Good question. I think it's more than you think... I played open beta for all of THREE DAYS, and I immediately went out and pre-ordered the game when the open beta ended. Calling WOW the breakout hit of the MMO genre isn't that much of a stretch... given Blizzard's track record, if anyone can do it, they can.
This changed late in open beta. Death now results in a 10% reduction in the durability of all items (which have durability ratings to begin with). If you choose to use the Spirit Healer, you are resurrected without finding your body, but you get a 25% reduction in durability. This basically costs you a little money in addition to the curse, which isn't that bad a deal. The death penalty in WOW is very minor compared to a lot of games.
Jerry's bought a house, Mike's had a baby boy. How has becoming bona-fide adults changed your lives, and do you find your priorities changing away from drawing comics and playing games.
Bonus Question: What advice would you give to geeks looking to in some way ensare geek grrls?
"... I did my taxes on paper for the first time ever this year because all the tax software has the same defect."
I use Quicken.com's TurboTax online. Don't have to buy new software every year, it's always up to date, don't have to download patches, and they save all my returns online for later retrieval.
The problem you're illustrating is mainly due to lead time. Of course they won't have the hot story the very instant it's revealed. Plus, when you add fact-checking and triple-corroboration into the mix, there are a lot of stories that the mainstream press will miss.
I'm not making excuses for them, just pointing out that there are perfectly reasonable reasons to not have the story first.
That said, I think part of the rest of the problem is the term "blog". Slashdot is NOT a blog as I've come to understand it. I don't think any site can claim to be a blog when they have multiple staff members all posting information. The problem is that "blog" has become a catch-all phrase for "website", and I think that needs to be fixed. Many websites have just as much journalistic integrity as the major news outlets, but I think that saying that the blogs don't isn't entirely unfair. All things being equal, a single person doesn't need to go through the red tape to post something that an organization would, which can either lead to getting the scoop first, or posting false information.
"If you define news as original reporting then keep in mind that a very large part of content of newspapers/radio/TV comes straight off Reuters or AP newswire."
Precisely, but even though the news outlets are using someone else's original reporting as their basis, that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't more original reporting that can be done. Even so, this ends up simply as "reporting", as opposed to "journalism". I should also point out that most of the news outslets that use AP or Reuters stories are in fact members of AP and Reuters, so there is some quid-pro-quo happening there.
That said, this is why I said that no one I know of gets thier news from Blogs. Sure, there are blogs out there that do original reporting, but no one I know uses them.
That's not news. That's regurgitating press releases and product reviews, 95% of the time. The remaining 5% is where they will occasionally get a tip or discover some information others have overlooked. It's not news when someone is feeding it to you. (That said, you could certainly argue that anything coming out of the White House isn't news either, but those reporters have other ways of corroborating or discounting official statements.)
Don't get me wrong, I love Gizmodo and sites like that. But I also don't harbor any delusions that what they do is news, and I'm pretty sure that they don't either.
The problem here is that CBS is confusing WRITING with JOURNALISM. NO surprise, since a lot of others are doing it as well. I've written for many gaming websites, as well as student magazines, and I have always refrained from ever calling myself a journalist. Quite frankly, I think that the only time writing can ever be called journalism is when you are writing about a first-hand experience.
That said, with so much of news becoming little more than opinion and thin analysis, writing is usually preferrable, just because the bias and editorializing is clear and expected. Journalism should be fair and unbiased, and rarely is.
That said, I think blogs are becoming the "new journalism", people writing from their own experiences and sharing that knowledge with others. Blogging is an exchange of ideas, debate in it's truest form. That something that Journalism stopped doing right around the time that the corporations bought up all of the media.
I'm sorry... but since when did blogs ever consider themselves Journalism? I know of exactly ZERO people who get their news from blogs. This has got to be the biggest non-story I've ever heard of.
I'd also point out that when websites like CBSNews are running "news" stories that do nothing other than reveal the results of reality TV shows, perhaps they're not the best ones to be preaching about journalistic integrity.
That's why I won't play online. The social engineering aspect of the game (which I'm very good at), is such a huge factor (at least, in Texas Hold 'Em) that I refuse to play online.
That, and the fact that many of the popular online poker establishments have problems with bots and people working in collusion to grind out the pots.
Anyway, one of the most important things I've learned while playing poker is that playing penny games online will get you to see enough pots where you can learn the odds pretty quickly. But I personally wouldn't take playing online any further than that. If you want to be a serious poker player, you have to get used to playing the people, and not just the odds.
The Segway's technology was adapted from wheelchairs that can raise up on two wheels for better mobility. It's what the technology was originally intended for, and the Segway really wasn't that large a departure from it.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that can take away some of the stigma of a wheelchair for those that can still stand, is a great thing.
Yes, but I don't want numbers. Numbers are only useful when you're measuring your penis. All I care about is what games it'll run, and RELATIVE performance. Such as an X800XT will run a game at higher resolutions and relatively the same framerate as an 9800XT. I could care less if it's one or two frames better than this or that, because that's all within margin of error, statistically.
So seriously, give me the raw information, because that's all that matters. At least, that's all that SHOULD matter. But sites like Tom's need to justify their existance as more than simple PR tools, thus, the "investigative reporting". Bleh.
"Oh, well - if Tommy holds the line on this, the hell with the 0-day reviewers. I know who'll get my page views."
So do I, and it'll be the one that gets the review up first. Information is free, and as soon as it's out there, the cat's out of the bag. What on earth could Tom's do better with more time? Another graph? Please. I want to know clock speeds and RAM size, general performance metrics, and if it'll fit in my case. Anything else is pretty pointless. If Tom's can't get that done in the same amount of time as the HUNDREDS of other enthusiast sites out there, then that's their problem. If they can do it, but not with quality, guess what? Still their problem.
Not to mention that I'd be willing to bet that companies will realize that they'd be better off sending that review card to a site that will get the review done in a timeframe that THEY want. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
I stopped reading Tom's a long time ago because of the constant grousing and airing of thier dirty laundry. It's the same thing here. Why post a huge announcement... just make the change and do it because you think it's the right thing to do... don't wear it on your sleeve. I can get the exact same information from other sites, that's the beauty of the internet.
I stopped reading Tom's a LONG time ago. He loves mudslinging, both with manufacturers and with other enthusiast sites. I'm close to giving HardOCP the heave-ho as well. I want INFORMATION, not grousing about how this company did so-and-so wrong, or what site is faking their benchmarks. I can figure that stuff out for myself.
The movie industry has been doing this for years, paying people to create fake "fan-sites" for movies, generating their own grass-roots buzz.
Despite what anyone might want to think, a blog isn't new. It's a webpage, it's just easier to post to, because you don't need to know HTML, really. So why is anyone surprised that this concept has extended to blogs?
If Sony is going to put the battery life problem off on Developers, then I think that having a battery life rating on the box, as accurate as possible, should be a requirement on each game. Maybe gamers only buying games that will give them a decent play experience will convince Sony that battery life is a HARDWARE problem, not a SOFTWARE problem.
This is why no one has wanted to use an optical disc in a handheld until now. Funny how much a simple spindle can drain a battery.
Of course they're not. They're patenting concept. What I was saying is that whatever prior art you might come up with, Nintendo probably has prior art of their own to beat it.
There's nothing bizarro about this. Nintendo has a legitimate patent here. Nintendo was doing online gaming with the NES. In fact, they mention this every single time someone asks them why they aren't doing online now. Nintendo's own "prior art" would even eclipse PC online gaming, I'm pretty sure.
What this does is allow Nintendo to get really aggressive in defending that patent if they want to.
Slashdot Mirror
"Do you play games online? Yes? What kinds?"
Done.
Stop rely on acronyms, which most people hate anyway. Converse like a normal human being, and get the jargon out of the equation.
Good question. I think it's more than you think ... I played open beta for all of THREE DAYS, and I immediately went out and pre-ordered the game when the open beta ended. Calling WOW the breakout hit of the MMO genre isn't that much of a stretch ... given Blizzard's track record, if anyone can do it, they can.
This changed late in open beta. Death now results in a 10% reduction in the durability of all items (which have durability ratings to begin with). If you choose to use the Spirit Healer, you are resurrected without finding your body, but you get a 25% reduction in durability. This basically costs you a little money in addition to the curse, which isn't that bad a deal. The death penalty in WOW is very minor compared to a lot of games.
I have to agree here. I stopped playing COH precisely because the supposed "carrots" are just not big enough to warrant paying for.
I'd just like to point out that I am, in fact, married to a geek grrl of my own, so my question wasn't for me, but for the lonely geeks of the world.
Jerry's bought a house, Mike's had a baby boy. How has becoming bona-fide adults changed your lives, and do you find your priorities changing away from drawing comics and playing games.
Bonus Question: What advice would you give to geeks looking to in some way ensare geek grrls?
You CAN download the files in advance, you know. :)
"... I did my taxes on paper for the first time ever this year because all the tax software has the same defect."
I use Quicken.com's TurboTax online. Don't have to buy new software every year, it's always up to date, don't have to download patches, and they save all my returns online for later retrieval.
The problem you're illustrating is mainly due to lead time. Of course they won't have the hot story the very instant it's revealed. Plus, when you add fact-checking and triple-corroboration into the mix, there are a lot of stories that the mainstream press will miss.
I'm not making excuses for them, just pointing out that there are perfectly reasonable reasons to not have the story first.
That said, I think part of the rest of the problem is the term "blog". Slashdot is NOT a blog as I've come to understand it. I don't think any site can claim to be a blog when they have multiple staff members all posting information. The problem is that "blog" has become a catch-all phrase for "website", and I think that needs to be fixed. Many websites have just as much journalistic integrity as the major news outlets, but I think that saying that the blogs don't isn't entirely unfair. All things being equal, a single person doesn't need to go through the red tape to post something that an organization would, which can either lead to getting the scoop first, or posting false information.
"If you define news as original reporting then keep in mind that a very large part of content of newspapers/radio/TV comes straight off Reuters or AP newswire."
Precisely, but even though the news outlets are using someone else's original reporting as their basis, that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't more original reporting that can be done. Even so, this ends up simply as "reporting", as opposed to "journalism". I should also point out that most of the news outslets that use AP or Reuters stories are in fact members of AP and Reuters, so there is some quid-pro-quo happening there.
That said, this is why I said that no one I know of gets thier news from Blogs. Sure, there are blogs out there that do original reporting, but no one I know uses them.
That's not news. That's regurgitating press releases and product reviews, 95% of the time. The remaining 5% is where they will occasionally get a tip or discover some information others have overlooked. It's not news when someone is feeding it to you. (That said, you could certainly argue that anything coming out of the White House isn't news either, but those reporters have other ways of corroborating or discounting official statements.)
Don't get me wrong, I love Gizmodo and sites like that. But I also don't harbor any delusions that what they do is news, and I'm pretty sure that they don't either.
The problem here is that CBS is confusing WRITING with JOURNALISM. NO surprise, since a lot of others are doing it as well. I've written for many gaming websites, as well as student magazines, and I have always refrained from ever calling myself a journalist. Quite frankly, I think that the only time writing can ever be called journalism is when you are writing about a first-hand experience.
That said, with so much of news becoming little more than opinion and thin analysis, writing is usually preferrable, just because the bias and editorializing is clear and expected. Journalism should be fair and unbiased, and rarely is.
That said, I think blogs are becoming the "new journalism", people writing from their own experiences and sharing that knowledge with others. Blogging is an exchange of ideas, debate in it's truest form. That something that Journalism stopped doing right around the time that the corporations bought up all of the media.
I'm sorry ... but since when did blogs ever consider themselves Journalism? I know of exactly ZERO people who get their news from blogs. This has got to be the biggest non-story I've ever heard of.
I'd also point out that when websites like CBSNews are running "news" stories that do nothing other than reveal the results of reality TV shows, perhaps they're not the best ones to be preaching about journalistic integrity.
That's why I won't play online. The social engineering aspect of the game (which I'm very good at), is such a huge factor (at least, in Texas Hold 'Em) that I refuse to play online.
That, and the fact that many of the popular online poker establishments have problems with bots and people working in collusion to grind out the pots.
Anyway, one of the most important things I've learned while playing poker is that playing penny games online will get you to see enough pots where you can learn the odds pretty quickly. But I personally wouldn't take playing online any further than that. If you want to be a serious poker player, you have to get used to playing the people, and not just the odds.
Your spam filter will reject "non-human-readable" text in the mail HEADER? Do you get ANY e-mail at all?
The Segway's technology was adapted from wheelchairs that can raise up on two wheels for better mobility. It's what the technology was originally intended for, and the Segway really wasn't that large a departure from it.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that can take away some of the stigma of a wheelchair for those that can still stand, is a great thing.
Yes, but I don't want numbers. Numbers are only useful when you're measuring your penis. All I care about is what games it'll run, and RELATIVE performance. Such as an X800XT will run a game at higher resolutions and relatively the same framerate as an 9800XT. I could care less if it's one or two frames better than this or that, because that's all within margin of error, statistically.
So seriously, give me the raw information, because that's all that matters. At least, that's all that SHOULD matter. But sites like Tom's need to justify their existance as more than simple PR tools, thus, the "investigative reporting". Bleh.
"Oh, well - if Tommy holds the line on this, the hell with the 0-day reviewers. I know who'll get my page views."
... just make the change and do it because you think it's the right thing to do ... don't wear it on your sleeve. I can get the exact same information from other sites, that's the beauty of the internet.
So do I, and it'll be the one that gets the review up first. Information is free, and as soon as it's out there, the cat's out of the bag. What on earth could Tom's do better with more time? Another graph? Please. I want to know clock speeds and RAM size, general performance metrics, and if it'll fit in my case. Anything else is pretty pointless. If Tom's can't get that done in the same amount of time as the HUNDREDS of other enthusiast sites out there, then that's their problem. If they can do it, but not with quality, guess what? Still their problem.
Not to mention that I'd be willing to bet that companies will realize that they'd be better off sending that review card to a site that will get the review done in a timeframe that THEY want. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
I stopped reading Tom's a long time ago because of the constant grousing and airing of thier dirty laundry. It's the same thing here. Why post a huge announcement
I stopped reading Tom's a LONG time ago. He loves mudslinging, both with manufacturers and with other enthusiast sites. I'm close to giving HardOCP the heave-ho as well. I want INFORMATION, not grousing about how this company did so-and-so wrong, or what site is faking their benchmarks. I can figure that stuff out for myself.
http://www.kensington.com/html/3208.html
I've had one of these just a little over a year. I love it. Lots of pockets and pouches, padded back and shoulder straps, and VERY durable.
The movie industry has been doing this for years, paying people to create fake "fan-sites" for movies, generating their own grass-roots buzz.
Despite what anyone might want to think, a blog isn't new. It's a webpage, it's just easier to post to, because you don't need to know HTML, really. So why is anyone surprised that this concept has extended to blogs?
If Sony is going to put the battery life problem off on Developers, then I think that having a battery life rating on the box, as accurate as possible, should be a requirement on each game. Maybe gamers only buying games that will give them a decent play experience will convince Sony that battery life is a HARDWARE problem, not a SOFTWARE problem.
This is why no one has wanted to use an optical disc in a handheld until now. Funny how much a simple spindle can drain a battery.
Of course they're not. They're patenting concept. What I was saying is that whatever prior art you might come up with, Nintendo probably has prior art of their own to beat it.
There's nothing bizarro about this. Nintendo has a legitimate patent here. Nintendo was doing online gaming with the NES. In fact, they mention this every single time someone asks them why they aren't doing online now. Nintendo's own "prior art" would even eclipse PC online gaming, I'm pretty sure.
What this does is allow Nintendo to get really aggressive in defending that patent if they want to.
Their site works just fine in Firefox, because I just came back from there.