Maybe this is folklore, but I heard once that somebody wrote a check for some thousands of dollars to Picasso, requesting that Picasso just draw something, anything, he didn't care.
Picasso took the check, and on its back, drew in red ink a sketch of the Devil, then handed it back. The message apparently: "Go to hell." And now the check is worth more than its face value.
Moral of the story is that some authors (or artists) are so famous and sought-after that people would almost publish their grocery lists. Its merely up to the professional pride of the authors and the measured restraint of the publishers that this (almost) never actually happens.
At first, paying money for virtual stuff... It's not real. Why would anybody pay real money for anything not real?
But then, I realized that when you pay $50 for the Sword of Gondron (or whatever), you're paying for somebody's many hours spent "leveling up" to GET the Sword of Gondron. If those many hours are boring tedious drudgery, maybe you're better off paying somebody else to do this (just this particular part of the game) for you.
This is not much different than paying somebody to shovel snow or mow the lawn. And the product is at least a little more permanent.
Now, the part I don't get is, if a game has such significant portions of drudgery that you would wish to hire it out, doesn't that start to sound more like work than fun?
The study also says that use will turn a driver who is age 20 into age 70.
And I thought my biggest worries might be getting brain cancer or running off the road.
So... pick up the cell phone while driving, start listening to easy listening oldies, leave the turn signal on for 10 miles, and look around for a farmers' market?
Any company that challenges the state of technology at any given time has to have flops.
The person (or company) who doesn't make mistakes, has never accomplished much of anything. For all I know, Ben Franklin may have made this observation at some point or other.
You've succeeded at pissing off your customers and failed at stopping people who are stealing your games.
This reminds me of the TurboTax licensing fiasco a while ago. At least they had the sense to realize that, by dicking with their customers' boot sectors in a misguided effort to curb piracy, they were doing more to damage their brand's reputation than the damage piracy could do to sales.
I liked Half-Life, but I won't be buying HL2 because of this stupid licensing system. Not even from the bargain bin. Way to go, Valve.
With only 3 channels (and 1 HD channel), even with one level of P-in-P, you're watching half the channels. Just 3 channels sounds kind of weak. Often said: "500 channels and nothing's on." With 3 channels, it better be offering something completely out of the box, not just the same old teevee.
I wonder how using it for TV watching sucks down the bandwidth for other things, like dowloading huge files. Or vice versa.
Tuner/Amplifier, CD player, DVD player, etc. But I also have a mix of other equipment which is not Sony.
If Sony had tried to make their stuff only work with their speakers (through funky plugs, say) and other Sony products, I would not have bought their stuff at all.
Their marketing team's wet dream is that they can trap people into only buying Sony stuff. But reality has set in (maybe), and they realize any attempts toward a proprietary system will just kill the product.
However, I suppose they felt they had to at least have a try at it before giving it up.
shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me again, OK, I should take the blame this time.
This really shakes what little confidence (none) I had in the general level of intelligence out there. Are they just a bunch of Homer Simpsons that keep opening the fucking attachments?
This is depressing. They're all morons. And they stay up all night calling Dell tech support just to see if they're really there (even on Kwanza).
I got it! We need a reality TV show where we watch a family watching people on TV playing the Sims, and they're watching the Sims watch TV, on which there's a reality TV show featuring a family watching people on TV playing the Sims, and they're watching...
Oh, and don't forget to frame the whole picture in a Gameboy DS top and bottom display for over 15 hours continuously.
So, from what I understand, this is not Battlestar Galactica "the Next Generation" but instead is like Battlestar Galactica "the Re-Do."
All the old characters are there: Adama, Starbuck, Boomer, etc. And yet, there's this reference to the Cylon Wars 40 years previous, where everything looked BSG "classic". (Did BSG TOS have the Cylon Wars in its past?) If all the characters weren't the same (mostly, except for some gender-swapping here and there) as the original series, I'd say that this series was NG, picking up some-odd decades after TOS. It's almost as if the directors planned an NG series, then switched gears to re-do TOS.
So... this gives me an idea. Somebody needs to do a re-do of the original Star Trek series. Not an NG. Not a prequel. Go find a new Kirk, Spock, McCoy, the whole lot, and spin out a new series. I think it will eventually happen, but it may be years from now.
Like how to "build in" a cheat code into your Knoppix remaster.
The trick is, after you rsync the/cdrom directory to the master directory (see the book), cd to master/boot/isolinux and edit the isolinux.cfg file. Put your favorite cheat in the first APPEND line.
This worked for Knoppix 3.4 and up. Don't know about earlier versions.
...They were going to compete directly with broadband services here. That would have been really cool.
Finally, I would have gotten to do a little outsourcing of my own. Give the telecom companies here a taste of their own medicine. Free market and all that.
TLC has become the Interior Decorating Channel. Seems like most of the time, they're showing Trading Spaces, some variant thereof, or shows about cosmetic makeovers.
I think somebody a couple years ago put that channel on autopilot, and now his corpse is stinking in the control room.
Spyware does not have to take control of a computer.
A good working definition for me of spy/malware is: any software which is installed without the user's knowledge and/or consent, and once installed, actively resists being uninstalled.
This may not define all types of spyware, but anything meeting these criteria is most likely spyware. At least I can't think of anything that matches this description, but which is not spyware.
Slashdot Mirror
If nothing else happens, the Sun's going to die in 5 billion years. Clock's ticking, people!
Picasso took the check, and on its back, drew in red ink a sketch of the Devil, then handed it back. The message apparently: "Go to hell." And now the check is worth more than its face value.
Moral of the story is that some authors (or artists) are so famous and sought-after that people would almost publish their grocery lists. Its merely up to the professional pride of the authors and the measured restraint of the publishers that this (almost) never actually happens.
But then, I realized that when you pay $50 for the Sword of Gondron (or whatever), you're paying for somebody's many hours spent "leveling up" to GET the Sword of Gondron. If those many hours are boring tedious drudgery, maybe you're better off paying somebody else to do this (just this particular part of the game) for you.
This is not much different than paying somebody to shovel snow or mow the lawn. And the product is at least a little more permanent.
Now, the part I don't get is, if a game has such significant portions of drudgery that you would wish to hire it out, doesn't that start to sound more like work than fun?
And I thought my biggest worries might be getting brain cancer or running off the road.
So... pick up the cell phone while driving, start listening to easy listening oldies, leave the turn signal on for 10 miles, and look around for a farmers' market?
The person (or company) who doesn't make mistakes, has never accomplished much of anything. For all I know, Ben Franklin may have made this observation at some point or other.
This reminds me of the TurboTax licensing fiasco a while ago. At least they had the sense to realize that, by dicking with their customers' boot sectors in a misguided effort to curb piracy, they were doing more to damage their brand's reputation than the damage piracy could do to sales.
I liked Half-Life, but I won't be buying HL2 because of this stupid licensing system. Not even from the bargain bin. Way to go, Valve.
With only 3 channels (and 1 HD channel), even with one level of P-in-P, you're watching half the channels. Just 3 channels sounds kind of weak. Often said: "500 channels and nothing's on." With 3 channels, it better be offering something completely out of the box, not just the same old teevee.
I wonder how using it for TV watching sucks down the bandwidth for other things, like dowloading huge files. Or vice versa.
Godwin?
If Sony had tried to make their stuff only work with their speakers (through funky plugs, say) and other Sony products, I would not have bought their stuff at all.
Their marketing team's wet dream is that they can trap people into only buying Sony stuff. But reality has set in (maybe), and they realize any attempts toward a proprietary system will just kill the product.
However, I suppose they felt they had to at least have a try at it before giving it up.
(Oh, no, my eyes, it burns, it burns)
This really shakes what little confidence (none) I had in the general level of intelligence out there. Are they just a bunch of Homer Simpsons that keep opening the fucking attachments?
This is depressing. They're all morons. And they stay up all night calling Dell tech support just to see if they're really there (even on Kwanza).
Yeah, needs some new blood all round. Best to try it when they're long since retired, or keeping Gene company. Years from now.
"Everything old is new again..."
He should only have to wait 10 or 20 years.
Oh, and don't forget to frame the whole picture in a Gameboy DS top and bottom display for over 15 hours continuously.
Next on G4...
All the old characters are there: Adama, Starbuck, Boomer, etc. And yet, there's this reference to the Cylon Wars 40 years previous, where everything looked BSG "classic". (Did BSG TOS have the Cylon Wars in its past?) If all the characters weren't the same (mostly, except for some gender-swapping here and there) as the original series, I'd say that this series was NG, picking up some-odd decades after TOS. It's almost as if the directors planned an NG series, then switched gears to re-do TOS.
So... this gives me an idea. Somebody needs to do a re-do of the original Star Trek series. Not an NG. Not a prequel. Go find a new Kirk, Spock, McCoy, the whole lot, and spin out a new series. I think it will eventually happen, but it may be years from now.
At least not until the yet-to-be-announced merger of G4 and SpikeTV.
The trick is, after you rsync the /cdrom directory to the master directory (see the book), cd to master/boot/isolinux and edit the isolinux.cfg file. Put your favorite cheat in the first APPEND line.
This worked for Knoppix 3.4 and up. Don't know about earlier versions.
Finally, I would have gotten to do a little outsourcing of my own. Give the telecom companies here a taste of their own medicine. Free market and all that.
(Then the drugs wore off...)
Unknown. Since nothing has been found so far (that we know of), you couldn't give odds.
To extend the analogy, some people like the idea of handing the keys over to somebody else, and letting them drive. Some don't.
There will be a mix of the two types: heavily managed systems for some (like WebTV), and independent personal computers of the traditional type.
And the ubergeeks of the 21st century will be like the John Wayne rugged individualist (ok, kinda sorta).
TLC has become the Interior Decorating Channel. Seems like most of the time, they're showing Trading Spaces, some variant thereof, or shows about cosmetic makeovers.
I think somebody a couple years ago put that channel on autopilot, and now his corpse is stinking in the control room.
A good working definition for me of spy/malware is: any software which is installed without the user's knowledge and/or consent, and once installed, actively resists being uninstalled.
This may not define all types of spyware, but anything meeting these criteria is most likely spyware. At least I can't think of anything that matches this description, but which is not spyware.
and copter belts. We'll still be waiting for those, too.
Doing anything that's not socializing, cuts socializing time. I love brilliant flashes of the obvious like this.
I'd like to see the money go towards building a catapult designed to hurl week-old chicken guts into their main conference room.