It is "nice" to see that something is still making money on the web. It is nearly impossible to make an dollar anymore on the web (using the ideal that you can make something from nothing) through anything other than porn, spam, or fraud (although I don't think fraud is "making money... more like stealing it from trusting people that aren't used to reading the fine print"). People used to be able to make money off of advertising banners, but that day has long since past.
Now, in order to make money (with out selling a "real' product), people have to revert to some of the world's oldest ways (the sex industry is the oldest business on the planet)to make a quick buck. What else did people think would happen after all of the investment money disappeared? It appears as though the cyber world works just like the real world (like an old abandoned neighborhood). Once the people with money move out, all the scum moves in!
My 2 cents...
From a project managers prospective ...
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Ask Larry Wall
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· Score: 4, Interesting
What are your thoughts on the comments made by people that Perl is not designed for projects that require more than one programmer? Many people have stated over and over again that Perl code can not be managed by more than one person... what are your thoughts on that statement? How would you manage a large Perl project? Do you think Perl should be used for large projects? (or should it be used strictly as a "quick and dirty" programming language?)
BTW: I love your work (someone had to say it)
This post was meant for Joe Average Computer Part guy.... not Sam the super dorkey nerd that has taped glasses that scowers the Internet to save a quarter on an item (then overnights it and pays $45 for shipping).... and it was based on retail prices BEFORE rebates:)
What a great and original idea!
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CD Copy Stopper
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· Score: 1
Why don't we use macrovision as well??
Some people never learn....
Perl is hell only for those people that are truely poor project managers that don't know how to develop a good coding standard.... go play with Visual C++ and let the REAL programmers be happy.
Re:Top Ten Reasons Why 'e' is Inferior to 'pi'
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Perl and XML
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
It is obvious why open source isn't over taking the evil Microsoft empire.... look at the people that they surveyed for the answer:
99% Males
40% Single
Hmmmmm.... Mainly single males.... maybe some of this stuff needs a women's touch (man, am I going to get flamed for saying that)... but look at neopets.com. It is the most popular, free online game right now... why???? Because women like it!!!!!!
Back to the topic, I don't think that the sample of the population makes for a good survey... it is skeewed towards software engineers. Where are the systems administrators and network administrators in that list?? I also didn't see that much in terms of University/public researchers.... they are the people that use this stuff!!! I think that the statistician that did this survey needs to go back to Probability & Statistics 101... and look at some of the fundemental rules for taking a survey.
Debian as the favorite Linux distribution??? Gimme a break!
Gnome?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I can't stop laughing!!!!
These people must also work for Enron.... man can they skeew numbers!!!! (and I bet they're grant money was also listed as "soft money"....)
I'm not implying that you or I have been scammed, but I work with a couple people that signed up for porn sites for thier "free" limited trial period (or 5 bucks for 3 days thing)... then get their credit card statement a couple months later with 50 - 100 charges on it cause they were unable to cancel their membership. I'm also not saying that sex.com did this... but in general, the porn industry is a giant scam! Its kinda ironic to see one of thier own get beat at their own game!
If people don't want other sites linking to their sites, make THEM take care of this matter!
In their web server config, check to see if the HTTP_REFERER variable is either their domain, a site that they have granted permission to link to their site, or empty. If it is, let people into the site... otherwise give them an error page (404 - You ae not allowed to link to my site because we are mean that way)
How rediculous! I can understand people wanting others to be curtius and not deep link... but not being allowed to link to ANY of their pages... gimme a break. People like that shouldn't be allowed to register a domian name. And besides, they CAN stop deep linking.... they're just too lazy! If it bugs you, DO SOMETHING!!!!
Why would you waste your money buying a new 40x CD burner (unless your old burner dies and you have money to burn)?? If you have money to burn and are only after bragging rights, buy a DVD-R! Obviously, CD-Rs are not going to be around too much longer since they will be replaced by DVD-Rs (or holographical hard drives.... another completely different topic).
Save yourself $100 - $150 and buy a 16x burner if you MUST replace your CD burner, otherwise spend your money on what is going to be around for the next several years... DVD-Rs.
Let's see (wondering through Best Buy)... 16x CD burner = $89,... 40x CD burner = $250,... DVD burner = $400...
I'll pass on the over priced CD burner... gaining 3 minutes per burn for something I'll only be using for another year just isn't worth $150 to me!.... and I love to have bragging rights....
Now if we could get AMD processors and motherboards with a faster front side bus....
The problem for some of the applications I am running (mainly DB apps) is the lack of bus speed and the inability to access information fast enough. We have PLENTY of processor speed (in fact, my processors probably spend more time spinning their wheels doing nothing than working), but they need information to process.
That is the case for most people. The fact is, most people are getting choked at the information transfer rate, not how fast they can proces information. Like mentioned earlier, who cares if I can load MS Word in a few less seconds... <begin cheap shot at Bill> it is bloated anyways!:) </end cheap shot at Bill>
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Athlon processors for playing War Craft 3 and Everquest (along with a GeForce4 video card), but for REAL applications, they need a faster bus! A faster bus would begin putting Intel's PC market six feet under! I have 3 Athlon machines right now.... and I wouldn't think about replacing them with Intels, but for server apps, Intel still seems to have the edge.... but I PRAY they loose that edge soon! I love seeing the "untouchable, big guy" go down...
As for the new processors.... w00t!!! I can't wait to see one in action.... way to hang in there AMD!!!
Just my 2 cents...
What about a LAN party center?
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Fragfest
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· Score: 1
I have been playing games like Quake and Age of Empires during LAN parties since 1996 in the computer labs at the University I attended. Now, I run my own Internet company, but one of the main reasons that I (along with my 4 partners) started this business was so that we could have our own LAN party center, so we could play games with each other... face-to-face... whenever we wanted without having to drag our equipment around. Lets face it, carrying a 21" monitor, Klipsh 5.1 surround sound speakers, a leather chair, and my PC would REALLY suck (as mentioned in previous posts). I suppose that you have to have the chance to regularly play on a LAN to really appreciate how nice it is (and what kind of advantage you get when playing against other people online), but we decided that this was DEFINATELY worth it.
Now comes my question.... what would all of you think about opening a LAN party center for the public to use? I'm talking about providing VERY comfortable chairs, good gaming PCs, concessions, and a place where people could come together (at all hours of the day or night) to play PC games together... either against each other or over the Internet. Of course, the place would have a T-1 or something close for bandwidth for about 20 to 30 stations (some would have complete PC's with only our game titles installed, some stations would only have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, others would only have a network cable... of course, we would offer wireless as well) How much would you pay to do this with your buddies (or just to meet and play games with other people)? $3/hr, $4/hr, $5/hr???? Would membership or group rates help this? Is this a good idea??? A buddy and I have been pondering this for about a year now... and we've got a business plan in place.
The problem is that it will take about $60,000 to start this up, so there is a risk involved. We're both Unix systems administrators for major universities as well as full partners in an Internet company that has been around for 3 years now, so we have the technical know how and business background, but we're lacking in the funding. If anyone knows of an investor that would like to fund this opportunity (in Ohio), please email me at adavis@colfirestudios.com. We have a couple ideal locations for such a facility, and I'm sure if we do this "right", we can make this fly. I think that this would really be a great thing for the world of Internet gaming. Best of all, I would love to share some of the fantastic experiences that I have had while playing PC games with my friends... IN THE SAME ROOM! It makes games SOOOO much better! In fact, I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't already done something like this to try to drive up PC game sales. Sorry for the advertisement here, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I have MANY more details for those that may be seriously interested in funding this idea. Also, any comments on this idea would be GREATLY appreciated. This is something that I have been dreaming about doing for MANY years now... nice to see that others may be thinking like me...
I actually got to live out my dream.
STORY TIME:
Five of my buddies and I used to "live" in the University computer lab (ordered pizza; played PC games, Play Station, & cards; took naps, got phone calls there; etc... ALL from the lab) while we were undergrads. One day, we were all playing an online game called Earth 2025 (swirve.com)... and one person said "Hey, this game is slow... couldn't we make a better one?"... Everyone's eyes got big, and a year later, we had our own game, War II (http://war.darkent.com). We took a month, laid out the plans for our game (actually, we laid out a couple games, then picked what we thought was the best one... and the one that we thought we could finish). And people just thought we were waisting all that time in the PC lab playing games!!!
War II started off as a free game that we ran out of a couple friends' dorm rooms (on University bandwidth), but the evil University caught on to us after a couple months (it was using too much bandwidth), so we had to put annoying banner ads on the gamne to pay for the bandwidth. I still remember when we had our 100th person sign up. It was a feeling like no other. Although it is just a simple browser game, I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone thinging about writing a game to write a browser based game first. The FANTASTIC feeling you'll get from having other people playing your game is like no other (we have over 20,000 people playing our games now), but you will also see first hand how difficult it is to write a balanced game. You'll also see how critical people can be of your hard work. It will help humble you TREMENDOUSLY!! (You'll never think you are the ultimate game creator after a 12 year old tells you where your game isn't balanced). You'll also see that creating a GOOD game (not some piece of junk like 90% of the games out there) is not NEARLY as easy as one would think. Just making a SECURE multiplayer version of a game is almost impossible. You'll never believe how much people love to cheat!
We've since wrote another game (Space.. voted Game of the Month of www.mpogd.com last month) and are working on a third game (Dark Age).
Still, if you have a love of games and are luckey enough to assemble the talent needed to create a game, DO IT!!! A chance like that only passes most people once in a lifetime... so grab it while the opportunity is there! Of course, it helps to have friends that live in dorm rooms that have free bandwidth to get started. Start up costs are evil things too!
OK, in the case of AOL, killing pop-up ads is a good thing! They already charge a ridiculous amount of $$$ for a poor dial-up service (although their cable modem service isn't too bad). However, they shouldn't advertise on a service that you are already paying for! Isn't that why you are paying... to have a "clean", user-friendly service? Take for example HBO, Showtime, etc... you pay for those services so that you don't have commercials! There are free (or nearly free) ISP services available.. so why are they charging??
Now, there are cases where killing pop-up ads is a VERY bad thing. I am a little biased on this since I do run a free online game service (http://www.coldfirestudios.com), but we give our players the option to pay-2-play if they don't want pop-up ads. The problem is this: many web sites NEED the pop-up revenue!! Regular banners pay (at best) $0.10 CPM (after commission), where pop-up ads pay about $0.30 CPM. That may not sound like much, but it is THREE times the revenue. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being greedy, but the bandwidth costs BIG $$$... and people just don't seem to understand this. I am all for a free Internet, but it just can't be "totally free" with the current system (an entirely different topic best left alone here). People that are providing free web sites NEED that revenue just to keep their free service running. My games get 20-30 million page views per month, and we just pay the bills (and occasionally upgrade or repair equipment).
I know this is a little off topic, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to remind the non-paying public that people running "free" web sites still have to pay for the equipment and bandwidth. All I ever here (concerning pop-up ads) is how evil and distracting they are. Keep this in mind when complaining... you can either deal with the pop-up ads, pay for the service, or watch the Internet get taken over by the corporate world... I personally like option #1 myself. For all of you that really can't stand pop-up ads, you should be making donations to sites you frequent often (our sites take donations, then we remove the banner ads from your account) to help support those sites. If you don't want to support these sites in some manner, I feel that you loose your right to complain. Beggers can't be choosey!!:)
Yes, I have heard of query overhead! What do you think stored procedures and nested queries generate??? The answer: QUERY OVERHEAD! MySQL is designed to query a simple database QUICKLY (really just basic selects, updates and deletes). ANYTHING that you add after that will begin to generate SERIOUS overhead.... JACKASS!
Go back to school and learn what you are talking about before flaming people!
Seriosly, stored procedures would be nice, but they would take away MySQL's edge on Postgres.... and that is SPEED!!!!!! I hope they NEVER put in stored procedures!!! It would bloat things too much and make MySQL = Postgres 9or worse) in every regard! MySQL could use nested selects and such (for those times when I'm feeling lazy and want the DB to do all te work for me), but stored procedures would kill MySQL!!!
To everyone concered about stored procedures: GO USE POSTGRES!!!!
To everyone that needs a FAST database:Use MySQL!!
To everyone that has too much money: Go buy Oracle
I hope this ends this silly string of people whining about stored procedures.
Here is a proof that has eluded many men throughout their life time.
Keep in mind this proof looks much better if you can actually use the square root symbol
The problem:
Prove that women are all evil.
(With written proof, men don't have to worry about women arguing this fact anymore... just show them the paper. This will end debates that have been going on for centuries)
The proof:
Given that:
Time = money (we all know this)
Women = time * money (another well known fact)
Money = sqrt(evil) (after all, money is the root of all evil)
Proceede with the proof:
Women = money * money (substitution)
Women = money^2 (restating #1)
Women = ( sqrt(evil) )^2 (substitution)
Women = evil
Q.E.D.
See what an undergrad in Mathematics, an undergrad in C.S., and a Master's in C.S. gets you.... the ability to prove what you already know to be true!! What a waste of time!!! And that time cost me money!! So I got screwed twice!!! (and not by women in this case) I suppose this proof would also apply to college as well as women (since college = time * money). In fact, I just proved another well known fact.... college = women!!! And since college = women, it follows that college = evil as well. Wow, I never proved this much good stuff while in school! Practical theory!!!!
Seriously, I wish someone could prove that P=NP. I hated graduate Algorithms! This would have eliminated a portion of my least favorite topic in that course (NP and NP-completeness). If this world is not truely hell, someone will prove that and share it to help prevent the suffering of innocent C.S. graduate students.
Think about it! Look at what was done to make the movie Titanic! They used clusters of old Sun IPC's to render the scenes for the movie. They used the old Sun machines not for their power, but for their size. They had a physical space limitation they had to work with. In addition, they found that it took MUCH less time to have MANY little (very weak) Sun machines render the scenes rather then spending a ton of money on a cutting edge cluster! Those old Sun machines alone a PATHETIC by today's standards.
Now just think of how much more time they could have saved using an (Linu)Xbox cluster! The space constraints would have been met AND they would have saved a TON of time rendering all of those scenes.
Maybe it is George Lucas putting up the money so he can do this with the third Star Wars movie (he still needs to make improvments from the last two movies... maybe he could save some money on the special effects and pay for a decent script for the movie this time).
In any case, like posted above, if you needed a LARGE cluster of PCs, and if you could get a cluster of decent PCs with each node costing only $200 (instead of paying $400 - $500 per node), wouldn't you do it? I'm sure that it would make the accountants happy... and it may even get you a nice bonus, raise, or promotion (or all three) if you could cut the cost of cluster in half!! This is a no-brainer! Once somebody ports Linux to these machines (for $200,000), everyone else in the world is going to have cheap (Linu)Xboxes! Even if it is just for your home Linux PC or if you wanted a REALLY nice firewall or router (provided it could get the other network interface needed), this thing would be GREAT!
How is Microsoft going to check every home in America to see if they have an Xbox running Linux? It won't have their OS anymore, so its not like they can spy on you like they do with their other products:)
Of course, I still like the Bill Gates theory. It would make for a better story than the logical reason I posted above.
I have been running several free online (Space, WWII, etc) games for the past three years. You can take a look at them at http://www.coldfirestudios.com.
Let me give you a little advice concerning game programming and making money.
1. First, be prepared to work MANY long hours for very little thanks from your players. You will find a hand full of people that really appreciate what you are doing, but most will just complain although you are providing a free service for them.
2. We have had very little success with getting people to pay-to-play. Our games generate all of their revenue through banner advertsing. At one point, this was a very profitable market (2+ years ago), but now has become about 1/10th of what it used to be. I wouldn't plan on quitting your job to do this, but instead, do it for the experience and for fun.
3. Have your game WELL planned out before you begin coding it. After you release an alpha or beta, pay close attention to what the players say. Take their advice!!!! They'll appreciate it.
4. Be sure to not only provide a game that is challenging, but also visually appealing as well. This market is very competitive now, so you'll need every advantage you can get to generate those precious banner views.
5. After you establish a solid user base, you can ask for donations. I have several players that have donated $500+, and many are willing to donate $25 or so, but be sure to publically recognize those that do donate. Also, take the banners off of the games of those that donate. It will help keep donations up, keep profits up, and prevent those that don't donate from complaining about the banners:)
If you (or anyone else) is still seriously interested in making a game and need a company to hos the game and provide advertising (getting accepted into banner ad companies these days is rough), send an email to adavis@coldfirestudios.com and I will try to help you out. Basically, we're trying to encourage people to make free games on the web, and we're doing our best to encourage it. At a minimum, you will break even with us. If you're game becomes a huge success, you'll make some money off of it.
My best advice, do this with a couple other people! This is a bigger project than you may think it is, and you'll need all the help you can get. I'll atleast try to provide hosting, ads, and systems admin support if you have a good game.
Slashdot Mirror
It is "nice" to see that something is still making money on the web. It is nearly impossible to make an dollar anymore on the web (using the ideal that you can make something from nothing) through anything other than porn, spam, or fraud (although I don't think fraud is "making money ... more like stealing it from trusting people that aren't used to reading the fine print"). People used to be able to make money off of advertising banners, but that day has long since past.
...
Now, in order to make money (with out selling a "real' product), people have to revert to some of the world's oldest ways (the sex industry is the oldest business on the planet)to make a quick buck. What else did people think would happen after all of the investment money disappeared? It appears as though the cyber world works just like the real world (like an old abandoned neighborhood). Once the people with money move out, all the scum moves in!
My 2 cents
What are your thoughts on the comments made by people that Perl is not designed for projects that require more than one programmer? Many people have stated over and over again that Perl code can not be managed by more than one person ... what are your thoughts on that statement? How would you manage a large Perl project? Do you think Perl should be used for large projects? (or should it be used strictly as a "quick and dirty" programming language?)
BTW: I love your work (someone had to say it)
This post was meant for Joe Average Computer Part guy .... not Sam the super dorkey nerd that has taped glasses that scowers the Internet to save a quarter on an item (then overnights it and pays $45 for shipping).... and it was based on retail prices BEFORE rebates :)
Why don't we use macrovision as well?? Some people never learn ....
Perl is hell only for those people that are truely poor project managers that don't know how to develop a good coding standard .... go play with Visual C++ and let the REAL programmers be happy.
12) Pi tastes better
It is obvious why open source isn't over taking the evil Microsoft empire .... look at the people that they surveyed for the answer:
.... Mainly single males .... maybe some of this stuff needs a women's touch (man, am I going to get flamed for saying that) ... but look at neopets.com. It is the most popular, free online game right now ... why???? Because women like it!!!!!!
... it is skeewed towards software engineers. Where are the systems administrators and network administrators in that list?? I also didn't see that much in terms of University/public researchers .... they are the people that use this stuff!!! I think that the statistician that did this survey needs to go back to Probability & Statistics 101 ... and look at some of the fundemental rules for taking a survey.
.... man can they skeew numbers!!!! (and I bet they're grant money was also listed as "soft money" ....)
99% Males
40% Single
Hmmmmm
Back to the topic, I don't think that the sample of the population makes for a good survey
Debian as the favorite Linux distribution??? Gimme a break!
Gnome?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I can't stop laughing!!!!
These people must also work for Enron
I'm not implying that you or I have been scammed, but I work with a couple people that signed up for porn sites for thier "free" limited trial period (or 5 bucks for 3 days thing) ... then get their credit card statement a couple months later with 50 - 100 charges on it cause they were unable to cancel their membership. I'm also not saying that sex.com did this ... but in general, the porn industry is a giant scam! Its kinda ironic to see one of thier own get beat at their own game!
They scam us to sign up for their "free" trials, now someone in their industry gets scammed ... I call it poetic justice ....
If people don't want other sites linking to their sites, make THEM take care of this matter! In their web server config, check to see if the HTTP_REFERER variable is either their domain, a site that they have granted permission to link to their site, or empty. If it is, let people into the site ... otherwise give them an error page (404 - You ae not allowed to link to my site because we are mean that way)
How rediculous! I can understand people wanting others to be curtius and not deep link ... but not being allowed to link to ANY of their pages ... gimme a break. People like that shouldn't be allowed to register a domian name. And besides, they CAN stop deep linking .... they're just too lazy! If it bugs you, DO SOMETHING!!!!
Why would you waste your money buying a new 40x CD burner (unless your old burner dies and you have money to burn)?? If you have money to burn and are only after bragging rights, buy a DVD-R! Obviously, CD-Rs are not going to be around too much longer since they will be replaced by DVD-Rs (or holographical hard drives .... another completely different topic).
... DVD-Rs.
... 16x CD burner = $89, ... 40x CD burner = $250, ... DVD burner = $400 ...
... gaining 3 minutes per burn for something I'll only be using for another year just isn't worth $150 to me! .... and I love to have bragging rights ....
...
Save yourself $100 - $150 and buy a 16x burner if you MUST replace your CD burner, otherwise spend your money on what is going to be around for the next several years
Let's see (wondering through Best Buy)
I'll pass on the over priced CD burner
My 2 cents
Now if we could get AMD processors and motherboards with a faster front side bus ....
... <begin cheap shot at Bill> it is bloated anyways! :) </end cheap shot at Bill>
.... and I wouldn't think about replacing them with Intels, but for server apps, Intel still seems to have the edge .... but I PRAY they loose that edge soon! I love seeing the "untouchable, big guy" go down ...
.... w00t!!! I can't wait to see one in action .... way to hang in there AMD!!!
...
The problem for some of the applications I am running (mainly DB apps) is the lack of bus speed and the inability to access information fast enough. We have PLENTY of processor speed (in fact, my processors probably spend more time spinning their wheels doing nothing than working), but they need information to process. That is the case for most people. The fact is, most people are getting choked at the information transfer rate, not how fast they can proces information. Like mentioned earlier, who cares if I can load MS Word in a few less seconds
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Athlon processors for playing War Craft 3 and Everquest (along with a GeForce4 video card), but for REAL applications, they need a faster bus! A faster bus would begin putting Intel's PC market six feet under! I have 3 Athlon machines right now
As for the new processors
Just my 2 cents
I have been playing games like Quake and Age of Empires during LAN parties since 1996 in the computer labs at the University I attended. Now, I run my own Internet company, but one of the main reasons that I (along with my 4 partners) started this business was so that we could have our own LAN party center, so we could play games with each other ... face-to-face ... whenever we wanted without having to drag our equipment around. Lets face it, carrying a 21" monitor, Klipsh 5.1 surround sound speakers, a leather chair, and my PC would REALLY suck (as mentioned in previous posts). I suppose that you have to have the chance to regularly play on a LAN to really appreciate how nice it is (and what kind of advantage you get when playing against other people online), but we decided that this was DEFINATELY worth it.
... either against each other or over the Internet. Of course, the place would have a T-1 or something close for bandwidth for about 20 to 30 stations (some would have complete PC's with only our game titles installed, some stations would only have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, others would only have a network cable ... of course, we would offer wireless as well) How much would you pay to do this with your buddies (or just to meet and play games with other people)? $3/hr, $4/hr, $5/hr???? Would membership or group rates help this? Is this a good idea??? A buddy and I have been pondering this for about a year now ... and we've got a business plan in place.
... IN THE SAME ROOM! It makes games SOOOO much better! In fact, I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't already done something like this to try to drive up PC game sales. Sorry for the advertisement here, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I have MANY more details for those that may be seriously interested in funding this idea. Also, any comments on this idea would be GREATLY appreciated. This is something that I have been dreaming about doing for MANY years now ... nice to see that others may be thinking like me ...
Now comes my question.... what would all of you think about opening a LAN party center for the public to use? I'm talking about providing VERY comfortable chairs, good gaming PCs, concessions, and a place where people could come together (at all hours of the day or night) to play PC games together
The problem is that it will take about $60,000 to start this up, so there is a risk involved. We're both Unix systems administrators for major universities as well as full partners in an Internet company that has been around for 3 years now, so we have the technical know how and business background, but we're lacking in the funding. If anyone knows of an investor that would like to fund this opportunity (in Ohio), please email me at adavis@colfirestudios.com. We have a couple ideal locations for such a facility, and I'm sure if we do this "right", we can make this fly. I think that this would really be a great thing for the world of Internet gaming. Best of all, I would love to share some of the fantastic experiences that I have had while playing PC games with my friends
I actually got to live out my dream. STORY TIME: Five of my buddies and I used to "live" in the University computer lab (ordered pizza; played PC games, Play Station, & cards; took naps, got phone calls there; etc ... ALL from the lab) while we were undergrads. One day, we were all playing an online game called Earth 2025 (swirve.com) ... and one person said "Hey, this game is slow ... couldn't we make a better one?" ... Everyone's eyes got big, and a year later, we had our own game, War II (http://war.darkent.com). We took a month, laid out the plans for our game (actually, we laid out a couple games, then picked what we thought was the best one ... and the one that we thought we could finish). And people just thought we were waisting all that time in the PC lab playing games!!!
War II started off as a free game that we ran out of a couple friends' dorm rooms (on University bandwidth), but the evil University caught on to us after a couple months (it was using too much bandwidth), so we had to put annoying banner ads on the gamne to pay for the bandwidth. I still remember when we had our 100th person sign up. It was a feeling like no other. Although it is just a simple browser game, I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone thinging about writing a game to write a browser based game first. The FANTASTIC feeling you'll get from having other people playing your game is like no other (we have over 20,000 people playing our games now), but you will also see first hand how difficult it is to write a balanced game. You'll also see how critical people can be of your hard work. It will help humble you TREMENDOUSLY!! (You'll never think you are the ultimate game creator after a 12 year old tells you where your game isn't balanced). You'll also see that creating a GOOD game (not some piece of junk like 90% of the games out there) is not NEARLY as easy as one would think. Just making a SECURE multiplayer version of a game is almost impossible. You'll never believe how much people love to cheat!
We've since wrote another game (Space .. voted Game of the Month of www.mpogd.com last month) and are working on a third game (Dark Age).
Still, if you have a love of games and are luckey enough to assemble the talent needed to create a game, DO IT!!! A chance like that only passes most people once in a lifetime ... so grab it while the opportunity is there! Of course, it helps to have friends that live in dorm rooms that have free bandwidth to get started. Start up costs are evil things too!
OK, in the case of AOL, killing pop-up ads is a good thing! They already charge a ridiculous amount of $$$ for a poor dial-up service (although their cable modem service isn't too bad). However, they shouldn't advertise on a service that you are already paying for! Isn't that why you are paying ... to have a "clean", user-friendly service? Take for example HBO, Showtime, etc ... you pay for those services so that you don't have commercials! There are free (or nearly free) ISP services available.. so why are they charging??
... and people just don't seem to understand this. I am all for a free Internet, but it just can't be "totally free" with the current system (an entirely different topic best left alone here). People that are providing free web sites NEED that revenue just to keep their free service running. My games get 20-30 million page views per month, and we just pay the bills (and occasionally upgrade or repair equipment).
... you can either deal with the pop-up ads, pay for the service, or watch the Internet get taken over by the corporate world ... I personally like option #1 myself. For all of you that really can't stand pop-up ads, you should be making donations to sites you frequent often (our sites take donations, then we remove the banner ads from your account) to help support those sites. If you don't want to support these sites in some manner, I feel that you loose your right to complain. Beggers can't be choosey!! :)
....
Now, there are cases where killing pop-up ads is a VERY bad thing. I am a little biased on this since I do run a free online game service (http://www.coldfirestudios.com), but we give our players the option to pay-2-play if they don't want pop-up ads. The problem is this: many web sites NEED the pop-up revenue!! Regular banners pay (at best) $0.10 CPM (after commission), where pop-up ads pay about $0.30 CPM. That may not sound like much, but it is THREE times the revenue. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being greedy, but the bandwidth costs BIG $$$
I know this is a little off topic, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to remind the non-paying public that people running "free" web sites still have to pay for the equipment and bandwidth. All I ever here (concerning pop-up ads) is how evil and distracting they are. Keep this in mind when complaining
Just my two cents
Yes, I have heard of query overhead! What do you think stored procedures and nested queries generate??? The answer: QUERY OVERHEAD! MySQL is designed to query a simple database QUICKLY (really just basic selects, updates and deletes). ANYTHING that you add after that will begin to generate SERIOUS overhead .... JACKASS!
Go back to school and learn what you are talking about before flaming people!
Seriosly, stored procedures would be nice, but they would take away MySQL's edge on Postgres .... and that is SPEED!!!!!! I hope they NEVER put in stored procedures!!! It would bloat things too much and make MySQL = Postgres 9or worse) in every regard! MySQL could use nested selects and such (for those times when I'm feeling lazy and want the DB to do all te work for me), but stored procedures would kill MySQL!!!
To everyone concered about stored procedures: GO USE POSTGRES!!!!
To everyone that needs a FAST database:Use MySQL!!
To everyone that has too much money: Go buy Oracle
I hope this ends this silly string of people whining about stored procedures.
Keep in mind this proof looks much better if you can actually use the square root symbol
The problem:
Prove that women are all evil.
(With written proof, men don't have to worry about women arguing this fact anymore
The proof:
Given that:
Proceede with the proof:
See what an undergrad in Mathematics, an undergrad in C.S., and a Master's in C.S. gets you
Seriously, I wish someone could prove that P=NP. I hated graduate Algorithms! This would have eliminated a portion of my least favorite topic in that course (NP and NP-completeness). If this world is not truely hell, someone will prove that and share it to help prevent the suffering of innocent C.S. graduate students.
Think about it! Look at what was done to make the movie Titanic! They used clusters of old Sun IPC's to render the scenes for the movie. They used the old Sun machines not for their power, but for their size. They had a physical space limitation they had to work with. In addition, they found that it took MUCH less time to have MANY little (very weak) Sun machines render the scenes rather then spending a ton of money on a cutting edge cluster! Those old Sun machines alone a PATHETIC by today's standards.
... maybe he could save some money on the special effects and pay for a decent script for the movie this time).
... and it may even get you a nice bonus, raise, or promotion (or all three) if you could cut the cost of cluster in half!! This is a no-brainer! Once somebody ports Linux to these machines (for $200,000), everyone else in the world is going to have cheap (Linu)Xboxes! Even if it is just for your home Linux PC or if you wanted a REALLY nice firewall or router (provided it could get the other network interface needed), this thing would be GREAT!
:)
Now just think of how much more time they could have saved using an (Linu)Xbox cluster! The space constraints would have been met AND they would have saved a TON of time rendering all of those scenes.
Maybe it is George Lucas putting up the money so he can do this with the third Star Wars movie (he still needs to make improvments from the last two movies
In any case, like posted above, if you needed a LARGE cluster of PCs, and if you could get a cluster of decent PCs with each node costing only $200 (instead of paying $400 - $500 per node), wouldn't you do it? I'm sure that it would make the accountants happy
How is Microsoft going to check every home in America to see if they have an Xbox running Linux? It won't have their OS anymore, so its not like they can spy on you like they do with their other products
Of course, I still like the Bill Gates theory. It would make for a better story than the logical reason I posted above.
I have been running several free online (Space, WWII, etc) games for the past three years. You can take a look at them at http://www.coldfirestudios.com.
:)
Let me give you a little advice concerning game programming and making money.
1. First, be prepared to work MANY long hours for very little thanks from your players. You will find a hand full of people that really appreciate what you are doing, but most will just complain although you are providing a free service for them.
2. We have had very little success with getting people to pay-to-play. Our games generate all of their revenue through banner advertsing. At one point, this was a very profitable market (2+ years ago), but now has become about 1/10th of what it used to be. I wouldn't plan on quitting your job to do this, but instead, do it for the experience and for fun.
3. Have your game WELL planned out before you begin coding it. After you release an alpha or beta, pay close attention to what the players say. Take their advice!!!! They'll appreciate it.
4. Be sure to not only provide a game that is challenging, but also visually appealing as well. This market is very competitive now, so you'll need every advantage you can get to generate those precious banner views.
5. After you establish a solid user base, you can ask for donations. I have several players that have donated $500+, and many are willing to donate $25 or so, but be sure to publically recognize those that do donate. Also, take the banners off of the games of those that donate. It will help keep donations up, keep profits up, and prevent those that don't donate from complaining about the banners
If you (or anyone else) is still seriously interested in making a game and need a company to hos the game and provide advertising (getting accepted into banner ad companies these days is rough), send an email to adavis@coldfirestudios.com and I will try to help you out. Basically, we're trying to encourage people to make free games on the web, and we're doing our best to encourage it. At a minimum, you will break even with us. If you're game becomes a huge success, you'll make some money off of it.
My best advice, do this with a couple other people! This is a bigger project than you may think it is, and you'll need all the help you can get. I'll atleast try to provide hosting, ads, and systems admin support if you have a good game.