NASA is so 1900's - I think the Chinese will leapfrog the shuttle fleet long before we can figure out what to do about any shuttle replacement. There's been talk about replacements since I was in elementary school. Now my own children are about to enter elementary school and very little has changed.
"In the post-9/11 era, even suburban counties have homeland security departments. Montgomery County will not specify how many officers are in the department's security division, citing security reasons. Its annual budget, including salaries, is $3.6 million."
I have an idea that will save $3.6M/year...can you guess what it is?
"And how much can you get for those electrons on Ebay?"
If it's less than $25 or so, is it really worth the Ebay hassle?
"I wouldn't buy electrons unless they're much cheaper than the boxed version. The used boxed version. There are too many overhyped and overpriced games out there. If you waste your money on a bad game wouldn't you rather have a physical copy you can resell?"
Every game available I've found in electronic-only format has also had a demo version available; if you don't try-before-you-buy, it's your own damn fault.
"At the dawn of software history, programmers wrote software for other programmers."
I thought the first programmers wrote software to figure out ballistic missle trajectories, crack ciphers, count census figures and perform other useful work. What exactly is our clueless author whining about?
"Shelf space" is obsolete - the last few computer games I bought were 100% pure electrons. (I paid online too, of course, before downloading.) The "shelf space" battle will always tilt toward the console-playing, Best-Buy-shopping, mouth-breathing masses. Show me "units sold" or "revenue per unit" and I'll pay more attention.
"That's a ridiculous statement, spoken by someone who just glossed right over 9 because 7 wasn't what they wanted after falling in love with 6 and 8 was... well... awful. 4, 5, and 6 are exceptional games, 7 you either loved it or you didn't, and 9 was just excellent."
You're right - I never played anything after FF4. My kid brothers played higher numbers in the series, but the "NUKE 4" crap was getting old by that time and I was starting to discover that girls were more interesting than airships by that time anyway.
"What about us loyal customers that have supported Square from the beginning? We didn't deserve Final Fantasy X-2."
Since Final Fantasy I on the Nintendo 8? True, they've been pumping out the same game for twenty years, but if it took you until X-2 to realize it, I would think it's your own damn fault.
Double? Is this like a "Gartner Graph" with the big curve that shows that sales of electronic teddy bears, remote control toothbrushes or whatever else their clients paid them to pitch will double/triple/whatever the number they want to see in five years?
"Akin to the structure of such established sports franchises as the PGA Tour and NASCAR, the World Series of Video Games will establish the first video game competition circuit..."
So, it's called "World Series" but it doesn't work like THE World Series. Instead it's based on the two least interesting major sports leagues ever invented...
I remember some of the stories my grandfather told me about "baseball". Once upon a time, people actually used to pay good money to watch nine players on two teams hit a ball around for about three hours. It was so popular they called it "the national passtime". In fact, I think the term "World Series" came from baseball's championship. If anyone else knows anything about this ancient and forgotten game, please post some links...
Shit - this is 2006, and they still hold the Olympic Games?
Four years ago you might have heard some people whining that coverage of the frozen stumpfuck was messing up Must See TV on NBC, but now I think people are happy the O-lame-pics are on network TV so they don't fuck with the schedules of the remaining TV shows people care about.
"You're married and have a job, but can't swing $15 a month?"
It's more the principle of the thing - I hate paying a monthly charge of something I don't have time to use. WoW might be cool, but I've got a life to live...
Does your wife get her nails done? That's more than $15/month right there.
What year is this, 1953? ("Nails done" - heh-heh-heh...)
"Our study shows that the online gaming communities are complex and highly developed, acting as training grounds for the transition from school to work."
When the players went to work, however, they had to adjust to the fact that other characters' names were pinned to their chests rather than displayed in floating letters above their head. Also, the/dance macro is harder than it looks out here.
"iDefense will change the focus of the challenge with each quarter -- the next challenge may focus on another vendor, or it may just center on particular class of vulnerabilities."
Or, iDefense may never pay any of the $10K prizes, citing independent discovery, not-really-critical status or just the fact that Verisign knows how to say "fuck you" better than almost anyone. Instead, they'll just get shitloads of free press for their cheesy security contest and a couple of marks will sign up for and/or buy whatever it is that Verisign/iDefense is hawking today.
I typically only buy one game a year. I would buy more, but I have a wife, kids, part-time school, a nice job, dogs, a house, a family and I use most of my remaining "free time" tinkering with code and other creations. In other words, I more-or-less grew out of the "new game" market.
I can usually pick up a two-year-old, highly-replayable hit for about $15 new. (I still haven't opened the box for WC3:TFT.) I'm sure that doesn't make any money for anyone, but it does kill off any remaining desire to purchase any new game.
MMORGS look interesting but I did enough of that more than a decade ago when MUDS were popular. Furthermore, the monthly charges are a no-go. (I took a quick look at "Minions of Might" because it doesn't have monthly charges, but I got plenty of play time just doing the demo.)
I guess I do most of my game-playing in between flights at airports. Even there, I'm drawn to MAME emulators because you don't exactly want to put on headphones in an airport (think flight changes) and old arcade games lend themselves well to the high levels of background noise in the terminals.
Marriage and MMORGs don't mix. The fact that EQ comes across as too expensive isn't a good sign either - women tend to eschew fellows lacking $*K/year in free cash flows. Just curious...how did Valentine's Day go for you?
"While programmers have their Minesweeper clone, the level designers (or LDs as everyone calls them) have 90 textures to do in seven days on top of their normal reading assignments, daily quizzes, and work from other classes."
How's the new order of things go? If you can't hack engineering, go comp sci. If you can't hack comp sci, go LD.
"Inside Nintendo, we call our strategy "Blue Ocean." This is in contrast to a "Red Ocean." Seeing a Blue Ocean is the notion of creating a market where there initially was none--going out where nobody has yet gone"
Looks like people at Nintendo have been reading this:
"Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant" (2005, Harvard Business School Publishing), by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
Slashdot Mirror
NASA is so 1900's - I think the Chinese will leapfrog the shuttle fleet long before we can figure out what to do about any shuttle replacement. There's been talk about replacements since I was in elementary school. Now my own children are about to enter elementary school and very little has changed.
I have an idea that will save $3.6M/year...can you guess what it is?
If it's less than $25 or so, is it really worth the Ebay hassle?
"I wouldn't buy electrons unless they're much cheaper than the boxed version. The used boxed version. There are too many overhyped and overpriced games out there. If you waste your money on a bad game wouldn't you rather have a physical copy you can resell?"
Every game available I've found in electronic-only format has also had a demo version available; if you don't try-before-you-buy, it's your own damn fault.
"At the dawn of software history, programmers wrote software for other programmers."
I thought the first programmers wrote software to figure out ballistic missle trajectories, crack ciphers, count census figures and perform other useful work. What exactly is our clueless author whining about?
"Shelf space" is obsolete - the last few computer games I bought were 100% pure electrons. (I paid online too, of course, before downloading.) The "shelf space" battle will always tilt toward the console-playing, Best-Buy-shopping, mouth-breathing masses. Show me "units sold" or "revenue per unit" and I'll pay more attention.
You're right - I never played anything after FF4. My kid brothers played higher numbers in the series, but the "NUKE 4" crap was getting old by that time and I was starting to discover that girls were more interesting than airships by that time anyway.
REXX was also available for Amiga...and others...
See: http://rexxla.org/Links/
Since Final Fantasy I on the Nintendo 8? True, they've been pumping out the same game for twenty years, but if it took you until X-2 to realize it, I would think it's your own damn fault.
Double? Is this like a "Gartner Graph" with the big curve that shows that sales of electronic teddy bears, remote control toothbrushes or whatever else their clients paid them to pitch will double/triple/whatever the number they want to see in five years?
Will it be as good as the SMB3 shootout in The Wizard (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/)?
So, it's called "World Series" but it doesn't work like THE World Series. Instead it's based on the two least interesting major sports leagues ever invented...
I remember some of the stories my grandfather told me about "baseball". Once upon a time, people actually used to pay good money to watch nine players on two teams hit a ball around for about three hours. It was so popular they called it "the national passtime". In fact, I think the term "World Series" came from baseball's championship. If anyone else knows anything about this ancient and forgotten game, please post some links...
Shit - this is 2006, and they still hold the Olympic Games? Four years ago you might have heard some people whining that coverage of the frozen stumpfuck was messing up Must See TV on NBC, but now I think people are happy the O-lame-pics are on network TV so they don't fuck with the schedules of the remaining TV shows people care about.
It's more the principle of the thing - I hate paying a monthly charge of something I don't have time to use. WoW might be cool, but I've got a life to live...
Does your wife get her nails done? That's more than $15/month right there.
What year is this, 1953? ("Nails done" - heh-heh-heh...)
When the players went to work, however, they had to adjust to the fact that other characters' names were pinned to their chests rather than displayed in floating letters above their head. Also, the /dance macro is harder than it looks out here.
Or, iDefense may never pay any of the $10K prizes, citing independent discovery, not-really-critical status or just the fact that Verisign knows how to say "fuck you" better than almost anyone. Instead, they'll just get shitloads of free press for their cheesy security contest and a couple of marks will sign up for and/or buy whatever it is that Verisign/iDefense is hawking today.
I'll admit it: I'm a bottom-feeder.
I typically only buy one game a year. I would buy more, but I have a wife, kids, part-time school, a nice job, dogs, a house, a family and I use most of my remaining "free time" tinkering with code and other creations. In other words, I more-or-less grew out of the "new game" market.
I can usually pick up a two-year-old, highly-replayable hit for about $15 new. (I still haven't opened the box for WC3:TFT.) I'm sure that doesn't make any money for anyone, but it does kill off any remaining desire to purchase any new game.
MMORGS look interesting but I did enough of that more than a decade ago when MUDS were popular. Furthermore, the monthly charges are a no-go. (I took a quick look at "Minions of Might" because it doesn't have monthly charges, but I got plenty of play time just doing the demo.)
I guess I do most of my game-playing in between flights at airports. Even there, I'm drawn to MAME emulators because you don't exactly want to put on headphones in an airport (think flight changes) and old arcade games lend themselves well to the high levels of background noise in the terminals.
Marriage and MMORGs don't mix. The fact that EQ comes across as too expensive isn't a good sign either - women tend to eschew fellows lacking $*K/year in free cash flows. Just curious...how did Valentine's Day go for you?
They built a Dalek?
I thought we could leave "Myst" out of this...but probably not "Doom3".
Sounds realistic...
What's that smell? (Sniff, sniff.) Um, check the tip of your nose...
How's the new order of things go? If you can't hack engineering, go comp sci. If you can't hack comp sci, go LD.
Wusses...
Looks like people at Nintendo have been reading this:
"Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant" (2005, Harvard Business School Publishing), by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
Ironically, it's also the book Ford cited when it took the knife to its belly a few weeks ago...0 6601230398
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20
Remember - that was 1997. A 5 meg download was quite annoying back then.