I know a team that's studying trust and loyalty interests in online commerce circumstances (i.e. eBay, company stores, etc.). I'm posting this in case anybody's interested in such matters.
I suspect it's likely cheaper to stamp out a product all at once than constantly returning to the manufacturer. Since the game needed updating the day it was released (the beta client was more updated!), it wouldn't make too much of a difference to Blizzard how new the disks were. Besides, I'm sure you've heard of their much-vaunted torrent updater, so bandwidth costs would be relatively low compared to other games anyhow.
Oh, and it was one year - I think they'd probably have boxes sitting around in a warehouse somewhere and slowly let them out as stores normally ran out-of-stock and needed to reorder.
There isn't much spin there. They say they did have plans in place for when the game grew, and that they did successfully double their server count quickly, but they do come out and say they had problems as well.
Ah... good memories abound. Especially of the earlier two games, I would have to say they were my favourite. I could never really sympathize or connect with the characters in the later games - they often just seemed so one-dimensional and I think the FMV aspect ruined it for me. Granted, the later games were still great space sims, but I much preferred the look and feel of the cutscenes in Wing Commander 1 and 2. Privateer (the first one) was quite good as well. When the animated characters were replaced by actual actors, I felt a lot of them lost a lot of their defining features about who they were. It was like watching new people make the old motions. I guess that's sort of true since they replaced most of the characters every game iteration, but......I just finished Prophecy recently. The bad end-game clip is memorable - mostly because it is one of the worst I've ever seen. >_
Oh, yeah. If you look at the CIC website, you'll notice that they have the episodes from the animated show online. I've been downloading them singly over the past few months and I must have to say that they're pretty decent.
...Because every little bit they do to discourage mob farming and 'boters will improve the playability of the game. Aside from fairness issues with regards to equipment and money, if the market grows enough then you will get huge groups of people killing mobs everywhere, making it hard for regular players to level and complete quests. You'll end up with a thousand silent players who never talk or interact and are focused only on making money. I'd rather have a smaller population of people I can have fun with than a huge population of resource-sucking scenary. It kills the economy and the atmosphere - perhaps moreso on the roleplaying servers. I suspect Blizzard would be able to retain a larger customer base if these farmers didn't exist because farming does discourage people from playing games.
In any case, some of those people in the Terra Nova blog also mentioned that dealing with eBayers would also be a good way to determine who were farming, selling and buying in-game items.
And.... it's down already. I wish they had an option to distribute this using some kind of universal bittorent client. I know a lot of people don't like it, but if they would give easy access to all their files using some special client then there would be a better chance that a dedicated fileserver wouldn't collapse under all the requests.
Not really. Other than the server queues (which a lot of people gripe about; I agree with them) on the busiest servers, they seem to have fixed their lag issues. My gameplay has been nearly flawless since the issues experienced during the first day or so.
Is this where I lose my identity and accidentally infiltrate a rogue organization on Mars? Then destroy the plans of some egocentric, half-mad politician?
Yeah, I actually had this idea a while ago - it would be neat if instead of having to carry around an mp3 player, you could just get a handsfree cellular phone device, switch your phone on and stream music over the network from your home machine or perhaps some huge online database where you can pay to have access to music. Then you wouldn't have to worry about having your mp3 player stolen, the amount of space on it, or even what to bring (not that 20GB is big enough for some of you folks out there, eh?).
A'course, there are already dial-a-song businesses out there... and I'm told that the bandwidth just isn't there yet for streaming music over cellphones?
How would you feel to know that you were born stuck on a floating mass of elements out in cold, bleak space?
If it's all the brain knows and will ever know, how can you begin to understand its perspective? If it's happy doing what it's doing, how do you know it'd even care? If it even capable of coherent thought, I suspect you'd find that you'd have very little in the way of commonalities with this... life form. It could be like trying to explain the concept of the "soul" to a chimpanzee.
I wonder if a brain could feel pleasure. I'm certainly no biologist or brain surgeon, but couldn't you duplicate the effects of pleasure simply by releasing the proper enzymes into the brain pan? Maybe more sugars?
This reminds me of The Ship that Sang. Except... less cuddly and much more ratlike.
I wonder what the possible incarnations of this technology would be like... would they replace airline pilots? What would happen if one went insane?/Could/ it go insane? I guess a brain computer could have a lot more processing power than current logic gate technology, but it'd be like comparing an apple to an orange.
I wonder what the PETA and other ethics groups will say in response to this research.
As I read the article, I just kept thinking about how a decentralized, p2p network could work better, assuming security could be kept tight. Think about it - instead of each unit having a single communications node which had to stop to communicate using high-powered electronics - a single point of failure - why not outfit each and every vehicle with a low-powered communications rig which could pass messages along more readily and improve the chances of data getting passed around? This could include aircraft for longer-range transmission jumps.
I don't know how feasible it is as an idea, but that's where everything comes from.
Perhaps, but it would decrease the incentive for businesses to develop, implement or otherwise invest in fancy and innovative internet solutions, technologies, or services. Would you bother to establish or maintain a service that only a very small portion of your audience makes use of?
That may include spamming and advertising, but that would also include things such as product information publishing, gaming, etc.
The very likelihood is that the internet won't collapse, but limiting the access to specific groups of people is a bad idea (not that that'll happen either).
...what would be kind of neat is some way to store publicly viewable information of your own will somewhere that people can get at it easily... or perhaps something where you're guaranteed anonymity for sharing this information. Imagine walking into a store and instead of having to browse through several minutes of stuff you don't want to get to what you do, the stuff you'd be interested would be at immediate access. Imagine listening to the radio but instead of having to pick a station and live with it, or having to compile your own music, the station'll dynamically pick out the sorts of music you enjoy and play them for you. I guess something like that would be a pay service though.
There are multitudes of ways the idea could be abused, but everything starts out as a dream... right?:)
Yes... and just about every agreement on every free service which I've read includes your giving the right to the company in question to share your personal information with any other corporate entity who comes along.
Slashdot Mirror
I know a team that's studying trust and loyalty interests in online commerce circumstances (i.e. eBay, company stores, etc.). I'm posting this in case anybody's interested in such matters.
http://www.eloyalty.ca/
I met a guy in Milliways who did it for tax reasons.
It sounds more like an answer.
I suspect it's likely cheaper to stamp out a product all at once than constantly returning to the manufacturer. Since the game needed updating the day it was released (the beta client was more updated!), it wouldn't make too much of a difference to Blizzard how new the disks were. Besides, I'm sure you've heard of their much-vaunted torrent updater, so bandwidth costs would be relatively low compared to other games anyhow.
Oh, and it was one year - I think they'd probably have boxes sitting around in a warehouse somewhere and slowly let them out as stores normally ran out-of-stock and needed to reorder.
There isn't much spin there. They say they did have plans in place for when the game grew, and that they did successfully double their server count quickly, but they do come out and say they had problems as well.
Does anybody else get bothered by the phrase "god-fearing"? I mean really, you should love your god.
Not that I subscribe to any religion, but why would you follow some superior being that you fear over all-else?
The problem is just contacting them (PayPal - eBay is easy). >_ Unless you're a representative of a major company, that can be rather frustrating.
Someone mod the parent up! It's almost the only comment worth reading in this mess.
May as well be "Gnome-be-gone", considering what happened to the city.
Ah... good memories abound. Especially of the earlier two games, I would have to say they were my favourite. I could never really sympathize or connect with the characters in the later games - they often just seemed so one-dimensional and I think the FMV aspect ruined it for me. Granted, the later games were still great space sims, but I much preferred the look and feel of the cutscenes in Wing Commander 1 and 2. Privateer (the first one) was quite good as well. When the animated characters were replaced by actual actors, I felt a lot of them lost a lot of their defining features about who they were. It was like watching new people make the old motions. I guess that's sort of true since they replaced most of the characters every game iteration, but... ...I just finished Prophecy recently. The bad end-game clip is memorable - mostly because it is one of the worst I've ever seen. >_
Oh, yeah. If you look at the CIC website, you'll notice that they have the episodes from the animated show online. I've been downloading them singly over the past few months and I must have to say that they're pretty decent.
...Because every little bit they do to discourage mob farming and 'boters will improve the playability of the game. Aside from fairness issues with regards to equipment and money, if the market grows enough then you will get huge groups of people killing mobs everywhere, making it hard for regular players to level and complete quests. You'll end up with a thousand silent players who never talk or interact and are focused only on making money. I'd rather have a smaller population of people I can have fun with than a huge population of resource-sucking scenary. It kills the economy and the atmosphere - perhaps moreso on the roleplaying servers. I suspect Blizzard would be able to retain a larger customer base if these farmers didn't exist because farming does discourage people from playing games.
In any case, some of those people in the Terra Nova blog also mentioned that dealing with eBayers would also be a good way to determine who were farming, selling and buying in-game items.
They do, but I meant to roll it out as a method to distribute all their files - not just their patches.
And.... it's down already. I wish they had an option to distribute this using some kind of universal bittorent client. I know a lot of people don't like it, but if they would give easy access to all their files using some special client then there would be a better chance that a dedicated fileserver wouldn't collapse under all the requests.
Not really. Other than the server queues (which a lot of people gripe about; I agree with them) on the busiest servers, they seem to have fixed their lag issues. My gameplay has been nearly flawless since the issues experienced during the first day or so.
Is this where I lose my identity and accidentally infiltrate a rogue organization on Mars? Then destroy the plans of some egocentric, half-mad politician?
Well, I guess Bush isn't half-mad yet.
Yeah, I actually had this idea a while ago - it would be neat if instead of having to carry around an mp3 player, you could just get a handsfree cellular phone device, switch your phone on and stream music over the network from your home machine or perhaps some huge online database where you can pay to have access to music. Then you wouldn't have to worry about having your mp3 player stolen, the amount of space on it, or even what to bring (not that 20GB is big enough for some of you folks out there, eh?).
A'course, there are already dial-a-song businesses out there... and I'm told that the bandwidth just isn't there yet for streaming music over cellphones?
Wait until they integrate peltiers into their drink cans. That would be kind of neat -- self-cooling drinks!
How would you feel to know that you were born stuck on a floating mass of elements out in cold, bleak space?
... life form. It could be like trying to explain the concept of the "soul" to a chimpanzee.
If it's all the brain knows and will ever know, how can you begin to understand its perspective? If it's happy doing what it's doing, how do you know it'd even care? If it even capable of coherent thought, I suspect you'd find that you'd have very little in the way of commonalities with this
This is a rather neat topic.
I wonder if a brain could feel pleasure. I'm certainly no biologist or brain surgeon, but couldn't you duplicate the effects of pleasure simply by releasing the proper enzymes into the brain pan? Maybe more sugars?
This reminds me of The Ship that Sang. Except... less cuddly and much more ratlike.
/Could/ it go insane? I guess a brain computer could have a lot more processing power than current logic gate technology, but it'd be like comparing an apple to an orange.
I wonder what the possible incarnations of this technology would be like... would they replace airline pilots? What would happen if one went insane?
I wonder what the PETA and other ethics groups will say in response to this research.
I agree. Imagine a suicide bomber in Israel with a small nuclear warhead.
As I read the article, I just kept thinking about how a decentralized, p2p network could work better, assuming security could be kept tight. Think about it - instead of each unit having a single communications node which had to stop to communicate using high-powered electronics - a single point of failure - why not outfit each and every vehicle with a low-powered communications rig which could pass messages along more readily and improve the chances of data getting passed around? This could include aircraft for longer-range transmission jumps.
I don't know how feasible it is as an idea, but that's where everything comes from.
Perhaps, but I recall that there were a number of threads that were left untied... such as her mouse army.
It was a rather good book - but I do agree that the ending left a bit to be desired.
Perhaps, but it would decrease the incentive for businesses to develop, implement or otherwise invest in fancy and innovative internet solutions, technologies, or services. Would you bother to establish or maintain a service that only a very small portion of your audience makes use of?
That may include spamming and advertising, but that would also include things such as product information publishing, gaming, etc.
The very likelihood is that the internet won't collapse, but limiting the access to specific groups of people is a bad idea (not that that'll happen either).
...what would be kind of neat is some way to store publicly viewable information of your own will somewhere that people can get at it easily... or perhaps something where you're guaranteed anonymity for sharing this information. Imagine walking into a store and instead of having to browse through several minutes of stuff you don't want to get to what you do, the stuff you'd be interested would be at immediate access. Imagine listening to the radio but instead of having to pick a station and live with it, or having to compile your own music, the station'll dynamically pick out the sorts of music you enjoy and play them for you. I guess something like that would be a pay service though.
:)
There are multitudes of ways the idea could be abused, but everything starts out as a dream... right?
Yes... and just about every agreement on every free service which I've read includes your giving the right to the company in question to share your personal information with any other corporate entity who comes along.