I think the issue there may not be as much a matter of video games in general, but of sequels that should just die and developers who should take a risk once in a while:)
It's possible to cater to more than one skill level, though. In fact, I just picked up Forza 4 and it's a good example - it has 5 difficulty levels that let beginners have fun and experts experience accurate racing techniquies. I haven't played a decent driving game in a while so I started at "medium". If I get into it, I'll probably bump it up to hard/advanced, but may never go to expert since I just don't have enough time to practice these days. Same with some of the better FPS shooters, etc - you can choose if you want aim assist or not. Honestly, these days I usually leave it on because again I don't have the time to put into it, and just want to experience the story, etc.
I play plenty of video games on consoles and the PC, and have for over 30 years. You know what? I don't see any difference (beyond all of the technological innovations) because there are just as many *real* games out there as there have always been.
So a bunch of middle-aged homemakers are now sucked into Farmville - these are *new* customers who have never played the "traditional" video games that existed before the glut of free-to-play Facebook crap, and will probably never be a part of that market.
Face it, the markets for "real" console and PC video games and free-to-play social network games have very little overlap, so there is no reason to think the popularity of the latter will kill the former. It's like claiming hamburger sales are doomed because the vegetarians are eating more tofu.
After it was released? Wow, there must be a lot of Apple Store employees losing their jobs today then:) I'm not talking about prototypes. I'm talking about giving a couple thousand dollars worth of hardware to one of the founders of the company - one who regularly talks about the products publicly.
Doesn't matter, though, since he probably wouldn't accept them. He has no need to get free stuff financially, and clearly likes being out there in line with the rest of the Apple consumers/fans supporting the company and paying retail...
Woz is rich, no question, but you are highly overestimating his net worth, which apparently is closer to $100M. He's nowhere near a "billionaire". Steve Jobs would never have let that happen... (too soon?:)
No question they'd give him as many phones as he wanted, though. I think it's both a matter of promoting the product (why wouldn't an Apple shareholder want to do that?) and a sense of wanting to be in the trenches like everyone else (as he always wanted to be when working at Apple).
Did they take the code for free because they could? Yep. Did they offer anything back?
Umm, actually, AMD released the original open source driver and has contributed a lot to its development. So it's *mostly* paid people from the same company that makes the proprietary driver. You'll be hard pressed to find any of the Radeon open source devs complain too much about AMD on this, as they have really helped improve the state of AMD/ATI graphics support on Linux...
After their sugar daddies told them to vote for it, of course - Wall Street controls Congress, not the other 99% of the voting population who "elected" them. Back to point;)
I totally agree. The 3rd gen RX-7 was one of the better looking (and performing) cars Japan has produced. The RX-8 was ugly as shit and the performance wasn't even close...
And, really, even without asking questions like that directly you should be able to get am idea of how rigorous their development processes are. If I went through an entire interview with 4-5 engineers and not one of them asked me about unit testing, versioning, deployment, scalability, tools, etc, then that's a pretty big red flag right there...
if the people who responded to this actually had some knowledge about the United Kingdom's legal structure. ... This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the case in the United Kingdom.
So, summary is you responded but had no actual knowledge of the United Kingdom's legal structure?
So they're nothing more than a forum for the candidates to issue sound bites now.
Actually, the Republican debates have been a lot more than that so far. It's been a great forum for the candidates to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot.
But that's exactly their POINT. The protests aren't some form of "dangerous class warfare" as the right wing pundits claim; it's not "the peasants revolting". These are people from the lower class and lower through upper middle class - ie. "the bottom 99% of the population" - speaking out against the completely imbalanced financial and *political* control of a supposed democracy.
His parents sound just about as reasonable as you could get in this situation. While he is taking college level math and science, they are sending him to an arts-oriented junior high and he's on a swim and ultimate team. They are trying to expose him to a wide range of activities as well as other kids his age so that he will be emotionally ready for college, etc.
After all of the "tiger mom" stories these days, it's nice to see parents with a bit of real foresight into their children's future *happiness* once in a while.
What? Did you read my post? It was only two sentences, and stated two unarguable facts - the summary said Yahoo loses money, and the truth is they make a (small) profit.
Personally I don't disagree with you that Yahoo is screwed in the long term, but my post has absolutely NOTHING to do with my understanding of their market. It was a simple statement of "a profit is not a loss" and nothing more. To post as much as you did in response to that, I think you must be the one with the agenda:)
Actually, I agree with everything you said (other than the horrible grammar) - but it doesn't really have anything to do with my post:) Regardless of all the ways they can and should fail, they are making a profit, and stating otherwise is incorrect.
I'm not saying, it's right, but I guarantee you posters on financial sites have been sued many times in the past - ironically several times on Yahoo Finance boards...
I know Yahoo isn't particularly trendy right now, but their 2010 EPS was 0.88 and they have made a profit so far every quarter on 2011.
Calling them "money-losing" in a slashdot post isn't only completely incorrect and horrible journalism (thanks, Timothy), but lesser publications and individuals have been sued for libel for this sort of thing when it affects the stock price...
Not only that, but US and Japanese companies (like Mazda & Ford, GM & Toyota) have made joint ventures to share technology - not only engines, but many parts of some of their high volume cars.
Besides, that CTO is full of crap anyway, Asia has *plenty* of NIH issues. Just look at Samsung, Mitsubishi/Panasonic, Sony (less so now, though) - the amount of vertical integration (esp. Samsung, Mistubishi) or use of in house technologies over standards (Sony - Memory Stick, Minidisk/ATRAC, UMD, etc) is huge there.
The start menu does let you use all kinds of switches, etc when launching an app. You just need to know the right shortcut keys to get to it: Window-c-m-d-Enter;)
Hey, I have written code almost exclusively for Linux in the last 10 years (mostly embedded TVs/BD players, though - where it's now about 95% market share!)
But, yes, I do believe Apple is beating Microsoft in UI (well, more in general "usability", which also includes hardware). I think I may be the last person in the office who hasn't switched to a Macbook Pro, and most of us are primarily Linux developers:) Apparently Apple's desktop/laptop share is up to about 25%, which is a huge gain over the last few years. Microsoft is definitely in panic-mode on the desktop, for home users, at least.
This is just Microsoft moving things around to justify the never-ending upgrade cycle.
No, it's really not. It's Microsoft completely freaking out that Apple is eating their lunch in the UI department, and has been working to unify their UI across platforms as well. Now they are trying to do the same as Apple with Windows Phone, XBox, and Windows 8. The scary part is that they seem to be basing the latter two on the former's UI. Windows Phone 7 UI is interesting, but it's not like it's proven in the slightest...
Slashdot Mirror
I think the issue there may not be as much a matter of video games in general, but of sequels that should just die and developers who should take a risk once in a while :)
It's possible to cater to more than one skill level, though. In fact, I just picked up Forza 4 and it's a good example - it has 5 difficulty levels that let beginners have fun and experts experience accurate racing techniquies. I haven't played a decent driving game in a while so I started at "medium". If I get into it, I'll probably bump it up to hard/advanced, but may never go to expert since I just don't have enough time to practice these days. Same with some of the better FPS shooters, etc - you can choose if you want aim assist or not. Honestly, these days I usually leave it on because again I don't have the time to put into it, and just want to experience the story, etc.
I play plenty of video games on consoles and the PC, and have for over 30 years. You know what? I don't see any difference (beyond all of the technological innovations) because there are just as many *real* games out there as there have always been.
So a bunch of middle-aged homemakers are now sucked into Farmville - these are *new* customers who have never played the "traditional" video games that existed before the glut of free-to-play Facebook crap, and will probably never be a part of that market.
Face it, the markets for "real" console and PC video games and free-to-play social network games have very little overlap, so there is no reason to think the popularity of the latter will kill the former. It's like claiming hamburger sales are doomed because the vegetarians are eating more tofu.
After it was released? Wow, there must be a lot of Apple Store employees losing their jobs today then :) I'm not talking about prototypes. I'm talking about giving a couple thousand dollars worth of hardware to one of the founders of the company - one who regularly talks about the products publicly.
Doesn't matter, though, since he probably wouldn't accept them. He has no need to get free stuff financially, and clearly likes being out there in line with the rest of the Apple consumers/fans supporting the company and paying retail...
Yeah, because bicycle owners have never figured this out either... ;)
Woz is rich, no question, but you are highly overestimating his net worth, which apparently is closer to $100M. He's nowhere near a "billionaire". Steve Jobs would never have let that happen... (too soon? :)
No question they'd give him as many phones as he wanted, though. I think it's both a matter of promoting the product (why wouldn't an Apple shareholder want to do that?) and a sense of wanting to be in the trenches like everyone else (as he always wanted to be when working at Apple).
Did they take the code for free because they could? Yep. Did they offer anything back?
Umm, actually, AMD released the original open source driver and has contributed a lot to its development. So it's *mostly* paid people from the same company that makes the proprietary driver. You'll be hard pressed to find any of the Radeon open source devs complain too much about AMD on this, as they have really helped improve the state of AMD/ATI graphics support on Linux...
After their sugar daddies told them to vote for it, of course - Wall Street controls Congress, not the other 99% of the voting population who "elected" them. Back to point ;)
I totally agree. The 3rd gen RX-7 was one of the better looking (and performing) cars Japan has produced. The RX-8 was ugly as shit and the performance wasn't even close...
And, really, even without asking questions like that directly you should be able to get am idea of how rigorous their development processes are. If I went through an entire interview with 4-5 engineers and not one of them asked me about unit testing, versioning, deployment, scalability, tools, etc, then that's a pretty big red flag right there...
if the people who responded to this actually had some knowledge about the United Kingdom's legal structure.
...
This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the case in the United Kingdom.
So, summary is you responded but had no actual knowledge of the United Kingdom's legal structure?
Congress.
So they're nothing more than a forum for the candidates to issue sound bites now.
Actually, the Republican debates have been a lot more than that so far. It's been a great forum for the candidates to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot.
But that's exactly their POINT. The protests aren't some form of "dangerous class warfare" as the right wing pundits claim; it's not "the peasants revolting". These are people from the lower class and lower through upper middle class - ie. "the bottom 99% of the population" - speaking out against the completely imbalanced financial and *political* control of a supposed democracy.
You didn't RTFA, did you? :)
His parents sound just about as reasonable as you could get in this situation. While he is taking college level math and science, they are sending him to an arts-oriented junior high and he's on a swim and ultimate team. They are trying to expose him to a wide range of activities as well as other kids his age so that he will be emotionally ready for college, etc.
After all of the "tiger mom" stories these days, it's nice to see parents with a bit of real foresight into their children's future *happiness* once in a while.
What? Did you read my post? It was only two sentences, and stated two unarguable facts - the summary said Yahoo loses money, and the truth is they make a (small) profit.
Personally I don't disagree with you that Yahoo is screwed in the long term, but my post has absolutely NOTHING to do with my understanding of their market. It was a simple statement of "a profit is not a loss" and nothing more. To post as much as you did in response to that, I think you must be the one with the agenda :)
That part was sarcasm ;) But seriously, there have been a number of lawsuits over posts in Yahoo Finance forums in recent years...
Actually, I agree with everything you said (other than the horrible grammar) - but it doesn't really have anything to do with my post :) Regardless of all the ways they can and should fail, they are making a profit, and stating otherwise is incorrect.
I'm not saying, it's right, but I guarantee you posters on financial sites have been sued many times in the past - ironically several times on Yahoo Finance boards...
I know Yahoo isn't particularly trendy right now, but their 2010 EPS was 0.88 and they have made a profit so far every quarter on 2011.
Calling them "money-losing" in a slashdot post isn't only completely incorrect and horrible journalism (thanks, Timothy), but lesser publications and individuals have been sued for libel for this sort of thing when it affects the stock price...
Not only that, but US and Japanese companies (like Mazda & Ford, GM & Toyota) have made joint ventures to share technology - not only engines, but many parts of some of their high volume cars.
Besides, that CTO is full of crap anyway, Asia has *plenty* of NIH issues. Just look at Samsung, Mitsubishi/Panasonic, Sony (less so now, though) - the amount of vertical integration (esp. Samsung, Mistubishi) or use of in house technologies over standards (Sony - Memory Stick, Minidisk/ATRAC, UMD, etc) is huge there.
Gives that term a whole new meaning...
The start menu does let you use all kinds of switches, etc when launching an app. You just need to know the right shortcut keys to get to it: Window-c-m-d-Enter ;)
Hey, I have written code almost exclusively for Linux in the last 10 years (mostly embedded TVs/BD players, though - where it's now about 95% market share!)
But, yes, I do believe Apple is beating Microsoft in UI (well, more in general "usability", which also includes hardware). I think I may be the last person in the office who hasn't switched to a Macbook Pro, and most of us are primarily Linux developers :) Apparently Apple's desktop/laptop share is up to about 25%, which is a huge gain over the last few years. Microsoft is definitely in panic-mode on the desktop, for home users, at least.
This is just Microsoft moving things around to justify the never-ending upgrade cycle.
No, it's really not. It's Microsoft completely freaking out that Apple is eating their lunch in the UI department, and has been working to unify their UI across platforms as well. Now they are trying to do the same as Apple with Windows Phone, XBox, and Windows 8. The scary part is that they seem to be basing the latter two on the former's UI. Windows Phone 7 UI is interesting, but it's not like it's proven in the slightest...