I'm not sure the first page is all sponsered links. One is a CNN story about a virus that can infect both Windows and Linux systems. Another links to Winecentric, which is supposed to give a Linux system the ability to run Windows program. Neither seems like the sort of thing the "Evil Empire" would allow on their sponsered page.
What those first 16 links do represent, I have no idea. Maybe it's just crappy search engine programming. How does that quote go? "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by ignorance"? Something like that, anyway.
Neiman-Marcus has been doing this with their Christmas catalogs for years. They always include one or two outrageous gifts. His and her helicopters, anyone? Your own oil derrick? Dinner with Walter Cronkite?
They don't actually want anyone to order the stuff, thats why the price is so ridiculous. If you're willing to pay $40K, they'll probably be willing to hire someone to craft a custom, one-of-a-kind desk, and pocket the change. Same thing with the other gifts.
The idea is to drive traffic to the site, which seems to have worked. People go to see the Powerpuff girls bedroom, but while they're there they see DVD's, t-shirts, games... more mundane stuff. And some of them will buy.
I think if I'm going to spend money to send a message to my loved ones after my untimely demise, I'd like it to be something useful. Like a life insurance policy.
You're right. Shrek was terrible. It was a kids movie, without much to offer anyone over the age of 9. Anyone who didn't have the whole plot figured out after the first 30 seconds has never read a fairy tale before. Lets see... ugly guy is reading story about princess and hero living happily ever after, says "Yeah, like that'll ever happen". Hmmm... what are the odds he'll get the princess in the end? Shrek got its laughs from a bunch of trite, topical humor that's already pretty dated, and is just going to get worse. If you don't know why the princess is moving in slow motion while the camera rotates around her, or why Shrek is doing all those strange things while he's fighting those knights, it's just not that funny.
Monsters Inc. is a classic. I'll be showing it to my grandkids 15 years from now. I doubt I'll even be able to find Shrek.
If the crap shows were causing the bad ratings by themselves, you'd think that ratings would be way down for all age groups. You'd also think that ratings would have been declining steadily for several years now, since this seasons crap isn't that much worse then last seasons crap or the season before. Certainly not enough to account for a 20% drop in ratings.
I think the author is on the right track, but he's a little late blaming CStrike. Two years ago maybe, but CS is on the decline. Video games as a whole, though, are picking up. Not just FPS's, but all the MMORPG's are sucking up huge amounts of peoples time.
Nooooooo.. it's a *Government* position. If you catch a cold, you're probably put on administratitive leave, with full pay, until you're (as the article so eloqeuently puts it) "back up to snuff".
The only downside I can see to the job is that you have to wear a dorky looking uniform, and put up with the yuk-monkeys constantly telling you "Hey! You're supposed to put telescopes up to your EYE, not your nose!"
Oh, and you have to spend your working day tramping around pig farms. That would kind of suck, too. Maybe they have an undercover opening checking for excessive levels of perfume at topless clubs. I can just see the girls eyes bug out when I whip out my olfactometer!
I don't think it's all that stupid. ATI/Valve are just tossing more free stuff at the people who bought a new ATI card. Granted, most of them probably already have HL, but it's not like they're paying more for this bundle. It's just a way to keep the customers from complaining quite so much.
Here's my question. I bought my Radeon 9700 at Quakecon 2002, and it was supposed to come with a copy of Doom 3 when that game gets released. So, where's my free copies of Doom and Doom 2? Huh?
I think this website is a pretty good example of why companies hold onto those old games, and don't just "release them". There's always the chance, however slight, that there might be some more money to be squeezed out of them. I wonder how many of those old games could be played on todays cell phones?
What happens if I resurrect some old game whose copyright owners have long since gone out of business? I guess I'm breaking the law, but who would have the right to take me to court?
I'm sure Coca-Cola made certain that the billboard is totally unhackable. Doubtless it was installed with state-of-the-art security measures, on a trusted and proven reliable operating system like Windows 2000.
Ha! Imagine the frustration on those poor hackers faces when they see what they're up against!
The problem is, most of the voice spam I get on my answering machine is pre-recorded. I get the feeling it's some new telemarketer strategy. They call you, if their autodialer detects an answering machine they just leave their prerecorded crap, if they get a real live person then they switch you to a human telemarketer to make their pitch.
I think if the action takes place entirely within the game universe, then no real crime has been comitted. If you're playing Everquest and you agree to pay some other character 50,000 gold pieces for a +5 Magic Moon Rock of Obfuscation, and you transfer the gold but don't get the item... too bad. Maybe your character can sue his character.
On the other hand, if you win an Ebay auction for the same item, and pay him $50 American, and you don't get the item... then a law has clearly been broken.
This seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Maybe someone could come up with a gray-area example to test it.
I'm sure the RIAA will soon be issueing a press statement saying "Clearly, based on the small number of people who responded to our amnesty program, music piracy via P2P networks is not nearly as pervasive as we had initially thought. We now feel that there are, at most, only a few thousand people using P2P networks to obtain copyrighted works. It would also seem that P2P networks are not to blame for decreased music sales and lower profits that RIAA members have experienced over the past few years."
I wonder what he's saying in Japan... maybe that American gamers don't really like challenging games, and that he wanted to make sure the Japanese fans were pleased and found the game challenging enough.
Nothing like a little sop to national pride to boost games sales.
The problem with letting players handle the skill matching is that a lot of people would deliberately understate their playing skill in order to play games that they can easily win. They're not interested in a competitive match... they want to beat someone and run their smack and talk about how pathetic the other player is, and how great they are.
Take a look at the Starcraft games on BNet sometime. Starcraft has been out for quite a few years now. You'd think that there aren't that many new players trying it out, but it seems like every third game on BNet is "n00bs ONLY!!" or some crap like that. Not because there are that many new players, but because people want an easy win against another human. Same thing with the supposed Free-For-All games where two or 3 guys will team up right away because they made an agreement before the game started. They don't want competition, they want an easy win and the feeling of smug superiority that comes with it.
From my perspective, the solution is simple. Give me a way to positively ID players, no matter what nick or account they use. BNet could use each players CD key to generate a unique "Player ID" which would be displayed beside the players name. The ID number would stay the same no matter what names the player used or what accounts he played under.
Then give me a way to easily make notations about players, or put them in categories while I'm playing. If I've got someone in the "Don't play with" category, I should get some kind of warning every time I see them, or every time they join a game I'm playing in. If I feel that someone is very skilled and a fun person to play with, I should be able to see them easily as well. In short, take away some of the anonymity, and force players to experience some repercussions for their negative actions.
Well of course that's who I meant. I just referred to him by his other name because I think most slashdotters are more familiar with his as a Nobel Prize winner then as a lyrical terrorist.
Well, if you're happy with the major music labels deciding for you what it good and what sucks... more power to you. There seem to be an awful lot of people like you.
I don't mind doing my own "quality control". I don't mind sifting through a bunch of crap to find a few gems. I'd rather have a few pearls and a bunch of dross then a sea of mediocre crap. Besides, if you follow your instincts and listen to the opinions of people you trust, you'll find good stuff more often then not. Stephen Hawking said that MC Frontalot had talent.... and by golly, he was right.
What about the other way, though? What if someone made a full-featured DVD player that could double as a game console? That might be something I would be interested in.
Let me guess... it'll be settled out of court, Verisign will admit no wrongdoing, the lawyers will get a few million dollars, and we'll all the $5 off the next domain we register with Verisign.
Doesn't "...gamers are getting older and tastes are becoming more sophisticated" disagree with ""It is imperative that a game machine is easy to use for anyone"? Which is it?
How about we put it this way: "A game machine should not be unnecessarily complicated."
Older gamers don't buy fewer games because they want longer play value or high production values. They buy fewer games because they're ADULTS, with spouses and kids and houses and cars and jobs and all the other shackles of adulthood. If you can only squeeze in 3 or four hours a week of game playing time, one game will last you quite a while. And you're much less likely to tolerate a bad/boring/indifferent game.
I also like some of the ones that pop up in WC3 when you click a unit long enough. Like the dark troll priest.. click him enough times, and he'll break out in a bastardized version of "Iron Chef". I snarfed all over my keyboard first time I heard that one.
I agree with you. Those kids were old enoug to know right from wrong. Certainly they would know that shooting innocent motorists with a rifle is a bad thing.
Problem is, the kids don't have much money. Nor do their parents. Sony, on the other hand, has millions of dollars. Thus the lawsuit.
I mean... a few years ago, a megabyte lost here or there would have been a big thing. Now they're giving away 30 GB hard drives as prizes in Crackerjack boxes... it doesn't matter any more!
Slashdot Mirror
Does your $40K really exist?
I'm not sure the first page is all sponsered links. One is a CNN story about a virus that can infect both Windows and Linux systems. Another links to Winecentric, which is supposed to give a Linux system the ability to run Windows program. Neither seems like the sort of thing the "Evil Empire" would allow on their sponsered page.
What those first 16 links do represent, I have no idea. Maybe it's just crappy search engine programming. How does that quote go? "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by ignorance"? Something like that, anyway.
It's an advertising ploy.
Neiman-Marcus has been doing this with their Christmas catalogs for years. They always include one or two outrageous gifts. His and her helicopters, anyone? Your own oil derrick? Dinner with Walter Cronkite?
They don't actually want anyone to order the stuff, thats why the price is so ridiculous. If you're willing to pay $40K, they'll probably be willing to hire someone to craft a custom, one-of-a-kind desk, and pocket the change. Same thing with the other gifts.
The idea is to drive traffic to the site, which seems to have worked. People go to see the Powerpuff girls bedroom, but while they're there they see DVD's, t-shirts, games... more mundane stuff. And some of them will buy.
I think if I'm going to spend money to send a message to my loved ones after my untimely demise, I'd like it to be something useful. Like a life insurance policy.
You're right. Shrek was terrible. It was a kids movie, without much to offer anyone over the age of 9. Anyone who didn't have the whole plot figured out after the first 30 seconds has never read a fairy tale before. Lets see... ugly guy is reading story about princess and hero living happily ever after, says "Yeah, like that'll ever happen". Hmmm... what are the odds he'll get the princess in the end? Shrek got its laughs from a bunch of trite, topical humor that's already pretty dated, and is just going to get worse. If you don't know why the princess is moving in slow motion while the camera rotates around her, or why Shrek is doing all those strange things while he's fighting those knights, it's just not that funny.
Monsters Inc. is a classic. I'll be showing it to my grandkids 15 years from now. I doubt I'll even be able to find Shrek.
If the crap shows were causing the bad ratings by themselves, you'd think that ratings would be way down for all age groups. You'd also think that ratings would have been declining steadily for several years now, since this seasons crap isn't that much worse then last seasons crap or the season before. Certainly not enough to account for a 20% drop in ratings.
I think the author is on the right track, but he's a little late blaming CStrike. Two years ago maybe, but CS is on the decline. Video games as a whole, though, are picking up. Not just FPS's, but all the MMORPG's are sucking up huge amounts of peoples time.
Nooooooo.. it's a *Government* position. If you catch a cold, you're probably put on administratitive leave, with full pay, until you're (as the article so eloqeuently puts it) "back up to snuff".
The only downside I can see to the job is that you have to wear a dorky looking uniform, and put up with the yuk-monkeys constantly telling you "Hey! You're supposed to put telescopes up to your EYE, not your nose!"
Oh, and you have to spend your working day tramping around pig farms. That would kind of suck, too. Maybe they have an undercover opening checking for excessive levels of perfume at topless clubs. I can just see the girls eyes bug out when I whip out my olfactometer!
I don't think it's all that stupid. ATI/Valve are just tossing more free stuff at the people who bought a new ATI card. Granted, most of them probably already have HL, but it's not like they're paying more for this bundle. It's just a way to keep the customers from complaining quite so much.
Here's my question. I bought my Radeon 9700 at Quakecon 2002, and it was supposed to come with a copy of Doom 3 when that game gets released. So, where's my free copies of Doom and Doom 2? Huh?
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just send a new $20 bill to every person in the US?
I think this website is a pretty good example of why companies hold onto those old games, and don't just "release them". There's always the chance, however slight, that there might be some more money to be squeezed out of them. I wonder how many of those old games could be played on todays cell phones?
What happens if I resurrect some old game whose copyright owners have long since gone out of business? I guess I'm breaking the law, but who would have the right to take me to court?
I'm sure Coca-Cola made certain that the billboard is totally unhackable. Doubtless it was installed with state-of-the-art security measures, on a trusted and proven reliable operating system like Windows 2000.
Ha! Imagine the frustration on those poor hackers faces when they see what they're up against!
The problem is, most of the voice spam I get on my answering machine is pre-recorded. I get the feeling it's some new telemarketer strategy. They call you, if their autodialer detects an answering machine they just leave their prerecorded crap, if they get a real live person then they switch you to a human telemarketer to make their pitch.
I think if the action takes place entirely within the game universe, then no real crime has been comitted. If you're playing Everquest and you agree to pay some other character 50,000 gold pieces for a +5 Magic Moon Rock of Obfuscation, and you transfer the gold but don't get the item... too bad. Maybe your character can sue his character.
On the other hand, if you win an Ebay auction for the same item, and pay him $50 American, and you don't get the item... then a law has clearly been broken.
This seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Maybe someone could come up with a gray-area example to test it.
I'm sure the RIAA will soon be issueing a press statement saying "Clearly, based on the small number of people who responded to our amnesty program, music piracy via P2P networks is not nearly as pervasive as we had initially thought. We now feel that there are, at most, only a few thousand people using P2P networks to obtain copyrighted works. It would also seem that P2P networks are not to blame for decreased music sales and lower profits that RIAA members have experienced over the past few years."
I mean.. that's what logically follows, right?
I wonder what he's saying in Japan... maybe that American gamers don't really like challenging games, and that he wanted to make sure the Japanese fans were pleased and found the game challenging enough.
Nothing like a little sop to national pride to boost games sales.
The problem with letting players handle the skill matching is that a lot of people would deliberately understate their playing skill in order to play games that they can easily win. They're not interested in a competitive match... they want to beat someone and run their smack and talk about how pathetic the other player is, and how great they are.
Take a look at the Starcraft games on BNet sometime. Starcraft has been out for quite a few years now. You'd think that there aren't that many new players trying it out, but it seems like every third game on BNet is "n00bs ONLY!!" or some crap like that. Not because there are that many new players, but because people want an easy win against another human. Same thing with the supposed Free-For-All games where two or 3 guys will team up right away because they made an agreement before the game started. They don't want competition, they want an easy win and the feeling of smug superiority that comes with it.
From my perspective, the solution is simple. Give me a way to positively ID players, no matter what nick or account they use. BNet could use each players CD key to generate a unique "Player ID" which would be displayed beside the players name. The ID number would stay the same no matter what names the player used or what accounts he played under.
Then give me a way to easily make notations about players, or put them in categories while I'm playing. If I've got someone in the "Don't play with" category, I should get some kind of warning every time I see them, or every time they join a game I'm playing in. If I feel that someone is very skilled and a fun person to play with, I should be able to see them easily as well. In short, take away some of the anonymity, and force players to experience some repercussions for their negative actions.
Well of course that's who I meant. I just referred to him by his other name because I think most slashdotters are more familiar with his as a Nobel Prize winner then as a lyrical terrorist.
Well, if you're happy with the major music labels deciding for you what it good and what sucks... more power to you. There seem to be an awful lot of people like you.
I don't mind doing my own "quality control". I don't mind sifting through a bunch of crap to find a few gems. I'd rather have a few pearls and a bunch of dross then a sea of mediocre crap. Besides, if you follow your instincts and listen to the opinions of people you trust, you'll find good stuff more often then not. Stephen Hawking said that MC Frontalot had talent.... and by golly, he was right.
Agreed.
What about the other way, though? What if someone made a full-featured DVD player that could double as a game console? That might be something I would be interested in.
Let me guess... it'll be settled out of court, Verisign will admit no wrongdoing, the lawyers will get a few million dollars, and we'll all the $5 off the next domain we register with Verisign.
I can hardly contain my enthusiasm.
Doesn't "...gamers are getting older and tastes are becoming more sophisticated" disagree with ""It is imperative that a game machine is easy to use for anyone"? Which is it?
How about we put it this way: "A game machine should not be unnecessarily complicated."
Older gamers don't buy fewer games because they want longer play value or high production values. They buy fewer games because they're ADULTS, with spouses and kids and houses and cars and jobs and all the other shackles of adulthood. If you can only squeeze in 3 or four hours a week of game playing time, one game will last you quite a while. And you're much less likely to tolerate a bad/boring/indifferent game.
Yeah, that ones at the top of my list, too.
I also like some of the ones that pop up in WC3 when you click a unit long enough. Like the dark troll priest.. click him enough times, and he'll break out in a bastardized version of "Iron Chef". I snarfed all over my keyboard first time I heard that one.
I'm assuming you mean female breasts.
I agree with you. Those kids were old enoug to know right from wrong. Certainly they would know that shooting innocent motorists with a rifle is a bad thing.
Problem is, the kids don't have much money. Nor do their parents. Sony, on the other hand, has millions of dollars. Thus the lawsuit.
I mean... a few years ago, a megabyte lost here or there would have been a big thing. Now they're giving away 30 GB hard drives as prizes in Crackerjack boxes... it doesn't matter any more!