its the somewhat bait-and-switch aspect of how these games are marketed.
With just under 30k accounts, maybe 2,000 of them active in a given month, I'm not really quite "massive" yet but my own experience is that I pull in on average less than $0.50 per account per month, with some fair bit of fluctuation. I'd be jumping for joy at an average of $2/player.
Means your game isn't sticky enough. You need to tweek it to get your players competing against each other more. :)
most people are going to play it like it's free, as in, not paying for anything
This tallies with my experiences of playing free MMOs... e.g., I've been playing Galaxy Online lately, where the vast majority never pay anything, but there's an a kind of inverse-long-tail effect going on where there are one or two players who spend absolutely obscene quantities of money. The mean per paying player may well be $50/month, but I bet you the median is more like $20. And while there may be thousands who spend only a couple of dollars a month, there's probably 10-20 who spend a couple of hundred dollars balancing them out.
No, 10% of the player base has ever paid him. Some other % (presumably smaller) is the 5000 players paying monthly.
[...]
No, the average is over all of the players, so thats (total players)*$2 a month.
And total monthly = $230,000, so we can surmise total players = ~115,000. So the smaller % is actually about 4%.
Note that my DNS servers are Level3 servers (4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.4) since they are much faster than Comcast DNS.
My last ISP used to give out 4.2.2.4 as the DNS server to use for all requests when you connected. It was fucking slow. I don't know how slow comcast is, but if that's better, they must _really_ suck. :)
It had something to do with star wars. The sith lord part tipped me off.
Star Wars _and_ Indiana Jones (that's where the Nazi's come from clearly).
Now, which movie were the RIAA the villains in?
Dunno whether you saw it, but about a week or so ago there was a link here to a story about how such games are designed to be addictive. Might interest you.
You know what components need to be written, because they are all in the requirements. (You have requirements, don't you?)
Well, yes, but requirements can change. In this case, before the game was even released they suddenly found they needed to support about twice as many players on their servers as they were expecting in total. This exposed a number of bugs that might otherwise have remained hidden for long enough that they could be fixed one at a time without issue.
You know what functionality is required, because you have a functional spec. (You have a functional spec, don't you?)
AFAIK, functional specs are not usually used in the game development industry. They tend to adopt a more agile approach, developing the game and changing it iteratively until the testers think it's working right.
You know how all your components are going to behave, and how they're laid out, because you have a design spec (You have a design spec, don't you?)
I've never been on a project where the design spec remained constant from the first line of code to the last. Maybe you have, if so you are the exception rather than the rule (I understand such projects are commonplace in the embedded systems market, but outside of it are rather unusual).
You know roughly how long it will take because you are properly staffed, and provided estimates that match reality. (I know, I'm getting ridiculous, now...)
And maybe everyone I've worked with has been incompetent, but I've never found a programming team that can provide realistic estimates reliably. Factor of 2 is about the best you can hope for here.
Properly managed project:
Week 1: 5 engineers, 40 hours, requirements
Week 2: 5 engineers, 40 hours, requirements
Week 3: 5 engineers, 40 hours, specifications
Week 4: 5 engineers, 40 hours, specifications
Week 5: 5 engineers, 40 hours, specifications, architecture
Week 6: 5 engineers, 40 hours, coding
Week 7: 5 engineers, 40 hours, integration, test
Week 8: 5 engineers, 40 hours, more test, acceptance, shipment
What happens when the product owner gets to actually see the product for the first time in week 7, and says, "No, this isn't supposed to be how it works. It's supposed to do this..."? Not having working code until the project is 75% to shipping date is a recipe for disaster.
Improperly managed project:
Week 1: 5 engineers, 40 hours, coding
Week 2: 5 engineers, 40 hours, coding
Week 3: 5 engineers, 40 hours, coding
Week 4: 4 engineers, 50 hours, blow up, everything's wrong--start over. more coding
Week 5: 4 engineers, 60 hours, coding
Week 6: 3 engineers, 70 hours, coding, boss yelling "You guys are totally incompetent!!"
Week 7: 2 engineers, 100 hours, coding
Week 8: 2 engineers, 100 hours, coding, boss yelling "What the fuck?!? Just ship it!"
Yeah, this is bad too. Here's a _properly_ managed project:
Week 1: 5 engineers, 40h requirements, designing tests. ...
Week 2: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests.
Week 3: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests.
Week 4: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests.
Week 5: 5 engineers, 40h coding, testing, demo to client, requirements for next stage, designing tests.
In a properly managed project you _can_ end up with "crunch time". It happens when the requirements change, or when the team misunderstands the requirements and is close to a shipping deadline. It shouldn't happen for more than one week in a row, and ideally no more than once in the project's lifetime, but realistically it is impossible to manage real world software projects without this happening occasionally.
"800,000 tonnes when pressurized" .... fill it with a lighter gas....
um
Well, 800,000 tonnes He == ~430,000 tonnes H. Which, combusted with the appropriate amount of O2 releases:
~ 430,000,000,000 mol x 286kJ/mol
= about 34 TW hours.
I'm not sure how anybody would ever be convinced accumulating that much elemental hydrogen in a single place could ever be safe.
Mpeg AFAIK is a freely implementable spec
This is not true. MPEG is covered by a variety of patents which may or may not be valid in a number of different countries.
Don't all Japanese female cartoon/video game characters look like 12 year olds?
Yeah, but the marketing material/manual will tell you they're 18.