I make games, and 95% of my focus with a game is to make it fun, and entertaining, and popular. that used to be 100% of the focus until I made this which started getting enquiries from university teachers and students who wanted to integrate it into lessons. That game now has a number of site licenses for schools, and apparently goes down very well. The reason I think it works, is that ultimately, it's just a fun game. The game may make you think about the subject matter (politics) but it doesn't ram it down your throat. It's also not vaguely preachy, and basically tries to be neutral on all issues, which avoid antagonizing or irritating any of the players.
Democracy is popular enough for me to do a sequel (nearly done!), and this time round it does contain a whole bunch of real world statistics and background data (in wiki-style form) which is presented as additional (and optional) to the game itself. This is just like those historical RTS games which have a built in encyclopaedia. You can play Age Of Empires just for fun, but it you really want to find out a bit more about trebuchets, the game is happy to help. that is as it should be. Games on interesting and intelligent topics that encourage the curious player to learn more. You should never ram the educational bit down the players throats. People play games for fun. If they want to do hardcore learning, they break out a textbook.
I'm sure when the net was young that.orgs had to be non profit, and.nets were ISPs, but all of that seems to have totally disappeared. I also think its a bit sad that we have.co.uk and so on, but nobody used any.us or.usa names..com became the default URL that you had to have, with everything else being cheap and forgettable. People can tell my site is UK site and that I'm a UK company, but US companies are completely invisible, with the rush for everyone to be dotcom. I'm sure a lot of UK customers are automatically pleasantly disposed towards my company when they realise I'm a bit 'local' to them, but the same thing isn't an option in the US. Given the ubiquity of bookmarks, hyperlinks and google, do we even need catchy domain names any more? I might have paid over the odds many years ago to get an easily remembered one, but now? who cares, people will find you with google anyway right?
Agreed 100%. I love the US, I got married there, I long to return to see Vegas and Yosemite again. But no way am I going to have my fingerprints taken and be treated like a terrorist when I'm on holiday. Not when Europe has great scenery too. I would HATE to work in US tourism right now.
bullshit. I am not vaguely the problem. given a choice between two vaguely comparable systems, i will always buy the one with the lower power consumption. The problem is most manufacturers care so little about this issue, they dont even mention power consumption. GP are doing their bit to draw attention to such issues, and all power to them. Your attempt to polarise the issue as being "waste 1000 watts to lay cutting edge game or play monopoly" is just strawman bullshit.
entirely my point. I'm showing that greenpeace are nothing like the parent poster suggested some huge corporate beast that wanted to just sustain its own existence, despite operating in a modern day ecological nirvana that had no need for them. Most of their staff are volunteers anyway, not exactly people trying to perpetuate their jobs.
from greenpeaces 2006 annual report (freely downloadable) Income: $14 million Expenses: $15.5 million.
lets pick a games company: Nintendo's net sales for the first half of this fiscal year amount to 6.08 billion USD The operating income results in 1.65 billion USD, and the net profit is the aforementioned grand total of 1.15 billion USD.
I cant really see how greenpeace are some big evil corporate bully that is wasting its powers. And exactly how do you conclude that the organisation's goals have been reached? There are still oil spills, still companies dumping toxic chemicals all over the place, and climate change is still an issue.
Games players are second only to car enthusiasts for the rabid inability to accept that there might be any way in which their hobby is actually a bad thing in any sphere of life. I love gaming, but I know full well that my gaming PC is the #1 most inefficient and expensive to run piece of hardware in my entire house (cooking and heating may sue mroe energy, but they are essential for my survival and not on 12 hours a day like the PC).
Personally, I'm 100% in favour of hardware companies being pressured to make energy efficient video cards, CPU's and consoles. This can only be a good thing, unless of course, your mom is currently paying your electricity bills.
"In the UK, the BBC is trying to promote the virtues of Islam while at the same time promoting anti-Christian material"
That's pure bullshit. I listened only this morning to a BBC paid interviewer calling islamic law 'barbaric and sickening' on the most listened to political radio program in the country. The BBC is not anti-christian either, In fact kits forced by law to have pro-religious views interrupt that same radio program EVERY DAY.
I can criticise my government quite openly in the UK, on the TV, radio, the web, anywhere. It seems we always hear about kids and teachers being investigated by the FBI for wearing 'bush sucks' t shirts or other silly things. that just does not happen here. One old guy was thrown out of a labour party conference for showing dissent and it was major national news. At no point was he tasered...
Trying to build a 3D interface that will 'simplify' our storage of data is just bollocks. I know where pretty much everything on my PC is. All my documents live in a sensible directory structure, and even if I lsoe one, I can do a desktop search. In the real world, I'm very confused. where is that letter? is it on my desk? in the desk drawer? downstairs on the bookcase? did I leave it in the car? in a kitchen drawer maybe? is that it? is it upside down? I don't recognise it without a filename...
My simple 2D desktop filing system is better than my real life one. don't try and make things worse just so we all need a 3D card to list our documents.
it's not. but to spin every case as being like that, when the truth 9as we aLL know) is that there are just thousands of companies using warezed copies of software is just delusional. The BSA exist for a good reason. They shouldn't prosecute in cases like those you describe, but they sure as hell should where there is blatant piracy.
How is prosecuting people for stealing your software 'extortion'? This is taking the slashdot pro-piracy meme too far. I run a (one man) company, I use legit software. It can cost a lot, but you weigh up the pros and cons and you buy it. Poser cost me $600 plus maybe another $300 of add ons. Its the cost of doing business. It's no different to paying for the desk, my PC, the heater in my home office or the phone bill.
I have zero sympathy for small businesses that would try and undercut me by stealing software. Fuck em. let them be prosecuted. It's not like people really do not realise that photoshop or visual studio isn't freeware.
I'm all for slashdot readers posting about how companies should use open source free software so they don't have to deal with this, but how can you defend people who KNOW there are free alternatives, but decide to steal a copy of an office suite anyway...
It doesn't sound like they deliberately delay anything, just that good customers get to the top of the queue. I'm not at all surprised by this. If you sell widgets and have 2 emails in you inbox, one from a guy who orders a widget each Christmas, and one from that guy who buys about 36 a week, whose do you reply to first? They are just automating the system.
I'd guess amazons order scheduling system is very complex and balances a variety of elements, such as:
total order value ease of scheduling that drop-off with others in the same area that day customer loyalty profit from the delivery 9is it paid delivery or a free delivery option) etc.
"The 85 metre towers with 35m blades which will make up London's first major 'wind park' have also been approved by Havering and Barking and Dagenham councils. They will provide 100% of the electricity requirements of the new assembly hall being built to produce diesel engines at the plant. "
and that was back in 2003. with electricity prices way higher, it must make even more sense now. Some people are so excitable about wanting to build nuclear power they will say anything to dismiss cheap, zero-emission and zero-waste energy systems that are proven and are much more socially acceptable than sticking a nuclear power station in the heart of a city.
really? so all those UK companies that stuck wind turbines in their car parks to power their factories and offices did so as a joke? or is it actually economically viable to do so? I'd guess the latter, as companies with the money to build big turbines normally don't throw money away. The payback time (at least in the UK) on wind power is pretty long, but still sensible if you are thinking long term. And the payback time on solar AFAIK is way way better. I'd rather stick a solar heating system on the roof and forget about it, than have new nuclear build, and the thought of owning and controlling at least part of my own energy usage appeals to me in a way that huge government-backed but privately profited-from nuclear power does not.
My vista machine copies files just as fast as XP and always has done. It also doesnt seem to have huge memory demands, and to be honest anyone who has a really shitty graphics card can just turn off the aero interface. Performance is pretty good in my experience, although startup times could be slightly faster (apparently its one thing that SP1 does fix in a big way). In my experience most people who approached vista with an open mind are very happy with it. Those who had decided to hate it before it was even released hear and see what they want to.
excellent post, wish I had mod points. I agree 100%. TPB are the worst example. they pretend to be 'fighting for freedom' whilst cashing MASSIVE checks for advertising revenue. go to the sites of their ad providers and check out the daily rates for TPB.
half a billion? no way more. heres what vince cable had to say:
"As we stand at present, every taxpayer in Britain has something approaching £900 of their money at stake in this small mortgage bank following the £24 billion loan (which excludes the less controversial £18 billion in deposit guarantees).
When Tony Blair was Prime Minister he was widely and rightly criticised for squandering £800 million on the Millennium Dome. This Prime Minister and this Chancellor have invested the equivalent of 30 Millennium Domes in this bank and we don't even have a few pop concerts to show for it.
There are some key questions for the Government to answer:
Will the Government's loan will be paid back in full, with interest, in this Parliament?
Is it true that Mr. Adam Applegarth, who led the bank into its current disaster, can expect a £2 million pension pot and generous bonuses, all underwritten by the taxpayer? How did the Government get into a position of entrusting vast sums of taxpayers' money to a man who showed his own faith in the company by selling his own shares to invest in a country mansion and a Ferrari?
What is the true total figure? We know about £24 billion from media reports, but the Government has not come clean: it has refused to give a figure, refused to confirm the media reports and refused to say whether there are even more loans than those the media discovered."
Oh jeez is this how some idiots minds work? I post in my spare time. you want to watch movies that people made half heartedly in their spare time when bored? get some fucking perspective kiddo. Lord Of The Rings was not made by 3 bored guys one afternoon. You == clueless.
the difference is that you didn't fucking write Tom Sawyer did you? you cant get it through your skull that handing someone a link to content is not the same as creating it? maybe that whole point just goes way above your head.
why the fuck would I bother? if I sit on my ass and hum to myself, some other gullible schmuck will make the magic hammer.
and that's the way we all think.... and no hammer ever gets made. Note that in my example we are all behaving 100% rationally. yeah great system, except that it totally and utterly fails. without reward for individual effort, nobody makes an effort. Would you go to work if nobody was going to pay you?
show me the freely made community produced lord of the rings movie. or bioshock game. You can't because there isn't one. Amazing though it may seem, people who get really good at something want to do it full time. if they go full time, they can produce more high quality content and everyone benefits. going full time means they need to earn money from it. that means people have to pay for it. how is this not obvious? would you really prefer to have all amateur entertainment content and NOTHING else? do you only listen to amateur bands, watch amateur movies and play amateur games? I call bullshit. You would replace 'schindlers list' with a cat video on youtube, and 'war and peace' with some blog post. Sorry, but I prefer the high quality work of professionals, and so does 99% of the planet.
jeez, I'm using a metaphor you even started for fucks sake, but hey, anonymous coward, if you cant argue the point, just hurl abuse eh? makes your side of the argument seem soooooo watertight.
holy crap, you accuse ME of using a strawman, and then you build some huge argument about eh RIAA outlawing P2p (they are not) and making it illegal to host music files (which they are not). talk about fucking irony. the RIAA are pressing for colleges to not cover the tracks of students who download copyrighted material. How can you say that's not fair? only people breaking the law and using a campus network to pirate music need fear anything. Stick to the debate on the topic, not what you wish the topic would be.
WTF? If you are a band that wants to give your music away FREE, nobody will or can stop you. If you want to sell your music for $0.01 $1 or $5 or $20 thats ENTIRELY up to you and nobody can or will prevent it happening. These are the facts. This is what I do for a living (with games, not music, but same principle). You can do it too. Right now.
Please show me evidence of how big business and the RIAA are preventing a small indie garage band selling their music direct for free. tell me how they will stop me. a direct example of how its done. Plenty of bands give away free music. None of them have been sued, intimidated, arrested or killed by the RIAA.
You are delusional if you think that any backwards-rationalising about business models can justify taking something that someone else made and distributing it without paying the price set by the creator of that content. That's just unethical, and a kick in the teeth to the guys who made the stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I make games, and 95% of my focus with a game is to make it fun, and entertaining, and popular. that used to be 100% of the focus until I made this which started getting enquiries from university teachers and students who wanted to integrate it into lessons. That game now has a number of site licenses for schools, and apparently goes down very well. The reason I think it works, is that ultimately, it's just a fun game. The game may make you think about the subject matter (politics) but it doesn't ram it down your throat. It's also not vaguely preachy, and basically tries to be neutral on all issues, which avoid antagonizing or irritating any of the players.
Democracy is popular enough for me to do a sequel (nearly done!), and this time round it does contain a whole bunch of real world statistics and background data (in wiki-style form) which is presented as additional (and optional) to the game itself. This is just like those historical RTS games which have a built in encyclopaedia. You can play Age Of Empires just for fun, but it you really want to find out a bit more about trebuchets, the game is happy to help.
that is as it should be. Games on interesting and intelligent topics that encourage the curious player to learn more. You should never ram the educational bit down the players throats. People play games for fun. If they want to do hardcore learning, they break out a textbook.
I'm sure when the net was young that .orgs had to be non profit, and .nets were ISPs, but all of that seems to have totally disappeared. I also think its a bit sad that we have .co.uk and so on, but nobody used any .us or .usa names. .com became the default URL that you had to have, with everything else being cheap and forgettable. People can tell my site is UK site and that I'm a UK company, but US companies are completely invisible, with the rush for everyone to be dotcom. I'm sure a lot of UK customers are automatically pleasantly disposed towards my company when they realise I'm a bit 'local' to them, but the same thing isn't an option in the US.
Given the ubiquity of bookmarks, hyperlinks and google, do we even need catchy domain names any more? I might have paid over the odds many years ago to get an easily remembered one, but now? who cares, people will find you with google anyway right?
Agreed 100%. I love the US, I got married there, I long to return to see Vegas and Yosemite again. But no way am I going to have my fingerprints taken and be treated like a terrorist when I'm on holiday. Not when Europe has great scenery too.
I would HATE to work in US tourism right now.
bullshit. I am not vaguely the problem. given a choice between two vaguely comparable systems, i will always buy the one with the lower power consumption. The problem is most manufacturers care so little about this issue, they dont even mention power consumption. GP are doing their bit to draw attention to such issues, and all power to them. Your attempt to polarise the issue as being "waste 1000 watts to lay cutting edge game or play monopoly" is just strawman bullshit.
entirely my point. I'm showing that greenpeace are nothing like the parent poster suggested some huge corporate beast that wanted to just sustain its own existence, despite operating in a modern day ecological nirvana that had no need for them.
Most of their staff are volunteers anyway, not exactly people trying to perpetuate their jobs.
"With all their wealth and power":
from greenpeaces 2006 annual report (freely downloadable)
Income: $14 million
Expenses: $15.5 million.
lets pick a games company:
Nintendo's net sales for the first half of this fiscal year amount to 6.08 billion USD The operating income results in 1.65 billion USD, and the net profit is the aforementioned grand total of 1.15 billion USD.
I cant really see how greenpeace are some big evil corporate bully that is wasting its powers. And exactly how do you conclude that the organisation's goals have been reached? There are still oil spills, still companies dumping toxic chemicals all over the place, and climate change is still an issue.
Games players are second only to car enthusiasts for the rabid inability to accept that there might be any way in which their hobby is actually a bad thing in any sphere of life. I love gaming, but I know full well that my gaming PC is the #1 most inefficient and expensive to run piece of hardware in my entire house (cooking and heating may sue mroe energy, but they are essential for my survival and not on 12 hours a day like the PC).
Personally, I'm 100% in favour of hardware companies being pressured to make energy efficient video cards, CPU's and consoles. This can only be a good thing, unless of course, your mom is currently paying your electricity bills.
"In the UK, the BBC is trying to promote the virtues of Islam while at the same time promoting anti-Christian material"
That's pure bullshit. I listened only this morning to a BBC paid interviewer calling islamic law 'barbaric and sickening' on the most listened to political radio program in the country. The BBC is not anti-christian either, In fact kits forced by law to have pro-religious views interrupt that same radio program EVERY DAY.
I can criticise my government quite openly in the UK, on the TV, radio, the web, anywhere. It seems we always hear about kids and teachers being investigated by the FBI for wearing 'bush sucks' t shirts or other silly things. that just does not happen here.
One old guy was thrown out of a labour party conference for showing dissent and it was major national news. At no point was he tasered...
Trying to build a 3D interface that will 'simplify' our storage of data is just bollocks.
I know where pretty much everything on my PC is. All my documents live in a sensible directory structure, and even if I lsoe one, I can do a desktop search.
In the real world, I'm very confused. where is that letter? is it on my desk? in the desk drawer? downstairs on the bookcase? did I leave it in the car? in a kitchen drawer maybe? is that it? is it upside down? I don't recognise it without a filename...
My simple 2D desktop filing system is better than my real life one. don't try and make things worse just so we all need a 3D card to list our documents.
*sigh*
do you think anyone listens to a word you type after you call them a dipshit?
There are sites (www.digg.com) for that level of discussion.
it's not. but to spin every case as being like that, when the truth 9as we aLL know) is that there are just thousands of companies using warezed copies of software is just delusional. The BSA exist for a good reason. They shouldn't prosecute in cases like those you describe, but they sure as hell should where there is blatant piracy.
How is prosecuting people for stealing your software 'extortion'?
This is taking the slashdot pro-piracy meme too far. I run a (one man) company, I use legit software. It can cost a lot, but you weigh up the pros and cons and you buy it. Poser cost me $600 plus maybe another $300 of add ons. Its the cost of doing business. It's no different to paying for the desk, my PC, the heater in my home office or the phone bill.
I have zero sympathy for small businesses that would try and undercut me by stealing software. Fuck em. let them be prosecuted. It's not like people really do not realise that photoshop or visual studio isn't freeware.
I'm all for slashdot readers posting about how companies should use open source free software so they don't have to deal with this, but how can you defend people who KNOW there are free alternatives, but decide to steal a copy of an office suite anyway...
It doesn't sound like they deliberately delay anything, just that good customers get to the top of the queue. I'm not at all surprised by this. If you sell widgets and have 2 emails in you inbox, one from a guy who orders a widget each Christmas, and one from that guy who buys about 36 a week, whose do you reply to first? They are just automating the system.
I'd guess amazons order scheduling system is very complex and balances a variety of elements, such as:
total order value
ease of scheduling that drop-off with others in the same area that day
customer loyalty
profit from the delivery 9is it paid delivery or a free delivery option)
etc.
greenwashing my ass:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3182961.stm
"The 85 metre towers with 35m blades which will make up London's first major 'wind park' have also been approved by Havering and Barking and Dagenham councils.
They will provide 100% of the electricity requirements of the new assembly hall being built to produce diesel engines at the plant. "
and that was back in 2003. with electricity prices way higher, it must make even more sense now. Some people are so excitable about wanting to build nuclear power they will say anything to dismiss cheap, zero-emission and zero-waste energy systems that are proven and are much more socially acceptable than sticking a nuclear power station in the heart of a city.
"Alt energy is such a scam"
really? so all those UK companies that stuck wind turbines in their car parks to power their factories and offices did so as a joke? or is it actually economically viable to do so? I'd guess the latter, as companies with the money to build big turbines normally don't throw money away.
The payback time (at least in the UK) on wind power is pretty long, but still sensible if you are thinking long term. And the payback time on solar AFAIK is way way better. I'd rather stick a solar heating system on the roof and forget about it, than have new nuclear build, and the thought of owning and controlling at least part of my own energy usage appeals to me in a way that huge government-backed but privately profited-from nuclear power does not.
My vista machine copies files just as fast as XP and always has done. It also doesnt seem to have huge memory demands, and to be honest anyone who has a really shitty graphics card can just turn off the aero interface.
Performance is pretty good in my experience, although startup times could be slightly faster (apparently its one thing that SP1 does fix in a big way).
In my experience most people who approached vista with an open mind are very happy with it. Those who had decided to hate it before it was even released hear and see what they want to.
excellent post, wish I had mod points. I agree 100%. TPB are the worst example. they pretend to be 'fighting for freedom' whilst cashing MASSIVE checks for advertising revenue. go to the sites of their ad providers and check out the daily rates for TPB.
please explain where this money came from?
half a billion? no way more. heres what vince cable had to say:
"As we stand at present, every taxpayer in Britain has something approaching £900 of their money at stake in this small mortgage bank following the £24 billion loan (which excludes the less controversial £18 billion in deposit guarantees).
When Tony Blair was Prime Minister he was widely and rightly criticised for squandering £800 million on the Millennium Dome. This Prime Minister and this Chancellor have invested the equivalent of 30 Millennium Domes in this bank and we don't even have a few pop concerts to show for it.
There are some key questions for the Government to answer:
Will the Government's loan will be paid back in full, with interest, in this Parliament?
Is it true that Mr. Adam Applegarth, who led the bank into its current disaster, can expect a £2 million pension pot and generous bonuses, all underwritten by the taxpayer? How did the Government get into a position of entrusting vast sums of taxpayers' money to a man who showed his own faith in the company by selling his own shares to invest in a country mansion and a Ferrari?
What is the true total figure? We know about £24 billion from media reports, but the Government has not come clean: it has refused to give a figure, refused to confirm the media reports and refused to say whether there are even more loans than those the media discovered."
Oh jeez is this how some idiots minds work? I post in my spare time. you want to watch movies that people made half heartedly in their spare time when bored?
get some fucking perspective kiddo. Lord Of The Rings was not made by 3 bored guys one afternoon.
You == clueless.
the difference is that you didn't fucking write Tom Sawyer did you? you cant get it through your skull that handing someone a link to content is not the same as creating it? maybe that whole point just goes way above your head.
why the fuck would I bother? if I sit on my ass and hum to myself, some other gullible schmuck will make the magic hammer.
and that's the way we all think.... and no hammer ever gets made. Note that in my example we are all behaving 100% rationally.
yeah great system, except that it totally and utterly fails. without reward for individual effort, nobody makes an effort. Would you go to work if nobody was going to pay you?
show me the freely made community produced lord of the rings movie. or bioshock game.
You can't because there isn't one.
Amazing though it may seem, people who get really good at something want to do it full time. if they go full time, they can produce more high quality content and everyone benefits. going full time means they need to earn money from it. that means people have to pay for it. how is this not obvious?
would you really prefer to have all amateur entertainment content and NOTHING else?
do you only listen to amateur bands, watch amateur movies and play amateur games? I call bullshit.
You would replace 'schindlers list' with a cat video on youtube, and 'war and peace' with some blog post. Sorry, but I prefer the high quality work of professionals, and so does 99% of the planet.
jeez, I'm using a metaphor you even started for fucks sake, but hey, anonymous coward, if you cant argue the point, just hurl abuse eh? makes your side of the argument seem soooooo watertight.
holy crap, you accuse ME of using a strawman, and then you build some huge argument about eh RIAA outlawing P2p (they are not) and making it illegal to host music files (which they are not). talk about fucking irony.
the RIAA are pressing for colleges to not cover the tracks of students who download copyrighted material. How can you say that's not fair? only people breaking the law and using a campus network to pirate music need fear anything.
Stick to the debate on the topic, not what you wish the topic would be.
WTF? If you are a band that wants to give your music away FREE, nobody will or can stop you. If you want to sell your music for $0.01 $1 or $5 or $20 thats ENTIRELY up to you and nobody can or will prevent it happening. These are the facts. This is what I do for a living (with games, not music, but same principle). You can do it too. Right now.
Please show me evidence of how big business and the RIAA are preventing a small indie garage band selling their music direct for free. tell me how they will stop me. a direct example of how its done. Plenty of bands give away free music. None of them have been sued, intimidated, arrested or killed by the RIAA.
You are delusional if you think that any backwards-rationalising about business models can justify taking something that someone else made and distributing it without paying the price set by the creator of that content. That's just unethical, and a kick in the teeth to the guys who made the stuff.