Re:They should make a law against this.
on
NBA Rejects EA Deal
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· Score: 4, Funny
Good God, man, have you forgotten about Double Dribble? It did not have league teams/players, and it, many would argue, was the pinnacle of basketball console games.
... being poorly implemented. I think it takes a lot of domain knowledge, hard work, and browser testing in order to get a useable and attractive mesh between server and client code. But, despite the challenges, it will become easier moving forward, as one of the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 will be to include client callback capabilities from server-side controls. It's a cool addition if used correctly and intelligently. My hope is that it doesn't get overused in inappropriate situations or without sufficient cross-browser testing.
The default "user icon" display is set *way* too big for starters.
Agree 100%. When I loaded up 3.0 for the first time that was the first thing I set out to change!
Have you been noticing any connection problems w/MSN w/Trillian 3.0? Pecking through the support forums on Trillian's site, there appear to be others who have had problems connecting w/MSN, such as in this thread, or this one. I have a problem occassionally with some MSN contacts, where if I IM them, they do not see my messages, but if they initiate the conversation, everything works fine. There are a handful of folks where this behavior is fairly consistent.
Anywho, my fervent hope is that 3.0 fixes this problem. I tried out GAIM, but gave up on it because it couldn't do what I needed (see this post if you care to know why it didn't cut the mustard).
I don't speak any language outside of English, so I can't confirm this first-hand, but from the latest Trillian blog entry: "We've added Unicode support [to 3.0] to allow international text, and pulled that through the system."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but GAIM only supports one set of network connection preferences for all IM mediums. Trillian allows you to specify this information on a per-medium basis. Why does this matter, you ask? Well, I use SecWay's (free) Encryption plug-in for MSN which requires that you route your connection through a local proxy. This works great for MSN, but for my AIM contacts I need to connect directly through the AIM server, without using the local encryption proxy.
I've tried GAIM, but it seemed like this wsa not configurable. With Trillian I can specify different network connection settings for MSN and AIM.
This was a savvy move by EA, as there are a number of sports fans who buy the games to play as their favorite teams and/or players. Not being an NFL fan, I would not be too upset if a game didn't have pro players, but I'd prefer it since I know the teams and a number of the high profile players.
I am, however, a big NBA fan, and couldn't see myself buying a game that didn't have the actual NBA teams and rosters, unless I knew in advance there was an easy way to download NBA rosters with players who looked like themselves and had similar physical and player stats. I'm not a big fan of EA games for sports, the last two basketball games I bought were Sega's (NBA 2k3 and ESPN NBA 2k5 (for $20 less than EA's NBA Live 2005!)), but when I'm ready for the next basketball game (2007, I'd guesstimate), if EA was the only game with NBA rosters, I'd buy that, even if it was $20 more than Sega's version.
Of all the console-based football games or basketball games I've ever played in my life, the only ones that didn't have actual league rosters were Double Dribble and 10 Yard Fight. About the only sport where I could really give a flying f*ck about whether or not they had league rosters would be baseball, as I really lothe baseball. Despite my feelings for the sport, there have been some fun baseball games, such as Baseball Stars 2 (an awesome game), Nintendo's original Baseball (seemed fun enough for an 8 year old), and RBI Baseball (although that may have had actual team names, I can't recall off the top of my head).
Have you heard of/used Lookout? It is a tool for indexing Outlook files (and is free). I tried out GDS, but reverted back to Lookout b/c Lookout can also index files on the file system that I specify, like I can say, "Index.cs files in this directory," and it will work, whereas GDS doesn't (yet?) support this. Google's UI is a lot nicer, but Lookout lets me get what I need done. Also, MS is supposedly going to be coming out with a Desktop Search of its own, which, since they bought Lookout, will hopefully be an improved version of Lookout.
There was an interesting blog article by a Microsoft PSS employee about his recommendation for choosing passphrases as opposed to passwords. Worth a read. The main problem is a number of online sites don't allow spaces in passwords or limit the password to a short number of characters. For example, I tried to create an iTunes account with a phrase from a Pavement song but it wouldn't let me go over 32 characters or have any spaces in my password.
This quote from the article raised my eyebrows a bit:
Even data entered on secure websites -- such as passwords, credit card numbers and bank account numbers, information that is supposed to be viewable only by the sender and the intended recipient -- is accessible to Marketscore, since the company has developed a method that allows it to view encrypted information.
Their servers can "view encrypted information?" If this were true, wouldn't that kind of make eCommerce a joke? Wouldn't our government be a bit concerned? Etc., etc.
What I assume happens is that this spyware can see that the browser is making an HTTPS request, send the form data to the Marketscore servers over HTTP, and then make the HTTPS request from their servers, but that's hardly "view[ing] encrypted information." And even that's a bit scary, since the HTTP request from the user's browser to Marketscore can be seen by others (the user's and Marketscore's ISPs, people who have gained control of routers along the way, people on the same LAN as the person using this computer, etc.).
Tetris was good but it's not something I go back and play a lot
Single player, you're right, but Tetris Worlds on N64 had a fun multiplayer game (up to 4 folks) and a friend of mine was so good that we'd play 3 on 1 and he'd hold his own, and probably won the majority of games. I think most games I enjoy a lot more playing with others. It's most fun when you're all there, but XBOX Live is having to hold me over as I the friends I have here aren't into video games like my friends back in college, and younger. Maybe they've all matured.;-)
My turn... I'd say my top games of all time list includes (in no particular order)... and I think you're a bit older than me, or at least have been playing games longer! (I am 26, btw):
Goldeneye (a James Bond game, FPS), for the N64 - if I had a nickel for every hour I wasted playing that with addictive game with my friends in college, I'd be rich
CivII (and CivI to a lesser extent)
Tetris (I especially enjoyed Tetris Worlds for N64)
The Legend of Zelda
Metroid
Techmo Bowl - was there ever a more fun football game you could play with your buddy?
NBA Live 2005 for Sega Genesis - again, if I had a nickel for every hour I blew playing this with my brother...
Doom/Doom II - never really liked Quake, though
Contra was pretty cool, but that up/down/up/down code was my crutch, which probably zapped some fun from the game.
It's interesting to think of what qualities make up a great game. One such quality (for me, at least), is the ability to be able to play a quick game and get great enjoyment from it, or had actions that were pretty simple and somewhat repetitive, but were fun nevertheless. Many games these days, it seem, try to immerse you into the game in too great detail, add to many features and so forth. Thinking back on the games I most enjoyed they'd be ones that I could pick up, play for ten minutes with a friend, and then go on and do something else. (Or keep playing for four hours and not get bored, having to quite because my eyes hurt rather than being tired of the game.)
Never played State of Emergency, but it looked pretty one dimensional. The games that have really stood the test of time, for me at least, are Civ II. I still play Civ II every now and then (well, I use C-Evo). Sports games last a while, along with games that you can play with others online or in person. But the single player game, save CivII and similar type games, do tire out quickly.
Say they do come up with a treatment that can suspend the ageing process. Who doesn't doubt that it would be, at least at first, a high priced therapy that only the upper echelons could afford? But how long would it be before the government stepped in and paid for this. I mean, would it be morally sound to keep alive only those who could afford it? You have this to a degree in the medical community today (the richer folks can afford better treatment), but even in the US, without a socialized heathcare, there is Medicaid, which offers free treatment for the poor, and Medicare for the elderly.
Once you start applying this en masse to the populations of first world nations, would it be morally repugnant not to do the same in second- and third-world nations? Even when their birthrates are astronomical? It's hard to draw parallels to today's world. I mean, places like Africa only get a pittance from first-world nations for AIDS prevention/therapy, but AIDS, but there's no 100% cure for AIDS (yet), and one can rationalize that AIDS is their own fault, in a sense. (Of course, not true for those who are raped.) But what about an anti-ageing therapy that is known to suspend ageing? I mean, could we as a people stand to see some 60 year old African guy on TV, begging for this therapy so he doesn't die? Some interesting moral delimmas would be raised, indeed.
In any event, I really hope this comes to fruition in my lifetime. I'd like to never die, and I don't think I'd get bored. Not with Halo 2 out and all.
Creativity in Hollywood is dead. Before I thought it just very sick, not well enough to answer the door, just strong enough to make some sickly whooping coughing noises. But now I know that, after years of painful struggle, it has finally died. Sigh.
Given most of the non-MMOG I get don't last even a month the first go around, it isn't hard to justify WoW
Just out of curiosity, what sort of games do you buy that don't last a month? I don't do computer games too often, mostly console games, and the only console game I've had that lasted less than a month was Halo 1. Once I beat it with my wife, that was pretty much it. (Halo 2, with its XBOX Live capabilities, will greatly extend its lifespan.)
Personally, I find sports games to have a good lifespan, usually at least for half a year, sometimes over a year if it's a particularly enjoyable game (NBA 2k3, for instance). Also, I still enjoy playing Castle Wolfenstein on XBOX Live, although there's fewer and fewer games online as time goes on...
The guy sounds happy where he is. He probably has some good friends, likes the location, has a relationship with some of his teachers in the department, maybe even (gasp!) a girlfriend. So why tear all that away just to go to some place that is supposedly better for his field? Mr. Poster, you have to decide what's more important to you: your happiness and contentness in life where you're at, or the almighty dollar. And, in the end, I'd argue that your smarts, work ethic, and luck will have a greater bearing on your life's monetary total than what school you graduated from.
My experience is that this mentality seems to exist on the IT side, but not necessarily on the developer side. Why, exactly, I can't say, but I'd fathom that it has to do with the perception that programming involves more logic and problem solving skills whereas IT focuses more on knowing specifics for pertinent technologies. But then again my view may be biased - I'm from the developer side!:-)
I tried 1.0, and found it to be bulkier, slower, and more buggy than 0.9.3, so I reverted back to 0.9.3. Never tried the 1.0 PR, 0.9.3 works well for me.
I just don't understand people with your greedy, assbackwards, mindset.
I don't understand people with your mindset, a mindset that strips individuals of their rights. Listen, if I have created something, and want to sell it to you with conditions, why shouldn't I be able to do that? If you don't want to abide by those conditions: DON'T FREAKING BUY WHAT I'M SELLING. Have a little restraint, Mr. Consumer. Jebus.
I am 100% for free trade between people. You, on the other hand, are against that, since you don't think a seller should be able to make a condition, and a buyer free to choose to accept or deny the sale based on that condition.
Finally, capitalism works. In a true capitalistic marketplace, having unnecessary, artificial conditions wouldn't be benefitial to the seller, since other sellers could enter the market without such fluff conditions and make the sale. Going back to the author denying readers to read certain chapters, who would buy those books? Rather, the authors who granted full access would far outsell those who did not.
If the EULA is clearly presented and the consumer can understand it, then why not. I just know that I wouldn't buy clothes packaged in a label that said: "NOT TO BE WORN BY ACTUAL PEOPLE. HIGHLY FLAMABLE. IF YOU BURN AND DIE, WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE."
Why do you think I am for hiding or "tricking" people? I said in my original post, in very clear terms, that conditions are only valid if the buyer understands and agrees to them.
Personally I don't think a EULA that is hidden like that should be binding. I'm not pro-tricking consumers. If a seller wants to place limitations on how his product is used, he needs to make the limitations crystal clear to the potential buyer before any money changes hands. The buyer should then think about whether the goods/conditions are worth the price being asked, and make their decision based on that balance.
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Good God, man, have you forgotten about Double Dribble? It did not have league teams/players, and it, many would argue, was the pinnacle of basketball console games.
... being poorly implemented. I think it takes a lot of domain knowledge, hard work, and browser testing in order to get a useable and attractive mesh between server and client code. But, despite the challenges, it will become easier moving forward, as one of the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 will be to include client callback capabilities from server-side controls. It's a cool addition if used correctly and intelligently. My hope is that it doesn't get overused in inappropriate situations or without sufficient cross-browser testing.
Agree 100%. When I loaded up 3.0 for the first time that was the first thing I set out to change!
Have you been noticing any connection problems w/MSN w/Trillian 3.0? Pecking through the support forums on Trillian's site, there appear to be others who have had problems connecting w/MSN, such as in this thread, or this one. I have a problem occassionally with some MSN contacts, where if I IM them, they do not see my messages, but if they initiate the conversation, everything works fine. There are a handful of folks where this behavior is fairly consistent.
Anywho, my fervent hope is that 3.0 fixes this problem. I tried out GAIM, but gave up on it because it couldn't do what I needed (see this post if you care to know why it didn't cut the mustard).
I don't speak any language outside of English, so I can't confirm this first-hand, but from the latest Trillian blog entry: "We've added Unicode support [to 3.0] to allow international text, and pulled that through the system."
I've tried GAIM, but it seemed like this wsa not configurable. With Trillian I can specify different network connection settings for MSN and AIM.
I am, however, a big NBA fan, and couldn't see myself buying a game that didn't have the actual NBA teams and rosters, unless I knew in advance there was an easy way to download NBA rosters with players who looked like themselves and had similar physical and player stats. I'm not a big fan of EA games for sports, the last two basketball games I bought were Sega's (NBA 2k3 and ESPN NBA 2k5 (for $20 less than EA's NBA Live 2005!)), but when I'm ready for the next basketball game (2007, I'd guesstimate), if EA was the only game with NBA rosters, I'd buy that, even if it was $20 more than Sega's version.
Of all the console-based football games or basketball games I've ever played in my life, the only ones that didn't have actual league rosters were Double Dribble and 10 Yard Fight. About the only sport where I could really give a flying f*ck about whether or not they had league rosters would be baseball, as I really lothe baseball. Despite my feelings for the sport, there have been some fun baseball games, such as Baseball Stars 2 (an awesome game), Nintendo's original Baseball (seemed fun enough for an 8 year old), and RBI Baseball (although that may have had actual team names, I can't recall off the top of my head).
Have you heard of/used Lookout? It is a tool for indexing Outlook files (and is free). I tried out GDS, but reverted back to Lookout b/c Lookout can also index files on the file system that I specify, like I can say, "Index .cs files in this directory," and it will work, whereas GDS doesn't (yet?) support this. Google's UI is a lot nicer, but Lookout lets me get what I need done. Also, MS is supposedly going to be coming out with a Desktop Search of its own, which, since they bought Lookout, will hopefully be an improved version of Lookout.
There was an interesting blog article by a Microsoft PSS employee about his recommendation for choosing passphrases as opposed to passwords. Worth a read. The main problem is a number of online sites don't allow spaces in passwords or limit the password to a short number of characters. For example, I tried to create an iTunes account with a phrase from a Pavement song but it wouldn't let me go over 32 characters or have any spaces in my password.
Well, in my case, a complete shutdown resulted in 100% decrease in spam traffic!
What I assume happens is that this spyware can see that the browser is making an HTTPS request, send the form data to the Marketscore servers over HTTP, and then make the HTTPS request from their servers, but that's hardly "view[ing] encrypted information." And even that's a bit scary, since the HTTP request from the user's browser to Marketscore can be seen by others (the user's and Marketscore's ISPs, people who have gained control of routers along the way, people on the same LAN as the person using this computer, etc.).
Single player, you're right, but Tetris Worlds on N64 had a fun multiplayer game (up to 4 folks) and a friend of mine was so good that we'd play 3 on 1 and he'd hold his own, and probably won the majority of games. I think most games I enjoy a lot more playing with others. It's most fun when you're all there, but XBOX Live is having to hold me over as I the friends I have here aren't into video games like my friends back in college, and younger. Maybe they've all matured. ;-)
- Goldeneye (a James Bond game, FPS), for the N64 - if I had a nickel for every hour I wasted playing that with addictive game with my friends in college, I'd be rich
- CivII (and CivI to a lesser extent)
- Tetris (I especially enjoyed Tetris Worlds for N64)
- The Legend of Zelda
- Metroid
- Techmo Bowl - was there ever a more fun football game you could play with your buddy?
- NBA Live 2005 for Sega Genesis - again, if I had a nickel for every hour I blew playing this with my brother...
- Doom/Doom II - never really liked Quake, though
Contra was pretty cool, but that up/down/up/down code was my crutch, which probably zapped some fun from the game.It's interesting to think of what qualities make up a great game. One such quality (for me, at least), is the ability to be able to play a quick game and get great enjoyment from it, or had actions that were pretty simple and somewhat repetitive, but were fun nevertheless. Many games these days, it seem, try to immerse you into the game in too great detail, add to many features and so forth. Thinking back on the games I most enjoyed they'd be ones that I could pick up, play for ten minutes with a friend, and then go on and do something else. (Or keep playing for four hours and not get bored, having to quite because my eyes hurt rather than being tired of the game.)
Never played State of Emergency, but it looked pretty one dimensional. The games that have really stood the test of time, for me at least, are Civ II. I still play Civ II every now and then (well, I use C-Evo). Sports games last a while, along with games that you can play with others online or in person. But the single player game, save CivII and similar type games, do tire out quickly.
Once you start applying this en masse to the populations of first world nations, would it be morally repugnant not to do the same in second- and third-world nations? Even when their birthrates are astronomical? It's hard to draw parallels to today's world. I mean, places like Africa only get a pittance from first-world nations for AIDS prevention/therapy, but AIDS, but there's no 100% cure for AIDS (yet), and one can rationalize that AIDS is their own fault, in a sense. (Of course, not true for those who are raped.) But what about an anti-ageing therapy that is known to suspend ageing? I mean, could we as a people stand to see some 60 year old African guy on TV, begging for this therapy so he doesn't die? Some interesting moral delimmas would be raised, indeed.
In any event, I really hope this comes to fruition in my lifetime. I'd like to never die, and I don't think I'd get bored. Not with Halo 2 out and all.
Creativity in Hollywood is dead. Before I thought it just very sick, not well enough to answer the door, just strong enough to make some sickly whooping coughing noises. But now I know that, after years of painful struggle, it has finally died. Sigh.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of games do you buy that don't last a month? I don't do computer games too often, mostly console games, and the only console game I've had that lasted less than a month was Halo 1. Once I beat it with my wife, that was pretty much it. (Halo 2, with its XBOX Live capabilities, will greatly extend its lifespan.)
Personally, I find sports games to have a good lifespan, usually at least for half a year, sometimes over a year if it's a particularly enjoyable game (NBA 2k3, for instance). Also, I still enjoy playing Castle Wolfenstein on XBOX Live, although there's fewer and fewer games online as time goes on...
You can have your cake and eat it too - create exciting computer games using COBOL.
The guy sounds happy where he is. He probably has some good friends, likes the location, has a relationship with some of his teachers in the department, maybe even (gasp!) a girlfriend. So why tear all that away just to go to some place that is supposedly better for his field? Mr. Poster, you have to decide what's more important to you: your happiness and contentness in life where you're at, or the almighty dollar. And, in the end, I'd argue that your smarts, work ethic, and luck will have a greater bearing on your life's monetary total than what school you graduated from.
My experience is that this mentality seems to exist on the IT side, but not necessarily on the developer side. Why, exactly, I can't say, but I'd fathom that it has to do with the perception that programming involves more logic and problem solving skills whereas IT focuses more on knowing specifics for pertinent technologies. But then again my view may be biased - I'm from the developer side! :-)
I tried 1.0, and found it to be bulkier, slower, and more buggy than 0.9.3, so I reverted back to 0.9.3. Never tried the 1.0 PR, 0.9.3 works well for me.
Rather than IsNot, use IsNotIsNot. Or, if you want to use the recursive, GNU approach, IsNotIsNotIsNot, or just III.
I agree with you wholeheartedly - trickly EULAs should not be enforceable. As I said in my post you replied to: "I'm not pro-tricking consumers."
Very.
I just don't understand people with your greedy, assbackwards, mindset.
I don't understand people with your mindset, a mindset that strips individuals of their rights. Listen, if I have created something, and want to sell it to you with conditions, why shouldn't I be able to do that? If you don't want to abide by those conditions: DON'T FREAKING BUY WHAT I'M SELLING. Have a little restraint, Mr. Consumer. Jebus.
I am 100% for free trade between people. You, on the other hand, are against that, since you don't think a seller should be able to make a condition, and a buyer free to choose to accept or deny the sale based on that condition.
Finally, capitalism works. In a true capitalistic marketplace, having unnecessary, artificial conditions wouldn't be benefitial to the seller, since other sellers could enter the market without such fluff conditions and make the sale. Going back to the author denying readers to read certain chapters, who would buy those books? Rather, the authors who granted full access would far outsell those who did not.
Why do you think I am for hiding or "tricking" people? I said in my original post, in very clear terms, that conditions are only valid if the buyer understands and agrees to them.
Personally I don't think a EULA that is hidden like that should be binding. I'm not pro-tricking consumers. If a seller wants to place limitations on how his product is used, he needs to make the limitations crystal clear to the potential buyer before any money changes hands. The buyer should then think about whether the goods/conditions are worth the price being asked, and make their decision based on that balance.