True, but I'd bet the ratio of "greedy, no good corp":"all corporations" is far higher than "greedy, useless union":"all unions". So while those unions who still strive for their members will get a boost here, that will be overwhelmingly drowned out by corporations hurrying to create ad campaigns for whatever they want.
However, there is one distinction I find important that is not mentioned in the summary (surprise!):
It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.
So both corps and unions still can't funnel money directly to candidates, they can basically accomplish everything themselves. While important, it doesn't leave a lot of hope; it's like saying 'Oh, this pile of shit is slightly less pungent than those last 15 piles of shit. Jolly good!' And I find this funny:
The ruling will lead to a "stampede of special interest money in our politics," Obama said in a statement.
Because that doesn't already happen, amirite? Then there's this, which is just stupid:
Roberts, in a separate opinion, said that upholding the limits would have restrained "the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy."
I don't know about you, but my local corporations have certainly been interested in furthering discord--er, discourse.
In the interview Bach claims that 70%-80% of Xbox 360 developers are working on some kind of Natal-enabled gaming software.
This means: A) Shovelware to keep in MS's good graces B) Otherwise normal games that have a special achievement for "waving your hands at the camera" or something similar C) both?
While Natal is interesting, the problem with it is the same with basically every "official" peripheral ever. Unless they pack it in with the system (and I haven't seen anything to suggest such), it will have a very low market penetration save for a HUGE game (such as Guitar Hero and the guitar). This means that most games will have some sort of Natal-enhancement that is not really required (and, if some Wii games are any indication, may often be completely worthless or worse than a traditional controller), and we'll see few, if any, games that take full advantage of what Natal has to offer.
On the other hand, if you thought that the plastic pieces put out by peripheral companies were bad, just wait until MadCatz or something releases a plastic version of everything under the sun. Should make LARP players happy.
I haven't read One More Day myself, but it made a huge uproar in the comics community as well as causing a huge shift in the Spider-man universe.
While I don't think it should be adapted faithfully (like it would be, anyway), it could serve as a good kick-off for a reboot without completely throwing away or disregarding the previous entries. Something bad happens, Parker makes a literal deal with the devil, boom, everything resets.
The main problem with approaching the film in this manner, though, is that the reset would have to be done within the first half hour, which would likely leave a lot of people confused who aren't familiar with the comics.
A big part of almost every episode involved the Sliders changing the world they landed on to some huge extent. I've always wondered how the worlds turned out afterward; it would be nice to have a series that didn't necessarily reboot Sliders, but followed a second group of Sliders that got stuck following their footsteps. They have to deal with any problems caused by the original Sliders, as well as exploring more the planets that we only got glimpses of (at the beggining or end of an episode).
Nintendo has always been stalwart when it comes to protecting their copyrights. Nintendo has a long history of comments about fair use, personal backups, and so forth that might even make Ken Kutaragi, Mr. "PS3 gamers should get a second job", laugh out loud. Their actions are usually quite in line with their statements.
But, something I have never heard about, despite trawling some of the darkest parts of the internet, is Nintendo going after creators of porn based on Nintendo IP. This has always confused me--I'm not really for nor against them going after the artists, but considering the potential harm they might do to Nintendo's brand, you'd think it would be of a higher priority. Even more astounding, at least to me, is that as far as I can tell THOT was being given away for free, while there are plenty of toon porn sites out there that charge for their content (though piracy often slips around this). I would think it almost a no-brainer for Nintendo to go after the commercial sites and more popular/notorious artists to scare off the little guys. And, yet, I've never heard of a single case or even a C&D.
In fact, I've never heard of any company acting upon toon porn (and any cosplay porn that may exist.) Why is this? Are they somehow not aware it exists? Rule 34 is a popular enough concept at this point that I would think the idea would have at least entered their head from somewhere. Are they scared of bringing the world of drawn pornography to the limelight? After an Iowa man was thrown in jail for kiddie toon porn ("shota yaoi"), Nintendo (and other similar companies) could get even more help from the FBI and local police forces (looking to make a name for themselves) going after the artists of any underaged characters. Nintendo obviously isn't going just for profit makers (Neither is Disney), so their lack of action in this regard leaves me scratching my head...Oh, and, uh, boo copyright, overzealous corporations, fish, fish, etc.
In my case, it's that when there's silence my mind starts to tune into every little sound and amplify it, including repetitive patters. Every little thing catches my attention and diverts it, sometimes being quite irksome. With music, I have a constant, ever changing background noise. Perhaps I'd be able to focus better without it, but with the music my attention is always on the screen with a slight diversion in the noise. The music drowns out all but the most important distractions, as well as gives me a nice pep-up on dreary days or when I'm doing something especially frustrating or repetitive.
I don't know if a lot of other programmers have the same mind thing as I do. I need white noise to go to sleep, or else my mind focuses on every little bump or cricket. However, I can't use a white noise machine because they have short clips that repeat, and my mind will pick up on the pattern then listen for it. A fan on low speed is usually the best option.
I also grew up in small towns with very little noise, but I don't like to go without some sort of background noise. When I'm at my computer, I'm always watching something on Hulu. When working out, it's an MP3 player; in my car, the radio.
The flip side is that, with electronic versions, patches can be applied to books as mistakes are found, saving a lot of money on versions and waste in textbooks.
Well, that is, if the textbook industry wasn't super greedy and would want to charge as much for a patch as for the original textbook.
I'm sure the majority of Slashdot remembers TechTV. Then Comcast came along, bought it up, and merged it with G4. Then the good parts of TechTV went away (G4 never had good parts). Then TechTV went away entirely. Then most of G4 went away as well; I don't have it in my cable package (thank goodness), but as I understand it G4 has become Spike2, showing 6 hours of COPS, 6 hours of Wrestling, and late at night they might show some gaming content and a rerun of Screensavers.
NBC has been lacking, but they still have some quality content. You can kiss that all goodbye.
The difference here is that Bing is going above and beyond the "call of duty". Google et al., as I understand it, filters only on their Chinese version (like google.cn). Bing is extending this so that any search done with Chinese characters is filtered.
This doesn't make Google et al. any less complacent or "evil" for doing so, but it does show that Bing/Microsoft is quite happy to throw away freedom of speech outside of the required areas, and is thus more evil for it. (Of course, according to/. Microsoft is always evil, so this wouldn't be new for them.)
according to this essay over on Forbes.com, zombies are more than just the trendy monster on the block, they are to Americans what Godzilla is to Japanese: a personification of our fear of science and technology.
I would have put that label upon Frankenstein. While perhaps not of American creation (are zombies?), Frankenstein is as well known as Mickey Mouse. And, as opposed to zombies, Frankenstein is, in every iteration, a creation of humanity; whereas Zombies can become as such thanks to any number of suddenly-unearthed virii.
I would say, though, that zombies strike more fear because they are more unknown. In most versions, Frankenstein answers to someone or can be stopped by some repressed sense of humanity (or a woodchipper, whatever). Zombies, however, have a bloodlust that is rarely stopped short of a shotgun to the head.
But that might be the reason for the popularity of zombies currently: they have a much more versatile origination scenario than does Frankenstein.
The editors were merely following a previous decision. From the first, they never actually edited, so to do so now would be contradictory. It's irrational cohesion. The ad revenue influenced them.
It's not just that; certainly, like many people getting home loans they couldn't afford, education loan companies have been handing out checks like candy. But, many universities, especially private ones, repeatedly raise their tuition year after year in order to give an aura of "prestige"--the idea is "we're so expensive that we must be good". I don't have actual proof of this, but after an in-depth discussion with a long-time professor at my university, he put forth the idea, and it makes a lot of sense to me. All about the short-term, all about the outward appearance.
I am one of the poor saps who underestimated the power of loans, over-borrowed (at an already expensive school), and, a year out of college and with no job (despite cumulative two years of internships, I lack experience for every job I've applied), am severely regretting it. Because of the tough job market and inability to seemingly garner the experience I need to get a job (an unfortunate catch-22), I'm actually working on entering the army just so I can delay/pay my loan, a large part of which my mom has co-signed.
Reading his writing (but ignoring his conclusion), I got wondering why we don't have some sort of standardization for avatars. All three major consoles now have some sort of system avatar, customizable to various degrees. These don't always make it into the games you play on them, but even when they do they tend to be very basic avatars, whereas many games have a huge number of options (and combinations thereof.) Considering how many games are giving us customizable avatars, and the rate with which they are coming to represent us online and in-game, it would seem the next logical step to create a method whereby someone can import a custom set into a game, and then tweak it from that base template, ensuring a mostly heterogeneous style over all the games they play.
This doesn't mean that developers would be limited by options, nor that they can't do micro-customization. For instance, a game that offers your character a Fu Man Chu would mark such a beard style as part of the "Small Beard" class/group. If a game does not offer that style, it chooses the default "Small Beard" style. Along with this standard, which would incorporate as many customizations as possible (and likely keep updating its database), there could be a set of open-source models based on the standards, which developers could then import into their game, customizing as desired. This would increase the potential of having a similar character from game to game.
There are some sequels that read on older games, and thus would likely incorporate customization, but I'm surprised this doesn't seem to be on even on a developer/publisher level--standardizing such a thing would seem, at least to me, to save a lot of time developing, as well as be supportive of return business.
You get that a lot, too? I honestly don't see why that's so hard for Hulu OR the leash company to understand.
This is why I think the surveys are wrong: while people don't like ads in general, they dislike ads that are unrelated to them more. Sure, targeted ads take a bit of information, but nothing I'd consider personal (age, sex, basic interests like games, clothes, movies, cooking, etc.). I'll ignore most ads, but it's far less of a nuisance if they at least feature explosions more often.
Last week I was getting that TMobile "myPhone" or whatever commercial for literally every other ad. I never want to see nor buy that phone now.
They want to have their cake and eat it too; get the consumer to pay for the Internet connection, and then get the content providers to pay to be visible, or at least visible in some meaningful way, on their network.
It just struck me: ISPs are trying to follow the American cellphone model.
While I'm sure our European counterparts[1] have learned about it by now, a brief explanation: In America, we pay to both send and receive. It's not just that our text charges are insane, but most plans charge you both for sending and receiving a text message (in some cases, even if you don't read it you still get charged for receiving a text.) Many plans do the same for phone calls.
ISPs are trying to do something similar. While both ends already pay for their connection, ISPs are trying to make the content providers pay double. "You have access to our network, but if you want access to our clients you must pay again." It's relatively the same kind of double-dipping, which, if not curbed now, will extend to end users as well. "What's that? You want to use Pandora? Well, we offer our own 'free' music service, RealRhapsody NapsterTunes, but if you really want to use Pandora we can let you access it for an extra $1/hour."
[1] I say European because my understanding is that this kind of bullshit doesn't happen commonly in Europe
I think that the reason it did crappy even for Spider-man and Harry Potter is for the reason you mentioned: specialized pieces. I bought a set (on clearance) for Spider-man 2, and was quite disappointed when I took it home to find out that the two-story walls were one solid piece of plastic, and that Doc Ock and Spidey were both slightly larger than normal Legomen; Doc Ock also had a pre-fab, solid hunk of plastic for his arms, so you couldn't position them.
A few years later I bought another set, this time Doc Ock was a normal Legoman and his arms were the robotic limbs that we've known from Lego for years.
The thing that has disheartened me about Lego recently, however, is the box: Remember when Lego boxes used to say "Ages: 9-99"? Look at any box, even the generic tubs. 6-16. Feh, FEH I SAY!
The day I realized that it was no longer stated as 9-99 was the day my childhood died for good. But damn them, I'll build with Lego anyway! Spite them by buying their products and so forth.
I think that's sort of happening with me and TF2. I agree that the difference between WoW/TF2 and other games is that you get that added social interaction, and there's a lot of it. Even if you're not actively talking to someone, you're still doing something to/with them. It goes some way to make up for a lack of social interaction (an unfortunate part of my life right now, living in the middle of the country with no job, money, or friends). With regular video games, there's far less challenge because you're facing a somewhat-predictable computer. There's also an increased amount of inanity in online games, ranging from griefers to Scouts who take the same route every time and die, only to try again.
The idea of the console industry is to lose money on the consoles and make it up on the games.
Not quite; the common razor and razorblade model keeps the razor at a low, fixed cost. In the console industry, companies routinely lower costs to help boost their own profits (or lower losses) as well as to eventually drop the console price and lure in more buyers. Some companies just accept losses early on in order to build up a consumer base, and then will profit on consoles later in their life. (Except Nintendo, who rarely loses money on their consoles.)
Planned DLC wouldn't be so bad if the original game was released at a cheaper price. Say, $30-$50, I get a complete though somewhat empty/short game, and then I can get DLC to my heart's content.
The article (or at least summary) is about how DLC is paid for on consoles, but often free on the PC. It can't be for fighting the second-hand market; in fact, charging for DLC would make a user more interested in giving up the game, especially if the developers take the sleazy route and make a short/crap game to start and then charge for the good stuff. $10/map pack, or $20 for another used game altogether?
It actually enhances the second hand market, as players will be able to buy a game for cheaper if they see DLC they want to buy as well (and are willing to pay for).
Valve has used the free downloads for TF2 (of which one was released this past week) to keep constant interest in the game; it both keeps players happy, as they'll discuss it and recommend it to friends, and make it more appealing to new players with every update. I know that on a video game forum I go to, at least three people have bought it because those of us who play it go crazy over updates, which piques their interest.
For those who don't want to read the excerpt, here's the best (and most telling) bit: Of all those on the committee, only Feynman (I believe) actually read any of the books. Two books, followups to another textbook that had been submitted, had not even been finished, yet many of the committee panel gave them some of the highest ratings.
It's unfortunately not too odd to hear that ATMs run Windows (especially with some of the error messages I've seen). But there are even odder devices running Windows.
I work at a somewhat-hated international retailing chain that will go unnamed, and while working there the other night my merchandise scanner, one of the portable hand-held ones used on the floor, froze. Not uncommon, but when I reset it it booted into Windows CE. A normal windows desktop. I tried starting Windows Media Player, but it wouldn't do anything. The funny thing is that when it works properly, it uses minimal ASCII art and no graphics at all.
Why these kind of things need to use Windows is beyond me. Windows, security issues aside, is alright for general purpose machines, but not highly-specialized machines like a scanner or ATM.
Why isn't there some company in another country trying to do the same thing? Won't be as much American TV, obviously, but surely there are European companies trying to make a European(-country) version of Boxee/Hulu/Zinc.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but I'd bet the ratio of "greedy, no good corp":"all corporations" is far higher than "greedy, useless union":"all unions". So while those unions who still strive for their members will get a boost here, that will be overwhelmingly drowned out by corporations hurrying to create ad campaigns for whatever they want.
However, there is one distinction I find important that is not mentioned in the summary (surprise!):
So both corps and unions still can't funnel money directly to candidates, they can basically accomplish everything themselves. While important, it doesn't leave a lot of hope; it's like saying 'Oh, this pile of shit is slightly less pungent than those last 15 piles of shit. Jolly good!' And I find this funny:
Because that doesn't already happen, amirite? Then there's this, which is just stupid:
I don't know about you, but my local corporations have certainly been interested in furthering discord--er, discourse.
This means:
A) Shovelware to keep in MS's good graces
B) Otherwise normal games that have a special achievement for "waving your hands at the camera" or something similar
C) both?
While Natal is interesting, the problem with it is the same with basically every "official" peripheral ever. Unless they pack it in with the system (and I haven't seen anything to suggest such), it will have a very low market penetration save for a HUGE game (such as Guitar Hero and the guitar). This means that most games will have some sort of Natal-enhancement that is not really required (and, if some Wii games are any indication, may often be completely worthless or worse than a traditional controller), and we'll see few, if any, games that take full advantage of what Natal has to offer.
On the other hand, if you thought that the plastic pieces put out by peripheral companies were bad, just wait until MadCatz or something releases a plastic version of everything under the sun. Should make LARP players happy.
I haven't read One More Day myself, but it made a huge uproar in the comics community as well as causing a huge shift in the Spider-man universe.
While I don't think it should be adapted faithfully (like it would be, anyway), it could serve as a good kick-off for a reboot without completely throwing away or disregarding the previous entries. Something bad happens, Parker makes a literal deal with the devil, boom, everything resets.
The main problem with approaching the film in this manner, though, is that the reset would have to be done within the first half hour, which would likely leave a lot of people confused who aren't familiar with the comics.
A big part of almost every episode involved the Sliders changing the world they landed on to some huge extent. I've always wondered how the worlds turned out afterward; it would be nice to have a series that didn't necessarily reboot Sliders, but followed a second group of Sliders that got stuck following their footsteps. They have to deal with any problems caused by the original Sliders, as well as exploring more the planets that we only got glimpses of (at the beggining or end of an episode).
Perhaps so, but then how does that differ from THOT?
Nintendo has always been stalwart when it comes to protecting their copyrights. Nintendo has a long history of comments about fair use, personal backups, and so forth that might even make Ken Kutaragi, Mr. "PS3 gamers should get a second job", laugh out loud. Their actions are usually quite in line with their statements.
But, something I have never heard about, despite trawling some of the darkest parts of the internet, is Nintendo going after creators of porn based on Nintendo IP. This has always confused me--I'm not really for nor against them going after the artists, but considering the potential harm they might do to Nintendo's brand, you'd think it would be of a higher priority. Even more astounding, at least to me, is that as far as I can tell THOT was being given away for free, while there are plenty of toon porn sites out there that charge for their content (though piracy often slips around this). I would think it almost a no-brainer for Nintendo to go after the commercial sites and more popular/notorious artists to scare off the little guys. And, yet, I've never heard of a single case or even a C&D.
In fact, I've never heard of any company acting upon toon porn (and any cosplay porn that may exist.) Why is this? Are they somehow not aware it exists? Rule 34 is a popular enough concept at this point that I would think the idea would have at least entered their head from somewhere. Are they scared of bringing the world of drawn pornography to the limelight? After an Iowa man was thrown in jail for kiddie toon porn ("shota yaoi"), Nintendo (and other similar companies) could get even more help from the FBI and local police forces (looking to make a name for themselves) going after the artists of any underaged characters. Nintendo obviously isn't going just for profit makers (Neither is Disney), so their lack of action in this regard leaves me scratching my head. ..Oh, and, uh, boo copyright, overzealous corporations, fish, fish, etc.
In my case, it's that when there's silence my mind starts to tune into every little sound and amplify it, including repetitive patters. Every little thing catches my attention and diverts it, sometimes being quite irksome. With music, I have a constant, ever changing background noise. Perhaps I'd be able to focus better without it, but with the music my attention is always on the screen with a slight diversion in the noise. The music drowns out all but the most important distractions, as well as gives me a nice pep-up on dreary days or when I'm doing something especially frustrating or repetitive.
I don't know if a lot of other programmers have the same mind thing as I do. I need white noise to go to sleep, or else my mind focuses on every little bump or cricket. However, I can't use a white noise machine because they have short clips that repeat, and my mind will pick up on the pattern then listen for it. A fan on low speed is usually the best option.
I also grew up in small towns with very little noise, but I don't like to go without some sort of background noise. When I'm at my computer, I'm always watching something on Hulu. When working out, it's an MP3 player; in my car, the radio.
The flip side is that, with electronic versions, patches can be applied to books as mistakes are found, saving a lot of money on versions and waste in textbooks.
Well, that is, if the textbook industry wasn't super greedy and would want to charge as much for a patch as for the original textbook.
I'm sure the majority of Slashdot remembers TechTV. Then Comcast came along, bought it up, and merged it with G4. Then the good parts of TechTV went away (G4 never had good parts). Then TechTV went away entirely. Then most of G4 went away as well; I don't have it in my cable package (thank goodness), but as I understand it G4 has become Spike2, showing 6 hours of COPS, 6 hours of Wrestling, and late at night they might show some gaming content and a rerun of Screensavers.
NBC has been lacking, but they still have some quality content. You can kiss that all goodbye.
The difference here is that Bing is going above and beyond the "call of duty". Google et al., as I understand it, filters only on their Chinese version (like google.cn). Bing is extending this so that any search done with Chinese characters is filtered.
This doesn't make Google et al. any less complacent or "evil" for doing so, but it does show that Bing/Microsoft is quite happy to throw away freedom of speech outside of the required areas, and is thus more evil for it. (Of course, according to /. Microsoft is always evil, so this wouldn't be new for them.)
Nifty, but I'm waiting for the day that they announce good customer service.
(Although I believe they're lifting the ban on adult content sites, so that's good.)
I would have put that label upon Frankenstein. While perhaps not of American creation (are zombies?), Frankenstein is as well known as Mickey Mouse. And, as opposed to zombies, Frankenstein is, in every iteration, a creation of humanity; whereas Zombies can become as such thanks to any number of suddenly-unearthed virii.
I would say, though, that zombies strike more fear because they are more unknown. In most versions, Frankenstein answers to someone or can be stopped by some repressed sense of humanity (or a woodchipper, whatever). Zombies, however, have a bloodlust that is rarely stopped short of a shotgun to the head.
But that might be the reason for the popularity of zombies currently: they have a much more versatile origination scenario than does Frankenstein.
The editors were merely following a previous decision. From the first, they never actually edited, so to do so now would be contradictory. It's irrational cohesion. The ad revenue influenced them.
It's not just that; certainly, like many people getting home loans they couldn't afford, education loan companies have been handing out checks like candy. But, many universities, especially private ones, repeatedly raise their tuition year after year in order to give an aura of "prestige"--the idea is "we're so expensive that we must be good". I don't have actual proof of this, but after an in-depth discussion with a long-time professor at my university, he put forth the idea, and it makes a lot of sense to me. All about the short-term, all about the outward appearance.
I am one of the poor saps who underestimated the power of loans, over-borrowed (at an already expensive school), and, a year out of college and with no job (despite cumulative two years of internships, I lack experience for every job I've applied), am severely regretting it. Because of the tough job market and inability to seemingly garner the experience I need to get a job (an unfortunate catch-22), I'm actually working on entering the army just so I can delay/pay my loan, a large part of which my mom has co-signed.
Reading his writing (but ignoring his conclusion), I got wondering why we don't have some sort of standardization for avatars. All three major consoles now have some sort of system avatar, customizable to various degrees. These don't always make it into the games you play on them, but even when they do they tend to be very basic avatars, whereas many games have a huge number of options (and combinations thereof.) Considering how many games are giving us customizable avatars, and the rate with which they are coming to represent us online and in-game, it would seem the next logical step to create a method whereby someone can import a custom set into a game, and then tweak it from that base template, ensuring a mostly heterogeneous style over all the games they play.
This doesn't mean that developers would be limited by options, nor that they can't do micro-customization. For instance, a game that offers your character a Fu Man Chu would mark such a beard style as part of the "Small Beard" class/group. If a game does not offer that style, it chooses the default "Small Beard" style. Along with this standard, which would incorporate as many customizations as possible (and likely keep updating its database), there could be a set of open-source models based on the standards, which developers could then import into their game, customizing as desired. This would increase the potential of having a similar character from game to game.
There are some sequels that read on older games, and thus would likely incorporate customization, but I'm surprised this doesn't seem to be on even on a developer/publisher level--standardizing such a thing would seem, at least to me, to save a lot of time developing, as well as be supportive of return business.
You get that a lot, too? I honestly don't see why that's so hard for Hulu OR the leash company to understand.
This is why I think the surveys are wrong: while people don't like ads in general, they dislike ads that are unrelated to them more. Sure, targeted ads take a bit of information, but nothing I'd consider personal (age, sex, basic interests like games, clothes, movies, cooking, etc.). I'll ignore most ads, but it's far less of a nuisance if they at least feature explosions more often.
Last week I was getting that TMobile "myPhone" or whatever commercial for literally every other ad. I never want to see nor buy that phone now.
It just struck me: ISPs are trying to follow the American cellphone model.
While I'm sure our European counterparts[1] have learned about it by now, a brief explanation: In America, we pay to both send and receive. It's not just that our text charges are insane, but most plans charge you both for sending and receiving a text message (in some cases, even if you don't read it you still get charged for receiving a text.) Many plans do the same for phone calls.
ISPs are trying to do something similar. While both ends already pay for their connection, ISPs are trying to make the content providers pay double. "You have access to our network, but if you want access to our clients you must pay again." It's relatively the same kind of double-dipping, which, if not curbed now, will extend to end users as well. "What's that? You want to use Pandora? Well, we offer our own 'free' music service, RealRhapsody NapsterTunes, but if you really want to use Pandora we can let you access it for an extra $1/hour."
[1] I say European because my understanding is that this kind of bullshit doesn't happen commonly in Europe
I think that the reason it did crappy even for Spider-man and Harry Potter is for the reason you mentioned: specialized pieces. I bought a set (on clearance) for Spider-man 2, and was quite disappointed when I took it home to find out that the two-story walls were one solid piece of plastic, and that Doc Ock and Spidey were both slightly larger than normal Legomen; Doc Ock also had a pre-fab, solid hunk of plastic for his arms, so you couldn't position them.
A few years later I bought another set, this time Doc Ock was a normal Legoman and his arms were the robotic limbs that we've known from Lego for years.
The thing that has disheartened me about Lego recently, however, is the box: Remember when Lego boxes used to say "Ages: 9-99"? Look at any box, even the generic tubs. 6-16. Feh, FEH I SAY!
The day I realized that it was no longer stated as 9-99 was the day my childhood died for good. But damn them, I'll build with Lego anyway! Spite them by buying their products and so forth.
I think that's sort of happening with me and TF2. I agree that the difference between WoW/TF2 and other games is that you get that added social interaction, and there's a lot of it. Even if you're not actively talking to someone, you're still doing something to/with them. It goes some way to make up for a lack of social interaction (an unfortunate part of my life right now, living in the middle of the country with no job, money, or friends). With regular video games, there's far less challenge because you're facing a somewhat-predictable computer. There's also an increased amount of inanity in online games, ranging from griefers to Scouts who take the same route every time and die, only to try again.
Not quite; the common razor and razorblade model keeps the razor at a low, fixed cost. In the console industry, companies routinely lower costs to help boost their own profits (or lower losses) as well as to eventually drop the console price and lure in more buyers. Some companies just accept losses early on in order to build up a consumer base, and then will profit on consoles later in their life. (Except Nintendo, who rarely loses money on their consoles.)
Planned DLC wouldn't be so bad if the original game was released at a cheaper price. Say, $30-$50, I get a complete though somewhat empty/short game, and then I can get DLC to my heart's content.
The article (or at least summary) is about how DLC is paid for on consoles, but often free on the PC. It can't be for fighting the second-hand market; in fact, charging for DLC would make a user more interested in giving up the game, especially if the developers take the sleazy route and make a short/crap game to start and then charge for the good stuff. $10/map pack, or $20 for another used game altogether?
It actually enhances the second hand market, as players will be able to buy a game for cheaper if they see DLC they want to buy as well (and are willing to pay for).
Valve has used the free downloads for TF2 (of which one was released this past week) to keep constant interest in the game; it both keeps players happy, as they'll discuss it and recommend it to friends, and make it more appealing to new players with every update. I know that on a video game forum I go to, at least three people have bought it because those of us who play it go crazy over updates, which piques their interest.
For those who don't want to read the excerpt, here's the best (and most telling) bit: Of all those on the committee, only Feynman (I believe) actually read any of the books. Two books, followups to another textbook that had been submitted, had not even been finished, yet many of the committee panel gave them some of the highest ratings.
I wish I was as cool as Richard Feynman.
Thanks for the info. I thought Windows CE was something like a streamlined Windows Mobile OS. :)
It's unfortunately not too odd to hear that ATMs run Windows (especially with some of the error messages I've seen). But there are even odder devices running Windows.
I work at a somewhat-hated international retailing chain that will go unnamed, and while working there the other night my merchandise scanner, one of the portable hand-held ones used on the floor, froze. Not uncommon, but when I reset it it booted into Windows CE. A normal windows desktop. I tried starting Windows Media Player, but it wouldn't do anything. The funny thing is that when it works properly, it uses minimal ASCII art and no graphics at all.
Why these kind of things need to use Windows is beyond me. Windows, security issues aside, is alright for general purpose machines, but not highly-specialized machines like a scanner or ATM.
Why isn't there some company in another country trying to do the same thing? Won't be as much American TV, obviously, but surely there are European companies trying to make a European(-country) version of Boxee/Hulu/Zinc.