Hundreds of Gnomes couldn't take down the MIT computer labs, but Slashdot does it with one story submission. Is there anything that can stop the Slashdot army?
"There never has been any double posting of articles on Slashdot!"
TheInformationMinister.com Slashdot really needs to hire this guy. (Note: Opera seems to have a problem with the way the Flash on the site works, but Netscape or IE seem fine.) Worth seeing at least once.
Not quite. The movie industry will spend $60 million to make a movie, where the music industry doesn't need to build sets employ a cast of thousands etc. Music artists can also do something called "concerts" where people pay anywhere from $25 to a few hundred dollars to sit in a seat and listen to the artist.
The comparison is valid. Music needs a better product.
There's already been discussion on this since yesterday on [H]ardforums. Too many people are reading the press release and thinking the graphics world is coming to an end. This is only a deal to get EA games bundled with Nvidia cards. That's it.
First off, let's look at some parts of the press statement. Graphics microchip maker Nvidia Corp. NVDA.O and video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. ERTS.O said on Thursday they would collaborate to market and develop new games. No biggie here. ATI does the same thing. Actually, in truth the way this works is EA will say to one of their development houses under contract, "Hey, we've got this Nvidia guy we'd like you to talk to, to help you implement some new features."
Under the terms of the deal, Nvidia hardware will become the "preferred" graphics platform for Electronic Arts's video game studios, and video games developed by Electronic Arts may offer features designed to work on Nvidia hardware. Note the quotes around "preferred" and the added emphasis (mine) on may. Note that this is all fuzzy and hazy on exactly what is going to be done. The terms "exclusive" isn't used. Fact is, the developers who actually make the games aren't going to cut off their nose to despite their face. Neither is the publisher.
Nvidia also said it will have exclusive rights to bundle Electronic Arts's games for personal computers with its products. Ah ha! This is what this whole thing is about. The best way to sell a game is to bundle it. The publisher makes a guarenteed sale and lowers his cost of production (no boxes to make, no instructions to print) as well. Best of all, a bundle is usually a guarenteed sale. Nvidia has already bought the game if they sell the video card or not and EA counts it in their books. The only thing that ATI users won't get is a EA game when they buy a new card. No big deal since ATI can lower the price of their card because they don't include a software bundle, or they could go to some other publisher.
Finally, for all those bitching and whining about this you've already been suckered into this for years and years. Bundling agreements have been around and we all have bought products that have them. You buy joysticks and dohickeys because they have video game support and drivers built in. They come with bundles as well. I've bought plenty of video cards with bundles. Most computers come with bundles. All of them involve agreements like Nvidia and EA and press releases.
What is this really? In exchange for technical expertise, the developer gets a free resource to implement some advanced features (which we probably won't use anyway) in return for some games in a video card box. Big whoop. There's just been too much FUD about this. It's not like DoomNukem IX only going to work on a Nvidia card. There's no conspiracy. There's no little green men trying to take away your ATI card. There's no men in black trying to limit your free choice.
It's a bundling agreement. That's it. Now go back to your homes. There's nothing to see here.
Thin plot? No, it was a Japanese writer and a Japanese director trying to get an eastern concept across to a western audience. It takes several viewings to get the "plot" of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, but it's there and very deep. The majority of the people watching it just didn't get it.
Oh, don't wuss out completely. I have learned from playing Fallout 1 & 2, Wasteland and watching all the Road Warrior movies that I can finally have a pink mohawk, wear football pads and drive as fast as I want with a sawed-off shotgun in a Post-Apocolyptic world.
Just get ready for everyone else to "port" this to their game engine of choice. Personally, I think that this would look pretty darn good in Age II or AoM.
Personally, I think the Infocom text parser version would be great!;-)
P.S. Long time no talk Matt. How ya' doing?
I found Seamus Blakely's remarks interesting but hardly exhaustive.
Blame the interviewer. My guess is this guy with 2 years of experience working on his high school newspaper grabbed him between conference sessions and asked for five minutes of his time. After whipping out his tape recorder and asking his five questions written on a tattered notecard his clicked STOP and he thought he had his story.
No followup questions at all. I mean, Seamus made some pretty bold statements. Like not following a design document because it "limits creativity". What the hell does that mean? Game developers shouldn't use a design document at all? Use one, but don't let the publisher see it? I'd be all over that statement, but no... we're forced by the interviewer to move on. Good grief? Doesn't anyone writing on the game industry have a journalism or English degree?
Gee, I wish I was made out of money like you. I don't have the cash to fork out a few hundred dollars for Office or the $99 for an "upgrade" to my operating system.
No matter what country you live in, MS prices are too high for the little guy.
I can't get to the article because it's already/.ed, but even if this idea is good, it is out of touch with reality. The manufacturing process in creating a silver CD is pretty straight forward. You make a master CD, you press silver copies of it and voila! You've got a *cheap* mass produced CD.
The problem with this idea is that you can't mass produce CDs like this with a writable area for the consumer. For one, it's a totally different process to make the media. It's also more expensive. Not only that, why should I use this monster? I can't erase what's already in the session. It's like using those preformatted Zip disks with that 50ways.exe and not being able to delete it. Oh, so I can store a few documents amongst the hundreds of megs of AOL crap on the CD. Talk about a autorun nightmare...
You're also rising the cost of manufacturing disks. Eh, I guess you could burn the CD roms by hand, but that would take forever even on a mass produced scale. You end up looking like some pirate operation. Plus how do I know the CD hasn't be adulterated somehow? At least with a silver CD I know that if it's fake, they went to a lot of effort to get a facility to make it. Gold, Green, or Black CDs can be made by anyone.
Eh, why bother? Just buy blank CDs. They're cheap enough and you know what you're getting. You're also putting only what you want on them.
Why lump AMD with NVidia in having "issues"? Just because they delayed release of their Clawhammer products doesn't mean they're having problems. Is it their fault that Microsoft can't come up with a consumer 64-bit version operating system? Can you blame them for giving Barton more of a chance in the marketplace by making sure that it doesn't compete with Hammer at the same time?
Just another case of a submission ruined by the submitter inserting an uninformed opinion at the end of the article.
With you writing history Germany would have won World War II and Russia came out on top in the Cold War. Ultima IX was the reason why Richard *left* the company, mainly because he lost full control of his product because of Electronic Arts meddling. RTFA's out on the web to get what truly happened.
I give you an A for effort, but none of these answers (other than the light sensor) is even physically feasible. Given the speed the shuttle travels at 40,000ft, there isn't any way to evacuate. There isn't space for such a ball and no way to launch one. Aerodynamics during re-entry would prevent any launch.
Another mission control is laughable. Houston is capable of monitoring several shuttles in orbit if needed. But that's not the point. What's to say that the second "rescue" shuttle wouldn't suffer the same problems as the original shuttle? Now you've endangered more people and two shuttles!
What?!? Are you also telling me that the guy on AOL MoviePhone isn't live? That they just cobble his sentences together with... a computer! This can't be happening! To think I thought we had something special together.
1. Dump Rick Berman & Co.
2. Get James Cameron to write script
3. Get Jerry Bruckheimer to produce
4. Get M. Night Shyamalan to direct
5. ???
6. Profit
Will the result resemble a Star Trek movie? Of course not. But at this point I don't think that's a bad thing.
Wait.. you don't think that Data is coming back? Oh, just wait. He'll be back. Then your Wrath of Kahn comparision will be complete. They always come back.
So now I can water cool my overclocked processor *and* power it from the creek near my house? Time to buy some garden hose extensions and some more power cables!
The answer to your question about what was left and why is because the article isn't all that good. It's a great subject, but let's face it; all the author did was hop on Google and do a few searches on the more "interesting" ones.
My biggest beef on articles such as this is that they just regurgitate the same articles over and over again. It reads like a high school term paper. No real insight here.
Why not read Game Over, Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames or Johnny Wilson's illustrated guide to video games? These books (you know, the objects that have physical paper) have depth and actual interviews with the console creaters. Good articles are written with more effort than a day's worth of web surfing.
Well, I obviously read it better than you because they never mention shutting down the website. Aside from saying "we will not tolerate" the use of their logo, there isn't someone standing by the outlet ready to pull the plug.
Slashdot Mirror
Hundreds of Gnomes couldn't take down the MIT computer labs, but Slashdot does it with one story submission. Is there anything that can stop the Slashdot army?
TheInformationMinister.com Slashdot really needs to hire this guy. (Note: Opera seems to have a problem with the way the Flash on the site works, but Netscape or IE seem fine.) Worth seeing at least once.
TheInformationMinister.com Simply hysterical.
Have to admit, "All the Things She Said" is kinda catchy.
Not quite. The movie industry will spend $60 million to make a movie, where the music industry doesn't need to build sets employ a cast of thousands etc. Music artists can also do something called "concerts" where people pay anywhere from $25 to a few hundred dollars to sit in a seat and listen to the artist. The comparison is valid. Music needs a better product.
If the video phone rings while I'm in the shower, I'm not going to rush out and get it.
First off, let's look at some parts of the press statement. Graphics microchip maker Nvidia Corp. NVDA.O and video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. ERTS.O said on Thursday they would collaborate to market and develop new games. No biggie here. ATI does the same thing. Actually, in truth the way this works is EA will say to one of their development houses under contract, "Hey, we've got this Nvidia guy we'd like you to talk to, to help you implement some new features."
Under the terms of the deal, Nvidia hardware will become the "preferred" graphics platform for Electronic Arts's video game studios, and video games developed by Electronic Arts may offer features designed to work on Nvidia hardware. Note the quotes around "preferred" and the added emphasis (mine) on may. Note that this is all fuzzy and hazy on exactly what is going to be done. The terms "exclusive" isn't used. Fact is, the developers who actually make the games aren't going to cut off their nose to despite their face. Neither is the publisher.
Nvidia also said it will have exclusive rights to bundle Electronic Arts's games for personal computers with its products. Ah ha! This is what this whole thing is about. The best way to sell a game is to bundle it. The publisher makes a guarenteed sale and lowers his cost of production (no boxes to make, no instructions to print) as well. Best of all, a bundle is usually a guarenteed sale. Nvidia has already bought the game if they sell the video card or not and EA counts it in their books. The only thing that ATI users won't get is a EA game when they buy a new card. No big deal since ATI can lower the price of their card because they don't include a software bundle, or they could go to some other publisher.
Finally, for all those bitching and whining about this you've already been suckered into this for years and years. Bundling agreements have been around and we all have bought products that have them. You buy joysticks and dohickeys because they have video game support and drivers built in. They come with bundles as well. I've bought plenty of video cards with bundles. Most computers come with bundles. All of them involve agreements like Nvidia and EA and press releases.
What is this really? In exchange for technical expertise, the developer gets a free resource to implement some advanced features (which we probably won't use anyway) in return for some games in a video card box. Big whoop. There's just been too much FUD about this. It's not like DoomNukem IX only going to work on a Nvidia card. There's no conspiracy. There's no little green men trying to take away your ATI card. There's no men in black trying to limit your free choice.
It's a bundling agreement. That's it. Now go back to your homes. There's nothing to see here.
Thin plot? No, it was a Japanese writer and a Japanese director trying to get an eastern concept across to a western audience. It takes several viewings to get the "plot" of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, but it's there and very deep. The majority of the people watching it just didn't get it.
That's why I wear my aluminum foil hat! Ha ha ha ha! Nothing can get in! Not even those voices that I hear sometimes.
Oh, don't wuss out completely. I have learned from playing Fallout 1 & 2, Wasteland and watching all the Road Warrior movies that I can finally have a pink mohawk, wear football pads and drive as fast as I want with a sawed-off shotgun in a Post-Apocolyptic world.
Personally, I think the Infocom text parser version would be great! ;-)
P.S. Long time no talk Matt. How ya' doing?
Blame the interviewer. My guess is this guy with 2 years of experience working on his high school newspaper grabbed him between conference sessions and asked for five minutes of his time. After whipping out his tape recorder and asking his five questions written on a tattered notecard his clicked STOP and he thought he had his story.
No followup questions at all. I mean, Seamus made some pretty bold statements. Like not following a design document because it "limits creativity". What the hell does that mean? Game developers shouldn't use a design document at all? Use one, but don't let the publisher see it? I'd be all over that statement, but no... we're forced by the interviewer to move on. Good grief? Doesn't anyone writing on the game industry have a journalism or English degree?
No matter what country you live in, MS prices are too high for the little guy.
The problem with this idea is that you can't mass produce CDs like this with a writable area for the consumer. For one, it's a totally different process to make the media. It's also more expensive. Not only that, why should I use this monster? I can't erase what's already in the session. It's like using those preformatted Zip disks with that 50ways.exe and not being able to delete it. Oh, so I can store a few documents amongst the hundreds of megs of AOL crap on the CD. Talk about a autorun nightmare...
You're also rising the cost of manufacturing disks. Eh, I guess you could burn the CD roms by hand, but that would take forever even on a mass produced scale. You end up looking like some pirate operation. Plus how do I know the CD hasn't be adulterated somehow? At least with a silver CD I know that if it's fake, they went to a lot of effort to get a facility to make it. Gold, Green, or Black CDs can be made by anyone.
Eh, why bother? Just buy blank CDs. They're cheap enough and you know what you're getting. You're also putting only what you want on them.
Next year? Try in a few months. ATI is almost finished with their production of the R350.
Just another case of a submission ruined by the submitter inserting an uninformed opinion at the end of the article.
With you writing history Germany would have won World War II and Russia came out on top in the Cold War. Ultima IX was the reason why Richard *left* the company, mainly because he lost full control of his product because of Electronic Arts meddling. RTFA's out on the web to get what truly happened.
Another mission control is laughable. Houston is capable of monitoring several shuttles in orbit if needed. But that's not the point. What's to say that the second "rescue" shuttle wouldn't suffer the same problems as the original shuttle? Now you've endangered more people and two shuttles!
Someone put Carmack in touch with Ryan Seacrest, host of American Idol. He seems to have plenty of peroxide to donate.
What?!? Are you also telling me that the guy on AOL MoviePhone isn't live? That they just cobble his sentences together with... a computer! This can't be happening! To think I thought we had something special together.
2. Get James Cameron to write script
3. Get Jerry Bruckheimer to produce
4. Get M. Night Shyamalan to direct
5. ???
6. Profit
Will the result resemble a Star Trek movie? Of course not. But at this point I don't think that's a bad thing.
Wait.. you don't think that Data is coming back? Oh, just wait. He'll be back. Then your Wrath of Kahn comparision will be complete. They always come back.
So now I can water cool my overclocked processor *and* power it from the creek near my house? Time to buy some garden hose extensions and some more power cables!
My biggest beef on articles such as this is that they just regurgitate the same articles over and over again. It reads like a high school term paper. No real insight here.
Why not read Game Over, Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames or Johnny Wilson's illustrated guide to video games? These books (you know, the objects that have physical paper) have depth and actual interviews with the console creaters. Good articles are written with more effort than a day's worth of web surfing.
Well, I obviously read it better than you because they never mention shutting down the website. Aside from saying "we will not tolerate" the use of their logo, there isn't someone standing by the outlet ready to pull the plug.