Actually, I think that the game IS supposed to be "like" GTA, but the people who write these things haven't actually played a video game since "Dig Dug", so, they think that a video game has to have "levels" to get past, etc.
Average attendance of 11,000 last season.
TV ratings, while not high, that do better than, amoung other things, NHL hockey, MLS Soccer and WNBA Basketball./www.arenafan.com
If by European you mean NFL Europe, then read into that.... "NFL" Europe. They actually do already include all the NFL Europe teams in Madden, and I doubt anyone would pay to get the 'rights' to them.
Basically now, all any other companies can do is either (A) do like Midway is doing with "Playmakers" or (B) do a game that is evidently better than Madden with fake teams but with a very robust "editor", and make it very easy to import team graphics/rosters.
I'd think that some enterprising company would team up with Atari to get the rights to the late 80s favorite "Cyberball" and upgrade it for the 21 Century. Cyberball in 3D with a more robust season/franchise mode (ongoing maintinance of robots, etc) would be an interesting game.
They also were very stupid on how they looked things up on Google:
Example:
"Question 3: Who is the vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on back care?
Google
6min 27sec (3rd)
This should be easy - I usually know exactly where to find the answer - the UK parliament website. Unfortunately, "back" is rather a common word, and is turning up in all sorts of irrelevant documents, most of them in PDF. I am very nearly taken by Lib-Dem MP Vince Cable in the results. He has created a page listing all his chairmanships, and Google has found all my keywords on it - just not together. Thank heavens I check. Back to the PDFs, where I discover the answer is Janet Dean MP.
Verdict: Much slower than the relevant reference book"
Well, you know, you CAN look up "back care" (in quotes) in Google to look up the entire phrase, and then you don't get EVERYTHING with just "back" and "care" in the page just anywhere. Sheesh. You know, you have to KNOW how to search on the internet for it to be useful.
To prove this, I typed in:
"back care" "vice chairman" "parliamentary group"
on google, got 2 answers, first one clicked on "view as HTML", searched for "back care" in the article, and saw Janet Dean MP as the answer, and it took about 20 seconds.
You guys really don't know much...
I'm not saying in "concept" that alacarte channels isn't a good idea, but, in practice, I don't think you would like the results.
The reason why you are able to get 80 channels for $35-45/month is exactly because they know that EVERYONE is getting all the channels. So, even though most of the time people might not watch channel "X", if there is some "event" programming, or something more interesting on than usual, they can draw in the "extra" people that don't usually watch that channel. The potential viewership is still there.
Outside of the "top" drawing networks (ESPN, CNN, Fox News, Nickelodeon, etc), the other cable networks don't draw really a "large" amount of viewers for most of their programming. For example, lets say you really like Comedy Central. I'd venture to guess if they went to a truly "alacarte" system, Comedy Central would be $3-5 by itself to "add" to your system, because, they still need to bring in so much money. The cable companies pay "X" dollars per customer that receives the channels to the networks. ESPN is around the most expensive, and they get $2 per customer. I'm guessing Comedy Central is like.50-$1 per customer, if that. Now, if they "force" the cable/satellite companies to offer "full" alacarte services, it's not changing the "costs" for the Comedy Central network - they still need the same income from the cable companies they had before. But, now instead of 50 million "subscribers" that had CC before, lets say only 20% of them "subscribe" to the ala carte version. Now its only 10 million viewers, but they still need to have the money coming in when they were getting 50 million times 60 cents. Something like "Tech TV", even more "narrowcast" of a network, would have to charge you $7-8 a month probably to stay profitable.
So, now once you've gotten your 7-10 channels you really want, you would probably paying fairly close to what you would have paid for all 80 channels anyway, and not be able to turn on one of those other 70 channels if something happened to come on that you did want to see. The big "fallacy" people think is that "Since my cable bill is $40/month for 80 channels, if they went ala carte, I would simply be paying.50 per channel". That is truly NOT the case.
I just saw something a little while ago about Montana thinking about upgrading their drinking and driving laws, because right now I guess while you can't be drunk and drive, you can drink liquor in your car while driving, as long as you are not legally drunk. They were talking to like some woman who enjoyed drinking a beer on her way home from work every day.
Drinks in the car and no speed limits: everyone get to Montana!
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I think that the game IS supposed to be "like" GTA, but the people who write these things haven't actually played a video game since "Dig Dug", so, they think that a video game has to have "levels" to get past, etc.
Average attendance of 11,000 last season. TV ratings, while not high, that do better than, amoung other things, NHL hockey, MLS Soccer and WNBA Basketball. /www.arenafan.com
If by European you mean NFL Europe, then read into that.... "NFL" Europe. They actually do already include all the NFL Europe teams in Madden, and I doubt anyone would pay to get the 'rights' to them. Basically now, all any other companies can do is either (A) do like Midway is doing with "Playmakers" or (B) do a game that is evidently better than Madden with fake teams but with a very robust "editor", and make it very easy to import team graphics/rosters. I'd think that some enterprising company would team up with Atari to get the rights to the late 80s favorite "Cyberball" and upgrade it for the 21 Century. Cyberball in 3D with a more robust season/franchise mode (ongoing maintinance of robots, etc) would be an interesting game.
They also were very stupid on how they looked things up on Google: Example: "Question 3: Who is the vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on back care? Google 6min 27sec (3rd) This should be easy - I usually know exactly where to find the answer - the UK parliament website. Unfortunately, "back" is rather a common word, and is turning up in all sorts of irrelevant documents, most of them in PDF. I am very nearly taken by Lib-Dem MP Vince Cable in the results. He has created a page listing all his chairmanships, and Google has found all my keywords on it - just not together. Thank heavens I check. Back to the PDFs, where I discover the answer is Janet Dean MP. Verdict: Much slower than the relevant reference book" Well, you know, you CAN look up "back care" (in quotes) in Google to look up the entire phrase, and then you don't get EVERYTHING with just "back" and "care" in the page just anywhere. Sheesh. You know, you have to KNOW how to search on the internet for it to be useful. To prove this, I typed in: "back care" "vice chairman" "parliamentary group" on google, got 2 answers, first one clicked on "view as HTML", searched for "back care" in the article, and saw Janet Dean MP as the answer, and it took about 20 seconds.
You guys really don't know much... I'm not saying in "concept" that alacarte channels isn't a good idea, but, in practice, I don't think you would like the results. The reason why you are able to get 80 channels for $35-45/month is exactly because they know that EVERYONE is getting all the channels. So, even though most of the time people might not watch channel "X", if there is some "event" programming, or something more interesting on than usual, they can draw in the "extra" people that don't usually watch that channel. The potential viewership is still there. Outside of the "top" drawing networks (ESPN, CNN, Fox News, Nickelodeon, etc), the other cable networks don't draw really a "large" amount of viewers for most of their programming. For example, lets say you really like Comedy Central. I'd venture to guess if they went to a truly "alacarte" system, Comedy Central would be $3-5 by itself to "add" to your system, because, they still need to bring in so much money. The cable companies pay "X" dollars per customer that receives the channels to the networks. ESPN is around the most expensive, and they get $2 per customer. I'm guessing Comedy Central is like .50-$1 per customer, if that. Now, if they "force" the cable/satellite companies to offer "full" alacarte services, it's not changing the "costs" for the Comedy Central network - they still need the same income from the cable companies they had before. But, now instead of 50 million "subscribers" that had CC before, lets say only 20% of them "subscribe" to the ala carte version. Now its only 10 million viewers, but they still need to have the money coming in when they were getting 50 million times 60 cents. Something like "Tech TV", even more "narrowcast" of a network, would have to charge you $7-8 a month probably to stay profitable.
So, now once you've gotten your 7-10 channels you really want, you would probably paying fairly close to what you would have paid for all 80 channels anyway, and not be able to turn on one of those other 70 channels if something happened to come on that you did want to see. The big "fallacy" people think is that "Since my cable bill is $40/month for 80 channels, if they went ala carte, I would simply be paying .50 per channel". That is truly NOT the case.
Depends on the state.
I just saw something a little while ago about Montana thinking about upgrading their drinking and driving laws, because right now I guess while you can't be drunk and drive, you can drink liquor in your car while driving, as long as you are not legally drunk. They were talking to like some woman who enjoyed drinking a beer on her way home from work every day.
Drinks in the car and no speed limits: everyone get to Montana!