Their tactics could use some updating certainly, but there's a lot of money to be made in creating the next big star. Recorded music is still a commodity, and what drives the price up of concert tickets? A: Who is most famous. How do they get famous? A: Recording industry promotes them.
What would happen without the recording industry? A: They'd become popular by internet vote and word-of-mouth, someone would claim to have "made them famous" on their website and demand some of their earnings from concerts, videos, commercials. Other people would hop on that bandwagon, realize it's easier to promote people if they work together, and they'd call it the WMIA, World Music Industry Association, claiming rights throughout the world as an "international" (ie internet-based) company.
You'd think the way people talk that big industries are just a bunch of small people being greedy. Well, you'd be right.
THey need to make the Prince not superhuman. His little leaps and swinging around poles should not be Daredevil-simple. Make him scared to try it. Sure he'll get better at it, but make it realistic...how would you feel if you had to wall run along a pit of spikes?
I think what most people don't realize, except maybe on a subconscious level, is that they are making their own stories. Remember Sam telling Frodo during their journey about being part of a story and how it doesn't really feel the same because you don't know what's next as you're part of it?
Consider some of your adventures in WoW (or EQ, or DAOC, etc). If you were to write them down, use some pretty prose, you might even have a good story. It's not part of the overwhelming "story of the world", but then it's not that way in real life either.
"The trip from the keep was uneventful until we reached the place where the forest thins and the desert wastes begins. Our party of six nearly became a party of five as we were beset upon by a great flying Griffon. Why our wily ranger didn't notice the creature before it arrived still puzzles me, but it was his bow that gave us the time to escape into the little cave hidden in the wall of the dunes. If only we'd had time to prepare for what we found in there..."
Your group ran from Freeport to the undead dungeon of Befallen and almost was wiped out by one of those high-level griffons that inhabit the area. See...a story!
There's that one episode of original Star Trek where a world with two countries is at war. They fight with computer simulations, and send any people "hit" into incinerators. This destroying of only people and not infrastructure preserves their "civilization".
SPOILER Kirk, in the end, destroys one of the country's main computers. The leader tells him that the other country will think they're going to really attack. There will be real war. Kirk says fighting a "real" war will let both countries realize why wars should not be fought without purpose, and should be ended as quickly as possible.
It's like a really slow motorcycle or a really expensive electric razor (those two wheeled scooters) that you can't take inside a building. All it really did was make traffic cops more prone to being overweight since they don't have to walk their beat.
Seems to me that anywhere the Segway can go, a person can walk or bike just as easily (or more easily). The people who could actually make use of it, the elderly, probably shouldn't risk riding one as even a multi-talented President can fall off of one.
Not saying that either Counter-Strike or FEAR changed the genre, but here's my take:
CS: Squad-based, limited time per match. Damage is realistic (relatively speaking) so teamwork, strategy (where to go, what your weapon's shot pattern is, etc), and good control are all vital to success. I suck at it, so I should know.
FEAR: With all effects on, it's like being in a firefight. Dust kicking up, sparks, explosions, enemies hopping over railings, flanking you, ragdoll physics. It's crazy good fun just for that. And the story...it beats HL and HL2 for actual plot. And it's totally creepy too. Even after you're done, you're still trying to figure out exactly what you've accomplished and what you're part of, and who she really is. Good stuff.
My opinion is that World of Warcraft's popularity is due to its original base in the hugely popular Warcraft series of games. Without that, it would be just another EQ clone like the rest of the games. For 3 million people, the name Warcraft introduced them to the MMORPG, something a new title like Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot wouldn't do. Would Spiderman the movie have been nearly as popular if it was called "Webman" and was loosely based off of Spider-man? I'd say not.
I played EQ "for fun"...two years and I had a single paladin up to level 38 (never did get those new spells). At that level, I was meeting people who were out not to have fun, but not to die, and that got real boring, real quick.
"Let's go camp the bears," they'd say, because it was safe XP. But who wants safe? What kind of paladin doesn't want to fight to save the group, casting lay hands on the besieged wizard just in time to port the rest of the party out, while taking his death blow just as the blue lights starts flashing.
Pulling and killing wasn't a game. It was one method of watching your XP bar go up. Even with people you had a good time with in chat, it just didn't have the adrenaline needed to keep me interested.
Coke isn't unique, but neither is google, amazon, napster, etc. They were simply the first to make their contribution popular to the world. Coke is the biggest brand of corn syrupy sugar drink in the world and without their marketing, you might still be drinking tonic water with your burger. Instead, people are gaining extra cavities and 150 calories a can while getting fat off the sugar content.
Coke's contribution to the world, like most major events, cuts both ways. You get a tasty soft drink that your friends can agree on, but trade off on health issues. Why's America fat? Coke. Period.
As OSes get more advanced, we'll see them start to converge (as we always have) on features. The defining traits will be ease of use and security, but functionality will likely end up being very very similar. It's like complaining that the Honda Civic has four tires, JUST like the Toyota Corolla.
After Everquest, I never really played MMORPGs. Tested a few, but once you're off the kick, you realize how much time you spend doing other things when you're not playing the game. But during that 2 year stint, I was pretty hooked. Here are some of the symptoms:
1) People listening to your phone conversations with other EQ players may truly believe that you have a sword you pried from the hands of a dead orc in your closet. You literally talk like you lived it: "Last night was great! Can't believe we survived that....Did you end up getting the sword? I didn't see. Oh, cool. Any chance I could borrow your axe then, until I get something better?"
2) Pressing, I think, F10 would toggle off the menus so you could see more of the screen. Driving down the highway with the shade things down (can't remember what the actual name is), instead of just putting them back up against the ceiling to see better, I put my finger out towards the dashboard...
3) You've heard this before, but it's true: You walk down the street and con people. Big ugly guys con red, so do beautiful women with attitudes...
So yes, you think about the game alot, and try to play it whenever you can. Very happy I got out of it.
It's a series of tubes. Tangled up tubes. Those democrats went and treated it like a truck...you can't do that! It's not something you can just dump things into. It's just tubes.
I remember when 8.6 came out. He toted it as a "Whole New Macintosh!" when, to most users, it just meant that, when you viewed the contents of a folder, the rows alternated colors for easier reading.
I'd rather be underwhelmed and content, than overwhelmed, just to fall farther down.
It's a disposable society. If they wanted an indestructible, high-quality cell phone, you'd get it. But it's better to have ones that are cheap or free, but don't last more than, say, half the length of your contract. That way, when you need to replace your phone, and you still don't want to pay alot (for the piece of crap), you need to renew, which, at $60-$100 a month, is a way better deal for the cell phone companies than selling a new phone.
The original Star Trek's stories were usually more thought-provoking than many modern TV shows. They didn't focus on interstellar battles, but more on moral dilemmas (Favorite Episode: Two countries on a planet wage "computer war" against each other - the only casualties are the humans, forced to walk into incinerators when the enemy's computer scored a "direct hit". This preserves "civilization": their cities and infrastructure, while still allowing their enmities to continue. I won't spoil it, but Kirk comes up with a meaningful solution).
The NG was just, well, sci-fi stories. I never paid attention to the other series much.
People are generally trusted implicitly because there isn't any gain to doing something wrong in the workplace. While it's not hard to think up reasons to commit a cybercrime, most people don't really gain anything by it, so why bother doing it? And if you are going to gain something by it, you're likely going to be on the list of suspects.
I equate it to seeing all those big plate glass windows in store fronts, and yet there's nary a brick through any one of them. Only time there is, is when someone wants something inside and can't get it another way -- and then they're easily caught.
It's simple. The same reason a civilian grocer and his family are disintegrated by an errant missile is the exact same reason someone would deface a NASA website to protest a war between two Middle-Eastern countries. Same reason we invaded Iraq to wreak revenge against the 9/11 terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
Makes perfect sense to me. Well-documented too. Just look up "Insanity" in any psychological text, and you can find the branching information.
That's funny. My brother manages a team of a dozen or so employees for a large Canadian-based networking company (any guesses?). He was telling me that after he went against HR's recommendations, and got burned, he now listens to them. The guy he wanted had the skillset my brother was looking for. HR told him he'd be a bad hire, that he just wouldn't put in the time you want him to. Hired him anyway, and fired him in 2 months and started the whole process over again.
I will up the caching limit on the SQL database. New Category 6 cabling to the gigabit switches in the network closet. Error catching code will be updated on the finance web application. Roaming profiles will no longer store temporary internet files.
Vote for me and all your wildest dreams will come true.
It seems to me that CDs are just the advertising for the concerts. The RIAA and the labels pay quite a bit of money to put your name out, market your image, distribute your CD. It's up to you, as the artist, to go out there and use that advertising to get people to show up at your concerts.
This is why smaller artists can benefit hugely from internet music sites - essentially free advertising.
Just got back to planet Earth, did you? Illegal phone taps of all Americans without warrant, American citizens winding up in Guantanamo Bay without trial or due process. There's evidence, and now the government is pulling a Half-Life 2 and saying, "You're not allowed to look into our obviously suspect activities." Not even hiding it anymore. Do you get what that means? Don't shrug it off as another "news" story from "mass media". If you do, you'll probably be in some secret prison in Europe before you realize you should have thought, "Oh sh-t!"
All that being said, you're damn right people should speak what they believe. Good words.
I'm switching out my stock Honda player for an iPod compatible one (my Honda CD player skips when I change lanes anyway...maybe that's where Bortcher got his idead from...). My girlfriend and I commute to work together, just got her a nano. So she can flip tunes while I try not to get us killed. All while being environmentally conscious.:-)
There are so many cars in the U.S., that no one really has to sit in the back seat.
Slashdot Mirror
Their tactics could use some updating certainly, but there's a lot of money to be made in creating the next big star. Recorded music is still a commodity, and what drives the price up of concert tickets? A: Who is most famous. How do they get famous? A: Recording industry promotes them.
What would happen without the recording industry? A: They'd become popular by internet vote and word-of-mouth, someone would claim to have "made them famous" on their website and demand some of their earnings from concerts, videos, commercials. Other people would hop on that bandwagon, realize it's easier to promote people if they work together, and they'd call it the WMIA, World Music Industry Association, claiming rights throughout the world as an "international" (ie internet-based) company.
You'd think the way people talk that big industries are just a bunch of small people being greedy. Well, you'd be right.
THey need to make the Prince not superhuman. His little leaps and swinging around poles should not be Daredevil-simple. Make him scared to try it. Sure he'll get better at it, but make it realistic...how would you feel if you had to wall run along a pit of spikes?
I think what most people don't realize, except maybe on a subconscious level, is that they are making their own stories. Remember Sam telling Frodo during their journey about being part of a story and how it doesn't really feel the same because you don't know what's next as you're part of it?
Consider some of your adventures in WoW (or EQ, or DAOC, etc). If you were to write them down, use some pretty prose, you might even have a good story. It's not part of the overwhelming "story of the world", but then it's not that way in real life either.
"The trip from the keep was uneventful until we reached the place where the forest thins and the desert wastes begins. Our party of six nearly became a party of five as we were beset upon by a great flying Griffon. Why our wily ranger didn't notice the creature before it arrived still puzzles me, but it was his bow that gave us the time to escape into the little cave hidden in the wall of the dunes. If only we'd had time to prepare for what we found in there..."
Your group ran from Freeport to the undead dungeon of Befallen and almost was wiped out by one of those high-level griffons that inhabit the area. See...a story!
There's that one episode of original Star Trek where a world with two countries is at war. They fight with computer simulations, and send any people "hit" into incinerators. This destroying of only people and not infrastructure preserves their "civilization".
:-)
SPOILER
Kirk, in the end, destroys one of the country's main computers. The leader tells him that the other country will think they're going to really attack. There will be real war. Kirk says fighting a "real" war will let both countries realize why wars should not be fought without purpose, and should be ended as quickly as possible.
Good stuff.
It's like a really slow motorcycle or a really expensive electric razor (those two wheeled scooters) that you can't take inside a building. All it really did was make traffic cops more prone to being overweight since they don't have to walk their beat.
Seems to me that anywhere the Segway can go, a person can walk or bike just as easily (or more easily). The people who could actually make use of it, the elderly, probably shouldn't risk riding one as even a multi-talented President can fall off of one.
Not saying that either Counter-Strike or FEAR changed the genre, but here's my take:
CS: Squad-based, limited time per match. Damage is realistic (relatively speaking) so teamwork, strategy (where to go, what your weapon's shot pattern is, etc), and good control are all vital to success. I suck at it, so I should know.
FEAR: With all effects on, it's like being in a firefight. Dust kicking up, sparks, explosions, enemies hopping over railings, flanking you, ragdoll physics. It's crazy good fun just for that. And the story...it beats HL and HL2 for actual plot. And it's totally creepy too. Even after you're done, you're still trying to figure out exactly what you've accomplished and what you're part of, and who she really is. Good stuff.
And DOOM > Wolfenstein3D
That makes sense since quanta are so... small?
Well, quanta is actually just a precisely defined amount. Size actually doesn't come into it.
Okay, back to work...
My opinion is that World of Warcraft's popularity is due to its original base in the hugely popular Warcraft series of games. Without that, it would be just another EQ clone like the rest of the games. For 3 million people, the name Warcraft introduced them to the MMORPG, something a new title like Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot wouldn't do. Would Spiderman the movie have been nearly as popular if it was called "Webman" and was loosely based off of Spider-man? I'd say not.
I played EQ "for fun"...two years and I had a single paladin up to level 38 (never did get those new spells). At that level, I was meeting people who were out not to have fun, but not to die, and that got real boring, real quick.
"Let's go camp the bears," they'd say, because it was safe XP. But who wants safe? What kind of paladin doesn't want to fight to save the group, casting lay hands on the besieged wizard just in time to port the rest of the party out, while taking his death blow just as the blue lights starts flashing.
Pulling and killing wasn't a game. It was one method of watching your XP bar go up. Even with people you had a good time with in chat, it just didn't have the adrenaline needed to keep me interested.
Coke isn't unique, but neither is google, amazon, napster, etc. They were simply the first to make their contribution popular to the world. Coke is the biggest brand of corn syrupy sugar drink in the world and without their marketing, you might still be drinking tonic water with your burger. Instead, people are gaining extra cavities and 150 calories a can while getting fat off the sugar content.
Coke's contribution to the world, like most major events, cuts both ways. You get a tasty soft drink that your friends can agree on, but trade off on health issues. Why's America fat? Coke. Period.
As OSes get more advanced, we'll see them start to converge (as we always have) on features. The defining traits will be ease of use and security, but functionality will likely end up being very very similar. It's like complaining that the Honda Civic has four tires, JUST like the Toyota Corolla.
After Everquest, I never really played MMORPGs. Tested a few, but once you're off the kick, you realize how much time you spend doing other things when you're not playing the game. But during that 2 year stint, I was pretty hooked. Here are some of the symptoms:
1) People listening to your phone conversations with other EQ players may truly believe that you have a sword you pried from the hands of a dead orc in your closet. You literally talk like you lived it: "Last night was great! Can't believe we survived that....Did you end up getting the sword? I didn't see. Oh, cool. Any chance I could borrow your axe then, until I get something better?"
2) Pressing, I think, F10 would toggle off the menus so you could see more of the screen. Driving down the highway with the shade things down (can't remember what the actual name is), instead of just putting them back up against the ceiling to see better, I put my finger out towards the dashboard...
3) You've heard this before, but it's true: You walk down the street and con people. Big ugly guys con red, so do beautiful women with attitudes...
So yes, you think about the game alot, and try to play it whenever you can. Very happy I got out of it.
It's a series of tubes. Tangled up tubes. Those democrats went and treated it like a truck...you can't do that! It's not something you can just dump things into. It's just tubes.
I remember when 8.6 came out. He toted it as a "Whole New Macintosh!" when, to most users, it just meant that, when you viewed the contents of a folder, the rows alternated colors for easier reading.
I'd rather be underwhelmed and content, than overwhelmed, just to fall farther down.
1-7-5-6, 6-3-ni-eee-ine!
It's a disposable society. If they wanted an indestructible, high-quality cell phone, you'd get it. But it's better to have ones that are cheap or free, but don't last more than, say, half the length of your contract. That way, when you need to replace your phone, and you still don't want to pay alot (for the piece of crap), you need to renew, which, at $60-$100 a month, is a way better deal for the cell phone companies than selling a new phone.
The original Star Trek's stories were usually more thought-provoking than many modern TV shows. They didn't focus on interstellar battles, but more on moral dilemmas (Favorite Episode: Two countries on a planet wage "computer war" against each other - the only casualties are the humans, forced to walk into incinerators when the enemy's computer scored a "direct hit". This preserves "civilization": their cities and infrastructure, while still allowing their enmities to continue. I won't spoil it, but Kirk comes up with a meaningful solution).
The NG was just, well, sci-fi stories. I never paid attention to the other series much.
People are generally trusted implicitly because there isn't any gain to doing something wrong in the workplace. While it's not hard to think up reasons to commit a cybercrime, most people don't really gain anything by it, so why bother doing it? And if you are going to gain something by it, you're likely going to be on the list of suspects.
I equate it to seeing all those big plate glass windows in store fronts, and yet there's nary a brick through any one of them. Only time there is, is when someone wants something inside and can't get it another way -- and then they're easily caught.
You must not have children. I can't begin to explain if you don't.
It's simple. The same reason a civilian grocer and his family are disintegrated by an errant missile is the exact same reason someone would deface a NASA website to protest a war between two Middle-Eastern countries. Same reason we invaded Iraq to wreak revenge against the 9/11 terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
Makes perfect sense to me. Well-documented too. Just look up "Insanity" in any psychological text, and you can find the branching information.
That's funny. My brother manages a team of a dozen or so employees for a large Canadian-based networking company (any guesses?). He was telling me that after he went against HR's recommendations, and got burned, he now listens to them. The guy he wanted had the skillset my brother was looking for. HR told him he'd be a bad hire, that he just wouldn't put in the time you want him to. Hired him anyway, and fired him in 2 months and started the whole process over again.
HR has its moments, good and bad.
I will up the caching limit on the SQL database. New Category 6 cabling to the gigabit switches in the network closet. Error catching code will be updated on the finance web application. Roaming profiles will no longer store temporary internet files.
Vote for me and all your wildest dreams will come true.
It seems to me that CDs are just the advertising for the concerts. The RIAA and the labels pay quite a bit of money to put your name out, market your image, distribute your CD. It's up to you, as the artist, to go out there and use that advertising to get people to show up at your concerts.
This is why smaller artists can benefit hugely from internet music sites - essentially free advertising.
Just got back to planet Earth, did you? Illegal phone taps of all Americans without warrant, American citizens winding up in Guantanamo Bay without trial or due process. There's evidence, and now the government is pulling a Half-Life 2 and saying, "You're not allowed to look into our obviously suspect activities." Not even hiding it anymore. Do you get what that means? Don't shrug it off as another "news" story from "mass media". If you do, you'll probably be in some secret prison in Europe before you realize you should have thought, "Oh sh-t!"
All that being said, you're damn right people should speak what they believe. Good words.
I'm switching out my stock Honda player for an iPod compatible one (my Honda CD player skips when I change lanes anyway...maybe that's where Bortcher got his idead from...). My girlfriend and I commute to work together, just got her a nano. So she can flip tunes while I try not to get us killed. All while being environmentally conscious. :-)
There are so many cars in the U.S., that no one really has to sit in the back seat.