How did they manage to build it by 2500 BC? I usually don't manage to finish it until 2000BC... they must have had a nearby source of marble I wasn't aware of.
If you're building Stonehenge with only a marble resource hooked up, then that explains the delay.
Which polls, and what's the correlation to "conservative-libetarians"? Are all non-conservatives fully informed?
I'm a pretty hard core fiscal Libertarian and I think some amount of money for NASA is a great thing, and I don't know anyone personally who thinks that they need less money. They just need more autonomy, and Congress needs to actually listen when experts say it must be done a certain way or it's crap. Congress directs too much effort into dictating exactly what NASA does with the money, down to how many jobs a program must have and other irrelevant issues.
I'm not saying Titanic didn't make a profit for the studio involved, but the gross and what the studio makes are vastly different. Theater chain "buyers" can negotiate a deal for each movie (or in groups - I'll take Piece of Crap if you give me Summer Blockbuster), meaning they can set the percentages for the entire run. From what I remember, Titanic wasn't predicted to gross very much (they were calling it Waterworld 2), so it likely got a standard deal that was something like this: Theater keeps 30% for the 1st two weeks, then it drops to 60% for two weeks, 50% for the next two, and 35% (the minimum) for the rest of the run. Titanic stayed number one for a very long time (14 weeks, maybe?) but the grosses were very even - around $20-$30 mil per weekend, and continued to play for eight months in some theaters, so the majority of the gross came at the 35% rate (for the studio). Add marketing costs, which are usually quoted as at least equal to the budget (and this film certainly met that), so $200 million, and you have much less profit than most people think. And that's just domestic distribution - foreign deals are usually more skewed towards the foreign distributor. Also, Cameorn put up some of his own money against the gross, so he made well over $100 million. So Titanic made a tidy profit, but my guess is the studio really only made $100-200 mil., which is 5-10% of the gross - not very good by Hollywood standards
And quite a few crashes have been avoided by one pilot reading through the emergency checklist while the other performs the actions. Also, two brains/sets of eyes are almost always better: one of the pilots may think of something or see something that the other doesn't.
"The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video..." and ads.
If AEG worried so much about this happening, why shouldn't they be forced to hire extra security to look out for the copied merchandise? This burden should not fall on the taxpayers.
Who exactly said that it was a flop? I have many friends who play Civ IV and we all agree that it's the best in the series, and I've never read anything published by a reputable source that claimed it was a flop. I could see people not liking it more if they don't get all of the subtleties or just want a simpler and faster game, but those people usually don't play Civ - they play something like Starcraft or Command and Conquer.
I have played all four Civ games (and all the expansions), and Civ IV with BtS is a much more interesting, complex, and fun game than any of its predecessors. I would estimate that I have spent ten times as many hours playing Civ IV than any of it's predecessors as well. In fact, when I heard about Civ V, I just thought, "meh." I'm sure that I'll still play Civ IV well into Civ V's "lifetime". Maybe I'll check it out if it gets stellar reviews, but I am more than content with Civ IV.
"It's very important that the arena doesn't become the sole focus of class balance for the game."
But it is the most important and most scrutinized focus of class balance. If you don't make the Arena mandatory for the best gear (please please please), then Arena balancing won't be nearly as important as it has become.
And here's an idea: Have servers/battle-groups with no Arena!
I'm a long-time MPP player (EQ pre-expansions), and I didn't figure this out even after reading the manual (not saying it isn't there, just that I missed it somehow). His point is that the interface is not intuitive, and after having played WoW (with several add-ons), I'd have to agree. The designers could have studied countless interfaces and add-ons, and it apepars that they just stuck the button somewhere sort-of convenient.
When your character first enters one of these zones, either a pop-up should appear and say, "Hey, click this button for open parties!", or the open parties dialog should stay open until you close it (at least the first time). This is a very cool feature, and they should promote it better.
Zapmedia did have a product in development (the ZapStation) at the time of the patent filing, which would have been used to download music and movies to itself over the internet.
I believe the article is referring to the practice of placing an ad for a foreign husband, then demanding money for postage, visas, plane tickets, etc... from any responders.
I disagree that "TiVo certainly was the best of class for a while". TiVo was the most popular, but ReplayTV had a much better interface and automatically skipped commercials if you wanted it to. I had a 1st generation TiVo, but ditched it as soon as I saw my friend's ReplayTV. It wasn't even close who was better at the time.
to prevent shoplifting, the logical solution is to: keep absolutely all merchandise locked up and behind counters, and to not give customers any merchandise until they've paid and are stepping out the door. It's monumentally inefficient and consumer hostile.
The problem is that the stores treat everyone like criminals throughout the buying process, and then when they leave, the store hassles them yet again. It would be much more efficient and less hostile at this point to implement the method that you mention and not hassle customers while they shop.
For example, I have bought two items at Best Buy recently and was irritated by the methods they used to protect their merchandise.
First, I needed to buy a copy of Office 2007 for work. When I got to the shelf, there was a huge display about the benefits of Office, but the shelves were empty. I asked one of the peons if they had sold out, and she told me that she just had to get one from the back. Almost ten minutes later, she came out with what I asked for. I asked why she had just wasted ten minutes of my life, and she responded that they had lost thousands of dollars of this product in the preceding weeks. How is that my problem? It's fairly obvious that employees are doing the stealing here - If the cashier doesn't deactivate the magnetic strip (and a big percentage of the time when they do), the alarm goes off when you leave. So it has to be employees giving them to friends after deactivating the strip, or walking out the back with them. Best Buy hiring thieves shouldn't affect my shopping experience.
Second, I went to buy a digital camera. I spoke with the peon and told her what I wanted. She proceeded to unlock a cabinet to get the camera. I took the box, and since I needed to buy one other item, I started to walk away. She stopped me and said that I needed to pay for the item right there and not up front. I asked her why, and she said to prevent shoplifting, essentially accusing me of trying to do so. This was a digital SLR in a decent-sized box, and I was wearing shorts and t-shirt, so I asked her where I could possibly put it. She just smiled and said sorry, you have to pay here. So I told here to hold it and I went to find my other item. About five minutes later, I returned, and wanted to pay for both items. So she unlocked the cabinet again to get the camera. I asked why she had to lock it up, and she said that she couldn't leave it out, ever. So I paid for both items, and she put them in a clear plastic bag (as opposed to the yellow ones) and physically sealed it with adhesive on the bag, then attached the receipt to the bag, making it extremely obvious that I had paid for whatever was in there. I went to the front to exit, and guess what? They wanted to see my receipt and inspect the bag!
How much more Soviet can you get?
I just buy stuff online now and make sure FedEx delivers it. Too many items with a high value get "lost" when you send them via UPS.
They don't take into account that some people are born more privledged (sic) than others and therefore have an easier path to wealth, that some people have fewer morals to get in their way, or that some people are just lucky.
Are you saying that intelligent people are naturally luckier than stupid people? That they have fewer morals (I guess this could be argued about both sides by the other side)? That more intelligent people are born rich? This can't be true. Luck is, well, not definable. And even if more children who are born to rich families that are intelligent as opposed to rich stupid families, that doesn't necessarily mean that their children will be intelligent.
In America, at least, people make their own luck for the most part, and virtually anyone can become successful if they work hard enough and make intelligent decisions. I know plenty of people who make more than they should if income equaled intelligence (me included). Conversely, plenty of my friends are extremely intelligent and choose to be teachers or nurses or in one case a construction worker because it makes them happy. I have no doubt that if the latter group wanted to be more financially successful, they could be. Being rich has very little to do with luck, being born "privileged", or having fewer morals. Intelligence and hard work are certainly much bigger factors.
If movie theaters are any indication, then prices won't go down, but will continue to rise. I managed theaters for a while, and despite our astronomical concession prices, we weren't rolling in dough. Pre-trailer ads were another revenue stream, for essentially no effort. A few people stopped coming because of the ads, but the extra money more than made up for it. Just like a few people might not buy a game with ads, but most won't care.
"Blade Runner: Final Cut will arrive in 2007 for a limited 25th-anniversary theatrical run, followed by a special-edition DVD with the three previous versions offered as alternate viewing."
I played Everquest pretty much from the beginning, and, even though I'm male, at some point I created a female Barbarian (Henna Barberra - ah fun with last names). She became my main, and when I would stand at EC and give SoWs for donations, players would always give me much more than normal. Some higher level players would just run up and give me nice items and not even want the SoW. Of course this led to plenty of A/S/L tells. I don't play female characters any longer - the free stuff isn't worth all the "Hey, baby"'s. It's probably somewhat better now that more females actually play, but during EQ's early days, female players were extremely rare.
WotC could make a CCG similar to Magic: the Gathering out of this: Your cards would be patents and lawyers and politicians and your "life" would be money. The battlefield would be the courts and fights would be lawsuits. Whoever makes the other guy go "broke" first wins. I'm filing a patent right now!
I really hope this is not the case. If it is, then the 80s edition will be the last dollar they get from me. It's ridiculous to make people pay for a new game and a new controller just because. There is no reason that the current controllers shouldn't work with Guitar Hero 3. I will buy new packs of songs all day long, but I won't buy another controller. In fact, if they don't find a way to make the current GH controller work with Rock Band, I won't be buying that, either.
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How did they manage to build it by 2500 BC? I usually don't manage to finish it until 2000BC... they must have had a nearby source of marble I wasn't aware of.
If you're building Stonehenge with only a marble resource hooked up, then that explains the delay.
Which polls, and what's the correlation to "conservative-libetarians"? Are all non-conservatives fully informed? I'm a pretty hard core fiscal Libertarian and I think some amount of money for NASA is a great thing, and I don't know anyone personally who thinks that they need less money. They just need more autonomy, and Congress needs to actually listen when experts say it must be done a certain way or it's crap. Congress directs too much effort into dictating exactly what NASA does with the money, down to how many jobs a program must have and other irrelevant issues.
WhiIe it's better than the House version, it's basically a jobs bill, nothing more. You think Obama wants more people out of work right now?
I'm not saying Titanic didn't make a profit for the studio involved, but the gross and what the studio makes are vastly different. Theater chain "buyers" can negotiate a deal for each movie (or in groups - I'll take Piece of Crap if you give me Summer Blockbuster), meaning they can set the percentages for the entire run. From what I remember, Titanic wasn't predicted to gross very much (they were calling it Waterworld 2), so it likely got a standard deal that was something like this: Theater keeps 30% for the 1st two weeks, then it drops to 60% for two weeks, 50% for the next two, and 35% (the minimum) for the rest of the run. Titanic stayed number one for a very long time (14 weeks, maybe?) but the grosses were very even - around $20-$30 mil per weekend, and continued to play for eight months in some theaters, so the majority of the gross came at the 35% rate (for the studio). Add marketing costs, which are usually quoted as at least equal to the budget (and this film certainly met that), so $200 million, and you have much less profit than most people think. And that's just domestic distribution - foreign deals are usually more skewed towards the foreign distributor. Also, Cameorn put up some of his own money against the gross, so he made well over $100 million. So Titanic made a tidy profit, but my guess is the studio really only made $100-200 mil., which is 5-10% of the gross - not very good by Hollywood standards
And quite a few crashes have been avoided by one pilot reading through the emergency checklist while the other performs the actions. Also, two brains/sets of eyes are almost always better: one of the pilots may think of something or see something that the other doesn't.
I had totally forgotten about this game, but I loved it. Is there any chance it's been ported to something else?
The best part of that game was the beginning when the name of the game was announced in the worst Southern accent imaginable... B-17 Baaawwwmberrrrr!
"The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video..." and ads.
If AEG worried so much about this happening, why shouldn't they be forced to hire extra security to look out for the copied merchandise? This burden should not fall on the taxpayers.
I think the consensus was that Civ IV was a flop.
Who exactly said that it was a flop? I have many friends who play Civ IV and we all agree that it's the best in the series, and I've never read anything published by a reputable source that claimed it was a flop. I could see people not liking it more if they don't get all of the subtleties or just want a simpler and faster game, but those people usually don't play Civ - they play something like Starcraft or Command and Conquer.
I have played all four Civ games (and all the expansions), and Civ IV with BtS is a much more interesting, complex, and fun game than any of its predecessors. I would estimate that I have spent ten times as many hours playing Civ IV than any of it's predecessors as well. In fact, when I heard about Civ V, I just thought, "meh." I'm sure that I'll still play Civ IV well into Civ V's "lifetime". Maybe I'll check it out if it gets stellar reviews, but I am more than content with Civ IV.
"It's very important that the arena doesn't become the sole focus of class balance for the game."
But it is the most important and most scrutinized focus of class balance. If you don't make the Arena mandatory for the best gear (please please please), then Arena balancing won't be nearly as important as it has become.
And here's an idea: Have servers/battle-groups with no Arena!
Heh, meant MMO player - damn MS Project file format.
I'm a long-time MPP player (EQ pre-expansions), and I didn't figure this out even after reading the manual (not saying it isn't there, just that I missed it somehow). His point is that the interface is not intuitive, and after having played WoW (with several add-ons), I'd have to agree. The designers could have studied countless interfaces and add-ons, and it apepars that they just stuck the button somewhere sort-of convenient.
When your character first enters one of these zones, either a pop-up should appear and say, "Hey, click this button for open parties!", or the open parties dialog should stay open until you close it (at least the first time). This is a very cool feature, and they should promote it better.
Zapmedia did have a product in development (the ZapStation) at the time of the patent filing, which would have been used to download music and movies to itself over the internet.
I believe the article is referring to the practice of placing an ad for a foreign husband, then demanding money for postage, visas, plane tickets, etc... from any responders.
I disagree that "TiVo certainly was the best of class for a while". TiVo was the most popular, but ReplayTV had a much better interface and automatically skipped commercials if you wanted it to. I had a 1st generation TiVo, but ditched it as soon as I saw my friend's ReplayTV. It wasn't even close who was better at the time.
The problem is that the stores treat everyone like criminals throughout the buying process, and then when they leave, the store hassles them yet again. It would be much more efficient and less hostile at this point to implement the method that you mention and not hassle customers while they shop.
For example, I have bought two items at Best Buy recently and was irritated by the methods they used to protect their merchandise.
First, I needed to buy a copy of Office 2007 for work. When I got to the shelf, there was a huge display about the benefits of Office, but the shelves were empty. I asked one of the peons if they had sold out, and she told me that she just had to get one from the back. Almost ten minutes later, she came out with what I asked for. I asked why she had just wasted ten minutes of my life, and she responded that they had lost thousands of dollars of this product in the preceding weeks. How is that my problem? It's fairly obvious that employees are doing the stealing here - If the cashier doesn't deactivate the magnetic strip (and a big percentage of the time when they do), the alarm goes off when you leave. So it has to be employees giving them to friends after deactivating the strip, or walking out the back with them. Best Buy hiring thieves shouldn't affect my shopping experience.
Second, I went to buy a digital camera. I spoke with the peon and told her what I wanted. She proceeded to unlock a cabinet to get the camera. I took the box, and since I needed to buy one other item, I started to walk away. She stopped me and said that I needed to pay for the item right there and not up front. I asked her why, and she said to prevent shoplifting, essentially accusing me of trying to do so. This was a digital SLR in a decent-sized box, and I was wearing shorts and t-shirt, so I asked her where I could possibly put it. She just smiled and said sorry, you have to pay here. So I told here to hold it and I went to find my other item. About five minutes later, I returned, and wanted to pay for both items. So she unlocked the cabinet again to get the camera. I asked why she had to lock it up, and she said that she couldn't leave it out, ever. So I paid for both items, and she put them in a clear plastic bag (as opposed to the yellow ones) and physically sealed it with adhesive on the bag, then attached the receipt to the bag, making it extremely obvious that I had paid for whatever was in there. I went to the front to exit, and guess what? They wanted to see my receipt and inspect the bag!
How much more Soviet can you get?
I just buy stuff online now and make sure FedEx delivers it. Too many items with a high value get "lost" when you send them via UPS.
Are you saying that intelligent people are naturally luckier than stupid people? That they have fewer morals (I guess this could be argued about both sides by the other side)? That more intelligent people are born rich? This can't be true. Luck is, well, not definable. And even if more children who are born to rich families that are intelligent as opposed to rich stupid families, that doesn't necessarily mean that their children will be intelligent.
In America, at least, people make their own luck for the most part, and virtually anyone can become successful if they work hard enough and make intelligent decisions. I know plenty of people who make more than they should if income equaled intelligence (me included). Conversely, plenty of my friends are extremely intelligent and choose to be teachers or nurses or in one case a construction worker because it makes them happy. I have no doubt that if the latter group wanted to be more financially successful, they could be. Being rich has very little to do with luck, being born "privileged", or having fewer morals. Intelligence and hard work are certainly much bigger factors.
Jaws, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, The Sixth Sense, Spiderman 1/2, X-Men 1/2 to name a few.
It's now Wii Golf Fridays.
If movie theaters are any indication, then prices won't go down, but will continue to rise. I managed theaters for a while, and despite our astronomical concession prices, we weren't rolling in dough. Pre-trailer ads were another revenue stream, for essentially no effort. A few people stopped coming because of the ads, but the extra money more than made up for it. Just like a few people might not buy a game with ads, but most won't care.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=36328
"Blade Runner: Final Cut will arrive in 2007 for a limited 25th-anniversary theatrical run, followed by a special-edition DVD with the three previous versions offered as alternate viewing."
I played Everquest pretty much from the beginning, and, even though I'm male, at some point I created a female Barbarian (Henna Barberra - ah fun with last names). She became my main, and when I would stand at EC and give SoWs for donations, players would always give me much more than normal. Some higher level players would just run up and give me nice items and not even want the SoW. Of course this led to plenty of A/S/L tells. I don't play female characters any longer - the free stuff isn't worth all the "Hey, baby"'s. It's probably somewhat better now that more females actually play, but during EQ's early days, female players were extremely rare.
WotC could make a CCG similar to Magic: the Gathering out of this: Your cards would be patents and lawyers and politicians and your "life" would be money. The battlefield would be the courts and fights would be lawsuits. Whoever makes the other guy go "broke" first wins. I'm filing a patent right now!
I really hope this is not the case. If it is, then the 80s edition will be the last dollar they get from me. It's ridiculous to make people pay for a new game and a new controller just because. There is no reason that the current controllers shouldn't work with Guitar Hero 3. I will buy new packs of songs all day long, but I won't buy another controller. In fact, if they don't find a way to make the current GH controller work with Rock Band, I won't be buying that, either.