Alexa's model is interesting - they hand out a "free" toolbar that gives you google search, as well as pinging Alexa and showing you every page's Alexa rank.
Unfortunately, the toolbar also slows down your browsing (especially if you're on dialup). And the more tech-savvy a user is, the less likely they are to want that toolbar on their system. Thus tech sites are going to be depressed in those rankings, always.
Alexa also can't tell a subdomain from a regular domain - so subpages of IGN.com or UGO wind up just increasing IGN or UGO's rank, and blogs hosted at X.BlogHost.Com just raise BlogHost.com's rank without being able to tell what the particular blog's rank might be.
Finally, the biggest flaw in Alexa's ranking system is that it's based on voluntary input; rather than finding 'Net users and trying to get a representative sample (which is the goal of the Nielsen TV setup), they take anyone who'll put in their toolbar. Sure, they can get a pretty large number of idiots to install the thing, but they're still idiots - there are demographics that the toolbar just won't get adopted by in that fashion.
The other sad thing is, there are companies that use Alexa's page rankings to decide how much they'll pay for ads. Go figure.
I wouldn't say that - he did say he was leaving things (like the reason movie-based games are usually bad) for another week. And going back and looking up titles all the way back through the 2600 days must have taken a while.
You're saying that because he didn't mention your particular games - or because he didn't go by the "well the impression comes from the percentage of games" - that he didn't do his homework.
Isn't it more likely that he was just trying to show that there are plenty of movie-license games that can manage to not suck - not that they'll all be super blockbusters like Halo, but that they'll be good enough that people still like them - and that the presence of a license, all by itself, shouldn't be reason to dump the game?
I mean, seriously now. Look at the titles you mention - Robocop 3 is a prime suspect here, why knock it when the first Robocop game on NES was, while not super-ultra-cool, decently fun to play? Or at very least, that explains why a Robocop 3 was made as much as the presence of the movie does.
The other question is - as many crappy movie games come out, is it pretty close to the percentage of non-movie games that are also crappy? I mean, sure, we don't remember the crappy ones as long when they're not movie licensed, but they're certainly there, or haven't you seen the bargain bin at Gamestop lately?
Funny thing about that - they're mentioned in the article. Also, the old SNES version of Lord of the Rings (based on the book/the Bakshi animation) are mentioned too.
The C64 version gave you 3x more options with how to customize your vehicle - plus, instead of the ridiculous stair climbing crap at the end, you just had to sneak two of your three guys past Mr. Stay Puft.
The NES version was good on its own, but it still was a mediocre port of the fantastic C64 version.
Face it - forever and forever, gamers have been conditioned to believe that the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
If a hallway is empty, chances are nothing is important down it. Exploring it is largely meaningless.
If you see a spot where some massive split-second jumping timing is required to get to, past lots of nasties, there's a REWARD at the end. If you see the tripwires and all the crap you have to disarm, it's viewed as an indication that the developers WANT you to go that way.
The presence of a thousand signposts, saying "GO THIS WAY TO THE END OF THE LEVEL", would mean nothing if the opposite hallway was filled with traps/grunts/stuff to blow up - we will, by conditioned nature, want to find out what reward the programmers have put in should we manage to get past their little fun-obstacle.
Deus Ex games were always fundamentally different. I remember using up half a dozen resources in a couple places, to wind up with... a lousy box of bullets. But Deus Ex games are the EXCEPTION.
Modern gamers have been conditioned to linear gameplay, where taking the route of most resistance is the obvious choice. The trick, now, is to condition them (with games like Thief, Hitman, and Deus Ex for starters) that the EASIEST choice should be the first one.
Remember how much Claria/Gator pitched a fit at sites on the 'net who were calling them spyware (YOU'RE SPYWARE SPYWARE SPYWARE GODDAMNIT YOU LOUSY LIARS - I've seen your trickler bullcrap and the javascript on webpages that slips the trickler into Windows, it's invasive spyware and that's final), going as far as to threaten legal action against a few?
Yahoo's lawyers obviously do. The fact that the "Adware" category isn't set for removal by default is Yahoo's fuckup - the fact that Gator is in that category is probably a decision made by their lawyers.
What's far more insidious is likely to be all the bots/spyware/trojans that will, by next week, be disabling this portion of Yahoo's product the moment they find it just like viruses go after virus scanners and several trojans spyware programs go after Ad-Aware/Spybot/etc already.
The PS2's backwards compatibility WAS a fluke. It came about when they realized that one of the auxiliary chips being used (the memory controller chip, if I remember correctly) was virtually identical to the PSX's corresponding chip, and that with a MINIMUM of work and fuss they could make the thing backwards compatible.
That's why the PS2 doesn't do happy things like AA on PSX games, and why the only noticeable change when running a PSX game on PS2 is the cleaned-up sound because the midi files are fed through the PS2's superior midi engine.
They certainly didn't start out with backwards compatibility in mind, however.
What's the standard warranty on a console system these days? You're lucky to get 60 days. But they'll charge you 25-50% the purchase price again, for another two years.
What's the standard way of getting it repaired? Ship it off to the factory. With the exception of Nintendo, "licensed repair centers" that you could take it to and get it back fixed in 1-2 days don't exist any more. And even with Nintendo, they're only in big cities.
Plus, when the console goes obsolete, don't expect backwards compatibility on the next one either. The PS2's backwards compatibility, lest we forget, was a colossal fluke. The only machine with any back compatibility to speak of, it seems, has been the Game Boy.
The more "free" you get something, the shittier service you can expect of it, and the worse/more breakage-prone product as they cut every possible corner on the device.
RIAA members ripping off their artists is nothing new - it's been documented over and over and fucking over again. I'm sure some slashdotters can point to half a dozen articles written by artists who point out that, by the time the RIAA gets done doing the math on a "standard" industry contract, an even moderately sucessful artist winds up OWING a few thousand dollars to the label and is pretty much an indentured servant, because they can't jump labels to find a better deal by the terms of the contract.
What we REALLY need is for some court ruling to take all those fucking provisions, and declare them illegal. THEN when the RIAA cries about "artists" being deprived of money due to file sharing, I might give a rat's ass about their bullshit argument.
Believe it or not, there ARE groups out there that advertise via email - but aren't spammers - that are arguably upset about spammers who clog inboxes.
One of them I buy stuff from infrequently - Overstock.com. I get an email from them every day, usually delete it right off, but I don't mind getting it because I did, indeed, sign up for it when I bought something from them the first time.
Ironport's service isn't just a "pay us lots of money and we'll look the other way" thing - the people in question do indeed have to stick to decent ethics about what they're selling, and to whom, and make sure it's damn easy to get off the list. So I view this as a relatively ambivalent thing.
It's not good, in the sense that spammers may manage to sneak in. But it's not bad, because the spammers will likely get zapped pretty fast, and because the idea of REAL companies putting up a bond of trust, "their money where their mouth is" so to speak with regard to a code of conduct, is a GOOD THING.
I'm just saying is all - especially if you see the Humans ending, you get the hippie "we are all stewards who have messed up the planet, we should go back to being naked hunter-gatherers" feel out of the ending.
Both his arguments, and yours, are completely fucking specious.
I keep a few email addresses around on various sites. One of them is literally present on only ONE site in the world, and it's in white text on a white background, with a disclaimer "this email address is a spam honeypot, don't send email to it" in text right next to it.
That address STILL gets Richter's spam-crap. Just like every other spammer out there, he's a liar, a thief (ripping off the people paying him to advertise), and deserves to be gotten rid of.
Think about it - Max Payne = the problems w/ drugs.
NARC, same thing.
Deus Ex - politicians.
EVO (back on the SNES) and Ecco the Dolphin = environmental nutjob propaganda.
Most of the Japanese titles have the same stuff going on as well, only they're really big into post-apocalyptic stuff after Hiroshima/Nagasaki took place; lacking an evil-stereotypical-bad-guy for their culture (you know, the one who is merely "Out to Rule the World) they go for the "I'm gonna blow everything up haha I'm insane" bad guy instead. (see: Sephiroth)
There is a more sinister side to this - monitors that can't keep up, get into BIG problems when dealing with another venue that is pushing towards them more and more: VIDEO GAMES.
I'm actually serious. While the normal populace may scoff and deride those who play games like Soul Calibur or Street Fighter until they can actually count how many frames a particular move takes to execute - and how many frames from when the button is pushed to when the move reaches its damage point - everyone likes nice, crisp controls.
They want to know that when they push that button, it went into the system immediately.
Now you're talking about adding a possible 4-5 frame delay to the entire system - but you CAN'T make the video game system have the same delay, it'd have to recalculate everything backwards in time to compensate.
So what do you do there, huh? It's a pretty crappy workaround solution.
Standards are needed - and despite Real's protestations to the contrary, there are two main reasons their "product" has lost market share left and right.
#1, they feel the need to load it down over and over with spyware - especially that Gator crap. And then they put in the constant-nagware messenger of their OWN with that "Real Messenger" garbage.
#2, their encoding schemes SUCK. Compared to the visual quality of Divx encoding, WMF, or even earlier-series Quicktime (which had some real nasty blocking problems), even modern Realplayer blows chunks.
Diebold HAS to be out to make their machines in such a way that votes can be altered, elections rigged.
Why do I say this? BECAUSE THEIR MACHINES DO NOT PRODUCE A PAPER TRAIL. It's really THAT SIMPLE.
"The simple fact is that, while Diebold does indeed care about producing accurate voting results, they are more concerned with making money. If Diebold is forced to choose between increasing their profit and making the system better, they'll choose profit."
Including a paper readout wouldn't require a major modification to the system at all. And polling locations do just fine with making people hand in paper ballots today, having them hand in a receipt from the machine is just as easy.
Diebold out and out REFUSES to add a simple feature like a paper trail to their machines. The only logical conclusion one can reach is that they don't want to have any way to verify the counts their machines reach.
Diebold HAS to be out to make their machines in such a way that votes can be altered, elections rigged.
Why do I say this?
BECAUSE THEIR MACHINES DO NOT PRODUCE A PAPER TRAIL.
It's really THAT SIMPLE.
"The simple fact is that, while Diebold does indeed care about producing accurate voting results, they are more concerned with making money. If Diebold is forced to choose between increasing their profit and making the system better, they'll choose profit."
Including a paper readout wouldn't require a major modification to the system at all. And polling locations do just fine with making people hand in paper ballots today, having them hand in a receipt from the machine is just as easy.
Diebold out and out REFUSES to add a simple feature like a paper trail to their machines. The only logical conclusion one can reach is that they don't want to have any way to verify the counts their machines reach.
And that's wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The article's got an update to the same effect. Were you the guy who emailed them?
Looks like things are done differently these days.
If you haven't been in for a while, you wouldn't know - feel free to hold grudges if you want, however.
Lame.
There's a section - with big red letters - titled "How They Screw Up" at the end.
I don't see how defining terms before getting to that point is bad.
Just because you left somewhere doesn't mean you have to talk down on them.
Seriously. "There was an old lady who drove in a shoe..."
Alexa's model is interesting - they hand out a "free" toolbar that gives you google search, as well as pinging Alexa and showing you every page's Alexa rank.
Unfortunately, the toolbar also slows down your browsing (especially if you're on dialup). And the more tech-savvy a user is, the less likely they are to want that toolbar on their system. Thus tech sites are going to be depressed in those rankings, always.
Alexa also can't tell a subdomain from a regular domain - so subpages of IGN.com or UGO wind up just increasing IGN or UGO's rank, and blogs hosted at X.BlogHost.Com just raise BlogHost.com's rank without being able to tell what the particular blog's rank might be.
Finally, the biggest flaw in Alexa's ranking system is that it's based on voluntary input; rather than finding 'Net users and trying to get a representative sample (which is the goal of the Nielsen TV setup), they take anyone who'll put in their toolbar. Sure, they can get a pretty large number of idiots to install the thing, but they're still idiots - there are demographics that the toolbar just won't get adopted by in that fashion.
The other sad thing is, there are companies that use Alexa's page rankings to decide how much they'll pay for ads. Go figure.
I wouldn't say that - he did say he was leaving things (like the reason movie-based games are usually bad) for another week. And going back and looking up titles all the way back through the 2600 days must have taken a while.
You're saying that because he didn't mention your particular games - or because he didn't go by the "well the impression comes from the percentage of games" - that he didn't do his homework.
Isn't it more likely that he was just trying to show that there are plenty of movie-license games that can manage to not suck - not that they'll all be super blockbusters like Halo, but that they'll be good enough that people still like them - and that the presence of a license, all by itself, shouldn't be reason to dump the game?
I mean, seriously now. Look at the titles you mention - Robocop 3 is a prime suspect here, why knock it when the first Robocop game on NES was, while not super-ultra-cool, decently fun to play? Or at very least, that explains why a Robocop 3 was made as much as the presence of the movie does.
The other question is - as many crappy movie games come out, is it pretty close to the percentage of non-movie games that are also crappy? I mean, sure, we don't remember the crappy ones as long when they're not movie licensed, but they're certainly there, or haven't you seen the bargain bin at Gamestop lately?
Funny thing about that - they're mentioned in the article. Also, the old SNES version of Lord of the Rings (based on the book/the Bakshi animation) are mentioned too.
It's called "doing your homework".
The C64 version gave you 3x more options with how to customize your vehicle - plus, instead of the ridiculous stair climbing crap at the end, you just had to sneak two of your three guys past Mr. Stay Puft.
The NES version was good on its own, but it still was a mediocre port of the fantastic C64 version.
I think he mentioned that under the blanket of "James Bond" series, in the N64 section...
they mentioned the Lightsaber training droid, but then linked the INTERROGATOR DROID.
Is there something here involved with G.W. that I'm not aware of?
Face it - forever and forever, gamers have been conditioned to believe that the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
If a hallway is empty, chances are nothing is important down it. Exploring it is largely meaningless.
If you see a spot where some massive split-second jumping timing is required to get to, past lots of nasties, there's a REWARD at the end. If you see the tripwires and all the crap you have to disarm, it's viewed as an indication that the developers WANT you to go that way.
The presence of a thousand signposts, saying "GO THIS WAY TO THE END OF THE LEVEL", would mean nothing if the opposite hallway was filled with traps/grunts/stuff to blow up - we will, by conditioned nature, want to find out what reward the programmers have put in should we manage to get past their little fun-obstacle.
Deus Ex games were always fundamentally different. I remember using up half a dozen resources in a couple places, to wind up with... a lousy box of bullets. But Deus Ex games are the EXCEPTION.
Modern gamers have been conditioned to linear gameplay, where taking the route of most resistance is the obvious choice. The trick, now, is to condition them (with games like Thief, Hitman, and Deus Ex for starters) that the EASIEST choice should be the first one.
Yahoo's lawyers obviously do. The fact that the "Adware" category isn't set for removal by default is Yahoo's fuckup - the fact that Gator is in that category is probably a decision made by their lawyers.
What's far more insidious is likely to be all the bots/spyware/trojans that will, by next week, be disabling this portion of Yahoo's product the moment they find it just like viruses go after virus scanners and several trojans spyware programs go after Ad-Aware/Spybot/etc already.
The PS2's backwards compatibility WAS a fluke. It came about when they realized that one of the auxiliary chips being used (the memory controller chip, if I remember correctly) was virtually identical to the PSX's corresponding chip, and that with a MINIMUM of work and fuss they could make the thing backwards compatible.
That's why the PS2 doesn't do happy things like AA on PSX games, and why the only noticeable change when running a PSX game on PS2 is the cleaned-up sound because the midi files are fed through the PS2's superior midi engine.
They certainly didn't start out with backwards compatibility in mind, however.
pretty damn badly.
What's the standard warranty on a console system these days? You're lucky to get 60 days. But they'll charge you 25-50% the purchase price again, for another two years.
What's the standard way of getting it repaired? Ship it off to the factory. With the exception of Nintendo, "licensed repair centers" that you could take it to and get it back fixed in 1-2 days don't exist any more. And even with Nintendo, they're only in big cities.
Plus, when the console goes obsolete, don't expect backwards compatibility on the next one either. The PS2's backwards compatibility, lest we forget, was a colossal fluke. The only machine with any back compatibility to speak of, it seems, has been the Game Boy.
The more "free" you get something, the shittier service you can expect of it, and the worse/more breakage-prone product as they cut every possible corner on the device.
"Standard Industry Practice."
RIAA members ripping off their artists is nothing new - it's been documented over and over and fucking over again. I'm sure some slashdotters can point to half a dozen articles written by artists who point out that, by the time the RIAA gets done doing the math on a "standard" industry contract, an even moderately sucessful artist winds up OWING a few thousand dollars to the label and is pretty much an indentured servant, because they can't jump labels to find a better deal by the terms of the contract.
What we REALLY need is for some court ruling to take all those fucking provisions, and declare them illegal. THEN when the RIAA cries about "artists" being deprived of money due to file sharing, I might give a rat's ass about their bullshit argument.
Believe it or not, there ARE groups out there that advertise via email - but aren't spammers - that are arguably upset about spammers who clog inboxes.
One of them I buy stuff from infrequently - Overstock.com. I get an email from them every day, usually delete it right off, but I don't mind getting it because I did, indeed, sign up for it when I bought something from them the first time.
Ironport's service isn't just a "pay us lots of money and we'll look the other way" thing - the people in question do indeed have to stick to decent ethics about what they're selling, and to whom, and make sure it's damn easy to get off the list. So I view this as a relatively ambivalent thing.
It's not good, in the sense that spammers may manage to sneak in. But it's not bad, because the spammers will likely get zapped pretty fast, and because the idea of REAL companies putting up a bond of trust, "their money where their mouth is" so to speak with regard to a code of conduct, is a GOOD THING.
doublechecked with spamhaus and the like, knowing what campaigns went out when and what the pitches were.
I'm 100% sure it's his spam.
it was really fun to play.
I'm just saying is all - especially if you see the Humans ending, you get the hippie "we are all stewards who have messed up the planet, we should go back to being naked hunter-gatherers" feel out of the ending.
Both his arguments, and yours, are completely fucking specious.
I keep a few email addresses around on various sites. One of them is literally present on only ONE site in the world, and it's in white text on a white background, with a disclaimer "this email address is a spam honeypot, don't send email to it" in text right next to it.
That address STILL gets Richter's spam-crap. Just like every other spammer out there, he's a liar, a thief (ripping off the people paying him to advertise), and deserves to be gotten rid of.
Think about it - Max Payne = the problems w/ drugs.
NARC, same thing.
Deus Ex - politicians.
EVO (back on the SNES) and Ecco the Dolphin = environmental nutjob propaganda.
Most of the Japanese titles have the same stuff going on as well, only they're really big into post-apocalyptic stuff after Hiroshima/Nagasaki took place; lacking an evil-stereotypical-bad-guy for their culture (you know, the one who is merely "Out to Rule the World) they go for the "I'm gonna blow everything up haha I'm insane" bad guy instead. (see: Sephiroth)
There is a more sinister side to this - monitors that can't keep up, get into BIG problems when dealing with another venue that is pushing towards them more and more: VIDEO GAMES.
I'm actually serious. While the normal populace may scoff and deride those who play games like Soul Calibur or Street Fighter until they can actually count how many frames a particular move takes to execute - and how many frames from when the button is pushed to when the move reaches its damage point - everyone likes nice, crisp controls.
They want to know that when they push that button, it went into the system immediately.
Now you're talking about adding a possible 4-5 frame delay to the entire system - but you CAN'T make the video game system have the same delay, it'd have to recalculate everything backwards in time to compensate.
So what do you do there, huh? It's a pretty crappy workaround solution.
Standards are needed - and despite Real's protestations to the contrary, there are two main reasons their "product" has lost market share left and right.
#1, they feel the need to load it down over and over with spyware - especially that Gator crap. And then they put in the constant-nagware messenger of their OWN with that "Real Messenger" garbage.
#2, their encoding schemes SUCK. Compared to the visual quality of Divx encoding, WMF, or even earlier-series Quicktime (which had some real nasty blocking problems), even modern Realplayer blows chunks.
Diebold HAS to be out to make their machines in such a way that votes can be altered, elections rigged.
Why do I say this? BECAUSE THEIR MACHINES DO NOT PRODUCE A PAPER TRAIL. It's really THAT SIMPLE.
"The simple fact is that, while Diebold does indeed care about producing accurate voting results, they are more concerned with making money. If Diebold is forced to choose between increasing their profit and making the system better, they'll choose profit."
Including a paper readout wouldn't require a major modification to the system at all. And polling locations do just fine with making people hand in paper ballots today, having them hand in a receipt from the machine is just as easy.
Diebold out and out REFUSES to add a simple feature like a paper trail to their machines. The only logical conclusion one can reach is that they don't want to have any way to verify the counts their machines reach.
And that's wrong.
Diebold HAS to be out to make their machines in such a way that votes can be altered, elections rigged. Why do I say this? BECAUSE THEIR MACHINES DO NOT PRODUCE A PAPER TRAIL. It's really THAT SIMPLE. "The simple fact is that, while Diebold does indeed care about producing accurate voting results, they are more concerned with making money. If Diebold is forced to choose between increasing their profit and making the system better, they'll choose profit." Including a paper readout wouldn't require a major modification to the system at all. And polling locations do just fine with making people hand in paper ballots today, having them hand in a receipt from the machine is just as easy. Diebold out and out REFUSES to add a simple feature like a paper trail to their machines. The only logical conclusion one can reach is that they don't want to have any way to verify the counts their machines reach. And that's wrong.