(ties in nicely with the whole humans only use 10 percent of their brain thing.)
Nice indeed, unless you account for the fact that the "10% of the brain" shtick is completely false. It's a popular myth that has been propagated endlessly in science fiction.
Hardcore StarWars fans: one of the most fiercely loyal, and ravenous fan-bases. They eat up anything with the starwars tag on it.
Hardcore MMORPG players: Willing to spend 2/3 of their waking lives playing a game that is largely clicking on a monster and then getting a few imaginary credits for said action.
Combine the two, and what did you expect? No matter how bad the game is (I personally think it's terrible, though I respect other opinions) people will:
A) play it
B) Spend REAL money to get imaginary status
Fools and their money, thats what i say. If sony was smart, instead of banning these sales all together, they would charge a 10% transaction fee.
Thats one thing i like about being so close to Canada. We get a couple of decent (ok like one) stations from over the river in the Detroit area that may play mostly top 40 crap, but do still include a fair bit of less well known artists. They even used to have a "home boys" show on sundays that was a couple hours of local acts only (though I dont know if they still do this or not)
Are they perfect? no, but they are a helluvalot better than any of the comercial stations I have found virtually anywhere else in the U.S.
Hopefully, Internet radio will give us a few years of service before it gets swallowed by clear channel and the like.
Nice to know that congress can get something right. Still a good sign that maybe some heads on capital hill are leveling out a bit and thinking about the long-term effects of enacting liberty-squelching legislation.
In other news, the Earth is a sphere, light is really fast and snails have shells.
Among the other leading causes of of customer dissatisfaction are:
1) Lack of Content
2) 4 bazillion patches a day
3) Easily hacked game servers
4) Exorbitant monthly rates while providing very little actual "service"
5) Server instability
6) the color yellow
I had this teacher in the 3rd grade that used to read books from the "Encyclopedia Brown" and "The Great Brain" series to us. I enjoyed them so much that I nagged my parents to take me to the library so I could read the rest of the series. Growing up, these were some of my favorite books, and along with my favorite TV show "MacGyver" I had plenty of intelligent role models. When I read these books again as an adult, they do seem a bit corny, and in retrospect, there were a lot of inconsistencies with MacGyver (and some very preachy politics) but I can't help but think the authors' hearts were in the right place at least. Characters that rely on their wits and cunning to defeat their foes has always seemed far more interesting to me then the ones that just pull out a gun or a pipe wrench when adversity arises.
Who's to say how much exposure to these characters and stories shaped the way that I look at the world? Maybe I would have been the same without them, but I can't help but thinking that you are what you eat intellectually. I'm not making a case for games and TV poisoning the youth of the world, rather I think that teaching children to actually think about things may be one of the best lessons you can give, and one of the ways to do this, is show some examples of characters that do use thier brains.
Is that all supposed to be true? I mean the facts seem ok but the structure of the piece resembles the ramblings of someone that is on waaaaay too much speed. Note for the future: Metaphors can only be stretched so far, at some point the facts need to stand on their own.
It would be interesting if it was better written, I guess that is what I am trying to say.
That is a pretty sneaky tactic. I am not sure if there is any legality to it, but it might not matter.
If they have made the claim, and they get bought out, if the company that buys them out doesn't pay the rebate you can bet that they will get sued class action style, which will cost money, bring bad PR, and so on. Even if no money is awarded, it could cost the buyer a lot of time and money.
It looks the same as the original, and has a classic mode that is... well the classic game. I think it's free ware even so its worth the download, I have hiding on my home sysyem somewhere...
I hope they do as good a job with this as the department of homeland security did with the "terror alert". Maybe we could all have little color-coded icons on our desk tops that let us know how likely we are to come under terrorist attack.
Warcraft--->direct descendent of "Dune 2:Battle for Arakkis" thats the earliest game i can think of with the whole, gather/build/attack format, I am sure someone can quote an earlier game.
Problem with your argument chief: Most artists will continue to make money the way they do now, without the RIAA overhead: they will tour and sell band merchandise
This would be nice if it was true. Some artists, the Eminems and the JLos of the world make a lot of money touring, but most artists do not. Check the last couple days worth of/. articles, there has been loads of proof posted on this and I am too lazy to reproduce it here.
Boycotting could be an effective means of driving a point home, except that most people do not care. If every person on/. stopped buying albums, the RIAA would see a loss of about, Im guessing, less than 10% overall sales. This they could quickly blame on piracy, makes some apperances on local news broadcasts to drum up anti-piracy support and jack the prices even further. Joe six-pack will then blame the tech crowd for stealing usic and forcing him to pay an extra $5 on that new Creed CD he wants.
Now a total boycott, that would hit them in the sack, but I don't have a clue how to get everybody to back it, and you need everybody, not just one demographic.
Where the blow needs to be struck, is by the artists themselves. We are not far from the day (if not there already) when an artist will be able to produce an album without a studio, and distribute it direct to fans via the web. No middle man. The RIAA's recent actions are especially going to encourage acts to start doing this. If the RIAA no longer controls the goods, then nobody is going to need to patronize them. They shirvel up like a slug caught out in the sun...
Sure Blizzard was never much of an innovater, but they are none the less a very strong developer that certainly know how to manipulate the hype machine as well as or better than they write code.
News like this, on the advent of the company branching off into new waters (starcraft: ghost, and world of war craft) starts to make me wonder whats going on over there. I would hate to see them turn into another "me too" developer and get absorbed by EA or Faux Atari.
Hacking AN X-Box hurts no-one other than a convicted monopoly company that's using it's extreme wealth to prop up a product that would have gone down the drain by now if it had come from anyone else a 'la dreamcast.
To be honest, I don't think that the modding is really even hurting MS. They expected to take it up the pooper so to speak on the x-box, and thats what they are getting.
I think blaming moders for loses is in the same league as the RIAA blaming piracy for all of the recording industries ills; It gives them something they can tell the stock holders to explain why the industry has had less than perfect performance.
Sure its definately cool, but its scary too. Imagine directions being constantly spoken into your ear as you perform your job.
Human beings are not efficent organisms, neither in chemistry or psychology. You can't expect a human to act like a machine, something has got to give.
I tried playing that game years ago, during one of its numerous free betas (shouldn't they have to move into gamma, delta and epsilon testing eventually?) and I could never get into it.
It was ugly, clunky, and boring. You beat up deer and goblins and once in a while, somebody would demand free items or your undying allegiance in broken english "you give item!!!!!!!!!!! you Swear to me now!!!!!!" and the worst part of it, was that the Koreans playing it, knew english better than most of the english speakers.
Slashdot Mirror
(ties in nicely with the whole humans only use 10 percent of their brain thing.)
Nice indeed, unless you account for the fact that the "10% of the brain" shtick is completely false. It's a popular myth that has been propagated endlessly in science fiction.
Hardcore StarWars fans: one of the most fiercely loyal, and ravenous fan-bases. They eat up anything with the starwars tag on it.
Hardcore MMORPG players: Willing to spend 2/3 of their waking lives playing a game that is largely clicking on a monster and then getting a few imaginary credits for said action.
Combine the two, and what did you expect? No matter how bad the game is (I personally think it's terrible, though I respect other opinions) people will:
A) play it
B) Spend REAL money to get imaginary status
Fools and their money, thats what i say. If sony was smart, instead of banning these sales all together, they would charge a 10% transaction fee.
Thats one thing i like about being so close to Canada. We get a couple of decent (ok like one) stations from over the river in the Detroit area that may play mostly top 40 crap, but do still include a fair bit of less well known artists. They even used to have a "home boys" show on sundays that was a couple hours of local acts only (though I dont know if they still do this or not)
Are they perfect? no, but they are a helluvalot better than any of the comercial stations I have found virtually anywhere else in the U.S.
Hopefully, Internet radio will give us a few years of service before it gets swallowed by clear channel and the like.
Nice to know that congress can get something right. Still a good sign that maybe some heads on capital hill are leveling out a bit and thinking about the long-term effects of enacting liberty-squelching legislation.
I could just be overly optimistic though.
Bravo! That was some great detective work there.
In other news, the Earth is a sphere, light is really fast and snails have shells.
Among the other leading causes of of customer dissatisfaction are:
1) Lack of Content
2) 4 bazillion patches a day
3) Easily hacked game servers
4) Exorbitant monthly rates while providing very little actual "service"
5) Server instability
6) the color yellow
I had this teacher in the 3rd grade that used to read books from the "Encyclopedia Brown" and "The Great Brain" series to us. I enjoyed them so much that I nagged my parents to take me to the library so I could read the rest of the series. Growing up, these were some of my favorite books, and along with my favorite TV show "MacGyver" I had plenty of intelligent role models. When I read these books again as an adult, they do seem a bit corny, and in retrospect, there were a lot of inconsistencies with MacGyver (and some very preachy politics) but I can't help but think the authors' hearts were in the right place at least. Characters that rely on their wits and cunning to defeat their foes has always seemed far more interesting to me then the ones that just pull out a gun or a pipe wrench when adversity arises.
Who's to say how much exposure to these characters and stories shaped the way that I look at the world? Maybe I would have been the same without them, but I can't help but thinking that you are what you eat intellectually. I'm not making a case for games and TV poisoning the youth of the world, rather I think that teaching children to actually think about things may be one of the best lessons you can give, and one of the ways to do this, is show some examples of characters that do use thier brains.
Is that all supposed to be true? I mean the facts seem ok but the structure of the piece resembles the ramblings of someone that is on waaaaay too much speed. Note for the future: Metaphors can only be stretched so far, at some point the facts need to stand on their own.
It would be interesting if it was better written, I guess that is what I am trying to say.
Hey! anybody got cheat codes for the new 1.98 patch?
Why the Windows requirement? Is that really going to make online voting secure?"
BR> Srcurity is not the issue, all kidding aside.
the issue is the implications of a MS sanctioned election.
That is a pretty sneaky tactic. I am not sure if there is any legality to it, but it might not matter.
If they have made the claim, and they get bought out, if the company that buys them out doesn't pay the rebate you can bet that they will get sued class action style, which will cost money, bring bad PR, and so on. Even if no money is awarded, it could cost the buyer a lot of time and money.
um yeah, real clever story there, why don't you post it another 12 times in the same thread....
Idiots
It looks the same as the original, and has a classic mode that is... well the classic game. I think it's free ware even so its worth the download, I have hiding on my home sysyem somewhere...
I hope they do as good a job with this as the department of homeland security did with the "terror alert". Maybe we could all have little color-coded icons on our desk tops that let us know how likely we are to come under terrorist attack.
Diablo--->Modern online version of "NetHACK"
Warcraft--->direct descendent of "Dune 2:Battle for Arakkis" thats the earliest game i can think of with the whole, gather/build/attack format, I am sure someone can quote an earlier game.
Problem with your argument chief:
/. articles, there has been loads of proof posted on this and I am too lazy to reproduce it here.
/. stopped buying albums, the RIAA would see a loss of about, Im guessing, less than 10% overall sales. This they could quickly blame on piracy, makes some apperances on local news broadcasts to drum up anti-piracy support and jack the prices even further. Joe six-pack will then blame the tech crowd for stealing usic and forcing him to pay an extra $5 on that new Creed CD he wants.
Most artists will continue to make money the way they do now, without the RIAA overhead: they will tour and sell band merchandise
This would be nice if it was true. Some artists, the Eminems and the JLos of the world make a lot of money touring, but most artists do not. Check the last couple days worth of
Boycotting could be an effective means of driving a point home, except that most people do not care. If every person on
Now a total boycott, that would hit them in the sack, but I don't have a clue how to get everybody to back it, and you need everybody, not just one demographic.
Where the blow needs to be struck, is by the artists themselves. We are not far from the day (if not there already) when an artist will be able to produce an album without a studio, and distribute it direct to fans via the web. No middle man. The RIAA's recent actions are especially going to encourage acts to start doing this. If the RIAA no longer controls the goods, then nobody is going to need to patronize them. They shirvel up like a slug caught out in the sun...
Nothing is worse than somebody who is too stupid to realize that their 15 minutes are up.
Gettin kinda spooky over there...
Sure Blizzard was never much of an innovater, but they are none the less a very strong developer that certainly know how to manipulate the hype machine as well as or better than they write code.
News like this, on the advent of the company branching off into new waters (starcraft: ghost, and world of war craft) starts to make me wonder whats going on over there. I would hate to see them turn into another "me too" developer and get absorbed by EA or Faux Atari.
Hacking AN X-Box hurts no-one other than a convicted monopoly company that's using it's extreme wealth to prop up a product that would have gone down the drain by now if it had come from anyone else a 'la dreamcast.
To be honest, I don't think that the modding is really even hurting MS. They expected to take it up the pooper so to speak on the x-box, and thats what they are getting.
I think blaming moders for loses is in the same league as the RIAA blaming piracy for all of the recording industries ills; It gives them something they can tell the stock holders to explain why the industry has had less than perfect performance.
Don't forget the whalers...
Sweet!
My career as a Solar Pirate is looking more promising everyday
Yarrr!
I know it's not basic, its a quote from a TV show and I took a few liberties with the syntax since the message is universal in all languages
See it works on many levels.
Pakistan.... is that anything like Pokemon?
Sure its definately cool, but its scary too. Imagine directions being constantly spoken into your ear as you perform your job.
Human beings are not efficent organisms, neither in chemistry or psychology. You can't expect a human to act like a machine, something has got to give.
The you are sure going to be pissed when Atari releases "Birth of a Nation: the lost missions" next month...
I tried playing that game years ago, during one of its numerous free betas (shouldn't they have to move into gamma, delta and epsilon testing eventually?) and I could never get into it.
It was ugly, clunky, and boring. You beat up deer and goblins and once in a while, somebody would demand free items or your undying allegiance in broken english "you give item!!!!!!!!!!! you Swear to me now!!!!!!" and the worst part of it, was that the Koreans playing it, knew english better than most of the english speakers.