I don't think the restrictions are off base if your business really does depend on keeping information secret. But, realistically, a determined spy is still likely to get the info, so depending on how policy is implemented, it could turn loyal employees into disgruntled workers who will no longer care about keeping company secrets.
The underlying truth is that information is universal. If you thought of something, then there is no reason that someone else couldn't have thought of the same thing, or won't think of it in the future. That being the case, it would pay to plan for that day when your secrets are no longer secret. In the financial information game in particular, the money is made in that little gap of time before the rest of world learns what you already know. When that happens, it's time to learn/create something new. If companies don't plan for this, they'll die.
The Slate article was very interesting. At the very least, it looks like Phantom is going to be an honest effort. I still don't believe that it will be wildly successful though, but not because of the model itself. Subscribable games would be kind of like Pay Per View. But my Grandma could buy a PPV movie without too much trouble, I don't think that using the Phantom service is likely to be that easy.
The underlying problem is the reliance on PC games for content. Those games were not made with this kind of use in mind which leaves lots of room for trouble. The other problem is that the market they claim to be aiming for, probably doesn't have broadband. Casual gamers can use the current generation of consoles without too much trouble or additional expense. I just don't see that with the Phantom. Why should a casual gamer bother with Phantom?
As always, I reserve the right to be utterly and completely wrong! In any case this should be interesting to watch. Hopefully Phantom doesn't turn out to be something akin to "The Producers".
The real question for me is will the new series have that wonderful "cheap" look that endeared many of us with the old one. Seriously, Dr. Who was what I'd watch to let my hair down after Star Trek. The cheesy sets were part of the fun, and left some room for the story to be more than it often is in the sfx laden features we have today. This is somewhat analogous to the old 8-bit video games days,when the gameplay had to be king because the hardware was so weak by today's standards.
In any case, I'll miss those shrill screams of "Exterminate! Exterminate!! EX-TER-MI-NATE!!!"
Laws to restrict technology exports like this are indicative of typical U.S. arrogance. We think that we are the only country with smart people. Why is it that if the rest of the world is smart enough for our corporations to export skilled tech jobs, then they aren't smart enough to design and build cpus and cluster them together to build supercomputers?
It really scares me sometimes that such short-sighted, arrogant people are running our country.
At this point the cancellation of yet another MMO effort isn't really news anymore. This can be attributed to a number of things, but two of the most important may be
1. The great expense of MMO development and support
2. Consolidation within the games industry
The first is pretty obvious as it takes millions of dollars and almost as many years (it seems) to develop an MMORPG. Then it takes money for servers and bandwidth to support the game.
The second is important because consolidation means less competition. This makes it easier for companies like EA and LucasArts to cancel even hotly anticipated titles.
So I pose the question (probably not original), will fans have to band together to create and support their own MMO's? The development of such games is no small task, but if the development of FPS mods and total conversions is any clue, then there is talent and dedication out there for this task. Next if a distributed support model can be developed wherin gamers and other interested parties donate computing resources in some kind of Seti At Home meets BitTorrent sort of fashion, then the effort could be successful.
Yeah, its pie in the sky, but we seem to be on the road to only a few MMOs to choose from. So as time goes on, DIY may be the way to go.
A cross platform browser plugin spec is a good idea and the timing is pretty good. The publicity that IE's security issues are getting, is opening up a window of opportunity for the major competing browsers. MS knows that this is getting serious because they are reconstituting their IE development division. If MS is smart, they'll get on board with this asap. That would look good to the DOJ and EU too and realistically it really won't threaten their browser dominance. It'd be good PR and could IMHO jump start their development efforts.
Metisse looks like a good start, but I'm still waiting for the QWM using the Quake engine. Imagine being able to take any cool Quake map and organize your stuff in it! This would make file deletes a lot more fun too, if you get my meaning!
Seriously, in such a system you could create rooms for objects of different types and navigate to them using your 1337 fps skillz. Or if you're lazy or suffer motion sickness you could send a bot to go find the stuff and bring it back. The bot would of course be customizable, so you could make it look like a dog (Rover skin), a butler (Jeeves skin), or your wife/girlfriend/so (skin skin)....
Hmm, if ice accumulation is the problem then there are a couple of things they could do. One build a strong structure well anchored in the ground. Two, build the outer cover out of something that the snow and ice would have trouble sticking to.
If the snow can stick, then the problem of accumulation is reduced without the use of more expensive measures. The surface could either consist of some kind of composite or a structural arrangement that makes it hard for snow to accumulate. In particular, I think the base will need to be very well insulated to such a degree that snow landing on the outside surface will not be melted by heat within the base. That should further aid its slipperiness with respect to snow and ice. Anyway you slice it though, very expensive. The harsh weather conditions will also dictate that much of this base will be prefab and then quickly assembled on site.
Seriously! One reason for failing in Japan was the lack of uniquely Japanese content, such as so called dating sims (Ren Ai games), various board games, work sims, and the oddball title here or there (think of Seaman). In addition to the absence of Japanese style RPGs. The other reason was that the darn thing was just too big and ugly for Japanese tastes.
With a stable of local developers given a free hand to create games for the Japanese market and a redesigned console, they have a chance. Why is the Japanese market important? Well, even with game sales in decline there right now, it's still a lot of money on the table. Not only that, you can't really say you've been successful unless you can make it in Japan which in many ways is still the center of the video gaming universe. And that has implications for getting the best developers to write games for your platform which means more royalties for you.
Aye, seriously, IE may really be in trouble as the constant exploits force a lot of organizations to reconsider often IE only situations. At some point, someone really important is going to be bitten by these persistent IE bugs, then we'll see some high profile lawsuits (and maybe a real test of the EULA). For all we know, MS may have already had to shell out millions in under the table settlements because of IE holes that they knew about and have decided not to fix.
For my part, I added a Get Firefox button to my site a month or two ago when I started using it as my default browser. Version 0.8 was pretty good, then 0.9 even better. I may try out 0.9.1 tomorrow.:-)
I think that part of the motivation for making the beta of the so called "hobbyist" tools free is to prime the pump with a new generation of Windows developers. The full professional version of Visual Studio.Net is fairly expensive for a teenager or college student (school discounts not withstanding). So making something a free download should rope in the some of those budding programmers who in MS's view would otherwise cut their teeth on OSS tools and platforms.
Most of the/.ers here are not going to be swayed by this, but the kids are another story. A good part of the success of Microsoft and Windows is because of good tools that were well promoted. With the great interest in OSS these days, MS has to work harder for mindshare. So don't be too surprised if the final pricing is something like $49.99 and lower with student discounts and such. And of course, an easy upgrade path to the professional tools.
This is really cool. This is the first attempt that I've seen by any state government to deliver some really useful technology to their citizens. Heck, I'm happy just being able to pay parking tickets online, this SimIndiana has online productivity apps for gosh sakes!
While I'm sure they'll get the usual criticism, I admire and salute their attempt to deliver something truly useful to the good people of Indiana. The only real problem I see with this is reaching the many people who don't have access to the technology needed to use SimIndiana. In the future it may be very useful to provide similar services that can be accessed via cel phone. Afterall, these days everyone and their grandma has a cel phone.
From what I've heard in the past, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Kim Jung-Il is an avid gamer.Yeah, he's kinda nutz too, but he actually does seem to pay attention to pop culture and such. Heck, he may be playing copy of Ghost Recon 2 right now. I'll bet he beats his homies all the time, or else!
Interesting. I wondew how much of the South Korean MMO scene is due to the culture there? That would make an interesting study. The main thing though, is the variety of play that you mentioned. For better or worse, the $40 box/download plus monthly fee is probably here to stay. It's just too expensive to operate the servers unless money is coming in up front. And until broadband becomes more prevalent and cheaper in the US (oddly enough SK has very high BB penetration), the market for MMOs will be restricted.
There have to be alternatives to the levelling treadmill. And there needs to be fresh content that all/most players can take part in on a regular basis. I'm a FFXI level 12 dilettante, mainly due to time constraints. But I'm still having a good time because there's new stuff on a regular basis and a lot of things to do other than killing monsters. Another MMO that may be getting it right is City of Heroes, which makes it very easy to jump right in and do interesting things. And COH makes it easy to hook up and play with friends regardless of player level with the sidekick function.
As others have mentioned, the revenue from advertising is very likely the primary motivation for making sure that people use the Yahoo! client instead of some other. Also note that in boosting email storage to 2GB for subscribers to premium Yahoo! services, Yahoo! also removed the online ads for those users. Well, those lost ads have to be made up for somewhere. So I guess their just tightening things up a bit.
Just for completeness, it is possible that they have technical reasons for changing the protocol too. Maybe the new one is more secure or runs better on their servers, yadda yadda. But without further comment from Yahoo!, I'm going with revenue enhancement.
Hmm, playing baseball is fun, watching it on TV is not, at least for me. But it is still a sport. Would I pay to watch the best CS players in some sort of virtual arena? Maybe. I think that if gaming continues to rake in money on the order of Hollywood and becomes more mainstream, eventually it will attract major sponsors. Once that happens, it may be recognized as a sport. Or not, afterall, my favorite sport, NASCAR auto racing, has loads of big money sponsors, but many still don't consider it to be a real sport. Oh well...
The passing of Comdex kinda reminds me of when the Playboy Clubs in North America closed down back in the early 1980s (I think). It's the passing of an era, which in itself is not a bad thing. Things change and evolve and there's always the next big thing on the horizon.
Comdex was killed by a number of things. The internet makes physically attending shows less necessary. Not only that with so many thousands of IT jobs sent overseas, many of those who might have attended in the past are no longer in IT at all. And the current generation of technology (I know, not well defined) has matured somewhat. There just isn't much in the way of mind blowing, paradigm shifting technologies that demand a Comdex. And heck, the consumer tech oriented shows like CES or E3 are more fun!
Will Comdex really be back? Who knows? I won't cry if it isn't because when the time is right, something new and exciting will arrive on the scene. Afterall, the Playboy Club is still gone, but now we have Hooters!;-) Buh-dump dump!
Over the last week or so, there have been a lot of XBox 2 related stories and now this "leak". I wonder if Microsoft is leaking all of this information to A) keep XBox in the news during a quiet summer and B) get some free advice from the community of interested gamers. Given its PC roots, I'd be willing to guess that XBox gamers are more technically knowledgeable as a group compared to other console gamers. If this is true, then their opinions with respect to XBox 2 specs could be valuable.
As I'm sure others have said in the past, ultimately the best way to eradicate spyware is to punish the companies that benefit from it in the marketplace. If we as consumers simply refuse to patronize companies that use such distasteful marketing methods, spyware would just shrivel up. Those of us who are knowledgable should spread the word and make those paying the spyware makers regret it.
Spyware, like spam, fluorishes because there is money to be made. There's no room in our capitalist system for morals, privacy, or common courtesy. But if lacking these starts to hurt in the pocketbook, then we'll see some progress.
Well I liked the sample tracks so I just bought it on AtariAge! Feels good to support independent artists, not to mention finding a place to get new games for my 2600.:-)
Absolutely! I started in my own office and it was great. Then I ended up in cubicle land and it sucked! It always felt like people were looking over my shoulder, though some of those people were rather attractive ladies so I didn't mind too much. Still it was pretty distracting, especially when I had to use the phone, or needed to meet with people.
Now I'm back in my own office and it's great. I feel a lot more productive and have fewer unwanted distractions. I miss the ladies on the other floor, but I get more work done with less stress.
Nice work, but hasn't Transgaming heard that PC gaming is dead?:-) Call me back when I can play XBox and PS2 games under Linux!
Seriously, if Transgaming can make money with WineX, then more power to them. They may only be serving a small niche, but if Apple has taught us anything, it's that niches can be profitable if you're smart. Go Transgaming!
With all of these tiny cell phones and people broadcasting their lives to the world as they talk, I'll have to wear my iPod all of the time just to be polite and respect their privacy! Oh well, at least I won't be able to hear the panhandlers...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the restrictions are off base if your business really does depend on keeping information secret. But, realistically, a determined spy is still likely to get the info, so depending on how policy is implemented, it could turn loyal employees into disgruntled workers who will no longer care about keeping company secrets.
The underlying truth is that information is universal. If you thought of something, then there is no reason that someone else couldn't have thought of the same thing, or won't think of it in the future. That being the case, it would pay to plan for that day when your secrets are no longer secret. In the financial information game in particular, the money is made in that little gap of time before the rest of world learns what you already know. When that happens, it's time to learn/create something new. If companies don't plan for this, they'll die.
The Slate article was very interesting. At the very least, it looks like Phantom is going to be an honest effort. I still don't believe that it will be wildly successful though, but not because of the model itself. Subscribable games would be kind of like Pay Per View. But my Grandma could buy a PPV movie without too much trouble, I don't think that using the Phantom service is likely to be that easy.
The underlying problem is the reliance on PC games for content. Those games were not made with this kind of use in mind which leaves lots of room for trouble. The other problem is that the market they claim to be aiming for, probably doesn't have broadband. Casual gamers can use the current generation of consoles without too much trouble or additional expense. I just don't see that with the Phantom. Why should a casual gamer bother with Phantom?
As always, I reserve the right to be utterly and completely wrong! In any case this should be interesting to watch. Hopefully Phantom doesn't turn out to be something akin to "The Producers".
The real question for me is will the new series have that wonderful "cheap" look that endeared many of us with the old one. Seriously, Dr. Who was what I'd watch to let my hair down after Star Trek. The cheesy sets were part of the fun, and left some room for the story to be more than it often is in the sfx laden features we have today. This is somewhat analogous to the old 8-bit video games days,when the gameplay had to be king because the hardware was so weak by today's standards.
In any case, I'll miss those shrill screams of "Exterminate! Exterminate!! EX-TER-MI-NATE!!!"
Laws to restrict technology exports like this are indicative of typical U.S. arrogance. We think that we are the only country with smart people. Why is it that if the rest of the world is smart enough for our corporations to export skilled tech jobs, then they aren't smart enough to design and build cpus and cluster them together to build supercomputers?
It really scares me sometimes that such short-sighted, arrogant people are running our country.
Cool!
At this point the cancellation of yet another MMO effort isn't really news anymore. This can be attributed to a number of things, but two of the most important may be
1. The great expense of MMO development and support
2. Consolidation within the games industry
The first is pretty obvious as it takes millions of dollars and almost as many years (it seems) to develop an MMORPG. Then it takes money for servers and bandwidth to support the game.
The second is important because consolidation means less competition. This makes it easier for companies like EA and LucasArts to cancel even hotly anticipated titles.
So I pose the question (probably not original), will fans have to band together to create and support their own MMO's? The development of such games is no small task, but if the development of FPS mods and total conversions is any clue, then there is talent and dedication out there for this task. Next if a distributed support model can be developed wherin gamers and other interested parties donate computing resources in some kind of Seti At Home meets BitTorrent sort of fashion, then the effort could be successful.
Yeah, its pie in the sky, but we seem to be on the road to only a few MMOs to choose from. So as time goes on, DIY may be the way to go.
A cross platform browser plugin spec is a good idea and the timing is pretty good. The publicity that IE's security issues are getting, is opening up a window of opportunity for the major competing browsers. MS knows that this is getting serious because they are reconstituting their IE development division. If MS is smart, they'll get on board with this asap. That would look good to the DOJ and EU too and realistically it really won't threaten their browser dominance. It'd be good PR and could IMHO jump start their development efforts.
Metisse looks like a good start, but I'm still waiting for the QWM using the Quake engine. Imagine being able to take any cool Quake map and organize your stuff in it! This would make file deletes a lot more fun too, if you get my meaning!
Seriously, in such a system you could create rooms for objects of different types and navigate to them using your 1337 fps skillz. Or if you're lazy or suffer motion sickness you could send a bot to go find the stuff and bring it back. The bot would of course be customizable, so you could make it look like a dog (Rover skin), a butler (Jeeves skin), or your wife/girlfriend/so (skin skin)....
And don't forget,
So long Spam Cowboy!
Hmm, if ice accumulation is the problem then there are a couple of things they could do. One build a strong structure well anchored in the ground. Two, build the outer cover out of something that the snow and ice would have trouble sticking to.
If the snow can stick, then the problem of accumulation is reduced without the use of more expensive measures. The surface could either consist of some kind of composite or a structural arrangement that makes it hard for snow to accumulate. In particular, I think the base will need to be very well insulated to such a degree that snow landing on the outside surface will not be melted by heat within the base. That should further aid its slipperiness with respect to snow and ice. Anyway you slice it though, very expensive. The harsh weather conditions will also dictate that much of this base will be prefab and then quickly assembled on site.
Seriously! One reason for failing in Japan was the lack of uniquely Japanese content, such as so called dating sims (Ren Ai games), various board games, work sims, and the oddball title here or there (think of Seaman). In addition to the absence of Japanese style RPGs. The other reason was that the darn thing was just too big and ugly for Japanese tastes.
With a stable of local developers given a free hand to create games for the Japanese market and a redesigned console, they have a chance. Why is the Japanese market important? Well, even with game sales in decline there right now, it's still a lot of money on the table. Not only that, you can't really say you've been successful unless you can make it in Japan which in many ways is still the center of the video gaming universe. And that has implications for getting the best developers to write games for your platform which means more royalties for you.
So bring on the Dating Sims!
Aye, seriously, IE may really be in trouble as the constant exploits force a lot of organizations to reconsider often IE only situations. At some point, someone really important is going to be bitten by these persistent IE bugs, then we'll see some high profile lawsuits (and maybe a real test of the EULA). For all we know, MS may have already had to shell out millions in under the table settlements because of IE holes that they knew about and have decided not to fix.
:-)
For my part, I added a Get Firefox button to my site a month or two ago when I started using it as my default browser. Version 0.8 was pretty good, then 0.9 even better. I may try out 0.9.1 tomorrow.
I think that part of the motivation for making the beta of the so called "hobbyist" tools free is to prime the pump with a new generation of Windows developers. The full professional version of Visual Studio .Net is fairly expensive for a teenager or college student (school discounts not withstanding). So making something a free download should rope in the some of those budding programmers who in MS's view would otherwise cut their teeth on OSS tools and platforms.
/.ers here are not going to be swayed by this, but the kids are another story. A good part of the success of Microsoft and Windows is because of good tools that were well promoted. With the great interest in OSS these days, MS has to work harder for mindshare. So don't be too surprised if the final pricing is something like $49.99 and lower with student discounts and such. And of course, an easy upgrade path to the professional tools.
Most of the
This is really cool. This is the first attempt that I've seen by any state government to deliver some really useful technology to their citizens. Heck, I'm happy just being able to pay parking tickets online, this SimIndiana has online productivity apps for gosh sakes!
While I'm sure they'll get the usual criticism, I admire and salute their attempt to deliver something truly useful to the good people of Indiana. The only real problem I see with this is reaching the many people who don't have access to the technology needed to use SimIndiana. In the future it may be very useful to provide similar services that can be accessed via cel phone. Afterall, these days everyone and their grandma has a cel phone.
Again, Kudos to Indiana!
From what I've heard in the past, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Kim Jung-Il is an avid gamer.Yeah, he's kinda nutz too, but he actually does seem to pay attention to pop culture and such. Heck, he may be playing copy of Ghost Recon 2 right now. I'll bet he beats his homies all the time, or else!
Interesting. I wondew how much of the South Korean MMO scene is due to the culture there? That would make an interesting study. The main thing though, is the variety of play that you mentioned. For better or worse, the $40 box/download plus monthly fee is probably here to stay. It's just too expensive to operate the servers unless money is coming in up front. And until broadband becomes more prevalent and cheaper in the US (oddly enough SK has very high BB penetration), the market for MMOs will be restricted.
There have to be alternatives to the levelling treadmill. And there needs to be fresh content that all/most players can take part in on a regular basis. I'm a FFXI level 12 dilettante, mainly due to time constraints. But I'm still having a good time because there's new stuff on a regular basis and a lot of things to do other than killing monsters. Another MMO that may be getting it right is City of Heroes, which makes it very easy to jump right in and do interesting things. And COH makes it easy to hook up and play with friends regardless of player level with the sidekick function.
As others have mentioned, the revenue from advertising is very likely the primary motivation for making sure that people use the Yahoo! client instead of some other. Also note that in boosting email storage to 2GB for subscribers to premium Yahoo! services, Yahoo! also removed the online ads for those users. Well, those lost ads have to be made up for somewhere. So I guess their just tightening things up a bit.
Just for completeness, it is possible that they have technical reasons for changing the protocol too. Maybe the new one is more secure or runs better on their servers, yadda yadda. But without further comment from Yahoo!, I'm going with revenue enhancement.
Hmm, playing baseball is fun, watching it on TV is not, at least for me. But it is still a sport. Would I pay to watch the best CS players in some sort of virtual arena? Maybe. I think that if gaming continues to rake in money on the order of Hollywood and becomes more mainstream, eventually it will attract major sponsors. Once that happens, it may be recognized as a sport. Or not, afterall, my favorite sport, NASCAR auto racing, has loads of big money sponsors, but many still don't consider it to be a real sport. Oh well...
The passing of Comdex kinda reminds me of when the Playboy Clubs in North America closed down back in the early 1980s (I think). It's the passing of an era, which in itself is not a bad thing. Things change and evolve and there's always the next big thing on the horizon.
;-) Buh-dump dump!
Comdex was killed by a number of things. The internet makes physically attending shows less necessary. Not only that with so many thousands of IT jobs sent overseas, many of those who might have attended in the past are no longer in IT at all. And the current generation of technology (I know, not well defined) has matured somewhat. There just isn't much in the way of mind blowing, paradigm shifting technologies that demand a Comdex. And heck, the consumer tech oriented shows like CES or E3 are more fun!
Will Comdex really be back? Who knows? I won't cry if it isn't because when the time is right, something new and exciting will arrive on the scene. Afterall, the Playboy Club is still gone, but now we have Hooters!
Over the last week or so, there have been a lot of XBox 2 related stories and now this "leak". I wonder if Microsoft is leaking all of this information to A) keep XBox in the news during a quiet summer and B) get some free advice from the community of interested gamers. Given its PC roots, I'd be willing to guess that XBox gamers are more technically knowledgeable as a group compared to other console gamers. If this is true, then their opinions with respect to XBox 2 specs could be valuable.
As I'm sure others have said in the past, ultimately the best way to eradicate spyware is to punish the companies that benefit from it in the marketplace. If we as consumers simply refuse to patronize companies that use such distasteful marketing methods, spyware would just shrivel up. Those of us who are knowledgable should spread the word and make those paying the spyware makers regret it.
Spyware, like spam, fluorishes because there is money to be made. There's no room in our capitalist system for morals, privacy, or common courtesy. But if lacking these starts to hurt in the pocketbook, then we'll see some progress.
Well I liked the sample tracks so I just bought it on AtariAge! Feels good to support independent artists, not to mention finding a place to get new games for my 2600. :-)
Absolutely! I started in my own office and it was great. Then I ended up in cubicle land and it sucked! It always felt like people were looking over my shoulder, though some of those people were rather attractive ladies so I didn't mind too much. Still it was pretty distracting, especially when I had to use the phone, or needed to meet with people.
Now I'm back in my own office and it's great. I feel a lot more productive and have fewer unwanted distractions. I miss the ladies on the other floor, but I get more work done with less stress.
Nice work, but hasn't Transgaming heard that PC gaming is dead? :-) Call me back when I can play XBox and PS2 games under Linux!
Seriously, if Transgaming can make money with WineX, then more power to them. They may only be serving a small niche, but if Apple has taught us anything, it's that niches can be profitable if you're smart. Go Transgaming!
With all of these tiny cell phones and people broadcasting their lives to the world as they talk, I'll have to wear my iPod all of the time just to be polite and respect their privacy! Oh well, at least I won't be able to hear the panhandlers...