As an aside, can anyone fill me in on what the Quake engine did that Descent didn't? I'm sure there's a reason why Quake's 3D is better than Descent's, but I really have no idea what it is other than Romero had better hair.
Umm... Quake had gravity? Descent was block-based while Quake was polygon based? Descent spread their people and their RAM more thinly? Descent's artists were obsessed with high-color contrast, which only accentuated the blockyness of it all, while Quake featured muted browns that almost didn't make it look like you were being attacked by Mr. Square and his 2D minions?
Art direction and design decisions can go a long way to the differences between games. It can't hurt, though, that quake was implemented by a bunch of truly top notch coders.
I've always thought it was odd that crashworthiness tests in the US don't look at the damage the car will do to the other car. Having large protruding eye-level spikes will make the car even more crash-worthy, as they will slow the car before impact (by skewering the passengers of the other car).
The most compelling argument for buying an SUV is that in one you are most likely to survive a crash with an SUV. However, that's also a pretty compelling argument for banning the whole bloody lot.
We even give tax brakes to SUV's above 6 thousand pounds. 6 Thousand pounds!
I was stopped one day by a cop while walking down the street. The car zoomed in front of me, a cop jumped out, pulled out a gun, and pointed it at, of all people, me. I found this behavior odd, and not at all to my liking. And then he yelled "put down the knife."
Knife. I had picked up somebody's discarded plastic halloween samurai sword, which I had found by the side of the road. It was clearly plastic, more round than blade-shaped, and did I mention perfectly white? The amusing thing was the baffled look on the cop's face when he heard the sound it made skidding across the cement towards him. I guess that finally shattered his illusion of the ivory-smuggling holigan he thought he had cornered.
He appologized, said some lady up the street got skittish and called the cops, and when on his way. I left the ivory knife there for the next kid to find.
I didn't mean to insinuate that it is difficult to take over an ISP (ours had a server owned about once every four months, and we weren't a windows shop), but rather how easy it isto tap, as well as otherwise modify, a phone line. As Mitnick proved, it's easier to convince the phone company to switch a line or add a tap for you than it is to do the legwork yourself.
And in some respects the Tucows approach is better. A Network Solutions query shows all my details directly. Tucows requires a query to input a grahpics based password so it is harder to harvest the info.
It's odd, but Network Solutions required the same thing up until this launched. I guess it was just more cost effective to let people scan the db. I've been using whois.net from the opera command line with much success, but every time in the past year I came across a bloody Network Solutions domain I'd have to break what I was doing and enter their silly cipher. Well, whois.net still doesn't query NS's database directly, but at least I can skip the 4757298B step.
It's admirable that you would know enough to avoid using windows / I.E. when trying to have secure transactions over the web. However, running any flavor of Linux is enough to guarentee a realistic amount of security. The.00000001% chance that someone is going to root your Knoppix distro is far smaller than the.000001% chance that someone has rooted the router at your ISP and is now rerouting all traffic from your bank site through their man in the middle. It's far less than the.01% chance that someone will just steal your identity through traditional means and clean you out properly.
In other words, balance risks. I.E. is a nasty mess that anyone can root with a little googling. Mozilla is pretty secure, Mozilla on Linux even more so, and Mozilla on Linux on PPC is pretty darned solid... to the point that other links in the chain become the weak one. Focus on those next, or realize that the Man in the Middle attack is basically undefeatable short of getting a second ISP.
Of course you could always call your bank and conduct your business like that, but it is far more difficult to root an ISP than it is to tap a phone line...
I've got some real fly PDA's right here check 'em out! They're bigger than all the other PDA's because bigger is better man. You don't want to be whipping it out in front of your girl and your girl be all "aww, you're PDA's too small." And she ain't gonna diss those 16 megs of ram. That's like two times the memory in one of those wimpy little Zire things.
You like texting on your phone? You send out them SMS messages wit yo thumbs? Yo man, we gots the mad SMS messaging going on. It ain't got no keyboard! No need, all you need is to tap each key five or six times, and bam, instant scribbles. You can even upgrade it with sound, a headphone jack, MP3 playback, and a whole lot else if you've got the dough if you know what I'm saying. And hey, the black and white screen is so sharp, it's almost color.
This little baby's just six huned dollas. Just six huned dollas! Who wants one? You in the back? I know you want one for ya girl, man.
Ironically enough, I don't remember seeing these articles for the Virtual Boy.
I don't think there was any controversy about the likelyhood for success of the Virtual Boy.
You're right, in a way, most systems do ship with too few killer games. The N64 was an oddity in this regard: it shipped with Mario 64, Waverace, and Pilot Wings, three truly killer games. Sadly, that's all it had for a very long time, leading to 2nd tier status. But the Playstation, Saturn, XBox, 'Cube, PS2, 3DO, Jaguar, Sega CD, TG16, Genesis... all shipped with weak lineups, especially in Japan.
However, the difference between those systems and the PSP's situation, is that the PSP looks to ship before ANY 3rd party developers get development hardware. At least Halo was in production... That really great must-have PSP game that is going to come out someday hasn't even been started yet. In two years when it is ready to ship, will the PSP even still be there? That the system is shipping before the great games are ready is no surprise. That the system is shipping before the great games have been started is a first for the industry, and doesn't look good for Sony. They're going to need all the help they can get in unseating the Game Boy, and going in without even giving your posse a map to the fight seems a little rash.
Re:Interesting choice of words...
on
An Online ID Registry
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· Score: 2, Informative
They've been doing it ever since I signed up a few years ago, but only if you are attempting to link your paypal account with an external bank account. If you're just linking with a credit card they don't verify.
I don't see how notarized copies of documents are easy or cheap to fake. Valid Drivers licenses are easier, but you can always verify the info with the state. Passports work great too.
The step that you're missing is not that xeroxes of these documents are hard to fake (they aren't) but that they are verifiable. If Mary Marsupial has a passport, the government can verify whether or not the information that she entered is correct. If there really is a Mary Marsupial with passport ID #15857287382748 VX123, with birthdate etc etc, they can verify that. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the person on the other end of that communication is actually Mary Marsupial, and the following step is to MAIL a confirmation code of some kind to the address of Mary Marsupial as listed by the passport. If you have that, you know that either A: this is really Mary Marsupial or B: Mary Marsupial is totally Owned.
Of course, all of this is hard work, and therefore would take paid registrations and a profit motive to achieve.
A few years back I was going through the obligatory registration process for real player, and inserted my name as "spamyourself@real.com". Turns out that was a popular option... it was already taken.
retlaw@disney.com was also a popular one for a while, as that was rumored to go to Michael Eisner, with their corporate headquarters, 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521, being the target of any mailings.
There is also SCO, 355 South 520 West Suite 100 Lindon, Utah 84042 USA, Phone: 801-765-4999, Fax: 801-852-9088 Sales:1-800-726-8649. They don't post many e-mail addresses on their site, so jobs@sco.com will have to do. If anyone remembers Darl McBride's address, phone number, or e-mail address (does he even know how to use a computer?), please repost them. The poor kid who answers jobs@sco.com probably doesn't deserve the vitrol, but BigKahuna@sco.com does.
There are other great targets... Ashcroft, Bush's ranch in Crawford, the RIAA, etc. If anyone has addresses for these, please post them as well.
How does a speech from the 70s, discussing how better "behaved" tubes are, have relevance today?
If we still can't talk about the differences between tubes and transistors, or the distortion vs quality arguments, how are we ever going to have a rational discussion about low-bitrate streaming codecs? The article seemed like an interesting primer on some of the early research into the debate, before it degraded into a religious war, exactly the sorts of debates we should be having now over WMA, OGG, etc, as well as DVDA, SCDA, and general component issues. The methodology for studying the problem is also facinating, and generally different than the waveform comparisons that are popular today.
Of course, there are probably many professional sound engineers, musicians, and audiophiles that have made up their minds based upon the wealth of data out there, and whatever their decision is is the "obvious" one. But for people like me, on the outside, it seemed like an interesting technical article that was accessible and avoided the technobable that permeates the discussion today.
6. Learn what interests people. When someone arrives at a new page, pre-cache all of the resultant page links, and have the system signify which links it thinks the user would like through some instantly intuitive system, like highlight color.
7. Remove infrequently used keyboard shortcuts, and add new shortcuts to commands frequently executed by the user.
8. Startup with frequently-visited and updated web pages already open.
The survey actually says that 50 some odd percent of japanese are disinterested in "premium" online games. "Premium" online games include Evercrack, Unfair Online, etcetera. This does not include XBox live, by far the best thing that has happened to online gaming. You'll note that XBox live is also not as successful in Japan as it is in other places, largely due to the XBox not being as successful in Japan. *
Overall, though, I can't say that I disagree with the assertion... The American MMPO premium game (with a few exceptions) was refined perfectly into The Sims Online: a game where social interaction collides with repetitive, trivial tasks to produce something roughly devoid of fun... certainly not fun enough to warrant a monthly fee. Now, if you take a Japanese consumer and put them down in front of Everquest, a largely english RPG appealing to American sensibilities about personal responsibility, bootstraps, yadda yadda, do you think it will resonate with them? Do you think it will resonate with them enough to convince them to pay A: 50 dollars for the application, B: 15 dollars every month, and C: 50 more dollars every 6 months for the expansion pack?
Furthermore, if you look at Japanese RPG's vs American RPG's, the American RPG's are about hard work and character building through self-improvement. Japanese RPG's on the other hand are about fulfilling the destiny of becoming the savior of the world. I've played a lot of Role Playing Games in my day, and I can't think of a single Japanese developed game in this genre where the character wasn't pre-ordained to become the savior of the would through birthright or destiny... A Superman complex, if you will. American RPG's are filled with characters that rose to heroism in the face of adversity. Like Batman. Characters that are normal people who do extrordinary things because of the circumstances they find themselves in. This distinction, while slight in a movie or single-player realm, is significant in online RPGs. You can't have 100,000 characters running around who are all Jesus. Even in City of Heroes everyone is just a normal, hardworking crime fighter.
I'm not saying that no games have cross cultural appeal, but delivering what the Japanese normally want impossible in a MMPORPG. Add in the fact that MMPORPG atrophy is high (most of the people I know have played a MMPORPG, and gave it up due to waning interest), and we can't even get right what "we" want. I'm sure that Japan will someday become a bastion of online gaming equivalent of Korea, but they need more Japanese developers than just SEGA and Square trying to push the boundaries and explore what makes the games appeal to the Japanese gamer.
* Full disclosure: I've come to respect the XBox, but I would hate to see my favorite pastime handed to a serially convicted monopolist.
The fans of the emulator, and the emulation scene, were upset because the work of this author was being used for evil commercial purposes by an evil company. If you haven't noticed, companies now play the role of the hated other. They routinely do terrible things that go unpunished (Shell murdering people in Nigeria, anyone?) and provide worse and worse products. For a company to take someone's work without payment and expoit it commercially is the highest evil imaginable.
Ok, that's a little thick, but you get the point. The problem is this "evil" company is Jaleco, a videogame company which generally seems motivated simply by making quirky games out of quirky ideas and doing so on the cheap. They probably re-released the games because they wanted people to play their stuff, rather than they wanted a quick buck. I know this isn't true at all publishers, and I have no personal contact with Jaleco, but most people who get into gaming do so because they love it, not because there is much money to be made. True, there are some toothpaste salesmen, but by and large even publishers are gamers. What they should have done was notify and thank the original author... but I wouldn't crucify them for that. They put out more retrogames into the world. They deserve support.
1. If you have call display, is it polite to answer the phone with the caller's name?
It's never polite to point out that you know more than the other person might let on. If someone doesn't volunteer their name, they don't want you to know. If someone on slashdot pretends that they're not a virgin, just nod politely.
2. What about call answer? Should you take the incoming call and how long should you be on it before returning to the original call?
What happens when you're with someone in meatspace and another friend bumps in with something important? You should be on the line with the second caller just long enough to ascertain what is going on, and that you will call them back, but that's it. If it's a matter of life and death, call back the first person. So long as everyone behaves in phone space as they would in real life, nobody's toes will get stepped on.
3. Is call screening using an answering machine polite?
Only until people catch on. It is a bad idea, though, because once someone in the know calls and doesn't get you, they will think you are snubbing them. If you really must screen, get a caller ID box instead, and stay consistent enough that the people whom you wouldn't screen out never have someone pick up during a message.
4. I give telemarketers one chance to hang up before I slam the receiver down on them. Is this polite or should I listen to their pitch?
Telemarketers are people too. But so are drug dealers. Drug dealers at least make you want what they are pushing. I recommend simply telling them that they have reached a cell phone (which they are not allowed in the US to call), and the problem will dissapate. Beyond that, the telemarketers are really at the mercy of the people they are calling, who have every moral right to make life as annoying as they do when they call 50 times in the middle of dinner. There's no rule that says you must be polite to someone who refuses to be polite to you.
5. What are cell phone rules? Is it acceptable to have a social call while in line at the supermarket? What about a heated business call?
There are two parts to this. One, people mysteriously become very loud on cellphones. The physical distance seems to subconsciously serve to cause people to raise their voices perceptably. If someone were carrying on a normal conversation with the same volume that they carry on a cellular conversation it would also be annoying. If you're careful with your volume, you won't be annoying.
Two, it is rude to be on a call when with someone else. It's ignoring your guest, even if youre just going to the supermarket together. The same rules apply here as apply to call waiting.
Three, assuming you follow the above rules, it is not any more rude to be chatting quietly on a cell phone than it would be to chat quietly with a friend. If it wouldn't be OK to chat with your neighbor during a sermon, get off the phone.
Recently a friend of ours was trying to get a ride to a party, but didn't start trying to contact us until after she was in our area. She called a few times until her cell battery died. She borrowed someone's computer at a cafe to e-mail us. She IM'ed us. She called from a payphone. She got frantic.
She did everything but come up and ring our doorbell. Which would have worked: we were at home.
Sometimes technology can cause people to forget the obvious ways of doing things.
It's extrememly significant. When is the last time a dominant MS end-user product *lost* marketshare?
Hmm... When you have 100% of anything, there's only one way to go. When you have essentially 100% of anything, and have reached a state of rough equillibrium, there is going to be oscillations. 1% does not a fight make, especially if you look at where Mozilla / Netscape was four years ago. The fact that the descrease is statistical noise to I.E. and a huge boost to the Mozilla community should show that the Mozilla community is also very close to statistical noise to I.E.
You know that was what prompted the law, yet ironically it was one of the most recorded moments in television history. People have it VHSed TIVOed Ripped Burned Shared and otherwise widely available.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell this will require webcasters to make and keep copies of their broadcasts as well, which strikes me as grossly inconvienient to them. There is a public television station near where I work that broadcasts nothing but a view from a camera at night when nothing is on. Will they have to record that? What about feeds from webcams?
This strikes me as having a lot more unintended side effects than the FCC might foresee, and in order to achieve something that we don't have a problem with now.
Slashdot Mirror
As an aside, can anyone fill me in on what the Quake engine did that Descent didn't? I'm sure there's a reason why Quake's 3D is better than Descent's, but I really have no idea what it is other than Romero had better hair.
Umm... Quake had gravity? Descent was block-based while Quake was polygon based? Descent spread their people and their RAM more thinly? Descent's artists were obsessed with high-color contrast, which only accentuated the blockyness of it all, while Quake featured muted browns that almost didn't make it look like you were being attacked by Mr. Square and his 2D minions?
Art direction and design decisions can go a long way to the differences between games. It can't hurt, though, that quake was implemented by a bunch of truly top notch coders.
It's just one of the best implementations of the classic game there is, Open Source or otherwise.
If only there was online play... Anyone up for developing a MMPOLCG?
One vehicle is safer in a crash than another. What's the answer? Ban the safer vehicle, of course!
Or, looked at from a more correct perspective, ban the vehicle most likely to kill the people in the other vehicle.
In a direct against-a-concrete-wall crash, lighter cars are generally safer.
Well, if you do a little digging, the US is averaging three showers for every four days, with minor variances based upon the person.
That's better than many of the Brits that I've met.
I've always thought it was odd that crashworthiness tests in the US don't look at the damage the car will do to the other car. Having large protruding eye-level spikes will make the car even more crash-worthy, as they will slow the car before impact (by skewering the passengers of the other car).
The most compelling argument for buying an SUV is that in one you are most likely to survive a crash with an SUV. However, that's also a pretty compelling argument for banning the whole bloody lot.
We even give tax brakes to SUV's above 6 thousand pounds. 6 Thousand pounds!
Must be a bitch to take that shiny new 21 inch monitor home from the store.
If you're serious about riding as a way of life, get a Yak trailer. Light, easy to park, very little drag, and carries a lot more than they should.
I was stopped one day by a cop while walking down the street. The car zoomed in front of me, a cop jumped out, pulled out a gun, and pointed it at, of all people, me. I found this behavior odd, and not at all to my liking. And then he yelled "put down the knife."
Knife. I had picked up somebody's discarded plastic halloween samurai sword, which I had found by the side of the road. It was clearly plastic, more round than blade-shaped, and did I mention perfectly white? The amusing thing was the baffled look on the cop's face when he heard the sound it made skidding across the cement towards him. I guess that finally shattered his illusion of the ivory-smuggling holigan he thought he had cornered.
He appologized, said some lady up the street got skittish and called the cops, and when on his way. I left the ivory knife there for the next kid to find.
I didn't mean to insinuate that it is difficult to take over an ISP (ours had a server owned about once every four months, and we weren't a windows shop), but rather how easy it is to tap, as well as otherwise modify, a phone line. As Mitnick proved, it's easier to convince the phone company to switch a line or add a tap for you than it is to do the legwork yourself.
And in some respects the Tucows approach is better. A Network Solutions query shows all my details directly. Tucows requires a query to input a grahpics based password so it is harder to harvest the info.
It's odd, but Network Solutions required the same thing up until this launched. I guess it was just more cost effective to let people scan the db. I've been using whois.net from the opera command line with much success, but every time in the past year I came across a bloody Network Solutions domain I'd have to break what I was doing and enter their silly cipher. Well, whois.net still doesn't query NS's database directly, but at least I can skip the 4757298B step.
It's admirable that you would know enough to avoid using windows / I.E. when trying to have secure transactions over the web. However, running any flavor of Linux is enough to guarentee a realistic amount of security. The .00000001% chance that someone is going to root your Knoppix distro is far smaller than the .000001% chance that someone has rooted the router at your ISP and is now rerouting all traffic from your bank site through their man in the middle. It's far less than the .01% chance that someone will just steal your identity through traditional means and clean you out properly.
In other words, balance risks. I.E. is a nasty mess that anyone can root with a little googling. Mozilla is pretty secure, Mozilla on Linux even more so, and Mozilla on Linux on PPC is pretty darned solid... to the point that other links in the chain become the weak one. Focus on those next, or realize that the Man in the Middle attack is basically undefeatable short of getting a second ISP.
Of course you could always call your bank and conduct your business like that, but it is far more difficult to root an ISP than it is to tap a phone line...
I've got some real fly PDA's right here check 'em out! They're bigger than all the other PDA's because bigger is better man. You don't want to be whipping it out in front of your girl and your girl be all "aww, you're PDA's too small." And she ain't gonna diss those 16 megs of ram. That's like two times the memory in one of those wimpy little Zire things.
You like texting on your phone? You send out them SMS messages wit yo thumbs? Yo man, we gots the mad SMS messaging going on. It ain't got no keyboard! No need, all you need is to tap each key five or six times, and bam, instant scribbles. You can even upgrade it with sound, a headphone jack, MP3 playback, and a whole lot else if you've got the dough if you know what I'm saying. And hey, the black and white screen is so sharp, it's almost color.
This little baby's just six huned dollas. Just six huned dollas! Who wants one? You in the back? I know you want one for ya girl, man.
Yo, be the first to buy the Jackito.
Ironically enough, I don't remember seeing these articles for the Virtual Boy.
I don't think there was any controversy about the likelyhood for success of the Virtual Boy.
You're right, in a way, most systems do ship with too few killer games. The N64 was an oddity in this regard: it shipped with Mario 64, Waverace, and Pilot Wings, three truly killer games. Sadly, that's all it had for a very long time, leading to 2nd tier status. But the Playstation, Saturn, XBox, 'Cube, PS2, 3DO, Jaguar, Sega CD, TG16, Genesis... all shipped with weak lineups, especially in Japan.
However, the difference between those systems and the PSP's situation, is that the PSP looks to ship before ANY 3rd party developers get development hardware. At least Halo was in production... That really great must-have PSP game that is going to come out someday hasn't even been started yet. In two years when it is ready to ship, will the PSP even still be there? That the system is shipping before the great games are ready is no surprise. That the system is shipping before the great games have been started is a first for the industry, and doesn't look good for Sony. They're going to need all the help they can get in unseating the Game Boy, and going in without even giving your posse a map to the fight seems a little rash.
They've been doing it ever since I signed up a few years ago, but only if you are attempting to link your paypal account with an external bank account. If you're just linking with a credit card they don't verify.
I don't see how notarized copies of documents are easy or cheap to fake. Valid Drivers licenses are easier, but you can always verify the info with the state. Passports work great too.
The step that you're missing is not that xeroxes of these documents are hard to fake (they aren't) but that they are verifiable. If Mary Marsupial has a passport, the government can verify whether or not the information that she entered is correct. If there really is a Mary Marsupial with passport ID #15857287382748 VX123, with birthdate etc etc, they can verify that. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the person on the other end of that communication is actually Mary Marsupial, and the following step is to MAIL a confirmation code of some kind to the address of Mary Marsupial as listed by the passport. If you have that, you know that either A: this is really Mary Marsupial or B: Mary Marsupial is totally Owned.
Of course, all of this is hard work, and therefore would take paid registrations and a profit motive to achieve.
Is Gates trying to say that with Open Source Software, you can do the same things with less employees?
That's the first intelligent thing he's said on the subject.
A few years back I was going through the obligatory registration process for real player, and inserted my name as "spamyourself@real.com". Turns out that was a popular option... it was already taken.
retlaw@disney.com was also a popular one for a while, as that was rumored to go to Michael Eisner, with their corporate headquarters, 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521, being the target of any mailings.
There is also SCO, 355 South 520 West Suite 100 Lindon, Utah 84042 USA, Phone: 801-765-4999, Fax: 801-852-9088 Sales:1-800-726-8649. They don't post many e-mail addresses on their site, so jobs@sco.com will have to do. If anyone remembers Darl McBride's address, phone number, or e-mail address (does he even know how to use a computer?), please repost them. The poor kid who answers jobs@sco.com probably doesn't deserve the vitrol, but BigKahuna@sco.com does.
There are other great targets... Ashcroft, Bush's ranch in Crawford, the RIAA, etc. If anyone has addresses for these, please post them as well.
Spam should be a political statement.
How does a speech from the 70s, discussing how better "behaved" tubes are, have relevance today?
If we still can't talk about the differences between tubes and transistors, or the distortion vs quality arguments, how are we ever going to have a rational discussion about low-bitrate streaming codecs? The article seemed like an interesting primer on some of the early research into the debate, before it degraded into a religious war, exactly the sorts of debates we should be having now over WMA, OGG, etc, as well as DVDA, SCDA, and general component issues. The methodology for studying the problem is also facinating, and generally different than the waveform comparisons that are popular today.
Of course, there are probably many professional sound engineers, musicians, and audiophiles that have made up their minds based upon the wealth of data out there, and whatever their decision is is the "obvious" one. But for people like me, on the outside, it seemed like an interesting technical article that was accessible and avoided the technobable that permeates the discussion today.
6. Learn what interests people. When someone arrives at a new page, pre-cache all of the resultant page links, and have the system signify which links it thinks the user would like through some instantly intuitive system, like highlight color.
7. Remove infrequently used keyboard shortcuts, and add new shortcuts to commands frequently executed by the user.
8. Startup with frequently-visited and updated web pages already open.
The survey actually says that 50 some odd percent of japanese are disinterested in "premium" online games. "Premium" online games include Evercrack, Unfair Online, etcetera. This does not include XBox live, by far the best thing that has happened to online gaming. You'll note that XBox live is also not as successful in Japan as it is in other places, largely due to the XBox not being as successful in Japan. *
Overall, though, I can't say that I disagree with the assertion... The American MMPO premium game (with a few exceptions) was refined perfectly into The Sims Online: a game where social interaction collides with repetitive, trivial tasks to produce something roughly devoid of fun... certainly not fun enough to warrant a monthly fee. Now, if you take a Japanese consumer and put them down in front of Everquest, a largely english RPG appealing to American sensibilities about personal responsibility, bootstraps, yadda yadda, do you think it will resonate with them? Do you think it will resonate with them enough to convince them to pay A: 50 dollars for the application, B: 15 dollars every month, and C: 50 more dollars every 6 months for the expansion pack?
Furthermore, if you look at Japanese RPG's vs American RPG's, the American RPG's are about hard work and character building through self-improvement. Japanese RPG's on the other hand are about fulfilling the destiny of becoming the savior of the world. I've played a lot of Role Playing Games in my day, and I can't think of a single Japanese developed game in this genre where the character wasn't pre-ordained to become the savior of the would through birthright or destiny... A Superman complex, if you will. American RPG's are filled with characters that rose to heroism in the face of adversity. Like Batman. Characters that are normal people who do extrordinary things because of the circumstances they find themselves in. This distinction, while slight in a movie or single-player realm, is significant in online RPGs. You can't have 100,000 characters running around who are all Jesus. Even in City of Heroes everyone is just a normal, hardworking crime fighter.
I'm not saying that no games have cross cultural appeal, but delivering what the Japanese normally want impossible in a MMPORPG. Add in the fact that MMPORPG atrophy is high (most of the people I know have played a MMPORPG, and gave it up due to waning interest), and we can't even get right what "we" want. I'm sure that Japan will someday become a bastion of online gaming equivalent of Korea, but they need more Japanese developers than just SEGA and Square trying to push the boundaries and explore what makes the games appeal to the Japanese gamer.
* Full disclosure: I've come to respect the XBox, but I would hate to see my favorite pastime handed to a serially convicted monopolist.
The fans of the emulator, and the emulation scene, were upset because the work of this author was being used for evil commercial purposes by an evil company. If you haven't noticed, companies now play the role of the hated other. They routinely do terrible things that go unpunished (Shell murdering people in Nigeria, anyone?) and provide worse and worse products. For a company to take someone's work without payment and expoit it commercially is the highest evil imaginable.
Ok, that's a little thick, but you get the point. The problem is this "evil" company is Jaleco, a videogame company which generally seems motivated simply by making quirky games out of quirky ideas and doing so on the cheap. They probably re-released the games because they wanted people to play their stuff, rather than they wanted a quick buck. I know this isn't true at all publishers, and I have no personal contact with Jaleco, but most people who get into gaming do so because they love it, not because there is much money to be made. True, there are some toothpaste salesmen, but by and large even publishers are gamers. What they should have done was notify and thank the original author... but I wouldn't crucify them for that. They put out more retrogames into the world. They deserve support.
1. If you have call display, is it polite to answer the phone with the caller's name?
It's never polite to point out that you know more than the other person might let on. If someone doesn't volunteer their name, they don't want you to know. If someone on slashdot pretends that they're not a virgin, just nod politely.
2. What about call answer? Should you take the incoming call and how long should you be on it before returning to the original call?
What happens when you're with someone in meatspace and another friend bumps in with something important? You should be on the line with the second caller just long enough to ascertain what is going on, and that you will call them back, but that's it. If it's a matter of life and death, call back the first person. So long as everyone behaves in phone space as they would in real life, nobody's toes will get stepped on.
3. Is call screening using an answering machine polite?
Only until people catch on. It is a bad idea, though, because once someone in the know calls and doesn't get you, they will think you are snubbing them. If you really must screen, get a caller ID box instead, and stay consistent enough that the people whom you wouldn't screen out never have someone pick up during a message.
4. I give telemarketers one chance to hang up before I slam the receiver down on them. Is this polite or should I listen to their pitch?
Telemarketers are people too. But so are drug dealers. Drug dealers at least make you want what they are pushing. I recommend simply telling them that they have reached a cell phone (which they are not allowed in the US to call), and the problem will dissapate. Beyond that, the telemarketers are really at the mercy of the people they are calling, who have every moral right to make life as annoying as they do when they call 50 times in the middle of dinner. There's no rule that says you must be polite to someone who refuses to be polite to you.
5. What are cell phone rules? Is it acceptable to have a social call while in line at the supermarket? What about a heated business call?
There are two parts to this. One, people mysteriously become very loud on cellphones. The physical distance seems to subconsciously serve to cause people to raise their voices perceptably. If someone were carrying on a normal conversation with the same volume that they carry on a cellular conversation it would also be annoying. If you're careful with your volume, you won't be annoying.
Two, it is rude to be on a call when with someone else. It's ignoring your guest, even if youre just going to the supermarket together. The same rules apply here as apply to call waiting.
Three, assuming you follow the above rules, it is not any more rude to be chatting quietly on a cell phone than it would be to chat quietly with a friend. If it wouldn't be OK to chat with your neighbor during a sermon, get off the phone.
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Recently a friend of ours was trying to get a ride to a party, but didn't start trying to contact us until after she was in our area. She called a few times until her cell battery died. She borrowed someone's computer at a cafe to e-mail us. She IM'ed us. She called from a payphone. She got frantic.
She did everything but come up and ring our doorbell. Which would have worked: we were at home.
Sometimes technology can cause people to forget the obvious ways of doing things.
It's extrememly significant. When is the last time a dominant MS end-user product *lost* marketshare?
Hmm... When you have 100% of anything, there's only one way to go. When you have essentially 100% of anything, and have reached a state of rough equillibrium, there is going to be oscillations. 1% does not a fight make, especially if you look at where Mozilla / Netscape was four years ago. The fact that the descrease is statistical noise to I.E. and a huge boost to the Mozilla community should show that the Mozilla community is also very close to statistical noise to I.E.
Full Disclosure: I'm writing this through Opera.
You know that was what prompted the law, yet ironically it was one of the most recorded moments in television history. People have it VHSed TIVOed Ripped Burned Shared and otherwise widely available.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell this will require webcasters to make and keep copies of their broadcasts as well, which strikes me as grossly inconvienient to them. There is a public television station near where I work that broadcasts nothing but a view from a camera at night when nothing is on. Will they have to record that? What about feeds from webcams?
This strikes me as having a lot more unintended side effects than the FCC might foresee, and in order to achieve something that we don't have a problem with now.