One that doesn't have a catastrophic failure mode? Maybe we should be putting our money into that rather than war machines and dick pills?
Is there any business operation anywhere on the planet that isn't operated as a giant catastrofuck? I mean seriously, everywhere you look it seems like lying, corner-cutting, and profit-raping. Are there any responsbile operators out there?
People are pressed for time. If they can rent a movie for a buck on their phone, they'll do it. If they have to pay $17 to "own" it and have it vendor-locked to the phone, now they're going to want to figure out how to pirate it.
Most people are not technical. "Burning" or "torrenting" is completely beyond their ken. The only time the average person will encounter piracy is when someone gives them a burn of a CD or DVD that they'll then treat exactly the same as standard media. But they're not going to do the pirating themselves. And for those who do, equitable pricing that gives more back to the creators and less than the middlemen will keep things fine.
Overcharge and people will pirate. Charge a reasonable rate and while you'll still have pirates, you'll have even more customers.
Re:Apart from being dumbfoundingly mundane like al
on
Dragon Age II Released
·
· Score: 1
i have spore. unfortunately its way too simplistic, and immersion is much limited.
The problem here is that you're trying to strike a balance between detail and tedium and it's a hard one to get right.
Master of Orion had one planet per star. The sequel put multiple planets per star, plus added micromanagement for each location. It certainly made the game more complicated but didn't feel any deeper, just more tedious.
X-Com had a good balance between the strategic map and base building/UFO intercepting but the sequel completely ruined that balance. Instead of the missions being interesting they felt like a grind. "Oh, shit, gotta go do another goddamn mission." And the ships were the worst because that basically took what would have been one tedious level and turned it into three or four decks worth of tedium.
The only way I think what you're suggesting would work is if the greater scale could be bolted onto the existing interface without feeling obnoxious. If it's an RTS game, you start out leading a fighting patrol. You're just a nobody. As you progress you get to start requesting units, then eventually building bases, and setting grand strategy. The RISK-style strategy screen would let you select the next territory to conquer and would determine the amount of support you can bring when conquering the next territory. All of those pieces would have been designed together as part of the whole game but revealed in a sequence that flows with the storyline.
But as I said, there's a fine balance between immersion and tedium. If you look at the recent Pirates! remakes, the land battle segments are not very good. It's tedium. Even worse is trying to go treasure hunting. You'll waste so much time mucking about the map. The console version did away with that -- so long as you make landfall near the right spot, you find the treasure/missing relative.
Honestly, for the most part I think if you're going to hybridize you need to do it from the start. Adding in some sort of higher-level minigame at the end would likely be irksome more than anything else.
Re:Apart from being dumbfoundingly mundane like al
on
Dragon Age II Released
·
· Score: 1
this would actually be more realistic in every way ; in almost all games you develop to a point you are totally a factor that would affect any world, if you developed something to that point (stats etc), but nothing changes - noone comes and asks you to be their general or king, and actual strategy happens. someone who became as strong as the characters in rpgs (da, mass effect included) would actually have SO much clout in the world they were living in that, a lot of things would be effected and revolving around them. but, because innovation and experiments are prohibited in mass manufacturing gaming, escapism is used - 'oh, our character is humble, and he does this/that. or, our character marries with the queen and happy ever after'
No, that sounds good but it would suck. Here's why: it's hard enough to make a game in a single genre that's any good. You start trying to go cross-genre, you're now greatly increasing the chance something's going to suck.
Something like GTAIII to IV is pretty unusual in that it's a hybrid of a first-person shooter and a vehicle sim. Even at that the vehicle controls are a bit spongy and make precision maneuvers difficult. Not so bad on normal missions but ruinous in the races.
There were already enough complaints with the way GTA IV handled all the mini-games. People were saying "I'm three hours into the game and still getting tutorials! This sucks!" And most of the mini-games were pretty forgettable. Darts, pool, the dating stuff. It sounds nice on paper but a lot of people found them completely distracting. Fortunately, you could skip most of that stuff or just do autoplay.
But what you're proposing would have the potential of introducing a brand new play mechanic really late in the game with the potential of ruining the feel of it. While it remains theoretically possible to do something like this right, in practice it would remain exceedingly difficult.
I love the idea of interactive storytelling but I've been greatly disappointed by most of the rpg's I've played. Usually they have terribly dull and uninteresting storylines you couldn't be bothered to give a goddamn about. There's no real storyline propelling the game, just random side-quests along the "collecting goblin noses" standard.
There's plenty of potential for the genre but all of the games feel alike and remain dull. Oblivion remains an unbelievably gorgeous game, jaw-dropping and absolutely amazing. But the counter-intuitive leveling system took immersion and broke it on the wheel. The trite and boring storyline snuffed out any sense of weight and meaning in the gameplay.
And I'd like to second whoever said the original Dragon Age had hideous graphics. Ugly beyond all belief. I don't know how they were able to release it in this day and age. Naff.
Mr. Bucket had a job at the toothpaste factory screwing lids onto tubes of toothpaste. A shitty job. One day, they bought a robot that did the same thing, only betterfastercheaper and so Mr. Bucket got the sack. So what did he do? He learned how to fix the machine, and thus got a job fixing the machine that paid better.
What is the moral of the story? If your job is in danger of becoming redundant because a robot (or piece of software) can do your job, you'd better start educating yourself so that you can get a job fixing the machine (or piece of software) that does your old job. Humans need to focus on work that humans are good at, and not try to compete at tedious repetitive things (screwing lids onto toothpaste, parsing long contracts with fixed logical rules) which machines (and software) are inherently better at.
You're not telling the whole story. Mr. Bucket was one of 21 different cap screwers working for the factory. The one machine replaced all of them. He got a job fixing the machine. What do the other 20 people do?
So, they're fucking cheating shits who do nothing but game algorithms and lie to people to steal their money, and you're a stupid cunt for having such blind faith in an opaque market.
What really bakes my noodle is how you have people out there defending these practices. It's like what, are you getting a cut of this? Because otherwise it looks like you're getting fucked on this same as the rest of us.
There's a certain conservative mentality that says "Everything's fine, we're all doing great here. A few bad apples don't invalidate the entire system." They think there's nothing wrong with our political process. Capitalism is the bestest, most awesome and wonderful economic system ever given to man by our lord Jebus Christ.
I worked with a guy who was a Karl Rove acolyte, worked with him in DC. He was now striking out as a professional lobbyist. That guy was marinated in the Kool-Aid. Said outsourcing was a wonderful thing. "You would deny the little brown people a chance at getting a slice of the American Dream?" Outsourcing manufacturing jobs and calling burger-flipping manufacturing to make the loss not look as steep? "Are you saying that working in the food service industry is not an honorable profession?" It's not about honor, you fuckspat. I'm just saying $5.15 an hour ain't the same as $20 an hour. This apple is not an orange."
[quote]I don't know where they hell you've been, but butthurt has been in the active vocabulary in my place of residence (California) for well over a decade now. My 55 year old boss at an engineering firm uses the term regularly and he's a Fortran coder (punch cards before that). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you are reaching for things to criticize.[/quote]
I'm no fuddy-duddy. I'm willing to change when an obviously superior idea comes along. What fucks me off about Microsoft is that they rearrange where you find the fucking things but they're ultimately the same fucking screen from the last four versions. But where do you go to configure network properties? It's a goddamn easter egg hunt.
They've spent the last year making Docs suck more and more.
1. Disabled offline editing, no replacement in sight but they promise it'll be fixed.
2. Locked you into fixed page width and are unable to change how things are laid out.
3. The new editor removed tons of customization because it was a big rewrite. I can understand getting basic features working before working on advanced ones but you can't roll out a new version of your product with less features than the original, critical features people are relying on.
This is a problem with software as a service. If you fucking HATE the ribbon you can stick with Office 2003. There's the issue of not being able to work as easily with people using the new version of Office but at least your internal documents are fine. Using Docs, you have to upgrade when everyone else does and if they screw up something you like, there's no sticking with the old version.
So, intrinsically, the Ring War in which Frodo and his merry band wins is fantasy. The Ring War in which Mordor wins would have been sci-fi.
I think that's a little too simplistic. LOTR has been tremendously influential and inspired a slew of imitators but there's plenty of fantasy that stabs out in other directions.
The question with this adaptation is whether or not we're supposed to accept the account written in LOTR as in any way truthful. It feels like an exercise in rehabilitating Stalin. I like the idea of presenting a typical fantasy dark lord in a more positive light but I remain skeptical that this could be accomplished with Suaron. that having been said, time to download the text and see how it's done.
Piracy means never having to worry about this shit. I'm not being flippant here -- you make your product more convenient to steal than purchase, what do you think's going to happen?
Balmer: Sir, there is a new threat facing us, Open Source.
Gates: No bother, we'll just rip off what they do and when they sue us we'll buy the company.
Balmer: It doesn't work that way. They're busy trying to emulate the look and feel of Windows. They're ripping us off.
Gates: Then we'll sue them.
Balmer: There's no company to sue.
Gates: If we can't buy them or sue them, what are we supposed to do? Let's go after the programmers. Surely we can pay them more than they're making right now.
Balmer: They're not making anything right now.
Gates: What? Preposterous! Anything worth doing is worth doing for money. What could possibly motivate them?
Balmer: Love and the respect of their peers. I assure you I am as baffled as you are.
Most of this stuff was done as a hobby, for bragging rights. It's like any other kind of hobby people get involved in. People were surfing and rock climbing and flying model airplanes long before there was any sort of sponsorship involved and sponsorships were basically from companies looking to cash in from association with the hobby, either trying to become a lifestyle brand like soda companies aligning themselves with extreeeeeeeeeme! sports or actual suppliers of the equipment wanting to get their name out amongst the participating amateurs.
The mistake these people are making is assuming that what motivates them motivates others. Usually it happens the other way around, people doing it for the love getting disillusioned by those doing it for the money so it's always nice to see it go the other way around for a change.
Jen: [Moss has a small plastic box with a flashing light] What is it? Moss: This, Jen, is the Internet. Jen: What? Moss: That's right. Jen: This is the Internet? The whole Internet? Moss: Yep. I asked for a loan of it so that you could use it in your speech. Jen: It's so small. Moss: That's one of the surprising things about it. Jen: Hang on, it doesn't have any wires or anything. Moss: It's wireless. Jen: Oh, yes, everything's wireless nowadays, isn't it... yeah. So, I can really use it in my speech? What if someone needs it? Moss: Oh, no, no, people will still be able to go online and everything. It will still work. Jen: Oh, good, good... Moss: I tell you, you present this to the shareholders and you will get quite the response. Jen: Can I touch it? It's so light! Moss: Of course it is, Jen. The Internet doesn't weigh anything. Jen: No, of course it doesn't. [laughs nervously] Roy: Hey! What is Jen doing with the Internet? Jen: Moss said I could use it for my speech. Roy: Are you insane? What if she drops it? Jen: I won't drop it, I'll look after it. Roy: No. No, no, no, no, Jen. No, this needs to go straight back to Big Ben. Jen: Big Ben? Moss: Yep. It goes on top of Big Ben. That's where you get the best reception.
Ok, looks like Italics don't work anymore but blockquote does. Once again slashcode amazes me. Didn't meant to steal the comment I was quoting above, tried putting it in italics.
It used to be that people heralded the internet as a death knell to the media conglomerates like ClearChannel and News Corps. Now we're seeing just how simple it is for even a dying internet presence to gobble up prominent venues for discussion, whether of technology (Engadget, TechCrunch) or politics (HuffPo). There's no reason to break out the tin foil hat just yet, but it's surprising how a left-leaning blog such as Huffington Post is not immune to a major league buyout. I'm sure many fans of the blog will defend this acquisition as a huge increase in journalistic capability, and claim that the authors will remain as interested in maintaining an independent politic voice, but only time will tell.
The thing is, people are mobile on the web. Network execs hated the invention of the remote control because they counted on people being too lazy to get up off the couch and change the channel. The last thing they wanted was the ability for people to change channels as quickly as the impulse hit them.
And as far as the web goes, the content producers are just as mobile. If the Huff name dies, everyone can make the jump to a new site, easy-peasy.
As for her selling the site, I suppose there's absolutely nothing illegal about it though it does seem to go against the basic assumptions someone would make about why she put it together in the first place. The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind. But if none of that was spelled out in a charter and bylaws then there's nothing illegal about it even if it is terribly disappointing. Might be an impetus to put together something with those expressed interests instead.
The thing that surprises me is AOL of all companies. I thought they were in their death throes.
It hurts to even look at this site now, let alone use it. Why why why did you do this? I come here for the stories and the user comments. All the site has to do is present everything in a friendly fashion. This is all just extremely painful. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and find a new timewaster.
Seems like this is the moment the HAM radio folks always shine. I don't know what kind of following they've got in Egypt but I imagine it'd be pretty useful. That and texting.
Yeah, not only are the foreign devils helping your people revolt, they're using HAM to do it. Like that's not going to piss off the mullahs even more. At least the GSM phones are halal.
I can understand someone creating spam pages for popular search terms but I've never understood quite how they manage to come up with really obscure shit, like if I type in "three inch frange demodulator" and there's the first hit proudly declaring "Internet's leader for three inch frange demodulators!" I just made that term up two seconds ago. How do they get that cached into google? A few years back they were doing that with porn text and it would be "'Harder!' she cried, and I thrust my three inch frange demodulator deep inside." I have two questions: how did they do that and is it even doing anything useful for them? Surely they couldn't generate real ad revenue off of banner cruft on that sort of page, right?
I'm not sure of the utility of the torrent spams, either. I know never to download video files that are compressed archives because it's just going to be a scam to get you to sign up for something or pay to get the password but those are few and far between. Pirate Bay and kickasstorrents are usually pretty good. It's the other oddball sites that don't even have the damn file you're looking for but give you a dozen "sponsored links" that pretend like they do and don't. Do they live off of money made from drive-by malware?
As you say, the money is all spent up front. So why not do the charging up front? Raise $X from investors, where the investors are also the consumers, pay the talent $X, make the product, let it scatter to the four winds by BitTorrent. If it's enjoyed, the reputation of the production house is raised for the next cycle of investment and production.
It's possible that this wouldn't work, there might be not enough committed interest from the hardcore fans to sustain a show of the price we've come to expect from per-copy funded distribution. But isn't it worth a try?
Someone coined the word 'prosumers'; how about 'convesters'? Consumer-investors. Are we all too cheap to pay the going rate for our entertainment?
I'm surprised nobody's tried this yet. I look at the anger Paramount generates with the way Trek is mismanaged. I'd figure someone with a name like Joss Whedon would be able to leverage that into doing something with an online distribution. We've got little web comedy shows succeeding right now like Mr. Deity or The Guild. Those have far smaller production costs.
JMS from Bab5 tried to go the direct-to-DVD route with a potential series of B5 vids. I don't think it panned out for him. I bought the first DVD anyway even though I've come to despise physical media for being a waste of space. Anyone know why it failed? Maybe we haven't yet reached the critical mass of fan-investors. But certainly today's technology would make investing in a venture like this more feasible than trying to do it in the 90's.
Slashdot Mirror
One that doesn't have a catastrophic failure mode? Maybe we should be putting our money into that rather than war machines and dick pills?
Is there any business operation anywhere on the planet that isn't operated as a giant catastrofuck? I mean seriously, everywhere you look it seems like lying, corner-cutting, and profit-raping. Are there any responsbile operators out there?
People are pressed for time. If they can rent a movie for a buck on their phone, they'll do it. If they have to pay $17 to "own" it and have it vendor-locked to the phone, now they're going to want to figure out how to pirate it.
Most people are not technical. "Burning" or "torrenting" is completely beyond their ken. The only time the average person will encounter piracy is when someone gives them a burn of a CD or DVD that they'll then treat exactly the same as standard media. But they're not going to do the pirating themselves. And for those who do, equitable pricing that gives more back to the creators and less than the middlemen will keep things fine.
Overcharge and people will pirate. Charge a reasonable rate and while you'll still have pirates, you'll have even more customers.
i have spore. unfortunately its way too simplistic, and immersion is much limited.
The problem here is that you're trying to strike a balance between detail and tedium and it's a hard one to get right.
Master of Orion had one planet per star. The sequel put multiple planets per star, plus added micromanagement for each location. It certainly made the game more complicated but didn't feel any deeper, just more tedious.
X-Com had a good balance between the strategic map and base building/UFO intercepting but the sequel completely ruined that balance. Instead of the missions being interesting they felt like a grind. "Oh, shit, gotta go do another goddamn mission." And the ships were the worst because that basically took what would have been one tedious level and turned it into three or four decks worth of tedium.
The only way I think what you're suggesting would work is if the greater scale could be bolted onto the existing interface without feeling obnoxious. If it's an RTS game, you start out leading a fighting patrol. You're just a nobody. As you progress you get to start requesting units, then eventually building bases, and setting grand strategy. The RISK-style strategy screen would let you select the next territory to conquer and would determine the amount of support you can bring when conquering the next territory. All of those pieces would have been designed together as part of the whole game but revealed in a sequence that flows with the storyline.
But as I said, there's a fine balance between immersion and tedium. If you look at the recent Pirates! remakes, the land battle segments are not very good. It's tedium. Even worse is trying to go treasure hunting. You'll waste so much time mucking about the map. The console version did away with that -- so long as you make landfall near the right spot, you find the treasure/missing relative.
Honestly, for the most part I think if you're going to hybridize you need to do it from the start. Adding in some sort of higher-level minigame at the end would likely be irksome more than anything else.
this would actually be more realistic in every way ; in almost all games you develop to a point you are totally a factor that would affect any world, if you developed something to that point (stats etc), but nothing changes - noone comes and asks you to be their general or king, and actual strategy happens. someone who became as strong as the characters in rpgs (da, mass effect included) would actually have SO much clout in the world they were living in that, a lot of things would be effected and revolving around them. but, because innovation and experiments are prohibited in mass manufacturing gaming, escapism is used - 'oh, our character is humble, and he does this/that. or, our character marries with the queen and happy ever after'
No, that sounds good but it would suck. Here's why: it's hard enough to make a game in a single genre that's any good. You start trying to go cross-genre, you're now greatly increasing the chance something's going to suck.
Something like GTAIII to IV is pretty unusual in that it's a hybrid of a first-person shooter and a vehicle sim. Even at that the vehicle controls are a bit spongy and make precision maneuvers difficult. Not so bad on normal missions but ruinous in the races.
There were already enough complaints with the way GTA IV handled all the mini-games. People were saying "I'm three hours into the game and still getting tutorials! This sucks!" And most of the mini-games were pretty forgettable. Darts, pool, the dating stuff. It sounds nice on paper but a lot of people found them completely distracting. Fortunately, you could skip most of that stuff or just do autoplay.
But what you're proposing would have the potential of introducing a brand new play mechanic really late in the game with the potential of ruining the feel of it. While it remains theoretically possible to do something like this right, in practice it would remain exceedingly difficult.
I love the idea of interactive storytelling but I've been greatly disappointed by most of the rpg's I've played. Usually they have terribly dull and uninteresting storylines you couldn't be bothered to give a goddamn about. There's no real storyline propelling the game, just random side-quests along the "collecting goblin noses" standard.
There's plenty of potential for the genre but all of the games feel alike and remain dull. Oblivion remains an unbelievably gorgeous game, jaw-dropping and absolutely amazing. But the counter-intuitive leveling system took immersion and broke it on the wheel. The trite and boring storyline snuffed out any sense of weight and meaning in the gameplay.
And I'd like to second whoever said the original Dragon Age had hideous graphics. Ugly beyond all belief. I don't know how they were able to release it in this day and age. Naff.
Mr. Bucket had a job at the toothpaste factory screwing lids onto tubes of toothpaste. A shitty job. One day, they bought a robot that did the same thing, only betterfastercheaper and so Mr. Bucket got the sack. So what did he do? He learned how to fix the machine, and thus got a job fixing the machine that paid better.
What is the moral of the story? If your job is in danger of becoming redundant because a robot (or piece of software) can do your job, you'd better start educating yourself so that you can get a job fixing the machine (or piece of software) that does your old job. Humans need to focus on work that humans are good at, and not try to compete at tedious repetitive things (screwing lids onto toothpaste, parsing long contracts with fixed logical rules) which machines (and software) are inherently better at.
You're not telling the whole story. Mr. Bucket was one of 21 different cap screwers working for the factory. The one machine replaced all of them. He got a job fixing the machine. What do the other 20 people do?
To say Phantom was the worst implies the other two were any better.
So, they're fucking cheating shits who do nothing but game algorithms and lie to people to steal their money, and you're a stupid cunt for having such blind faith in an opaque market.
What really bakes my noodle is how you have people out there defending these practices. It's like what, are you getting a cut of this? Because otherwise it looks like you're getting fucked on this same as the rest of us.
There's a certain conservative mentality that says "Everything's fine, we're all doing great here. A few bad apples don't invalidate the entire system." They think there's nothing wrong with our political process. Capitalism is the bestest, most awesome and wonderful economic system ever given to man by our lord Jebus Christ.
I worked with a guy who was a Karl Rove acolyte, worked with him in DC. He was now striking out as a professional lobbyist. That guy was marinated in the Kool-Aid. Said outsourcing was a wonderful thing. "You would deny the little brown people a chance at getting a slice of the American Dream?" Outsourcing manufacturing jobs and calling burger-flipping manufacturing to make the loss not look as steep? "Are you saying that working in the food service industry is not an honorable profession?" It's not about honor, you fuckspat. I'm just saying $5.15 an hour ain't the same as $20 an hour. This apple is not an orange."
Blows me away.
[quote]I don't know where they hell you've been, but butthurt has been in the active vocabulary in my place of residence (California) for well over a decade now. My 55 year old boss at an engineering firm uses the term regularly and he's a Fortran coder (punch cards before that). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you are reaching for things to criticize.[/quote]
Anecdote not notable. Citation needed.
I'm no fuddy-duddy. I'm willing to change when an obviously superior idea comes along. What fucks me off about Microsoft is that they rearrange where you find the fucking things but they're ultimately the same fucking screen from the last four versions. But where do you go to configure network properties? It's a goddamn easter egg hunt.
Don't even get me started on that fucking ribbon.
man vs. nature
man vs. man
man vs. the environment
man vs. machines/technology
man vs. the supernatural
man vs. self
man vs. god/religion
man vs. food
They've spent the last year making Docs suck more and more.
1. Disabled offline editing, no replacement in sight but they promise it'll be fixed.
2. Locked you into fixed page width and are unable to change how things are laid out.
3. The new editor removed tons of customization because it was a big rewrite. I can understand getting basic features working before working on advanced ones but you can't roll out a new version of your product with less features than the original, critical features people are relying on.
This is a problem with software as a service. If you fucking HATE the ribbon you can stick with Office 2003. There's the issue of not being able to work as easily with people using the new version of Office but at least your internal documents are fine. Using Docs, you have to upgrade when everyone else does and if they screw up something you like, there's no sticking with the old version.
We have the best government money can buy.
So, intrinsically, the Ring War in which Frodo and his merry band wins is fantasy. The Ring War in which Mordor wins would have been sci-fi.
I think that's a little too simplistic. LOTR has been tremendously influential and inspired a slew of imitators but there's plenty of fantasy that stabs out in other directions.
The question with this adaptation is whether or not we're supposed to accept the account written in LOTR as in any way truthful. It feels like an exercise in rehabilitating Stalin. I like the idea of presenting a typical fantasy dark lord in a more positive light but I remain skeptical that this could be accomplished with Suaron. that having been said, time to download the text and see how it's done.
Piracy means never having to worry about this shit. I'm not being flippant here -- you make your product more convenient to steal than purchase, what do you think's going to happen?
Balmer: Sir, there is a new threat facing us, Open Source.
Gates: No bother, we'll just rip off what they do and when they sue us we'll buy the company.
Balmer: It doesn't work that way. They're busy trying to emulate the look and feel of Windows. They're ripping us off.
Gates: Then we'll sue them.
Balmer: There's no company to sue.
Gates: If we can't buy them or sue them, what are we supposed to do? Let's go after the programmers. Surely we can pay them more than they're making right now.
Balmer: They're not making anything right now.
Gates: What? Preposterous! Anything worth doing is worth doing for money. What could possibly motivate them?
Balmer: Love and the respect of their peers. I assure you I am as baffled as you are.
Most of this stuff was done as a hobby, for bragging rights. It's like any other kind of hobby people get involved in. People were surfing and rock climbing and flying model airplanes long before there was any sort of sponsorship involved and sponsorships were basically from companies looking to cash in from association with the hobby, either trying to become a lifestyle brand like soda companies aligning themselves with extreeeeeeeeeme! sports or actual suppliers of the equipment wanting to get their name out amongst the participating amateurs.
The mistake these people are making is assuming that what motivates them motivates others. Usually it happens the other way around, people doing it for the love getting disillusioned by those doing it for the money so it's always nice to see it go the other way around for a change.
Jen: [Moss has a small plastic box with a flashing light] What is it?
Moss: This, Jen, is the Internet.
Jen: What?
Moss: That's right.
Jen: This is the Internet? The whole Internet?
Moss: Yep. I asked for a loan of it so that you could use it in your speech.
Jen: It's so small.
Moss: That's one of the surprising things about it.
Jen: Hang on, it doesn't have any wires or anything.
Moss: It's wireless.
Jen: Oh, yes, everything's wireless nowadays, isn't it... yeah. So, I can really use it in my speech? What if someone needs it?
Moss: Oh, no, no, people will still be able to go online and everything. It will still work.
Jen: Oh, good, good...
Moss: I tell you, you present this to the shareholders and you will get quite the response.
Jen: Can I touch it? It's so light!
Moss: Of course it is, Jen. The Internet doesn't weigh anything.
Jen: No, of course it doesn't.
[laughs nervously]
Roy: Hey! What is Jen doing with the Internet?
Jen: Moss said I could use it for my speech.
Roy: Are you insane? What if she drops it?
Jen: I won't drop it, I'll look after it.
Roy: No. No, no, no, no, Jen. No, this needs to go straight back to Big Ben.
Jen: Big Ben?
Moss: Yep. It goes on top of Big Ben. That's where you get the best reception.
this is italicized
plain test
Ok, looks like Italics don't work anymore but blockquote does. Once again slashcode amazes me. Didn't meant to steal the comment I was quoting above, tried putting it in italics.
It used to be that people heralded the internet as a death knell to the media conglomerates like ClearChannel and News Corps. Now we're seeing just how simple it is for even a dying internet presence to gobble up prominent venues for discussion, whether of technology (Engadget, TechCrunch) or politics (HuffPo). There's no reason to break out the tin foil hat just yet, but it's surprising how a left-leaning blog such as Huffington Post is not immune to a major league buyout. I'm sure many fans of the blog will defend this acquisition as a huge increase in journalistic capability, and claim that the authors will remain as interested in maintaining an independent politic voice, but only time will tell.
The thing is, people are mobile on the web. Network execs hated the invention of the remote control because they counted on people being too lazy to get up off the couch and change the channel. The last thing they wanted was the ability for people to change channels as quickly as the impulse hit them.
And as far as the web goes, the content producers are just as mobile. If the Huff name dies, everyone can make the jump to a new site, easy-peasy.
As for her selling the site, I suppose there's absolutely nothing illegal about it though it does seem to go against the basic assumptions someone would make about why she put it together in the first place. The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind. But if none of that was spelled out in a charter and bylaws then there's nothing illegal about it even if it is terribly disappointing. Might be an impetus to put together something with those expressed interests instead.
The thing that surprises me is AOL of all companies. I thought they were in their death throes.
It hurts to even look at this site now, let alone use it. Why why why did you do this? I come here for the stories and the user comments. All the site has to do is present everything in a friendly fashion. This is all just extremely painful. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and find a new timewaster.
Seems like this is the moment the HAM radio folks always shine. I don't know what kind of following they've got in Egypt but I imagine it'd be pretty useful. That and texting.
Yeah, not only are the foreign devils helping your people revolt, they're using HAM to do it. Like that's not going to piss off the mullahs even more. At least the GSM phones are halal.
I can understand someone creating spam pages for popular search terms but I've never understood quite how they manage to come up with really obscure shit, like if I type in "three inch frange demodulator" and there's the first hit proudly declaring "Internet's leader for three inch frange demodulators!" I just made that term up two seconds ago. How do they get that cached into google? A few years back they were doing that with porn text and it would be "'Harder!' she cried, and I thrust my three inch frange demodulator deep inside." I have two questions: how did they do that and is it even doing anything useful for them? Surely they couldn't generate real ad revenue off of banner cruft on that sort of page, right?
I'm not sure of the utility of the torrent spams, either. I know never to download video files that are compressed archives because it's just going to be a scam to get you to sign up for something or pay to get the password but those are few and far between. Pirate Bay and kickasstorrents are usually pretty good. It's the other oddball sites that don't even have the damn file you're looking for but give you a dozen "sponsored links" that pretend like they do and don't. Do they live off of money made from drive-by malware?
Glen Beck glares up at the sky. "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!"
As you say, the money is all spent up front. So why not do the charging up front? Raise $X from investors, where the investors are also the consumers, pay the talent $X, make the product, let it scatter to the four winds by BitTorrent. If it's enjoyed, the reputation of the production house is raised for the next cycle of investment and production.
It's possible that this wouldn't work, there might be not enough committed interest from the hardcore fans to sustain a show of the price we've come to expect from per-copy funded distribution. But isn't it worth a try?
Someone coined the word 'prosumers'; how about 'convesters'? Consumer-investors. Are we all too cheap to pay the going rate for our entertainment?
I'm surprised nobody's tried this yet. I look at the anger Paramount generates with the way Trek is mismanaged. I'd figure someone with a name like Joss Whedon would be able to leverage that into doing something with an online distribution. We've got little web comedy shows succeeding right now like Mr. Deity or The Guild. Those have far smaller production costs.
JMS from Bab5 tried to go the direct-to-DVD route with a potential series of B5 vids. I don't think it panned out for him. I bought the first DVD anyway even though I've come to despise physical media for being a waste of space. Anyone know why it failed? Maybe we haven't yet reached the critical mass of fan-investors. But certainly today's technology would make investing in a venture like this more feasible than trying to do it in the 90's.
Just...no. Stop it right now. Stop before something bad happens.
I guess you never saw the last two.