To get people to switch you need to get them to try. To do this you need to get Linux to be 100% RISK FREE. If you don't like it you need to be able to easily uninstall and your computer will be exactly the same as before you started.
Because I have played poker with PartyGaming on our usual poker night, once a week for the past six months, and not once has it offered to buy the pretzels and beer.
"Still, Take-Two's stock trades at just 16 times fiscal 2006 estimates, a steep discount to top rivals Electronic Arts , Activision and THQ."
Perhaps it's just stemming from the idea that Take-Two is a proverbial new kid on the block compared to its three "top rivals," but the comparison being made here is to game companies with far more history, money, and market clout behind them. Has the GTA series taken off since GTA3? Sure it has. Is this good for Take-Two? Sure it is. But is the idea that Take-Two is being offered for a discount "surprising?" I don't think so. Here's a very brief comparison:
Activision: Pitfall, Quake II/III, Doom 3, Spider-Man, Tony Hawk Series
THQ: Rights to WCW, then WWE wrestling games (and I'm sure a couple of +5 funnies will come off of responses to this, but you know as well as I do that the market slice that buys wrestling games will do so pretty religiously)
EA:...do you need me to list some of these? Madden series, SSX, NBA/NFL Street, all the other sports games under their control, Burnout series, and, oh yeah, THE SIMS.
Take-Two: Controls 2K Games (which has lost NFL and ESPN licenses, leaving them leaning on basketball and baseball), and Rockstar (Max Payne, GTA series)
Now. I'm sure I risk again getting hounded because the list isn't complete, but I don't mean for it to be. This is a list of strong titles for all 4 groups. It wouldn't surprise me if Take-Two overtook THQ within the next few years, given that THQ's WWE licensing agreement runs out in 2009, but for now? It's a pretty serious statement of the obvious; quirky titles like Manhunt and State of Emergency are not enough to push the GTA-fueled machine into software juggernaut status.
GameOgre's list is missing the platformer recently covered by Slashdot and resurrected by enthusiasts, Castle Infinity. Though they do request donations.
A crucial part of the new arrangements will be advertising. In-game ads are a fast-growing revenue stream for publisher and licensors, and Silver said the NBA planned to take full advantage of the opportunity.
"In the online games, we can insert virtual signage in the same way we do during the telecasts," he (COO of NBA Entertainment) said. "As part of the reality we're going to be selling advertising in the same way we do in our arenas."
Not that this is a new idea, but is this just becoming the way of the virtual world?
It's almost understandable to rationalize by saying "Well, there's advertising all over these arenas for x and y sponsors," but at the risk of showing off a mildly offtopic example, there's no Burger King Modein most of the college basketball that I've seen.
Why does it seem like forcing the question of "Which carries more weight" nullifies the weight of the lesser side completely?
Let me go ahead and wave the flag, yes, freedom of the press is in the First Amendment, let's take a moment to celebrate the foresight of our forefathers in writing that down.
All done? All right. Now, this seems almost like intellectual tabloid reporting, in which the information is somewhat more accurate, but the "photographers" are still jumping the fence and getting onto the property in order to take the pictures that people want to see. Privacy isn't something that's constitutionally covered, either. It's just stuck under the catch-all "Unenumerated Rights" 9th Amendment that was supposed to handle everything that couldn't be thought of at the moment. Therefore, we can take any given privacy argument and toss it out as bunk, so long as we can show that the other side of the argument has some sort of constitutional backing to it. Right?
The geek public no doubt loved to have the information that it did available via hidden sources and online publications. But someone -is- spilling trade secrets. I'm really kind of surprised that Slashdotters are fighting this so hard, since it comes out of one of the relative underdog companies that so often are defended.
Anyhow, I digress. If the publishers of this info had really known that this information wasn't anywhere else, that it was as hot as they'd hoped, what do you think they were thinking? Do you think they never realized what they were doing, handling their publication in blissful ignorance? Or should any journalist just be able to say "screw trade secrets, the public needs to know!" in an effort to get a little more circulation? If they knew what they had was hot, they should have been ready for this sort of litigation.
And mine works just fine. Submit. Submit. I said submit. Why isn't this expletivedeleted thing triggering the submit button. Submit! Submit! Damn it, I have to move the mouse.
Take a look at this. Or, for an annotated version of what I'm homing in on, this comes from the above interview:
The American way is business, lawyers, all that s--- follows some cool, cultural moment. When did it, if ever, did it feel like the others guys kind of came through the door behind you and started to do whatever they did?
It's a point that's actually fairly definable. At the point when the overall take from the music business probably passes, let's say, a billion dollars -- now it's off the top of my head, the actual number you'd have to ascertain -- but there was a certain point at which the take got big enough to where the big boys got interested. They said, "Oh, wait a minute, that's some serious cash. I better go over there and rake off some of that."
When it all started, record companies -- and there were many of them, and this was a good thing -- were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music....
Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big. Somebody [in] a forensic accounting job could probably establish the exact moment at which it reached the level that brought in the sharks....
How did you know they were there?
Change in attitude, change in management, new management. You'd just be dealing with different people. You know, you'd go to a meeting with a record company and it wouldn't be a guy there who knew that you had written a new song and thought that was cool. It would be a guy who knew that he had moved 40,000 pieces out of Dallas this month, and he had no idea, pieces of what? None.
Yes, the above quote is about the music industry, and not the gaming industry. But do you see the parallel? Maybe these are ideas that most people already know, but people who see money (probably precise dollar amounts in every individual item they see) all around them can see opportunities as they come about. That's the job of CEOs and the staff around them for conglomerates like Vivendi. The gaming industry became an enormous cash cow, and so bigger companies wanted to get a piece of the pie, just like what happened in the music industry. Now that Vivendi is in, their priorities change. It isn't about Blizzard anymore, it isn't about the consumers anymore. Priority rests in the satisfaction of shareholders. You can bet that every move they make is done solidly to improve the proverbial bottom line, if they have to strangle the life out of the employees under their thumbs. The worst part is that developers get stuck in between us (as consumers) and the conglomerate, so should we try to squeeze back, they're the first to feel it and the first to suffer for it. What do we do? I don't know. But I think maybe, even if I don't have any specific information on why Vivendi is doing this, that maybe it has provided a little perspective.
So now that we have a legal, malicious attack, we'll only have to wait a few -more- years for bills to be passed to have the law catch up with some watermark of digital exploitation. Super.
While it may bring universal (nationwide?) standards to e-mailing, you know that it will be seen as a potential source of revenue.
Shortly thereafter, they'll set in place a registration system that wants you to put in a checking or credit card account with the rest of your information......and then they start taxing e-mails. A penny or two per e-mail is something the public could be cowed into, despire what we/.ers think about it, and by the time it can be adequately questioned, the public will be too accustomed to paying, the gov't too accustomed to collecting, and we'll be stuck.
I think the continued deregulation is worth risking a GMail invite or two.
But think about it; if we'd started back a lot sooner, we could've had the resurgence of the Nazis within them, and possibly without a daring-do archaeologist and absent-minded but well-meaning father to help him out along the way!
---American astronauts and spacecraft suppliers demand tremendous amounts of money for "NASA" brand supplies and missions. Venture capitalists respond by waiting no less than 10 months for generic supplies to hit the market at bargain prices (pick up a Southwest Space Shuttle today!) or by venturing to Canada to get those brand-name "NASA" parts at far less than they would from the American conglomerates of GlaxoMcDonnellDouglas and Lockheed-Merck.
However, keep in mind, the government will be bringing in subsidies for the poor and elderly to experience the wonders of spaceflight! Look for Spaceaid and Spacecare, coming soon to an aviation office near you!
They could always give you the option of buying a Windows plant, with the understanding that in x months/weeks/days, it was bound to explode due to a lack of maintenance and release tons of Blaster/Sasser/Torgo/Cowboyneal/DRM/MS Bob radiation into your surrounding markup, script and proprietary software extension zones.
My mother inadvertently combined the two suggestions above (the parent, and the comment before this one) in order to gain some programming experience many years ago.
Until I was spoiled by the spiraling world of computer graphics, I played text-based adventure games briefly on both a Radio Shack TRS-ForgotTheDigits and a Tandy 1000. The "fun" in both was determining the words that would actually get my character to do something. Each word that was used had its own specific function, both usable and sensical in specific situations.
In a way, BASIC would seem to be the same thing. A limited number of operators means that on the surface, there are only so many things to do (though we programmers know that there are about as many ways to make a computer/compiler crash as was recorded in the biggest prime number, most recently) and so many combinations to make. Once she gets the (pardon the pun) basic ideas of computer science out of the way, she could start writing little applications that did piddly little things.
For instance, my mother wrote a relative brief program that resulted in my controlling the Enterprise, exploring nearby space and eventually find Klingons to get blasted by/to almost defeat and have the program crash.
Now...good ol'Mom has reiterated time and time again that she is -not- a math person. She's very much right-brained, and was more inspired by the content of the "gameplay" that she was creating than the theory she was using to build it.
And yet, the theory was a means to an end. Try finding the right approach. Maybe see if you can dig up some old text-based games, get your mother playing those, and then edge her into QBasic. I agree that no GUI is the way to go; this will give her less functionality to be confused with. But see if you can start there, and if not, try instilling in her a love of flowcharts, introduce her to UML and see if she can build a model that you can exploit for millions of dollars.
If the movie can go from start to finish in less than 3 hours, will we see Samus in a skimpy outfit at the end, after the credits?
Re:Warning: Vaporware Company Detected
on
The Universal Card
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
So does this mean I should scale back the work on my planned competing product, the "Carte Blanche?"
On a more serious note, how much of a far-fetched idea did universal remotes appear to be when they were first being developed? While they can be a little bit cumbersome when switching between multiple devices (for those of us who still rig our cable between the VCR, satellite dish, microwave, Bose wave radio, ham radio, heat pump and Tesla coil), it still seems to be generally less hassle than having to switch between remotes to find the appropriate one(s) to use.
Of course, the likelihood of needing multiple cards at one location would be rare, but could this be just the first shot at a product that's bound to come to us eventually, anyway?
I could've sworn that I wasn't logged into this terminal when I read this article, though I thought about doing so. Then, somehow, as I left to go to a different page, then came back, I'm greeted by "Have you meta-moderated lately?"...Slashdot really is cutting edge!
Slashdot Mirror
Because I have played poker with PartyGaming on our usual poker night, once a week for the past six months, and not once has it offered to buy the pretzels and beer.
Perhaps it's just stemming from the idea that Take-Two is a proverbial new kid on the block compared to its three "top rivals," but the comparison being made here is to game companies with far more history, money, and market clout behind them. Has the GTA series taken off since GTA3? Sure it has. Is this good for Take-Two? Sure it is. But is the idea that Take-Two is being offered for a discount "surprising?" I don't think so. Here's a very brief comparison:
Activision: Pitfall, Quake II/III, Doom 3, Spider-Man, Tony Hawk Series
THQ: Rights to WCW, then WWE wrestling games (and I'm sure a couple of +5 funnies will come off of responses to this, but you know as well as I do that the market slice that buys wrestling games will do so pretty religiously)
EA:
Take-Two: Controls 2K Games (which has lost NFL and ESPN licenses, leaving them leaning on basketball and baseball), and Rockstar (Max Payne, GTA series)
Now. I'm sure I risk again getting hounded because the list isn't complete, but I don't mean for it to be. This is a list of strong titles for all 4 groups. It wouldn't surprise me if Take-Two overtook THQ within the next few years, given that THQ's WWE licensing agreement runs out in 2009, but for now? It's a pretty serious statement of the obvious; quirky titles like Manhunt and State of Emergency are not enough to push the GTA-fueled machine into software juggernaut status.
GameOgre's list is missing the platformer recently covered by Slashdot and resurrected by enthusiasts, Castle Infinity. Though they do request donations.
Not that this is a new idea, but is this just becoming the way of the virtual world?
It's almost understandable to rationalize by saying "Well, there's advertising all over these arenas for x and y sponsors," but at the risk of showing off a mildly offtopic example, there's no Burger King Modein most of the college basketball that I've seen.
Why does it seem like forcing the question of "Which carries more weight" nullifies the weight of the lesser side completely?
Let me go ahead and wave the flag, yes, freedom of the press is in the First Amendment, let's take a moment to celebrate the foresight of our forefathers in writing that down.
All done? All right. Now, this seems almost like intellectual tabloid reporting, in which the information is somewhat more accurate, but the "photographers" are still jumping the fence and getting onto the property in order to take the pictures that people want to see. Privacy isn't something that's constitutionally covered, either. It's just stuck under the catch-all "Unenumerated Rights" 9th Amendment that was supposed to handle everything that couldn't be thought of at the moment. Therefore, we can take any given privacy argument and toss it out as bunk, so long as we can show that the other side of the argument has some sort of constitutional backing to it. Right?
The geek public no doubt loved to have the information that it did available via hidden sources and online publications. But someone -is- spilling trade secrets. I'm really kind of surprised that Slashdotters are fighting this so hard, since it comes out of one of the relative underdog companies that so often are defended.
Anyhow, I digress. If the publishers of this info had really known that this information wasn't anywhere else, that it was as hot as they'd hoped, what do you think they were thinking? Do you think they never realized what they were doing, handling their publication in blissful ignorance? Or should any journalist just be able to say "screw trade secrets, the public needs to know!" in an effort to get a little more circulation? If they knew what they had was hot, they should have been ready for this sort of litigation.
And I do my best to regularly take stock tips from Anonymous Cowards. My cardboard box has a fine gigabit network connection.
What are you talking about?????
Getting 2048 fps instead of 2043 is just so much better! You can practically see the difference!
"Hopefully this competition means lower prices and more goodies." ...so I think it sounded more feasible when I saw "higher prices for bigger goodies.
And mine works just fine. Submit. Submit. I said submit. Why isn't this expletivedeleted thing triggering the submit button. Submit! Submit! Damn it, I have to move the mouse.
Yes, the above quote is about the music industry, and not the gaming industry. But do you see the parallel? Maybe these are ideas that most people already know, but people who see money (probably precise dollar amounts in every individual item they see) all around them can see opportunities as they come about. That's the job of CEOs and the staff around them for conglomerates like Vivendi. The gaming industry became an enormous cash cow, and so bigger companies wanted to get a piece of the pie, just like what happened in the music industry. Now that Vivendi is in, their priorities change. It isn't about Blizzard anymore, it isn't about the consumers anymore. Priority rests in the satisfaction of shareholders. You can bet that every move they make is done solidly to improve the proverbial bottom line, if they have to strangle the life out of the employees under their thumbs. The worst part is that developers get stuck in between us (as consumers) and the conglomerate, so should we try to squeeze back, they're the first to feel it and the first to suffer for it. What do we do? I don't know. But I think maybe, even if I don't have any specific information on why Vivendi is doing this, that maybe it has provided a little perspective.
So now that we have a legal, malicious attack, we'll only have to wait a few -more- years for bills to be passed to have the law catch up with some watermark of digital exploitation. Super.
While it may bring universal (nationwide?) standards to e-mailing, you know that it will be seen as a potential source of revenue.
...and then they start taxing e-mails. A penny or two per e-mail is something the public could be cowed into, despire what we /.ers think about it, and by the time it can be adequately questioned, the public will be too accustomed to paying, the gov't too accustomed to collecting, and we'll be stuck.
Shortly thereafter, they'll set in place a registration system that wants you to put in a checking or credit card account with the rest of your information...
I think the continued deregulation is worth risking a GMail invite or two.
Of fighting the good fight...something parallel to that of a penguin, and a gun, and millions of tiny little Windows logos charging forth...
But think about it; if we'd started back a lot sooner, we could've had the resurgence of the Nazis within them, and possibly without a daring-do archaeologist and absent-minded but well-meaning father to help him out along the way!
---American astronauts and spacecraft suppliers demand tremendous amounts of money for "NASA" brand supplies and missions. Venture capitalists respond by waiting no less than 10 months for generic supplies to hit the market at bargain prices (pick up a Southwest Space Shuttle today!) or by venturing to Canada to get those brand-name "NASA" parts at far less than they would from the American conglomerates of GlaxoMcDonnellDouglas and Lockheed-Merck.
However, keep in mind, the government will be bringing in subsidies for the poor and elderly to experience the wonders of spaceflight! Look for Spaceaid and Spacecare, coming soon to an aviation office near you!
They could always give you the option of buying a Windows plant, with the understanding that in x months/weeks/days, it was bound to explode due to a lack of maintenance and release tons of Blaster/Sasser/Torgo/Cowboyneal/DRM/MS Bob radiation into your surrounding markup, script and proprietary software extension zones.
But it takes numbers + characters to make -strong- passwords. So the next logical step:
Login: Theyllneverguess
Password: cuzimso1337
A Beowulf cluster of hamsters...with more high availability wheels!
And...I miraculously failed to include tags to make it readable.
Maybe Mom can still teach me a thing or two about coding. =(
My mother inadvertently combined the two suggestions above (the parent, and the comment before this one) in order to gain some programming experience many years ago. Until I was spoiled by the spiraling world of computer graphics, I played text-based adventure games briefly on both a Radio Shack TRS-ForgotTheDigits and a Tandy 1000. The "fun" in both was determining the words that would actually get my character to do something. Each word that was used had its own specific function, both usable and sensical in specific situations. In a way, BASIC would seem to be the same thing. A limited number of operators means that on the surface, there are only so many things to do (though we programmers know that there are about as many ways to make a computer/compiler crash as was recorded in the biggest prime number, most recently) and so many combinations to make. Once she gets the (pardon the pun) basic ideas of computer science out of the way, she could start writing little applications that did piddly little things. For instance, my mother wrote a relative brief program that resulted in my controlling the Enterprise, exploring nearby space and eventually find Klingons to get blasted by/to almost defeat and have the program crash. Now...good ol'Mom has reiterated time and time again that she is -not- a math person. She's very much right-brained, and was more inspired by the content of the "gameplay" that she was creating than the theory she was using to build it. And yet, the theory was a means to an end. Try finding the right approach. Maybe see if you can dig up some old text-based games, get your mother playing those, and then edge her into QBasic. I agree that no GUI is the way to go; this will give her less functionality to be confused with. But see if you can start there, and if not, try instilling in her a love of flowcharts, introduce her to UML and see if she can build a model that you can exploit for millions of dollars.
Sounds like...Linux...XP? =D
If the movie can go from start to finish in less than 3 hours, will we see Samus in a skimpy outfit at the end, after the credits?
So does this mean I should scale back the work on my planned competing product, the "Carte Blanche?"
On a more serious note, how much of a far-fetched idea did universal remotes appear to be when they were first being developed? While they can be a little bit cumbersome when switching between multiple devices (for those of us who still rig our cable between the VCR, satellite dish, microwave, Bose wave radio, ham radio, heat pump and Tesla coil), it still seems to be generally less hassle than having to switch between remotes to find the appropriate one(s) to use.
Of course, the likelihood of needing multiple cards at one location would be rare, but could this be just the first shot at a product that's bound to come to us eventually, anyway?
I could've sworn that I wasn't logged into this terminal when I read this article, though I thought about doing so. Then, somehow, as I left to go to a different page, then came back, I'm greeted by "Have you meta-moderated lately?" ...Slashdot really is cutting edge!