Re:Why were MP ever such a big deal?
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Beyond Megapixels
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Heh thats kinda funny.. as I read your post I look down at this film container I use to keep bolts in, and its a Seattle Filmworks container. I was happy they were sending me their crap film for free, as the containers are useful, much more then their film is =).
I downloaded the emulator file and watched it thru there. Im kinda assuming the movie itself is 14% faster just because the video is mainly there to watch it, and making it faster means you can watch what he did and not have it take up too much time. I myself haven't hit that level of boredom yet but you might want to try running the emulator movie vs you playing on rocknes.
As a side note, I had friends in high school who used to steal bottles of Robitussin from the drug store and force the stuff down their throats. If they could prevent themselves from explosively regurgitating it they were in for a long lasting, intense, and incapacitatingly psychadelic high. They called it "Doing the robo."
Thats funny, my friends used to call it "Robo-frying". Ive never touched the stuff myself, they enjoyed it though I guess..
I used to work helpdesk for Microsoft. Well it was another company that they contracted, but anyway. After doing Win98 support I got moved to multimedia and games. Part of that support was for Asherons Call.
Asherons Call (when it originally came out) used the MSN Zone login system to keep track of whos in the game, who has accounts, etc. Probably a year or so later, they (being Microsoft) decided that it would be better of all of the MSN Gaming Zone went to passport instead of using their own login system. When this first went thru, the passport servers got hammered, and people were unable to make passport accounts. Most of these people that were making new accounts were because of Asherons Call. Then the real troubles began.
First, they had it setup so only one active Asherons Call account could be tied to a passport. Sure, you could have multiple accounts under one passport, but you would have to go to the Asherons Call website each time you wanted to use a different account, and change that info on the webpage. (What pretty much happens is you login to passport when you go to the AC page, and then you go into the game, you dont put another password or anything in the actual game interface). So, when you logged in, it just used the "active" AC account tied to the passport you used. This really isn't a big deal for those who have just one account, but there was a lady who called in with 22 AC accounts. Don't ask me why she had so many, people get a little crazy with these games I guess. So, for her to be able to easily login to each one of those accounts, she would have to create 22 seperate passport accounts. So much for the "single sign in system" that they like to tout so much.
Second, the MSN Gaming Zone, and Microsoft are pretty much 2 seperate companies. They don't really share much info behind the scenes (im talking support wise). So, when someone called me up, they would say they couldn't login to Asheron's Call. I would have them go thru the process of making a passport account. At times, the passport account creation wouldn't go well, and Microsoft (at least at that time) had not a single person who could really help me with the passport system at all. There really isn't a phone extension I could have called to get more info, i just had to like figure it out on my own. Not something I dont think really should be done in a big support deal. Anyway, walk the person thru creating the passport account, and then going in and linking the AC account with the newely created passport account. For the few weeks after they decided to do this, it was the worst that you could think of, having to fix that 20 times in a day. It wasn't really our problem (games and multimedia) but they didn't have anywhere else for them to go.
Ok, so that said, I couldn't imagine what a seperate company would get in terms of support when trying to, lets say, integrate passport into thier website. I was representing myself as a Microsoft employee and I couldn't really find anyone to help fix problems with passport, and I was access to the full MSKB (one of the cool things they have, even if it is all just text)Eventually we got some tools towards the end of my days that we could look up what account was tied to what passport, but it really didn't matter much because all the problems we had with it were pretty much taken care of. As a side note, if you were to call them up today, you would be talking to someone in India.
Lol geez, you know after trying to get help from the real Microsoft mentors and such, and trying to get help from Dell, I have never had such a clear explination of why it happened. I think they just realized it isn't something that you can do a registry fix for or anything, so they gave up on it. Well thanks for the reply.
Maybe thats why you never will work for MS, you just dont give a shit about the products.
Btw thanks for havin the balls to reply back as AC. This is probably a troll but im gonna respond anyway. My main problem at my old job was I cared too much about the customers I helped, and the products I supported. I wasn't one of the techs that gave up, heck, I had a few cases that almost went on for a year. The problem is Microsoft doesn't really care about its products. They dont fix something just because its broke, they only fix things when a certain amount of "trouble" has been raised about said problem. That would be either companies losing money because of that problem, or a massive amount of calls to support (im talking extremely massive, if its just a lot, and they dont want to fix it, id have to tell the customer its a known problem and theres nothing I could do about it). If you want to get mad at someone, you should get mad at the person at Microsoft that decided it would be better to move 400+ jobs to India instead of keeping them in the U.S.
I used to work the help desk at microsoft. (Ok, it was another company, I was never employed by microsoft, thank god.). Anyway, there was this problem when Links 2003 came out, with pretty much any Dell laptop. The problem was, the golfer would swing about 10x fast as normal. After infestigating the problem, we found out that these specific dell laptops would not keep track of windows uptime correctly. We would reboot the laptop, and bring up a program that showed windows uptime, and it would give us completely wrong times. As an example, we would reboot, and the dell laptop would show 48 days uptime. Now, as a "microsoft employee", we didn't have a lot do to, when it came to fixing that particular problem. (it only happened on dell laptops, and we could use windows to verify the uptime was not being recorded correctly. Links 2003 would use that uptime figure to calculate how fast the golfer should swing). In any caes, I was never able to get a straight answer from either Microsoft or Dell as to why the newer dell laptops would not keep the Windows uptime correctly. It was kinda one of those issues that was swept under the rug. So, I can atest to the games out there that use the system clock as a timer to find out how fast to play certain things (probably mainly with animation). This is probably something that is used quite often, especially in a situation (like the xbox)where every system is the same. Oh ya, and I hope the Xbox dies a miserable death.
As far as I understand it, record labels decide if they want to be represented by the RIAA. Part of that representation is protecting the copyrights of the labels.
Im a fan of Sisoft Sandra, I used to do tech support over the phone kinda deal, and in the crazier problems we would use it. It may feel bloaty (ive never thought that) but it gives you *a lot* of good information that you can use to troubleshoot the problem. I haven't had that job for the past couple years so there may be better ones out there, but it would be the first thing I downloaded if I needed somethin like that.
Hmm, here is what Larry Probst (hes the CEO of EA) said in a recent interview:
"We have had ongoing discussions with Microsoft about supporting their Xbox Live functionality. It really comes down to a difference in philosophy about the business model. They're creating a new revenue and profit stream. They want to use our intellectual property. They don't want to compensate us for the use of our intellectual property. We think that's a little unrealistic. It would be akin to someone starting a new cable channel and going to HBO or ESPN and saying, we're going to use your content, but you're not going to be compensated for that. I doubt that they would get much of a reception from HBO or ESPN. And so, we've been having ongoing discussions. The negotiations continue to this day. We're moving closer and closer together in terms of a business model that we think is palatable. I think we'll eventually get there. In the meantime we are very, very strong on the Sony platform, supporting their functionality."
So, I'd say I have a somewhat firm grasp as to what is going on.
1 - X-Box Live is the only way Microsoft wants games to be played online with the X-Box.
2 - Customers that play the games with X-Box Live have to pay Microsoft a yearly fee.
Thats all fine and dandy, it would be much better if, lets say, Microsoft gave companies a choice..? How about, you can use Xbox Live, or if you have your own matchmaking service that works better with your game your making, by all means go ahead and use it. May the X-Box crumble and die..
The article mentioned is really the same retoric that companies who outsource like to spout out. Im not sure if anyone is saying that outsourcing doesn't benefit buisnesses, obviously it does. They can take a whole call center of 300+ people, pay them 1/10th the amount they were paid in the U.S., and still have a part of thier buisness they call "tech support". The problem is, the 300+ people that worked there, worked there for 4+ years, and actually cared about the job they worked for. They invested time to become better workers, while thier corporation waved flags of good times in front of them. I worked for a company like this, my job got replaced by a worker in India, and this happend about 4 or 5 months before the "state of the company meeting" we had. Sure, during the meeting, it seemed like a "good" thing that Level 3 communications were buying the part of the company I worked at. Sure, things would be good. Every question we could throw at them they came back saying, yes, this is a good thing.
I'm just glad I sucked up all the unemployment I could get... and im drunk =)
So your saying that there are no web servers on cable modems? Although you are correct that web servers and cable modems operate on different levels of the OSI layer, that doesn't mean that they can't put 2 devices in one box.
Well id say that I wouldn't want to let Osama go that easy, if you know what I mean...
MARSELLUS:
What now? Well let me tell you what now. I'm gonna call a couple pipe-hittin' niggers, who'll go to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.
Nah not really, the ones in prey could fly, used predetor / prey instincts, had optical cameras, etc.. Id say much cooler then a chip that can detect temperature and motion.
Get real, lets send some good ones up there.. Lets see, make fake invitations to Darl McBride and John Ashcroft to go meet at the headquarters of the RIAA, maybe even get Hillary Rosen to show up. Then attach rocket boosters to building and send the whole lot up.
Ahh interesting, I was just looking at ebay and noticed quite a few auctions had a lot of units to sell, and wondered how they went about doing all that. Thanks for the good info.
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Heh thats kinda funny.. as I read your post I look down at this film container I use to keep bolts in, and its a Seattle Filmworks container. I was happy they were sending me their crap film for free, as the containers are useful, much more then their film is =).
I downloaded the emulator file and watched it thru there. Im kinda assuming the movie itself is 14% faster just because the video is mainly there to watch it, and making it faster means you can watch what he did and not have it take up too much time. I myself haven't hit that level of boredom yet but you might want to try running the emulator movie vs you playing on rocknes.
Of course theres always the proof we saw in the movie, "Hudson Hawk".
Thats funny, my friends used to call it "Robo-frying". Ive never touched the stuff myself, they enjoyed it though I guess..
I envision a "hold" button that might be on the device, so any sort of movement wouldn't change the screen in any way. Too simple? Probably...
I used to work helpdesk for Microsoft. Well it was another company that they contracted, but anyway. After doing Win98 support I got moved to multimedia and games. Part of that support was for Asherons Call.
Asherons Call (when it originally came out) used the MSN Zone login system to keep track of whos in the game, who has accounts, etc. Probably a year or so later, they (being Microsoft) decided that it would be better of all of the MSN Gaming Zone went to passport instead of using their own login system. When this first went thru, the passport servers got hammered, and people were unable to make passport accounts. Most of these people that were making new accounts were because of Asherons Call. Then the real troubles began.
First, they had it setup so only one active Asherons Call account could be tied to a passport. Sure, you could have multiple accounts under one passport, but you would have to go to the Asherons Call website each time you wanted to use a different account, and change that info on the webpage. (What pretty much happens is you login to passport when you go to the AC page, and then you go into the game, you dont put another password or anything in the actual game interface). So, when you logged in, it just used the "active" AC account tied to the passport you used. This really isn't a big deal for those who have just one account, but there was a lady who called in with 22 AC accounts. Don't ask me why she had so many, people get a little crazy with these games I guess. So, for her to be able to easily login to each one of those accounts, she would have to create 22 seperate passport accounts. So much for the "single sign in system" that they like to tout so much.
Second, the MSN Gaming Zone, and Microsoft are pretty much 2 seperate companies. They don't really share much info behind the scenes (im talking support wise). So, when someone called me up, they would say they couldn't login to Asheron's Call. I would have them go thru the process of making a passport account. At times, the passport account creation wouldn't go well, and Microsoft (at least at that time) had not a single person who could really help me with the passport system at all. There really isn't a phone extension I could have called to get more info, i just had to like figure it out on my own. Not something I dont think really should be done in a big support deal. Anyway, walk the person thru creating the passport account, and then going in and linking the AC account with the newely created passport account. For the few weeks after they decided to do this, it was the worst that you could think of, having to fix that 20 times in a day. It wasn't really our problem (games and multimedia) but they didn't have anywhere else for them to go.
Ok, so that said, I couldn't imagine what a seperate company would get in terms of support when trying to, lets say, integrate passport into thier website. I was representing myself as a Microsoft employee and I couldn't really find anyone to help fix problems with passport, and I was access to the full MSKB (one of the cool things they have, even if it is all just text)Eventually we got some tools towards the end of my days that we could look up what account was tied to what passport, but it really didn't matter much because all the problems we had with it were pretty much taken care of. As a side note, if you were to call them up today, you would be talking to someone in India.
Although it wasn't that expensive, when DVD-R's first came out, the media was pretty high priced. That and a bit of sarcasm = $75
The coin gets a bit thicker.
Lol geez, you know after trying to get help from the real Microsoft mentors and such, and trying to get help from Dell, I have never had such a clear explination of why it happened. I think they just realized it isn't something that you can do a registry fix for or anything, so they gave up on it. Well thanks for the reply.
Btw thanks for havin the balls to reply back as AC. This is probably a troll but im gonna respond anyway. My main problem at my old job was I cared too much about the customers I helped, and the products I supported. I wasn't one of the techs that gave up, heck, I had a few cases that almost went on for a year. The problem is Microsoft doesn't really care about its products. They dont fix something just because its broke, they only fix things when a certain amount of "trouble" has been raised about said problem. That would be either companies losing money because of that problem, or a massive amount of calls to support (im talking extremely massive, if its just a lot, and they dont want to fix it, id have to tell the customer its a known problem and theres nothing I could do about it). If you want to get mad at someone, you should get mad at the person at Microsoft that decided it would be better to move 400+ jobs to India instead of keeping them in the U.S.
I used to work the help desk at microsoft. (Ok, it was another company, I was never employed by microsoft, thank god.). Anyway, there was this problem when Links 2003 came out, with pretty much any Dell laptop. The problem was, the golfer would swing about 10x fast as normal. After infestigating the problem, we found out that these specific dell laptops would not keep track of windows uptime correctly. We would reboot the laptop, and bring up a program that showed windows uptime, and it would give us completely wrong times. As an example, we would reboot, and the dell laptop would show 48 days uptime. Now, as a "microsoft employee", we didn't have a lot do to, when it came to fixing that particular problem. (it only happened on dell laptops, and we could use windows to verify the uptime was not being recorded correctly. Links 2003 would use that uptime figure to calculate how fast the golfer should swing). In any caes, I was never able to get a straight answer from either Microsoft or Dell as to why the newer dell laptops would not keep the Windows uptime correctly. It was kinda one of those issues that was swept under the rug. So, I can atest to the games out there that use the system clock as a timer to find out how fast to play certain things (probably mainly with animation). This is probably something that is used quite often, especially in a situation (like the xbox)where every system is the same. Oh ya, and I hope the Xbox dies a miserable death.
As far as I understand it, record labels decide if they want to be represented by the RIAA. Part of that representation is protecting the copyrights of the labels.
So its illegal to not have an ID on you now?
Actually I think a reporter had written that in an article about him, he never said it. Here is more info.
Im a fan of Sisoft Sandra, I used to do tech support over the phone kinda deal, and in the crazier problems we would use it. It may feel bloaty (ive never thought that) but it gives you *a lot* of good information that you can use to troubleshoot the problem. I haven't had that job for the past couple years so there may be better ones out there, but it would be the first thing I downloaded if I needed somethin like that.
"We have had ongoing discussions with Microsoft about supporting their Xbox Live functionality. It really comes down to a difference in philosophy about the business model. They're creating a new revenue and profit stream. They want to use our intellectual property. They don't want to compensate us for the use of our intellectual property. We think that's a little unrealistic. It would be akin to someone starting a new cable channel and going to HBO or ESPN and saying, we're going to use your content, but you're not going to be compensated for that. I doubt that they would get much of a reception from HBO or ESPN. And so, we've been having ongoing discussions. The negotiations continue to this day. We're moving closer and closer together in terms of a business model that we think is palatable. I think we'll eventually get there. In the meantime we are very, very strong on the Sony platform, supporting their functionality."
So, I'd say I have a somewhat firm grasp as to what is going on.
Oh I dunno..
1 - X-Box Live is the only way Microsoft wants games to be played online with the X-Box.
2 - Customers that play the games with X-Box Live have to pay Microsoft a yearly fee.
Thats all fine and dandy, it would be much better if, lets say, Microsoft gave companies a choice..? How about, you can use Xbox Live, or if you have your own matchmaking service that works better with your game your making, by all means go ahead and use it. May the X-Box crumble and die..
The article mentioned is really the same retoric that companies who outsource like to spout out. Im not sure if anyone is saying that outsourcing doesn't benefit buisnesses, obviously it does. They can take a whole call center of 300+ people, pay them 1/10th the amount they were paid in the U.S., and still have a part of thier buisness they call "tech support". The problem is, the 300+ people that worked there, worked there for 4+ years, and actually cared about the job they worked for. They invested time to become better workers, while thier corporation waved flags of good times in front of them. I worked for a company like this, my job got replaced by a worker in India, and this happend about 4 or 5 months before the "state of the company meeting" we had. Sure, during the meeting, it seemed like a "good" thing that Level 3 communications were buying the part of the company I worked at. Sure, things would be good. Every question we could throw at them they came back saying, yes, this is a good thing.
I'm just glad I sucked up all the unemployment I could get... and im drunk =)
So your saying that there are no web servers on cable modems? Although you are correct that web servers and cable modems operate on different levels of the OSI layer, that doesn't mean that they can't put 2 devices in one box.
Well id say that I wouldn't want to let Osama go that easy, if you know what I mean...
MARSELLUS:
What now? Well let me tell you what now. I'm gonna call a couple pipe-hittin' niggers, who'll go to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.
According to Mr. Stephenson: music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
Nah not really, the ones in prey could fly, used predetor / prey instincts, had optical cameras, etc.. Id say much cooler then a chip that can detect temperature and motion.
Get real, lets send some good ones up there.. Lets see, make fake invitations to Darl McBride and John Ashcroft to go meet at the headquarters of the RIAA, maybe even get Hillary Rosen to show up. Then attach rocket boosters to building and send the whole lot up.
Ahh interesting, I was just looking at ebay and noticed quite a few auctions had a lot of units to sell, and wondered how they went about doing all that. Thanks for the good info.
As far as I know, you bid on something and you win, you pay the price you bid for, not the price that the second highest bidder put up.