Spoken like someone who has never made an AMV. There are many excellent ones out there that are EXTREMELY well edited. To prove my point that they can INDEED bring something original to the table...I present this video of 100 animes mashed up and edited (with rotoscoping) to produce an incredibly original piece showing all of the characters in a giant race and fighting each other.
Part of that is due to the fact that it takes a long time (sometimes) to get even simple things done, thanks to having to run around and fly here/there, etc.
And you can be damned sure they made it that way intentionally. Allow me to compare with City of Heroes, arguably one of the best MMOs for the casual gamer. No items to really worry about, quick missions, excellent party locator, trains and travel powers.
Their goal was to make it as simple as possible to get somewhere because that is not necessarily fun (although travel powers sure as hell are fun). They know they are targeting casual gamers. WoW knows they have the addicts by the balls, so they put in time sinks like having your gryphon fly through a really roundabout (albeit beautiful) route. Or have quests requiring you to run all over the goddamned world. I hope when the Warhammer game comes out it will give the same look and feel of WoW, but with casual gamer-oriented gameplay. They'd have a huge market right from that.
According to Blizzard, I don't own anything inside of the World of Warcraft. Why the hell would I be taxed on property that belongs to someone else?
I believe they are saying that while the items in the game don't have value, your time spent acquiring them does, and when you exchange the fruits of your "service" that you provided by acquiring those items for someone else and receive payment for this, that is taxable income.
I've been saying it from the beginning and I'll say it again, microcontent is a bad thing for gamers. Its not so much the concept that is bad, but the fact that there is not a single company out there who can be trusted to treat it properly and not nickle and dime their players to milk them for all they're worth.
The second a company introduces microcontent, they set themselves on a slippery slope from which there is no return.
It begins with them charging a tiny amount for an addon that has good value, then it becomes them charging for some other parts....then they start scraping content from the retail game and you end up with things like Lumines and horse armor, and in its worst incarnation, you end up with the new Gran Turismo.
Vote with your dollars and don't buy any of this bullshit. In addition, keep writing about how this is a royal crock of shit and make noise to the PR and marketing departments of these companies. Believe it or not, if a large number of people are saying the same thing to them, and the numbers correlate, they WILL stop this stuff.
Although part of me thinks there are a few evil people (shareholders) at the top mandating this for their own greed.
Another interesting note is that this kinda stuff is a big hit in Asia, but what companies need to learn is that doing business in the US is a lot different, and we won't take this kind of bullshit. We want to pay once and own something, not rent and be nickle and dimed for shit that should have been included in the first place.
Please mod parent down as troll. That link is an affiliate link to the Naughty Bookworms porn site. Great content, but widely available via torrent and affiliate links suck.
I think the many poor families in India, Africa and Mexico who scrape together their life savings to send their most promising child to America (or wherever) to make money to send home would beg to differ.
The fact that she is physically attractive was only incidental which brings up a whole other category of people who meet and then fall in love over the Internet without ever having met in person.
It is important to note here that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. And please, do not in any way take this as an insult to your wife, it is just my personal preference. You see, that is why these types of studies are bullshit. Personal preference of physical characteristics is as varied as the number of combinations you can make with different physical characteristics. So for someone to make a statement saying that people will become more attractive....I counter with..."To whom?"
The media plays a large role in determining what is considered attractive by mainstream society, but that changes as frequently as ratings and clothing styles. So there's really no set basis from which to pin this study on, let alone a prediction focusing on 100,000 years from now.
Slashdot is violently pro-privacy, and yet then you get gems like this one that poke fun at people who actually act to do something about it.
While I am as big a privacy nut as most of Slashdot, and while I admit the grandparent was flamebaiting a bit...I have to say, just because Slashdot leans heavily one way does not mean that it is WRONG for someone to express another viewpoint even though it might contradict with the general consensus. There are definitely arguable reasons for why people shouldn't care that much about losing a bit of privacy for a game like this. While I don't personally agree with them, people should be allowed to express those views without being attacked. That is what debate is for.
One of the features that sounds the most promising is how your appearance changes as you level to show you being more powerful, aside from any equipment you might have. It is frustrating to invest a large amount of time and reach the top of the ladder to discover you look exactly the same as everybody else at the top, and you all mostly have the same few pieces of uber-gear. It is also frustrating when everybodies spell effects look exactly the same with no way to alter the particles to make your individual castings look unique. What is the extent of this visual distinction? How does that system work exactly? Also, will we be able to distinguish ourselves by our equipment, or will everybody eventually end up with the same few identical uber-weapons that look exactly the same?
I took a quick glance at your post and misread where the bold was...for a moment I was a bit confused as to why you WOULDN'T want to hide the fact that you had h-e-r-p-e-s
were duped from perfectly legal sources (namely CD's) that I rushed out and bought right after RIAA has launched its accusations.
That's actually an interesting point...Can anybody comment as to how you need to present your "previously owned music" as evidence? How do you prove that you owned it before the RIAA if you've tossed your receipts out? What is to stop exactly what parent poster said? Can college students being sued just go out, buy the CDs with cash (so as not to leave a credit trail), toss the receipts and cases and say "your honor, I own that CD"? What means exist to determine the truth of this?
Bingo. We got a glimpse of their future plans with Gran Turismo HD. They want to sell you every single element of the game, and the only way they can do that is if you are forced to suck off the tit of their online gaming service.
Is online gaming the future? Of course. And online services are essential for future consoles. But if its any company that I do NOT trust when they say the service is "free", its Sony. They WILL recoup that cost in some way, most likely through scraping content and forcing you to pay extra microfees to download it. Beware, the future is paved with a road where each chunk of asphalt costs $1, and in the end you never own any of it.
Just out of curiosity, what recourse will this woman, who has no means to pay this judgement, have? Will she they garnish her wages? If so, by how much? Can bankruptcy protect her? Has this judgement permanently ruined this woman's financial future?
The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frusterate me as I find myself wanting to use more web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs.
How long do you think it will take companies to realize that users are starting to see browser tabs and AJAX sites as basically their own "programs" and will want to manage them like they do all of their programs, not just within the confines of a browser window. That is the next step I feel in making things seamless. Removing the browser barrier.
As for rain, I use a protective rubber suit, consisting of both a "rain coat" and "rain pants" to keep me from getting wet. I live in Vancouver, and bike through the winter, so don't give me any shit about how that simply wouldn't work where you live (unless you've got an actual monsoon season, in which case you can take the bus:) ).
Its not that we'd give you shit about it...its just that those of us who don't like the idea of biking in winter aren't masochistic. I'm all for biking to work when its nice to neutral outside, but the majority of people do not find the idea of exerting themselves in the middle of a downpour or freezing weather to be fun...or safe. Not just safety from the weather itself, but you have to take into consideration other people sharing the road (if you don't have a direct bike path) and bad road conditions.
Why would anybody be stupid enough to purchase a preorder from a company that has a proven history of taking people's investment money (which is essentially what a preorder is in this instance) and running?
It doesn't take a genious to figure out that the people who go out drinking, socializing and schmoozing get ahead. While it would be nice things were more merit based, the truth is that the majority of management spent their college days hitting the bars and making their friends over a pint. Some of that changed in the real world, but thats still where a lot of the connections are made, not at the office where people are more focused on getting work done.
Getting your boss drunk tends to make them be more intimate with you (not in the sexual sense) and they feel they can trust you more. They trust you more, so they feel safe promoting you or giving you a raise.
People hate the guy who doesn't do squat at the office yet is very charismatic and sociable and rises to the top. But what they don't realize is that being that sociable can actually be a lot of work. Especially across your entire network. You have to go out to lunch all the time to catch up with people...go to bars at night...throw get togethers...etc.
For an introvert like me, that's a lot of friggin work. But you know what? I recognize that that is how the game is played, and I play it, and play it well. And it has rewarded me. So I guess there's that.
As technology gets more advanced, less understanding of it is required to be able to use it. My mom doesn't know how to change the oil in her car, but she can still drive it.
And while the nice guy in me wants to make things great for EVERYBODY...the logical part of me is thinking "you know what? screw em!". Reason being...if these people don't know enough about the tech to know the jargon, I don't want them anywhere near it. Honestly...I think it should be that way with cars too. If knowledge requirements for driving a car were anywhere NEAR as big as they are for flying a plane the roads would be infinitely safer. Same thing with the internet.
You must drive one of these "fast, expensive cars", don't you?
Wow, you must think you are so witty. Actually I don't. I drive a 98 Subaru Forester. My dream car would be a Mazda RX7 r2 with the twin turbo. Hardly $150k, but definitely fast, and with 50/50 weight distribution making it a beast in the corners.
But I love how you assume that just because I defend people with expensive flashy fast cars that I drive one. The fact is I think the reasoning behind the grandparent's comment is completely baseless, and is one of the most retarded comments that I hear all too frequently. Thanks for supporting the ignorance.
Why do people automatically say that if someone drives a fast, expensive car that they have a small penis? It bugs me that people resort to name calling when in reality all they are is jealous over the fact that they can't afford to drop 150k on a car who's sole purpose is to look sexy and go fast. What if the person happened to bust his ass for his job to make that money, and really enjoys driving very nice, exotic and fast cars?
I agree that DRM sucks, and rootkits and corporation's dull witted approach to protecting their property sucks too. But the *reason* this stuff exists is because of the weasels like Lord_Dweomer who steal and justify more regularly than evangelists sin and repent.
I didn't give an excuse, I mentioned a reality of the current music business. Ask ANY performer who is on a label where the majority of their pay comes from. They will all tell you touring and merchandise.
I was going to debate your point until I realized you didn't want to make a point, you wanted to be flamebait. You indicated this by attacking me, making baseless false accusations and resorting to sophomoric name calling. I don't steal, stealing is a criminal offense while downloading music most certainly is not. When you are dealing with legal accusations, you had damn sure better have your legal terminology straight. I also was not attempting in the least to justify what I do. I infringe on copyrights. You see, I have a big craving for rare electronic music (drum and bass in particular) and it is very difficult to find a lot of tracks and full mixes for sale in the format I need. You see, I don't have turntables, I have an iPod, and a lot of it is only available in vinyl, and often times the mixes aren't available at all. So I hop onto Soulseek and download it. If I later see it for sale, I might buy it, or I might not...but if I pick up a flyer with a DJ on it that I like, you can be damn sure I'll be there at the event, paying whatever it takes to see them live. So is what I do legal? No...well...not in this country anyway. Is it morally and ethically wrong? That's a very subjective question. Given my circumstance and my reasons, I do not feel it is so, of course I'm a bit biased. But I never EVER tried to justify what I do.
There's a few factors which have made myspace a cesspool spawning marketing and advertising demons left and right.
Might also have something to do with the fact that the founders don't exactly have a problem with it seeing as how MySpace was founded by spammers, not Tom. Tom is just the pretty wholesome face they put on there to get peopel to join.
Slashdot Mirror
And you can be damned sure they made it that way intentionally. Allow me to compare with City of Heroes, arguably one of the best MMOs for the casual gamer. No items to really worry about, quick missions, excellent party locator, trains and travel powers.
Their goal was to make it as simple as possible to get somewhere because that is not necessarily fun (although travel powers sure as hell are fun). They know they are targeting casual gamers. WoW knows they have the addicts by the balls, so they put in time sinks like having your gryphon fly through a really roundabout (albeit beautiful) route. Or have quests requiring you to run all over the goddamned world. I hope when the Warhammer game comes out it will give the same look and feel of WoW, but with casual gamer-oriented gameplay. They'd have a huge market right from that.
I believe they are saying that while the items in the game don't have value, your time spent acquiring them does, and when you exchange the fruits of your "service" that you provided by acquiring those items for someone else and receive payment for this, that is taxable income.
Set phasers to...fun?
The second a company introduces microcontent, they set themselves on a slippery slope from which there is no return.
It begins with them charging a tiny amount for an addon that has good value, then it becomes them charging for some other parts....then they start scraping content from the retail game and you end up with things like Lumines and horse armor, and in its worst incarnation, you end up with the new Gran Turismo.
Vote with your dollars and don't buy any of this bullshit. In addition, keep writing about how this is a royal crock of shit and make noise to the PR and marketing departments of these companies. Believe it or not, if a large number of people are saying the same thing to them, and the numbers correlate, they WILL stop this stuff.
Although part of me thinks there are a few evil people (shareholders) at the top mandating this for their own greed.
Another interesting note is that this kinda stuff is a big hit in Asia, but what companies need to learn is that doing business in the US is a lot different, and we won't take this kind of bullshit. We want to pay once and own something, not rent and be nickle and dimed for shit that should have been included in the first place.
I think the many poor families in India, Africa and Mexico who scrape together their life savings to send their most promising child to America (or wherever) to make money to send home would beg to differ.
It is important to note here that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. And please, do not in any way take this as an insult to your wife, it is just my personal preference. You see, that is why these types of studies are bullshit. Personal preference of physical characteristics is as varied as the number of combinations you can make with different physical characteristics. So for someone to make a statement saying that people will become more attractive....I counter with..."To whom?"
The media plays a large role in determining what is considered attractive by mainstream society, but that changes as frequently as ratings and clothing styles. So there's really no set basis from which to pin this study on, let alone a prediction focusing on 100,000 years from now.
I took a quick glance at your post and misread where the bold was...for a moment I was a bit confused as to why you WOULDN'T want to hide the fact that you had h-e-r-p-e-s
That's actually an interesting point...Can anybody comment as to how you need to present your "previously owned music" as evidence? How do you prove that you owned it before the RIAA if you've tossed your receipts out? What is to stop exactly what parent poster said? Can college students being sued just go out, buy the CDs with cash (so as not to leave a credit trail), toss the receipts and cases and say "your honor, I own that CD"? What means exist to determine the truth of this?
Is online gaming the future? Of course. And online services are essential for future consoles. But if its any company that I do NOT trust when they say the service is "free", its Sony. They WILL recoup that cost in some way, most likely through scraping content and forcing you to pay extra microfees to download it. Beware, the future is paved with a road where each chunk of asphalt costs $1, and in the end you never own any of it.
Its not that we'd give you shit about it...its just that those of us who don't like the idea of biking in winter aren't masochistic. I'm all for biking to work when its nice to neutral outside, but the majority of people do not find the idea of exerting themselves in the middle of a downpour or freezing weather to be fun...or safe. Not just safety from the weather itself, but you have to take into consideration other people sharing the road (if you don't have a direct bike path) and bad road conditions.
Getting your boss drunk tends to make them be more intimate with you (not in the sexual sense) and they feel they can trust you more. They trust you more, so they feel safe promoting you or giving you a raise.
People hate the guy who doesn't do squat at the office yet is very charismatic and sociable and rises to the top. But what they don't realize is that being that sociable can actually be a lot of work. Especially across your entire network. You have to go out to lunch all the time to catch up with people...go to bars at night...throw get togethers...etc.
For an introvert like me, that's a lot of friggin work. But you know what? I recognize that that is how the game is played, and I play it, and play it well. And it has rewarded me. So I guess there's that.
And while the nice guy in me wants to make things great for EVERYBODY...the logical part of me is thinking "you know what? screw em!". Reason being...if these people don't know enough about the tech to know the jargon, I don't want them anywhere near it. Honestly...I think it should be that way with cars too. If knowledge requirements for driving a car were anywhere NEAR as big as they are for flying a plane the roads would be infinitely safer. Same thing with the internet.
Wow, you must think you are so witty. Actually I don't. I drive a 98 Subaru Forester. My dream car would be a Mazda RX7 r2 with the twin turbo. Hardly $150k, but definitely fast, and with 50/50 weight distribution making it a beast in the corners.
But I love how you assume that just because I defend people with expensive flashy fast cars that I drive one. The fact is I think the reasoning behind the grandparent's comment is completely baseless, and is one of the most retarded comments that I hear all too frequently. Thanks for supporting the ignorance.
I didn't give an excuse, I mentioned a reality of the current music business. Ask ANY performer who is on a label where the majority of their pay comes from. They will all tell you touring and merchandise.
I was going to debate your point until I realized you didn't want to make a point, you wanted to be flamebait. You indicated this by attacking me, making baseless false accusations and resorting to sophomoric name calling. I don't steal, stealing is a criminal offense while downloading music most certainly is not. When you are dealing with legal accusations, you had damn sure better have your legal terminology straight. I also was not attempting in the least to justify what I do. I infringe on copyrights. You see, I have a big craving for rare electronic music (drum and bass in particular) and it is very difficult to find a lot of tracks and full mixes for sale in the format I need. You see, I don't have turntables, I have an iPod, and a lot of it is only available in vinyl, and often times the mixes aren't available at all. So I hop onto Soulseek and download it. If I later see it for sale, I might buy it, or I might not...but if I pick up a flyer with a DJ on it that I like, you can be damn sure I'll be there at the event, paying whatever it takes to see them live. So is what I do legal? No...well...not in this country anyway. Is it morally and ethically wrong? That's a very subjective question. Given my circumstance and my reasons, I do not feel it is so, of course I'm a bit biased. But I never EVER tried to justify what I do.
Might also have something to do with the fact that the founders don't exactly have a problem with it seeing as how MySpace was founded by spammers, not Tom. Tom is just the pretty wholesome face they put on there to get peopel to join.