FACT: All Uwe Bolls movies made a HUGE loss not even coming close to recouping investment. So why do investors keep trying?
One explenation could be taking a longshot. If you got money to burn you can afford to bet on an outsider. If it is the loss you expect then well who cares but if it wins you clean up.
This however only works in bets where an outsider can have a profit margin or 3000%. An Uwe Boll movie is never going to do it. Sure George Lucas recooped his own original investment back many many times but surely nobody believes that Uwe Boll is the next George Lucas? Anyway GL made good movies before Star Wars.
Other motive could be the fun of being in show business. Spend a million and get to hang out with the big stars. Possible but unlikely, anyway the stars ain't that big.
No that leaves either complete stupidity on the investors part or some kind of way they actually profit by having the movie tank.
That the crew might have escaped safely had the shuttle been fitted with an escape mechanism. How extensive? I don't know. The F-111 bomber has a capacity for the entire cockpit to be ejected. Russian rockets have the capacity to fire the last stage allowing the "top" of the rocket to escape from the main rocket. This has worked and allowed for succesfull escapes during faulty launches. The shuttle has had numerous proposals for escape mechanisms NONE of wich have been implemented. It was and is a sealed coffin all the way.
The crew was probably unconcious. Well that is easy, we don't want to hear that 7 people fell to their death in a coffin and maybe even survived on the ground only to burn to death sealed inside. Except that it seems pretty silly to not equip astronauts with basic fighter pilot equipment. Like an oxygen mask.
The challenger disaster was just the result of constant budget cuts resulting in a space craft that did not have proper safety equipment being used in roles it had never been designed for and forced to operate in circumstances that were not safe.
It is not an accident, it was mis-management and Nasa learned nothing from it.
On the other hand, the NASA the US gets is the NASA it is prepared to pay for. Same with ESA really, luckily for the europeans we do not do passenger launches so when the europeans screw up it is "harmless".
Few people saw it live because CNN and other news stations had broadcasted the launch live. THEN cut away to other programming only to come back AFTER the accident showing recorded video.
So if you watched CNN you did not see the accident live but a recording. Granted the difference is only a few minutes but Live is Live and not a recording.
So the original story is right and you fail for being unable to read.
You can see this espcially with SWG wich they butchered in the hopes of being seen as more WoW.
I don't know about the old everquest but the 2nd version has also been overhauled to make it appeal to a bigger crowd.
Most notable? Increased run speed so your character now looks like a loony toon and no more death penalty.
SOE was one of the big boys in MMO land and then Blizzard came along and showed them how it is done. By the fact that SOE now seems to be in a panic overhauling their games to appeal to a different audience (was any EQ2 player upset by the death penalties?) I judge to be an admission of failure.
Everquest did fine, until WoW showed what was possible. The figures speak for themselves.
And I do so DS games wich cost the same as full price PC games. 39.95 euro for both in holland. Sure some PC games go to 49.95 but some of the DS games are more expensive at launch as well.
Sorry but I don't do big consoles. I remember that all the games I want to play cost a lot more on the consoles then the PC version.
So your right, I should have made it clear I meant PC prices. My bad.
For everyone wondering why the letter is from november and only on slashdot now, it isn't. It is a dupe.
But what the hell, something has changed between now and then. All of us had the chance to play the free trial. Ex-players even got two weeks of free play on our old characters.
The old SWG is claimed by Smedley as being to complex, with to many proffesions for people to figure out and a combat system that was to complex and not action packed enough.
Overall it was felt that SWG was too complex a game.
So was this true? Depends I suppose. Who are you talking too? A person who is confused by patience or an ex F16 Fighting falcon player? There are people out there who find the manual for Diablo a real thick brick. Other people ain't happy until they know every detail of whatever virtual thing they control. Actually fuel mix ratios in a cessna at altitude X and temp Y nuts.
SWG has 34 proffesions but most of them were easy to grasp for someone with an IQ. How hard is it to figure out Medic, Sword master, Pistoleer. If you can't grasp that Medics heal, Sword masters fight with swords while pistoleers use pistols your IQ must be in the single digit range. In binary.
Perhaps it was the fact that you had Medics AND Combat Medics AND Doctors. Medic was the base proffersion from wich you could advance to Combat Medic and Doctor. Well yeah this is complex I guess. For a six year old. Most people playing the game seemed able to figure it out. Most, not everyone however. RTFM Syndrome reared its ugly head in SWG like everywhere else.
RTFM. You know what I mean with that don't you. If you are online you will come across countless people who ask inane questions they could easily answer themselves by reading the GODDAMN FUCKING MANUAL but wich they can't be arsed to do. On slashdot this is called "Read The Fuckin Article" where a poster ask a question that is answered in the article posted.
Simply put there will always be a group who is very focal screaming that it is to complex, I seen this in every game. You probably can't get much simpler then Quake and I seen people begging for help in there.
There is a group of people out there that will never be able to deal with anything wich requires them to read more then one word. Not because they lack the IQ but because they just can't be bothered.
Is this really a group you want to market a game too? You can do it offcourse, it certainly is a big group but you will alienate the group of players who can read a manual without throwing a hissy fit.
And that is SWG's NGE biggest failure. It took a game from the crowd that could read a manual and turned it into a simpleton game. How simple? Well so simple that instead of mixing your own character from various proffesions you now do not have any choice to make in your chars development. You just level up in the proffesion you chose at the start. Every level 60 jedi will have exactly the same skills. Yuck.
There are plenty of "dumb" MMORPG's out there. All the korean ones for a start. Perhaps the truth is that only the "dumb" MMORPG's can survive.
SWG was played by an audience that by and large liked to play a complex deep game where you had a large amount of freedom to play the way you wanted too.
The problem was that SOE never really managed it right. It shouldn't have launched until they had removed a lot of the bugs. This killed the game far more then it being considered to complex, but offcourse they cannot say this. Smedley blames all of SWG failure on complexity not on SOE releasing a bugged product on an audience fed up with buggie MMO games.
SWG was complex and deep enough to allow you to be your own character. Well up to midlevel anyway. Then all of a sudden everything started to crash. Why? The "highend" content. Mini expansions like the Death Watch Bunker and The Corvette (dungeons) were unplayable for a lot of proffesion mixes. Creature Tamers were out because pets cannot be summoned inside. Scout/Rangers trap skill did not work on
That certainly seems to be an area where they can compete. The hardware is profitable and doesn't take next generation technology to develop. The software is cheaper to design for. And the prices are virtually the same.
This leads me to conclude that Nintendo is cleaning up on its entire handheld business. You can't really tell me that a game like Nintendogz or Animal Crossing DS cost the same to produce as a "full" console game. Yet they sell close to full price.
I never really could figure out why handhelds are considered seperate from consoles anyway. Is it bit like not counting card games as full games. Excluding pinball from arcade games.
So do they really need to succeed with the revolution considering how well the DS is doing. Especially since it was claimed the DS was NOT the true succesor to the GBA. That honor is for an as yet unknown handheld.
For a GBA.5 the DS ain't doing bad at all. In fact many "big" console makers would wish they could sell the same amounts, Eh Microsoft?
Or can a nintendo only sell handhelds because it has the big consoles in its catalog? I doubt it. Nintendo will be around even if the revolution fails UNLESS they are wasting all their profits from the handhelds on it to the point where they leech that division of the funds needed to go to the next generation of handhelds. That would be stupid. But hey this the game industry, stupid is what they do best.
Yeah, because subscription really hurt WoW
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MMOGs Branch Out
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Just read the article and look at the sales for WoW (subscription) vs Guild Wars (free to play). And that is without WoW's continued monthly income of a few million times 14.95
Oh sure, there will always be people who say they won't pay a subscription on top of the box fee. Some of the more insane even bring up their internet connection fee. This is a bit like people who object to having to pay for gas after they bought a car. Even when they pay roadtax!!! The outrage!
WoW has proven that whatever anyone thought about the MMO industry was wrong. The market had not been saturated. There was no objection against paying a monthly fee. People were not tired of fantasy worlds with orcs and elves.
People just wanted a game that was fun to play without to many game crippling bugs. No matter how rough WoW has been it was nothing compared to games like EQ and UO wich were at launch so bad it begged believe.
The subscription fee however is indeed a barrier. Against kiddies seeking to grief. While it doesn't stop them the costs involved keep games like WoW and EQ/SWG cleaner then say a guildwars. As to the few totally free games. Well, browse slashdot at -1 for an instant impression.
There will be different ways of "selling" an MMO but I think the old and tried box+monthy subscription model is far from death. In fact WoW should have revived it a lot. Wich company could possibly resists years of receiving hundreds of millions of revenue. Most game companies drool at the thought of making that during the launch of a game and Blizzard is doing it month after month after month.
SOE failed, Blizzard succeeded. Now it will be intresting to see if anyone else can copy WoW's success or wether it was something unique.
This will get modded down so modders don't waste time reading the rest. I am talking to the free people who read at -1 anyway.
Almost everyone here comments that there is no connection it is just coincedence nothing more and that the media would have blamed loud music just 10 years ago.
Blah blah blah. We have a game that is about street racing apparently having been played by a couple of real street races YET THERE IS NO CONNECTION. That is whacked up logic worthy of Jack Thompson.
Could it possibly be that people who enjoy speeding enjoy games that involve a lot of speed? Nah, of course not. That would be silly.
There probably is a link, if these kids like racing they could have applied to a racing school and played "proper" racing games. If they were raiding in mercs they probably had the money.
But no, they were attracted to illegal street racing and a game about illegal street racing. Is there a link? Yes.
BUT what kind of link? I think it is very simple and direct. These guys like speed and illegal street racing and need for speed are about speed. ne didn't lead to the other. They just both satisfied the same interrest.
Think of it like this. I was eating dinner. If you interrupted me halfway through you would have seen some fried rice and a cup of tea. AH!!! So tea leads to the eating of fried rice!!!
Eh no. Being hungry leads me to drink tea and eat fried rice.
The linking of games with undesirable behaviour often reminds me of the logic error: all fish swim in water so everything in water is a fish. Or I carry an umbrella when it rains so if I carry an umbrella it rains.
So don't I agree with all the other people who claim there is no link? No, there is a link, it is just not as direct as the media likes to pretend it is. This is going to be hard to put in html text but I think it is like this.
Media view: Need for speed Illegal street racing.
The real work:
Desire to drive fast -> Need for speed
---------------------> Illegal street racing.
What needs to be determind if there is a reinforcement going on between the two end actions. Does Need for Speed reinforce the speeders need to speed? Perhaps tells them that it is okay?
Perhaps, I don't know, that is an answer for a psychiatrist to answer. What is for us as society to answer is what we are willing to put up with. Do we want to ban everyone from buying gametype X OR do we want to put up with X amount of people that can't handle it.
If "we" gamers are going to win this argument we need better arguments then Jack Thompson and friends.
I know, it took us decades to properly research this but we finally can proudly announce that men are attracted to sexy females. Especially if those females know they are not going to get paid if they mace any geek coming within a 100 meters of them.
It is not new, go to a carshow sometime. Boatshow? Yeah sure, that shipyard employees a dozen young women as its builders.
Sex sells. Well not really but it certainly works in getting eyeballs on your stand and then the selling can start. There are a 100th other booths there all competing for attention and a bit of skin is the cheapest way to attract a male audience.
I frankly don't see the problem. The girls get a fat paycheck, we get to see some skin, game execs get their eyeballs on the stand, everybody is happy.
Well except for some puritans but what the fuck are they doing at E3 anyway? Aren't games sinfull? Go back to your farm. This is the big city.
We are male, we either see boobies OR we talk intelligently. The two are mutually exclusive. If your really a female you should know this. Boobs reduce our IQ to a single digit. In binary.
Oh and before you feel all superior as a geek girl with brains who is not reduced to a blittering idiot at the mere hint of boobs. Look! Over there it is actor XXXX XXXXXXX.
I did some rigging during an erotica convention and the one thing sadder then males lusting after the naked female performers was the females lusting after the naked male performers. The moment women stop throwing their panties at every good looking actor/popstar is the moment you can comment on us males.
They do try but it is hard to get a PC like console out with a mere 50 million so naturally you blow it all on expenses and then are reduced to paying a few tens of thousands to some unheard of company to actually develop the hardware. Or you would pay them a few tens of thousands if you still had any money.
You make licensing deals that cost you money wich you don't have to release games on a hardware platform that is still being designed.
You get investigated by the sec because the best way to sell your stock is to spam.
Frankly this is not the bubble wich other/.ers are claiming, this is criminal. You can't mis-manage a company like this by accident. They are blowing tens of millions with no actuall product in sight. Not even a proto-type. I seen web businesses blow that kind of money but they did it by developing software/services that you could actually see. Some just never recooped the money on their projects causing them to slide into debt but this?
Now another 5 million dollar loan. For what. A wireless keyboard. WOHOO! For gamers? Well only for gamers playing on a big screen. Wouldn't want to watch my 17 inch LCD from 30 feet away. Not PC games wich usually have fonts in the smallest size possible.
I tried googling for the investor company but could find nothing.
This should be in the comedy section. It's funny, laugh.
Heavy gaming is more then once per week? WTF? I would consider a heavy gamer someone who games most days. A casual once twice per week and anyone who plays less then once a week trivial.
You don't measure TV watching in this way do you? Perhaps it shows the researchers were still slanted against gaming being considered normal. It would explain the HUGE gap between this researchs heavy gamer group and the next one. If nearly everyone says they are a heavy user perhaps you defined heavy user wrong.
The poster asks about the medium users but I think the stats are so skewed and the difference so minimal that the only thing you can conclude from this is that men and women pretty much play the same games. Just that women game slightly less.
Considering the attitude that games are for men I find the small diffrences really revealing. Seems the old attitude that games are for the boys is just plain not true anymore.
What I think is really the case? That initially gaming was discovered by people of my generation (70s) and we kept it with us. Some older folks were of course intrested (who do you think wrote those games when I was a kid?) but fewer of them. As we moved on we introduced other people to gaming and slowly it spread. I can remember where if you talked to a person of the female gender they would never even have heard of quake let alone doom. Now they can kick your ass. There are still a lot of people who don't game but the hobby is spreading.
As for puzzle games being most popular? Well in a way yeah that is no wonder. If they count solataire. Even worse, mobile phone games. Nokia Snake alone must have been played more then any full price console/pc game.
We just had an article about games for females but I think they are barking up the wrong tree. These games already exist but the real gems are those games where we are not forced to think in current sexist views but we can be whoever we want to be.
MMORPG's are a lot of fun that way. I played with females who make me very very afraid and with males who act out characters so sweet they make japanese idols look like war veterans.
The Sims is perhaps another good example of male and female players being able to meet. I am a perverted sexist male running an all female co-ed lesbian house using sexy skins made by a female who likes to design pretty sims models (not easy in The Sims 2).
Over the years I have spoken to female flight sim nuts and males who spend hours designing hair meshes for The Sims. Games at their best allow us to have fun the way we want to. Long live the new age where you real live sex doesn't matter if you don't want to.
Now back to slashdot where everyone is a teenage boy.
Yeah I agree, this stuff is pretty tame. I helped with the rigging off several erotica conventions in europe and this guy would have a heart attack if he saw what went on there.
Then again it is hard to imagine an area of public sales where a pretty girl won't do the trick. Wether it is the stewardes or the receptionist a pretty face works better.
As for it being sexist. Advertising aimed at women either uses the most perfect male or a mental retard. "Normal" men need not apply to sell products to women.
Hell a lot of ads aimed at females use pretty females themselves so what is wrong with ads aimed at men using sexy females.
This guy probably got a serious case of the right wing nutter disease and starts enforcing his own impotentency on the rest of us. Just because he can not longer enjoy looking at a pretty girl he must ruin it for the rest of us as well.
Booth babes are a way to dress up your booth, to get eyeballs on your stand and then once you got them there you can make your sale. It is very old, it happens in every industry and it won't go away. I seen these kinds of restrictions being proposed before and they are always worked around. When you are selling the next DOA game you can hardly have it being advertised by a couple of guys in suits.
Is simple enough. This is a google vid. So it should be on google right? enter the url video.google.com enter the search "8088 corruption" click on the image and on the right choose to save. Tada. Instant format of your choice. Of course only evil formats belonging to nasty MS and Apple but should be enough for most people.
As for getting the vid out of flash, it is easy enough but if you can't even manage the above I think it is beyond you.
Oh and to avoid that horrible off topic nazi mod, nice vid. Reminds me of playing some ancient games that tried to do full motion when the hardware still wasn't up to it. Remember when FMV was actually thought to be the beginning of a new genre in gaming. Ah, those were the days.
I am socialist, I live in holland and ALWAYS vote leftwing and think Holland would do better looking at the swedish model then the american model. I am just aware that a lot of the people here are american and not fully aware what exactly it means to live in places with a large social securit system.
BUT I do not want to tell americans that they are wrong. They can run their country the way they want to. In such a way I am not taking sides. I do think the swedish system makes a better system for ME, americans would in general feel different.
Perhaps if you got of your high moral horse for a while you would be able to accept that different people prefer different societies.
Sweden is a socialist country. EXTREMELY socialist even by pinko european standards. This means very simply that an awfull lot of your income will be taxed and given to people to lazy to work.
Worse? Swedes are proud of this. It creates a country they like and best of all a society everyone can fit in. The hard workers can work hard and make more money then the terminally lazy BUT they will also be funding the terminally lazy. Oh and the sick and or handicapped or people who are raising the next generation that in times to come will take care of the hard workers when they are old.
It is just that to americans the change might be to much. If you are an american who ever just once complained about any taxation, do not move to sweden. Sweden has changed a bit since it has undergone a financial crisis but by and large most swedes still believe that the working class benefits from supporting a large non-working group. The american attitude where people getting benefits are misfits to lazy to work who should only be given a few weeks/months of the most minimal income is alien to swedes. Sweden vs America is often used as an example when talking about extreme opposites in social security. If you wanna emigrate countries like england and ireland are closer to the american model. Mainland europe really is a bunch of pinko's.
Note that I am not taking sides, just that I did work for a truly international company and have had dealings with people emigrating and getting homesick. There are real changes between mainland europe and america that go far deeper then americans having bigger asses^H^H^H^H^H^Hcars. Europeans are often bitten hard by the fact that to afford the american way of live it often requires working weeks of 80 hours. To a european with max weeks of around 36 hours this is can some as a shock. Even england can be nasty with its 48 hour weeks. Emigrator beware.
As for this move? Well sweden is in a unique position, most of its population is in a small part of the country so it benefits that public transport can work like it can in dense countries/cities (holland/japan and New York/London) while it still has plenty of area to put renewable energie plants in especially considering its small population. I wonder if they can pull this off, they would still need oil for plastics but there own reserves would last a lot longer. They also got their own car industry to support wich may benefit if all the other car companies are unwilling to make the bet to go non-petrol.
Wasn't it the swedish volvo who first made seatbelts standard when american car companies resisted (patent for the 3point harness belonging to a swede)? Perhaps this might lead to a similar coop. Sometimes it pays to be first.
To those who argue against such a move, oil however much there is is needed for plastics wich are a lot harder to replace then petrol is. With current prices, this might be exactly the right moment to try it. Last time prices were so high we moved from the gass guzzlers to tiny cars. Who knows what this time might bring.
The most dangerous thing in the world is finding someone you agree with. If say a TV station news is saying exactly what you think is right BE BEWARE! You are very likely only reinforcing your believes and not being supplied with new information. A newssource that says the exact opposite of what you believe to be true will cause you to either outright deny it (bad) or search for the real truth.
Con men always work with this, they tell you what you want to hear so that you will end up trusting them and then they can scam you.
Linux fans, don't trust claims by say IBM on linux performance blindly, Mac fans doubt every single thing Steve Jobs tells you and MS fans.... well there is no helping some people.
That people like to have their ideas reinforced is pretty clear with the current world events involving armed conflicts between various factions. Why do I not say "war" or something like that? Because even that means taking sides. Call it war on terror and it becomes clear that america is the one fighting terrorists. I am pretty sure the other side claims however that it is america who is the one dealing in terror.
Some americans who are against their goverments actions happily claim that european media, the BBC especially is so much more un-biased then their own networks. Is it? Or does the BBC simply say what they want to hear? Same of course the other way around. Is all the european press simply anti-american or are they only guilty of saying something you don't want to hear?
Not to long ago I had an argument with an american about the race riots in france and the american claimed that in the US such things could not happen because immigrants were integrated into society better. Any recent immigrants in america want to reply on this? Apparently the riots in LA were not related to race.
It is intresting to see this article take on it. I hadn't suspected it ran so deeply. Then again it may be related to how we defend any decision we made wich later turns out to be bad. Wether we find out that the car we bought is considered bad by everyone else or the partner we choose turns out to be abusive. People like to stick with their decisions because we hate to admit we were wrong.
Linux zealots, mac slaves and MS apologists, all firmly believe their own myths and deny the enemies truths. Doesn't help at all when 99% of the time your in fact right. It makes it all the easier to think that 1 truth is a lie as well.
In dutch politics we had a few years a go a new person on the political scene who really upset the current balance as he was neither left nor right wing. The left claimed he was extreme right and the right claimed he was to left. He was for instance against continued immigration (far right) but also wanted to stop buying american fighter aircraft (far left). He was killed and dutch politics went back to the total crap it has always been but perhaps that is the only way forward. A party that is neither left nor right but simply does what is best for the country without being hunted by dogmatic views from some political ideologie.
A sort of enlighten socialism. Oh and before I get all the americans over me, remember that america is a socialist country as well. A true capatalist nation would have NO social security whatsoever. As long as tax money from the rich goes to those who are poor you are socialist. Take that you bunch of pinkos.
If you agree with what I said, BE AWARE! Am I only saying what you wanna hear? If you disagree, are you just in denial ignoring the facts?
In a way, all the responses to this article should be unmodded. Modding is after all only a way to reward those who say what you wanta hear and punish those who do not. If you don't believe me spend some real time meta-moderating.
When I was a kid the dutch tv station Veronica had aired an program about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It was explicit and used porn actors to show in full detail how to use condoms. Couple that with movies about people dying, some hardhitting campaigns and it was pretty hard not to grow up being aware that screwing without a condome was bad for you.
Even then an awfull lot of people didn't do the safe sex thing.
It also put a strain on people. Not nice to be constantly reminded as a young male/female that doing what comes natural can kill you. There were ways around it like mutual masturbation replacing intercourse but for many that is just not good enough.
After the sexual freedom of previous decades our generation was definitly handicapped. Sleeping around was not just cheating anymore, you put yourselve and your partner at real risk.
So fast forward to now and those hardhitting campaigns have stopped. Sexually transmitted diseases off all sorts haven't gone away but the urgency has been removed. It just isn't seen as an issue anymore. Can you blame people? Either you live you live in blissfull ignorance OR you have to turn down that easy girl/boy who fucks everyone and remain a virgin until you meet another virgin.
Cause just condoms alone are not good enough, have you ever tried eating a girl with one of those rubber sheets to prevent direct contact? It is not easy I can tell you. I am not 100% certain but I think the female fluids are just as capable of spreading aids as sperm and it is a lot harder to catch them in a rubber.
So given the choice between being fearfull and ignoring the danger most people choose to ignore the danger. It is not just aids. The amount of women who are infertile is sky-rocketing. Sure sure, genetic changes. Eheh. Ask a doctor. Most of the women who have trouble getting pregnant can only blame it as the result of a sexually transmitted disease.
AIDS is a killer but others STD's are far more common and can have very big impacts as well. Going infertile can be a pretty big deal for a woman. Especially if it turns out the female got it from a cheating partner.
But what can we do? Terrorize people into being completly paranoid about sex? People have to rationlize dangers otherwise we would never get out of bed. How many people die each day on the roads because of unsafe driving? That is a real risk wich many of us can see directly as we pass yet another accident scene each day on the way to work. Does that stop us from driving to fast, in crappy cars, while drunk? Nope. Remember, it is not just how you drive but the millions of other road users as well. Sleep around and you are having sex with not just your partner but all the people they had sex with as well. One happy STD chain.
STD's are nasty but they are something we just have to live with for now.As long as people are not so ignorant as to stop funding research I think we can handle it. Just life as usual.
"My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc."
If she said the same to her employer/manager I am not suprised she didn't get training.
Training is expensive. Not just the training costs themselves but also because it usually removes the person from work.
Now who would you choose for training? Female A: claims she has a life outside of work, probably going to have a baby anytime now or Male B: Work is his life, can't have babies.
Gee, that is a thoughie. Oh the baby argument is sexist but I am telling you what it is like in the real world. One woman in a company of thousands pulls the being absent for years trick and every woman in the company and every woman in companies where the male managers know a guy in another company where it happened will be tainted with the brush of being unreliable.
Common perception is that women see work as something to do until they get kids. You put them in a position where they are critical and they will just disappear for months. True? Sorta, while I never met any "highlevel" females who did this it sure can mess up a company when the "lowlevel" secretary decides that she has had it and is going to take care of her own baby and no a bunch of middle aged babies. Offcourse the fact that this female was underpaid, undervalued is never mentioned. Just maternity leave is risky. Every male knows this. Sorry.
Then stating also that you value your private life is not a good thing. I am male and even I can't get away with that one. Companies investing thousands of dollars in a person want to be sure they get a willing slave in return. Doesn't matter if that person is going to leave right after completing the training what matters is perception.
And finally the biggest killer in getting training? Just being to damn valuable. I actually been told I couldn't get trained because they couldn't get me the time off needed from projects. So the guys who were "unemployed" got the the training while the guy who was earning the salaries by being outsourced had to buy his own books. Oh and ended up having to be the teacher to the guys just having received a 20.000 guilder training. Grrrr.
Whenever an employer starts talking about training your bullshit meter should spring into the red. I have had several "offers" and it never works out. In the rare occasions where it actually reaches a "planned" stage there is always some project that I am suddenly needed on because the guy that was on it and received lots and lots of training can't hack it. Or left for greener pastures with his shiny new diploma.
Those who can, do. Those who can't get trained and leave the company.
As for the whole butter trap, can you blame men for trying it? Call us sexist pigs if you want, just also remember to call us master and serve us. Resistance is futile. We are male, you will serve us.
If you think it is wrong, just realise that no matter how fucked up men are, women are worse. Just examine yourselve (if your female) what you want in a male partner and then check how many of your wishes contradict themselves. Strong, yet caring. Able to express his emotions but not a cry baby. And the biggest one, "he musn't mind me earning more then him" vs "he better earn a good income". No women respects a man with a low paycheck. The only way for a woman to get the man she wants is to have a harem or someone with a split personality.
Surely it is the taking part that counts. Yet that doesn't stop hundreds of millions of people from following sports events.
No I don't see the appeal either but then I don't watch "regular" sports anyway so perhaps I am just weird.
Just as there is a "market" for chess matches or curdling or downhill skiing or soccer there will be a market for "gaming".
If it will ever be big I have no idea. Why did soccer get big but not field hockey? Why do americans watch football and europeans soccer.
F1 is a big sport. Perhaps it is only watched because you want to see lethal crashes but if that is not the case then why should people not also watch a F1 race with virtual cars?
It would not be my cup of tea and it may not be yours but we hardly matter now do we? Computer "sports" would allow events that could never be held in real live, why hold a chess match when you can televise a battle between armies? The BBC already had a program like this.
Why? What is the state of advergaming right now? Almost non-existant yet somehow in a mere two years it will be worth 4 billion? That is fantasy accounting. It probably goes like this, 1st month 1million, 2nd month 2 million wich can only lead you to conclude that in 48 months you must have reach 48 million. It is called making a future prediction with not enough historical data.
Now we just had a story about planetside getting ads. Another MMORPG that I can't remember right has been doing that for over a year now. Nice but I would hardly use their "success" as a way to predict what is going to happen in two years time. The most popular MMORPG's right now are fantasy making it hard to fit ads into them.
I also remember games like Grand Prix Legends that had to jump through hoops to get permission to use the authentic ads in the game of the era. Far from being payed most companies will sue you if you use their ad slogans in your game without permission.
What company would really want to be associated with a GTA San Andreas especially now that it has been shown game makers can't be trusted? What will be in the next version, a hidden level of shooting kittens? A marketing nightmare.
It is the same reason a lot of car companies do not give permission to use their real car names in games with violence or even just realastic damage modelling. You do not want customers of you latest super car to see exactly what remains of the car when you take it to 180 on the open road.
EQ2 pizza deal seems to have been removed. Ad based MMO's are the ones who couldn't hack it as a subscription game. Most companies do not want to be associated with the wrong kind of game.
Sure there will be a market but 4 billion worth? I doubt it. Reminds me of the internet bubble.
I am to unpopular to get a lot of spam but the few I get on my gmail account all seem to be beginning with "Re:" clearly seeking to trick me into believing it is a reply.
Of course you could check the headers but these could easily be faked. In seen spams in the past that got through where I had real trouble figuring out where the fuck they came from. Some I even seemed to have sent myself.
The only real way to check it would be for hotmail to keep a track record of everyone you send mail to, add them to your adress book and then let those emails bypass your spam filters.
Silly Hotmail for not doing that. OH wait, they do! When you send an email via hotmail you are asked wether you want to add that person to your contact list. Most people don't bother.
My tip to you? Make it very clear that if they contact you via hotmail it may be filtered. Also check why you are being spam filtered. Is it based on your hostname or is the content of your email to spammy?
I know your pain, I dealt with it myself although in my case I am not depended on hotmail users so simply don't care that much. It is a lot of extra work but that is the cost of spam. No spam, no spam filters. It is something people often forget, it is not just the bandwidth cost and the time wasted sorting through spam but also the fact the real emails get lost in the mess. But don't worry, Bill Gates promised he would solve it. Has he ever lied before?
This is not supposed to be a replacement for your dog/cat/baby seal (to cute!) but as a substitute for people who can't have a real one.
That "pets" fake or real are good for you is without debate. From a teddy bear to a dog they make us feel secure and give us something to care for. Yet in a way these pets are still a replacement, you don't give a toddler a real pet to take off so you give them a teddy bear instead. If you cannot or do not want to have kids a dog can be used as a replacement.
So why is it stupid to use more robotic teddy bears for older people who need something that reacts. Sure there are well established projects that bring real pets into the lives of the sick or the elderely but this is still out of reach of some people.
Allergies are the simplest reason. What if the patient simply can handle real animals. Should they live in complete isolation?
What if a patient is mentally incapable of dealing with a real pet. A patient prone to uncontrolled rage or just uncontrolled movement in general would be hell on the pets. A robot doesn't mind being flung across a room or being severly beaten.
And what of the other way around? Pets bite. Do you really want a bleeder to be around a real bet wich bites and scratches?
I also seen some experiments where mentally disabled people dealt with robots better then with humans. A robot is never moody never changes it pattern. I forgot the name but one mental handicap makes it very hard for its sufferers to deal with emotion in other people. A robot cat would always react exactly the same making interaction a lot easier for them.
I see this as a very nice tech solution to a problem with no bad side effects. No real dogs and cats won't be replaced for those who can take proper care of them. Yet for those who can't because it would be bad for the human or the pet this provides an alternative.
On the other hand, we should not see this as an excuse to deny people real pets. Why exactly do a lot of homes for the elderly deny them their pets? Oh sure I know the reasons, they just don't seem very good ones. Then again I never vote for the guy offering the biggest taxcut.
Slashdot Mirror
One explenation could be taking a longshot. If you got money to burn you can afford to bet on an outsider. If it is the loss you expect then well who cares but if it wins you clean up.
This however only works in bets where an outsider can have a profit margin or 3000%. An Uwe Boll movie is never going to do it. Sure George Lucas recooped his own original investment back many many times but surely nobody believes that Uwe Boll is the next George Lucas? Anyway GL made good movies before Star Wars.
Other motive could be the fun of being in show business. Spend a million and get to hang out with the big stars. Possible but unlikely, anyway the stars ain't that big.
No that leaves either complete stupidity on the investors part or some kind of way they actually profit by having the movie tank.
Perhaps it is all a simple money laundering deal.
The challenger disaster was just the result of constant budget cuts resulting in a space craft that did not have proper safety equipment being used in roles it had never been designed for and forced to operate in circumstances that were not safe.
It is not an accident, it was mis-management and Nasa learned nothing from it.
On the other hand, the NASA the US gets is the NASA it is prepared to pay for. Same with ESA really, luckily for the europeans we do not do passenger launches so when the europeans screw up it is "harmless".
So if you watched CNN you did not see the accident live but a recording. Granted the difference is only a few minutes but Live is Live and not a recording.
So the original story is right and you fail for being unable to read.
I don't know about the old everquest but the 2nd version has also been overhauled to make it appeal to a bigger crowd.
Most notable? Increased run speed so your character now looks like a loony toon and no more death penalty.
SOE was one of the big boys in MMO land and then Blizzard came along and showed them how it is done. By the fact that SOE now seems to be in a panic overhauling their games to appeal to a different audience (was any EQ2 player upset by the death penalties?) I judge to be an admission of failure.
Everquest did fine, until WoW showed what was possible. The figures speak for themselves.
Sorry but I don't do big consoles. I remember that all the games I want to play cost a lot more on the consoles then the PC version.
So your right, I should have made it clear I meant PC prices. My bad.
But what the hell, something has changed between now and then. All of us had the chance to play the free trial. Ex-players even got two weeks of free play on our old characters.
The old SWG is claimed by Smedley as being to complex, with to many proffesions for people to figure out and a combat system that was to complex and not action packed enough.
Overall it was felt that SWG was too complex a game.
So was this true? Depends I suppose. Who are you talking too? A person who is confused by patience or an ex F16 Fighting falcon player? There are people out there who find the manual for Diablo a real thick brick. Other people ain't happy until they know every detail of whatever virtual thing they control. Actually fuel mix ratios in a cessna at altitude X and temp Y nuts.
SWG has 34 proffesions but most of them were easy to grasp for someone with an IQ. How hard is it to figure out Medic, Sword master, Pistoleer. If you can't grasp that Medics heal, Sword masters fight with swords while pistoleers use pistols your IQ must be in the single digit range. In binary.
Perhaps it was the fact that you had Medics AND Combat Medics AND Doctors. Medic was the base proffersion from wich you could advance to Combat Medic and Doctor. Well yeah this is complex I guess. For a six year old. Most people playing the game seemed able to figure it out. Most, not everyone however. RTFM Syndrome reared its ugly head in SWG like everywhere else.
RTFM. You know what I mean with that don't you. If you are online you will come across countless people who ask inane questions they could easily answer themselves by reading the GODDAMN FUCKING MANUAL but wich they can't be arsed to do. On slashdot this is called "Read The Fuckin Article" where a poster ask a question that is answered in the article posted.
Simply put there will always be a group who is very focal screaming that it is to complex, I seen this in every game. You probably can't get much simpler then Quake and I seen people begging for help in there.
There is a group of people out there that will never be able to deal with anything wich requires them to read more then one word. Not because they lack the IQ but because they just can't be bothered.
Is this really a group you want to market a game too? You can do it offcourse, it certainly is a big group but you will alienate the group of players who can read a manual without throwing a hissy fit.
And that is SWG's NGE biggest failure. It took a game from the crowd that could read a manual and turned it into a simpleton game. How simple? Well so simple that instead of mixing your own character from various proffesions you now do not have any choice to make in your chars development. You just level up in the proffesion you chose at the start. Every level 60 jedi will have exactly the same skills. Yuck.
There are plenty of "dumb" MMORPG's out there. All the korean ones for a start. Perhaps the truth is that only the "dumb" MMORPG's can survive.
SWG was played by an audience that by and large liked to play a complex deep game where you had a large amount of freedom to play the way you wanted too.
The problem was that SOE never really managed it right. It shouldn't have launched until they had removed a lot of the bugs. This killed the game far more then it being considered to complex, but offcourse they cannot say this. Smedley blames all of SWG failure on complexity not on SOE releasing a bugged product on an audience fed up with buggie MMO games.
SWG was complex and deep enough to allow you to be your own character. Well up to midlevel anyway. Then all of a sudden everything started to crash. Why? The "highend" content. Mini expansions like the Death Watch Bunker and The Corvette (dungeons) were unplayable for a lot of proffesion mixes. Creature Tamers were out because pets cannot be summoned inside. Scout/Rangers trap skill did not work on
This leads me to conclude that Nintendo is cleaning up on its entire handheld business. You can't really tell me that a game like Nintendogz or Animal Crossing DS cost the same to produce as a "full" console game. Yet they sell close to full price.
I never really could figure out why handhelds are considered seperate from consoles anyway. Is it bit like not counting card games as full games. Excluding pinball from arcade games.
So do they really need to succeed with the revolution considering how well the DS is doing. Especially since it was claimed the DS was NOT the true succesor to the GBA. That honor is for an as yet unknown handheld.
For a GBA.5 the DS ain't doing bad at all. In fact many "big" console makers would wish they could sell the same amounts, Eh Microsoft?
Or can a nintendo only sell handhelds because it has the big consoles in its catalog? I doubt it. Nintendo will be around even if the revolution fails UNLESS they are wasting all their profits from the handhelds on it to the point where they leech that division of the funds needed to go to the next generation of handhelds. That would be stupid. But hey this the game industry, stupid is what they do best.
Oh sure, there will always be people who say they won't pay a subscription on top of the box fee. Some of the more insane even bring up their internet connection fee. This is a bit like people who object to having to pay for gas after they bought a car. Even when they pay roadtax!!! The outrage!
WoW has proven that whatever anyone thought about the MMO industry was wrong. The market had not been saturated. There was no objection against paying a monthly fee. People were not tired of fantasy worlds with orcs and elves.
People just wanted a game that was fun to play without to many game crippling bugs. No matter how rough WoW has been it was nothing compared to games like EQ and UO wich were at launch so bad it begged believe.
The subscription fee however is indeed a barrier. Against kiddies seeking to grief. While it doesn't stop them the costs involved keep games like WoW and EQ/SWG cleaner then say a guildwars. As to the few totally free games. Well, browse slashdot at -1 for an instant impression.
There will be different ways of "selling" an MMO but I think the old and tried box+monthy subscription model is far from death. In fact WoW should have revived it a lot. Wich company could possibly resists years of receiving hundreds of millions of revenue. Most game companies drool at the thought of making that during the launch of a game and Blizzard is doing it month after month after month.
SOE failed, Blizzard succeeded. Now it will be intresting to see if anyone else can copy WoW's success or wether it was something unique.
Almost everyone here comments that there is no connection it is just coincedence nothing more and that the media would have blamed loud music just 10 years ago.
Blah blah blah. We have a game that is about street racing apparently having been played by a couple of real street races YET THERE IS NO CONNECTION. That is whacked up logic worthy of Jack Thompson.
Could it possibly be that people who enjoy speeding enjoy games that involve a lot of speed? Nah, of course not. That would be silly.
There probably is a link, if these kids like racing they could have applied to a racing school and played "proper" racing games. If they were raiding in mercs they probably had the money.
But no, they were attracted to illegal street racing and a game about illegal street racing. Is there a link? Yes.
BUT what kind of link? I think it is very simple and direct. These guys like speed and illegal street racing and need for speed are about speed. ne didn't lead to the other. They just both satisfied the same interrest.
Think of it like this. I was eating dinner. If you interrupted me halfway through you would have seen some fried rice and a cup of tea. AH!!! So tea leads to the eating of fried rice!!!
Eh no. Being hungry leads me to drink tea and eat fried rice.
The linking of games with undesirable behaviour often reminds me of the logic error: all fish swim in water so everything in water is a fish. Or I carry an umbrella when it rains so if I carry an umbrella it rains.
So don't I agree with all the other people who claim there is no link? No, there is a link, it is just not as direct as the media likes to pretend it is. This is going to be hard to put in html text but I think it is like this.
Media view: Need for speed Illegal street racing.
The real work:
Desire to drive fast -> Need for speed
---------------------> Illegal street racing.
What needs to be determind if there is a reinforcement going on between the two end actions. Does Need for Speed reinforce the speeders need to speed? Perhaps tells them that it is okay?
Perhaps, I don't know, that is an answer for a psychiatrist to answer. What is for us as society to answer is what we are willing to put up with. Do we want to ban everyone from buying gametype X OR do we want to put up with X amount of people that can't handle it.
If "we" gamers are going to win this argument we need better arguments then Jack Thompson and friends.
I know, it took us decades to properly research this but we finally can proudly announce that men are attracted to sexy females. Especially if those females know they are not going to get paid if they mace any geek coming within a 100 meters of them.
It is not new, go to a carshow sometime. Boatshow? Yeah sure, that shipyard employees a dozen young women as its builders.
Sex sells. Well not really but it certainly works in getting eyeballs on your stand and then the selling can start. There are a 100th other booths there all competing for attention and a bit of skin is the cheapest way to attract a male audience.
I frankly don't see the problem. The girls get a fat paycheck, we get to see some skin, game execs get their eyeballs on the stand, everybody is happy.
Well except for some puritans but what the fuck are they doing at E3 anyway? Aren't games sinfull? Go back to your farm. This is the big city.
Oh and before you feel all superior as a geek girl with brains who is not reduced to a blittering idiot at the mere hint of boobs. Look! Over there it is actor XXXX XXXXXXX.
I did some rigging during an erotica convention and the one thing sadder then males lusting after the naked female performers was the females lusting after the naked male performers. The moment women stop throwing their panties at every good looking actor/popstar is the moment you can comment on us males.
Men and women aren't all that different really.
You make licensing deals that cost you money wich you don't have to release games on a hardware platform that is still being designed.
You get investigated by the sec because the best way to sell your stock is to spam.
Frankly this is not the bubble wich other /.ers are claiming, this is criminal. You can't mis-manage a company like this by accident. They are blowing tens of millions with no actuall product in sight. Not even a proto-type. I seen web businesses blow that kind of money but they did it by developing software/services that you could actually see. Some just never recooped the money on their projects causing them to slide into debt but this?
Now another 5 million dollar loan. For what. A wireless keyboard. WOHOO! For gamers? Well only for gamers playing on a big screen. Wouldn't want to watch my 17 inch LCD from 30 feet away. Not PC games wich usually have fonts in the smallest size possible.
I tried googling for the investor company but could find nothing.
This should be in the comedy section. It's funny, laugh.
You don't measure TV watching in this way do you? Perhaps it shows the researchers were still slanted against gaming being considered normal. It would explain the HUGE gap between this researchs heavy gamer group and the next one. If nearly everyone says they are a heavy user perhaps you defined heavy user wrong.
The poster asks about the medium users but I think the stats are so skewed and the difference so minimal that the only thing you can conclude from this is that men and women pretty much play the same games. Just that women game slightly less.
Considering the attitude that games are for men I find the small diffrences really revealing. Seems the old attitude that games are for the boys is just plain not true anymore.
What I think is really the case? That initially gaming was discovered by people of my generation (70s) and we kept it with us. Some older folks were of course intrested (who do you think wrote those games when I was a kid?) but fewer of them. As we moved on we introduced other people to gaming and slowly it spread. I can remember where if you talked to a person of the female gender they would never even have heard of quake let alone doom. Now they can kick your ass. There are still a lot of people who don't game but the hobby is spreading.
As for puzzle games being most popular? Well in a way yeah that is no wonder. If they count solataire. Even worse, mobile phone games. Nokia Snake alone must have been played more then any full price console/pc game.
We just had an article about games for females but I think they are barking up the wrong tree. These games already exist but the real gems are those games where we are not forced to think in current sexist views but we can be whoever we want to be.
MMORPG's are a lot of fun that way. I played with females who make me very very afraid and with males who act out characters so sweet they make japanese idols look like war veterans.
The Sims is perhaps another good example of male and female players being able to meet. I am a perverted sexist male running an all female co-ed lesbian house using sexy skins made by a female who likes to design pretty sims models (not easy in The Sims 2).
Over the years I have spoken to female flight sim nuts and males who spend hours designing hair meshes for The Sims. Games at their best allow us to have fun the way we want to. Long live the new age where you real live sex doesn't matter if you don't want to.
Now back to slashdot where everyone is a teenage boy.
DDR as a way to fight lardasses. Hmmm, okay. Wouldn't a live action doom be faster? Double shotgun in the blubber butt should cure them.
Then again it is hard to imagine an area of public sales where a pretty girl won't do the trick. Wether it is the stewardes or the receptionist a pretty face works better.
As for it being sexist. Advertising aimed at women either uses the most perfect male or a mental retard. "Normal" men need not apply to sell products to women.
Hell a lot of ads aimed at females use pretty females themselves so what is wrong with ads aimed at men using sexy females.
This guy probably got a serious case of the right wing nutter disease and starts enforcing his own impotentency on the rest of us. Just because he can not longer enjoy looking at a pretty girl he must ruin it for the rest of us as well.
Booth babes are a way to dress up your booth, to get eyeballs on your stand and then once you got them there you can make your sale. It is very old, it happens in every industry and it won't go away. I seen these kinds of restrictions being proposed before and they are always worked around. When you are selling the next DOA game you can hardly have it being advertised by a couple of guys in suits.
As for getting the vid out of flash, it is easy enough but if you can't even manage the above I think it is beyond you.
Oh and to avoid that horrible off topic nazi mod, nice vid. Reminds me of playing some ancient games that tried to do full motion when the hardware still wasn't up to it. Remember when FMV was actually thought to be the beginning of a new genre in gaming. Ah, those were the days.
BUT I do not want to tell americans that they are wrong. They can run their country the way they want to. In such a way I am not taking sides. I do think the swedish system makes a better system for ME, americans would in general feel different.
Perhaps if you got of your high moral horse for a while you would be able to accept that different people prefer different societies.
Worse? Swedes are proud of this. It creates a country they like and best of all a society everyone can fit in. The hard workers can work hard and make more money then the terminally lazy BUT they will also be funding the terminally lazy. Oh and the sick and or handicapped or people who are raising the next generation that in times to come will take care of the hard workers when they are old.
It is just that to americans the change might be to much. If you are an american who ever just once complained about any taxation, do not move to sweden. Sweden has changed a bit since it has undergone a financial crisis but by and large most swedes still believe that the working class benefits from supporting a large non-working group. The american attitude where people getting benefits are misfits to lazy to work who should only be given a few weeks/months of the most minimal income is alien to swedes. Sweden vs America is often used as an example when talking about extreme opposites in social security. If you wanna emigrate countries like england and ireland are closer to the american model. Mainland europe really is a bunch of pinko's.
Note that I am not taking sides, just that I did work for a truly international company and have had dealings with people emigrating and getting homesick. There are real changes between mainland europe and america that go far deeper then americans having bigger asses^H^H^H^H^H^Hcars. Europeans are often bitten hard by the fact that to afford the american way of live it often requires working weeks of 80 hours. To a european with max weeks of around 36 hours this is can some as a shock. Even england can be nasty with its 48 hour weeks. Emigrator beware.
As for this move? Well sweden is in a unique position, most of its population is in a small part of the country so it benefits that public transport can work like it can in dense countries/cities (holland/japan and New York/London) while it still has plenty of area to put renewable energie plants in especially considering its small population. I wonder if they can pull this off, they would still need oil for plastics but there own reserves would last a lot longer. They also got their own car industry to support wich may benefit if all the other car companies are unwilling to make the bet to go non-petrol.
Wasn't it the swedish volvo who first made seatbelts standard when american car companies resisted (patent for the 3point harness belonging to a swede)? Perhaps this might lead to a similar coop. Sometimes it pays to be first.
To those who argue against such a move, oil however much there is is needed for plastics wich are a lot harder to replace then petrol is. With current prices, this might be exactly the right moment to try it. Last time prices were so high we moved from the gass guzzlers to tiny cars. Who knows what this time might bring.
Con men always work with this, they tell you what you want to hear so that you will end up trusting them and then they can scam you.
Linux fans, don't trust claims by say IBM on linux performance blindly, Mac fans doubt every single thing Steve Jobs tells you and MS fans.... well there is no helping some people.
That people like to have their ideas reinforced is pretty clear with the current world events involving armed conflicts between various factions. Why do I not say "war" or something like that? Because even that means taking sides. Call it war on terror and it becomes clear that america is the one fighting terrorists. I am pretty sure the other side claims however that it is america who is the one dealing in terror.
Some americans who are against their goverments actions happily claim that european media, the BBC especially is so much more un-biased then their own networks. Is it? Or does the BBC simply say what they want to hear? Same of course the other way around. Is all the european press simply anti-american or are they only guilty of saying something you don't want to hear?
Not to long ago I had an argument with an american about the race riots in france and the american claimed that in the US such things could not happen because immigrants were integrated into society better. Any recent immigrants in america want to reply on this? Apparently the riots in LA were not related to race.
It is intresting to see this article take on it. I hadn't suspected it ran so deeply. Then again it may be related to how we defend any decision we made wich later turns out to be bad. Wether we find out that the car we bought is considered bad by everyone else or the partner we choose turns out to be abusive. People like to stick with their decisions because we hate to admit we were wrong.
Linux zealots, mac slaves and MS apologists, all firmly believe their own myths and deny the enemies truths. Doesn't help at all when 99% of the time your in fact right. It makes it all the easier to think that 1 truth is a lie as well.
In dutch politics we had a few years a go a new person on the political scene who really upset the current balance as he was neither left nor right wing. The left claimed he was extreme right and the right claimed he was to left. He was for instance against continued immigration (far right) but also wanted to stop buying american fighter aircraft (far left). He was killed and dutch politics went back to the total crap it has always been but perhaps that is the only way forward. A party that is neither left nor right but simply does what is best for the country without being hunted by dogmatic views from some political ideologie.
A sort of enlighten socialism. Oh and before I get all the americans over me, remember that america is a socialist country as well. A true capatalist nation would have NO social security whatsoever. As long as tax money from the rich goes to those who are poor you are socialist. Take that you bunch of pinkos.
If you agree with what I said, BE AWARE! Am I only saying what you wanna hear? If you disagree, are you just in denial ignoring the facts?
In a way, all the responses to this article should be unmodded. Modding is after all only a way to reward those who say what you wanta hear and punish those who do not. If you don't believe me spend some real time meta-moderating.
When I was a kid the dutch tv station Veronica had aired an program about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It was explicit and used porn actors to show in full detail how to use condoms. Couple that with movies about people dying, some hardhitting campaigns and it was pretty hard not to grow up being aware that screwing without a condome was bad for you.
Even then an awfull lot of people didn't do the safe sex thing.
It also put a strain on people. Not nice to be constantly reminded as a young male/female that doing what comes natural can kill you. There were ways around it like mutual masturbation replacing intercourse but for many that is just not good enough.
After the sexual freedom of previous decades our generation was definitly handicapped. Sleeping around was not just cheating anymore, you put yourselve and your partner at real risk.
So fast forward to now and those hardhitting campaigns have stopped. Sexually transmitted diseases off all sorts haven't gone away but the urgency has been removed. It just isn't seen as an issue anymore. Can you blame people? Either you live you live in blissfull ignorance OR you have to turn down that easy girl/boy who fucks everyone and remain a virgin until you meet another virgin.
Cause just condoms alone are not good enough, have you ever tried eating a girl with one of those rubber sheets to prevent direct contact? It is not easy I can tell you. I am not 100% certain but I think the female fluids are just as capable of spreading aids as sperm and it is a lot harder to catch them in a rubber.
So given the choice between being fearfull and ignoring the danger most people choose to ignore the danger. It is not just aids. The amount of women who are infertile is sky-rocketing. Sure sure, genetic changes. Eheh. Ask a doctor. Most of the women who have trouble getting pregnant can only blame it as the result of a sexually transmitted disease.
AIDS is a killer but others STD's are far more common and can have very big impacts as well. Going infertile can be a pretty big deal for a woman. Especially if it turns out the female got it from a cheating partner.
But what can we do? Terrorize people into being completly paranoid about sex? People have to rationlize dangers otherwise we would never get out of bed. How many people die each day on the roads because of unsafe driving? That is a real risk wich many of us can see directly as we pass yet another accident scene each day on the way to work. Does that stop us from driving to fast, in crappy cars, while drunk? Nope. Remember, it is not just how you drive but the millions of other road users as well. Sleep around and you are having sex with not just your partner but all the people they had sex with as well. One happy STD chain.
STD's are nasty but they are something we just have to live with for now.As long as people are not so ignorant as to stop funding research I think we can handle it. Just life as usual.
If she said the same to her employer/manager I am not suprised she didn't get training.
Training is expensive. Not just the training costs themselves but also because it usually removes the person from work.
Now who would you choose for training? Female A: claims she has a life outside of work, probably going to have a baby anytime now or Male B: Work is his life, can't have babies.
Gee, that is a thoughie. Oh the baby argument is sexist but I am telling you what it is like in the real world. One woman in a company of thousands pulls the being absent for years trick and every woman in the company and every woman in companies where the male managers know a guy in another company where it happened will be tainted with the brush of being unreliable.
Common perception is that women see work as something to do until they get kids. You put them in a position where they are critical and they will just disappear for months. True? Sorta, while I never met any "highlevel" females who did this it sure can mess up a company when the "lowlevel" secretary decides that she has had it and is going to take care of her own baby and no a bunch of middle aged babies. Offcourse the fact that this female was underpaid, undervalued is never mentioned. Just maternity leave is risky. Every male knows this. Sorry.
Then stating also that you value your private life is not a good thing. I am male and even I can't get away with that one. Companies investing thousands of dollars in a person want to be sure they get a willing slave in return. Doesn't matter if that person is going to leave right after completing the training what matters is perception.
And finally the biggest killer in getting training? Just being to damn valuable. I actually been told I couldn't get trained because they couldn't get me the time off needed from projects. So the guys who were "unemployed" got the the training while the guy who was earning the salaries by being outsourced had to buy his own books. Oh and ended up having to be the teacher to the guys just having received a 20.000 guilder training. Grrrr.
Whenever an employer starts talking about training your bullshit meter should spring into the red. I have had several "offers" and it never works out. In the rare occasions where it actually reaches a "planned" stage there is always some project that I am suddenly needed on because the guy that was on it and received lots and lots of training can't hack it. Or left for greener pastures with his shiny new diploma.
Those who can, do. Those who can't get trained and leave the company.
As for the whole butter trap, can you blame men for trying it? Call us sexist pigs if you want, just also remember to call us master and serve us. Resistance is futile. We are male, you will serve us.
If you think it is wrong, just realise that no matter how fucked up men are, women are worse. Just examine yourselve (if your female) what you want in a male partner and then check how many of your wishes contradict themselves. Strong, yet caring. Able to express his emotions but not a cry baby. And the biggest one, "he musn't mind me earning more then him" vs "he better earn a good income". No women respects a man with a low paycheck. The only way for a woman to get the man she wants is to have a harem or someone with a split personality.
No I don't see the appeal either but then I don't watch "regular" sports anyway so perhaps I am just weird.
Just as there is a "market" for chess matches or curdling or downhill skiing or soccer there will be a market for "gaming".
If it will ever be big I have no idea. Why did soccer get big but not field hockey? Why do americans watch football and europeans soccer.
F1 is a big sport. Perhaps it is only watched because you want to see lethal crashes but if that is not the case then why should people not also watch a F1 race with virtual cars?
It would not be my cup of tea and it may not be yours but we hardly matter now do we? Computer "sports" would allow events that could never be held in real live, why hold a chess match when you can televise a battle between armies? The BBC already had a program like this.
Now we just had a story about planetside getting ads. Another MMORPG that I can't remember right has been doing that for over a year now. Nice but I would hardly use their "success" as a way to predict what is going to happen in two years time. The most popular MMORPG's right now are fantasy making it hard to fit ads into them.
I also remember games like Grand Prix Legends that had to jump through hoops to get permission to use the authentic ads in the game of the era. Far from being payed most companies will sue you if you use their ad slogans in your game without permission.
What company would really want to be associated with a GTA San Andreas especially now that it has been shown game makers can't be trusted? What will be in the next version, a hidden level of shooting kittens? A marketing nightmare.
It is the same reason a lot of car companies do not give permission to use their real car names in games with violence or even just realastic damage modelling. You do not want customers of you latest super car to see exactly what remains of the car when you take it to 180 on the open road.
EQ2 pizza deal seems to have been removed. Ad based MMO's are the ones who couldn't hack it as a subscription game. Most companies do not want to be associated with the wrong kind of game.
Sure there will be a market but 4 billion worth? I doubt it. Reminds me of the internet bubble.
I am to unpopular to get a lot of spam but the few I get on my gmail account all seem to be beginning with "Re:" clearly seeking to trick me into believing it is a reply.
Of course you could check the headers but these could easily be faked. In seen spams in the past that got through where I had real trouble figuring out where the fuck they came from. Some I even seemed to have sent myself.
The only real way to check it would be for hotmail to keep a track record of everyone you send mail to, add them to your adress book and then let those emails bypass your spam filters.
Silly Hotmail for not doing that. OH wait, they do! When you send an email via hotmail you are asked wether you want to add that person to your contact list. Most people don't bother.
My tip to you? Make it very clear that if they contact you via hotmail it may be filtered. Also check why you are being spam filtered. Is it based on your hostname or is the content of your email to spammy?
I know your pain, I dealt with it myself although in my case I am not depended on hotmail users so simply don't care that much. It is a lot of extra work but that is the cost of spam. No spam, no spam filters. It is something people often forget, it is not just the bandwidth cost and the time wasted sorting through spam but also the fact the real emails get lost in the mess. But don't worry, Bill Gates promised he would solve it. Has he ever lied before?
That "pets" fake or real are good for you is without debate. From a teddy bear to a dog they make us feel secure and give us something to care for. Yet in a way these pets are still a replacement, you don't give a toddler a real pet to take off so you give them a teddy bear instead. If you cannot or do not want to have kids a dog can be used as a replacement.
So why is it stupid to use more robotic teddy bears for older people who need something that reacts. Sure there are well established projects that bring real pets into the lives of the sick or the elderely but this is still out of reach of some people.
Allergies are the simplest reason. What if the patient simply can handle real animals. Should they live in complete isolation?
What if a patient is mentally incapable of dealing with a real pet. A patient prone to uncontrolled rage or just uncontrolled movement in general would be hell on the pets. A robot doesn't mind being flung across a room or being severly beaten.
And what of the other way around? Pets bite. Do you really want a bleeder to be around a real bet wich bites and scratches?
I also seen some experiments where mentally disabled people dealt with robots better then with humans. A robot is never moody never changes it pattern. I forgot the name but one mental handicap makes it very hard for its sufferers to deal with emotion in other people. A robot cat would always react exactly the same making interaction a lot easier for them.
I see this as a very nice tech solution to a problem with no bad side effects. No real dogs and cats won't be replaced for those who can take proper care of them. Yet for those who can't because it would be bad for the human or the pet this provides an alternative.
On the other hand, we should not see this as an excuse to deny people real pets. Why exactly do a lot of homes for the elderly deny them their pets? Oh sure I know the reasons, they just don't seem very good ones. Then again I never vote for the guy offering the biggest taxcut.