I dont know but IMO a smaller/thinner notebook is a very specialized product for a small market.
Anyone who commutes into a large city and uses mass transit and wants to carry a laptop to work in the mornings, this sort of thing is great for. Also, anyone who has to travel for their jobs. It's not that small of a market.
. My whole argument is that it's inferior to a business model in which they focus more on making games for all platforms and less on controlling their hardware
It's not though, historically, software "sells" hardware. No consumer (outside of fanboys) really cares about what hardware they are using (PSX, PC, Gamecube, Xbox) they care about what games they can play with that hardware, and will be able to play in the future with that hardware. This is why consoles or handhelds without good launch titles bomb (see the n-gage, Jaguar, etc). Exclusive content sells systems to non-fan boy people (ie the majority).
The monopoly thing was way out of line too, saying nintendo has a monopoly on game consoles would be like saying mac has a monopoly on the home computing market.
It sounds pretty good, but so did the original specs for Star Wars Galaxies. I'll bet 2 years from now, we will be talking about how some cantina dancer took over the universe.
if you can, expect armies of lightsaber-wielding Jedi vs armies of lightsaber-wielding Jedi...
doubtful, since you see plenty of people online in Jedi Acadamy who shun using lightsabers even though it's encouraged. In the "seige" battle mode where you can pick character classes, most of the players aren't Jedi.
The funny part about this is, buying a game is a much worse deal then pirating one. Ok, say I want to buy Unreal Tournament 2004. I have to wait for it to come out, go to the store, hope they have a copy, bring it home, install it, put in a serial number, hope the serial is right, then play. Any time I want to play after that, I have to make sure the CD is in the drive, and if I lose the original I am fuxored. Plus if the game sucks, I've lost $50
Now say I pirate the game, I have no waiting in line, no CD to worry about, if I lose the thing I can always re-burn it, I can make unlimited backups of it, and I don't have to worry about a serial most of the time. If the game sucks, I just lost 50 cents.
Why is it harder for the buyer than the pirate to play a game? Copy protection only stops the lowest common denominator of people who are too brainless to find a crack. Meanwhile consumers who support these game companies get punished by the silly copy protection schemes.
. Look at Unreal Tournament. Think you are going to give your buddy a copy so you both can play online? Wrong. You have to connect to the internet to play and it checks your serial number.
FYI-Unreal Tournament doesn't check for a unique serial number when you go online. I believe half-life does.
Carly's totally right -- what makes a job yours by birthright? Compete like everyone else.
I have no problem competing with these guys on a level playing field. The problem is, it's not level. The cost of living in India is so low these programmers can hire their own maids and live very well over there on what American companies pay them. I would seriously move to India if I were out of work and work there, except the Indian government won't allow it.
Neoprotectionist policies help a few people out in the short run, but hurt everyone in the long run by imposing unnecessary costs on products
Bullshit
In an ideal capitalist economy this is how it would work, but when a company saves money on a product it goes to line the CxO's pockets, thoses costs do not get passed on to the consumer. The assumption that these companies using cheap labor are somehow making things cheaper is BS, all it's doing is making these mega-corps bottom lines nicer. Just like Communism, Capitalism isn't perfect, it's just a theory.
Well I'm a CS student about to graduate with my bachelors degree.
Would you take a Job for slightly over minimum wage for 2-3 years if it ment good experence? I'd bet there are a few CS students and tech school students in the US who would gladly work for a few years at or slighty above minimum wage, but the bottom line for these companies is that they will pay $2 an hour rather than $7 an hour if they can get away with it. It works out well for the Indians also, since most programmers in India can afford housekeepers. It's not even like you can move over there to work, one guy tried and the Indian goverment flat out told him no.
I'm sure someone will say "Well, the tech companies will pass the savings on to consumers", but it never works that way other than in theory. The consumers pay the same price, the company gets off cheap, the Indians get good jobs, and the American worker gets screwed.
Don't worry, your comp sci degree will be great for working a cash register at Burger King. Don't worry, I'll probably be working a starbucks register soon with my comp sci degree, just so my "javalord" nickname still applies to my job.
'This seems to be just another case of the people who dislike the game being especially vocal,
or maybe a lot of people who were looking foward to it were turned off by the final product...hmm I wonder why...
Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for a few stormtroopers to meet the business end of my flamethrower.
Ahh could this be it? Could it be that most players didn't like it, because it wasn't LIKE the star wars movies? How many times during the star wars movies did you see someone running around with a flame thrower? Now, what percentage of time during the movies had a scene where someone had a lightsaber?
I'm not saying that you have bad taste or anything to enjoy the game, what I am saying is there are a lot of reasons many people were turned off by it.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
The reason there is no women is the same as in the rest of the world:)
Women aren't much into gaming is it ?
How does this get modded as flamebait? It's clearly the truth, for every 100 male gamers there is probably 1 female. I suspect this will change with the current 13-25 generation of gamers, but females over 25 don't play video games for the most part, while males over 25 do.
Re:We know other life exists
on
Lonely Planets
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· Score: 1
We are on a teeny-tiny planet next to an average star, in unremarkable galaxy - let's not take things out of context.
Actually, it would be a very remarkable galaxy if it's the only place that intellegent life exists. We don't have enough data, knowledge or understanding of the universe to decide one way or another. It's fun to guess though!:)
If you haven't played the original GTA, go download it. The graphics are no where near GTA3, but if you can get over the oldschool graphics it's still damn fun.
Try firing a gun at the train station when the people get off the train.:)
This is kind of like the quip about free speach and nazi-ism. I'll defend your right to play those kinds of games, but those games are sick, and some part of you has to be sick to enjoy them.
Hey, thanks for being so judgemental. That is really open minded of you. Of course, I could be judgemental about your signature....but I wont.:)
I hope it's just your sense of humor that's so twisted, and that you keep such activities to fantasy scenarios such as video games. I'm not one of those whacked out PETA people, i don't rate animals' lives over humans' lives, but i'd certainly rate an animal's welfare over the life of the type of sadistic bastard who would actually do the type of things you're describing.
So you are saying that animals are more important than some people. Sound like a PETA person to me. You need to lighten up a bit. If someone enjoys Mortal Kombat or Quake does that make them a sadistic bastard? You sound as bad as Joe Liberman and the other fools in congress who whine about video game violence, and I don't think you mean to come across that way.
No. GTA is fun if you play it for what it is (a virtual violence sandbox), and that game was a critical success.
Actually, GTA3 has missions and a story which is what it was designed for. I think some time was put into it being a virtual violence sandbox, but it wasn't as pointless as postal 2 (which is a good thing)
Remember, kiddies: "Dark humor" requires both the "dark" AND the "humor" to work; simply peeing on dead people is not immediately amusing in and of itself.
Have you played the game? I would say it's humor is like the kind you would find in a tarantino movie, but on a much lower buget.
There are plenty of things you can do outside of peeing on dead people. I personally find it funny to collect a bunch of cats, go into a kitchen with a stove on and set all the cats on fire. After setting them on fire, watch them run around and burn the whole town down. I find cats setting people on fire amusing, but it's probably just me.
Except that Postal 2 is a horrible game with way-too-long loadtimes.
Agreed, the zones are annoying.
Take away the peeing and exploding anthrax cow-heads and you have a boring, repetative game that takes forever to load.
That is like saying "Take the guns out of quake and you have aboring repetative game
Plus, you didn't mention taking out the anal raping of cats with shotguns, the priests with guns, making women vomit and pee themselves by shocking them with a tazer, the insane amount of politically incorrect humor in the game, etc etc.
I grant you, this isn't Final Fantasy, Quake, KoTR, Madden 2003, etc. It isn't innovative in anyway, it's just funny, and fun to play.
There are plenty of movies that appeal to nothing other than crude humor, and that is their selling point. Why is this an invalid selling point for a game?
It's becoming more obvious that people who review video games are becoming more and more snobbish against violence and sex in video games. It's kind of silly for them to attack postal 2 because you can pee on people. The fact is a game geared twards adults can be fun. Postal2 is fun if you play it for what it is (a virtual violence sandbox).
Slashdot Mirror
Are the monkeys going to take all the Visual Basic jobs out there?
If anything since I was first "online" in 1993-4. I've slowly become less social. Of course, aging from 18-28 can do that also I guess.
Anyone else think the internet in general has made them less social?
I dont know but IMO a smaller/thinner notebook is a very specialized product for a small market.
Anyone who commutes into a large city and uses mass transit and wants to carry a laptop to work in the mornings, this sort of thing is great for. Also, anyone who has to travel for their jobs. It's not that small of a market.
. My whole argument is that it's inferior to a business model in which they focus more on making games for all platforms and less on controlling their hardware
It's not though, historically, software "sells" hardware. No consumer (outside of fanboys) really cares about what hardware they are using (PSX, PC, Gamecube, Xbox) they care about what games they can play with that hardware, and will be able to play in the future with that hardware. This is why consoles or handhelds without good launch titles bomb (see the n-gage, Jaguar, etc). Exclusive content sells systems to non-fan boy people (ie the majority).
The monopoly thing was way out of line too, saying nintendo has a monopoly on game consoles would be like saying mac has a monopoly on the home computing market.
WHITE TRASH
nice subliminal message. LOL
It sounds pretty good, but so did the original specs for Star Wars Galaxies. I'll bet 2 years from now, we will be talking about how some cantina dancer took over the universe.
if you can, expect armies of lightsaber-wielding Jedi vs armies of lightsaber-wielding Jedi...
doubtful, since you see plenty of people online in Jedi Acadamy who shun using lightsabers even though it's encouraged. In the "seige" battle mode where you can pick character classes, most of the players aren't Jedi.
The funny part about this is, buying a game is a much worse deal then pirating one. Ok, say I want to buy Unreal Tournament 2004. I have to wait for it to come out, go to the store, hope they have a copy, bring it home, install it, put in a serial number, hope the serial is right, then play. Any time I want to play after that, I have to make sure the CD is in the drive, and if I lose the original I am fuxored. Plus if the game sucks, I've lost $50
Now say I pirate the game, I have no waiting in line, no CD to worry about, if I lose the thing I can always re-burn it, I can make unlimited backups of it, and I don't have to worry about a serial most of the time. If the game sucks, I just lost 50 cents.
Why is it harder for the buyer than the pirate to play a game? Copy protection only stops the lowest common denominator of people who are too brainless to find a crack. Meanwhile consumers who support these game companies get punished by the silly copy protection schemes.
. Look at Unreal Tournament. Think you are going to give your buddy a copy so you both can play online? Wrong. You have to connect to the internet to play and it checks your serial number.
FYI-Unreal Tournament doesn't check for a unique serial number when you go online. I believe half-life does.
Get 200 or so smart folks with a lot in common together in one place at one time, let them pitch tents
This sounds like a recipe for a gay bukkake movie...get 200 guys together and let them "pitch tents"? Ugg.
I have no problem competing with these guys on a level playing field. The problem is, it's not level. The cost of living in India is so low these programmers can hire their own maids and live very well over there on what American companies pay them. I would seriously move to India if I were out of work and work there, except the Indian government won't allow it.
Neoprotectionist policies help a few people out in the short run, but hurt everyone in the long run by imposing unnecessary costs on products
- Bullshit
In an ideal capitalist economy this is how it would work, but when a company saves money on a product it goes to line the CxO's pockets, thoses costs do not get passed on to the consumer. The assumption that these companies using cheap labor are somehow making things cheaper is BS, all it's doing is making these mega-corps bottom lines nicer. Just like Communism, Capitalism isn't perfect, it's just a theory.Well I'm a CS student about to graduate with my bachelors degree.
Would you take a Job for slightly over minimum wage for 2-3 years if it ment good experence? I'd bet there are a few CS students and tech school students in the US who would gladly work for a few years at or slighty above minimum wage, but the bottom line for these companies is that they will pay $2 an hour rather than $7 an hour if they can get away with it. It works out well for the Indians also, since most programmers in India can afford housekeepers. It's not even like you can move over there to work, one guy tried and the Indian goverment flat out told him no.
I'm sure someone will say "Well, the tech companies will pass the savings on to consumers", but it never works that way other than in theory. The consumers pay the same price, the company gets off cheap, the Indians get good jobs, and the American worker gets screwed.
Don't worry, your comp sci degree will be great for working a cash register at Burger King. Don't worry, I'll probably be working a starbucks register soon with my comp sci degree, just so my "javalord" nickname still applies to my job.
They should have been using sun-bloc SPF-10,000,000
'This seems to be just another case of the people who dislike the game being especially vocal,
or maybe a lot of people who were looking foward to it were turned off by the final product...hmm I wonder why...
Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for a few stormtroopers to meet the business end of my flamethrower.
Ahh could this be it? Could it be that most players didn't like it, because it wasn't LIKE the star wars movies? How many times during the star wars movies did you see someone running around with a flame thrower? Now, what percentage of time during the movies had a scene where someone had a lightsaber?
I'm not saying that you have bad taste or anything to enjoy the game, what I am saying is there are a lot of reasons many people were turned off by it.
learn to take a joke cuntrag
You post the truth, but will never get modded up since you don't agree with popular slashdot (leftist) opinion.
The reason there is no women is the same as in the rest of the world :)
Women aren't much into gaming is it ?
How does this get modded as flamebait? It's clearly the truth, for every 100 male gamers there is probably 1 female. I suspect this will change with the current 13-25 generation of gamers, but females over 25 don't play video games for the most part, while males over 25 do.
We are on a teeny-tiny planet next to an average star, in unremarkable galaxy - let's not take things out of context.
:)
Actually, it would be a very remarkable galaxy if it's the only place that intellegent life exists. We don't have enough data, knowledge or understanding of the universe to decide one way or another. It's fun to guess though!
Everytime I saw a Gamorrean!
a Garmorrean looks nothing like someone wearing bone armor in Star wars galaxies.
If you haven't played the original GTA, go download it. The graphics are no where near GTA3, but if you can get over the oldschool graphics it's still damn fun.
:)
Try firing a gun at the train station when the people get off the train.
This is kind of like the quip about free speach and nazi-ism. I'll defend your right to play those kinds of games, but those games are sick, and some part of you has to be sick to enjoy them.
:)
Hey, thanks for being so judgemental. That is really open minded of you. Of course, I could be judgemental about your signature....but I wont.
I hope it's just your sense of humor that's so twisted, and that you keep such activities to fantasy scenarios such as video games. I'm not one of those whacked out PETA people, i don't rate animals' lives over humans' lives, but i'd certainly rate an animal's welfare over the life of the type of sadistic bastard who would actually do the type of things you're describing.
So you are saying that animals are more important than some people. Sound like a PETA person to me. You need to lighten up a bit. If someone enjoys Mortal Kombat or Quake does that make them a sadistic bastard? You sound as bad as Joe Liberman and the other fools in congress who whine about video game violence, and I don't think you mean to come across that way.
No. GTA is fun if you play it for what it is (a virtual violence sandbox), and that game was a critical success.
Actually, GTA3 has missions and a story which is what it was designed for. I think some time was put into it being a virtual violence sandbox, but it wasn't as pointless as postal 2 (which is a good thing)
Remember, kiddies: "Dark humor" requires both the "dark" AND the "humor" to work; simply peeing on dead people is not immediately amusing in and of itself.
Have you played the game? I would say it's humor is like the kind you would find in a tarantino movie, but on a much lower buget.
There are plenty of things you can do outside of peeing on dead people. I personally find it funny to collect a bunch of cats, go into a kitchen with a stove on and set all the cats on fire. After setting them on fire, watch them run around and burn the whole town down. I find cats setting people on fire amusing, but it's probably just me.
Except that Postal 2 is a horrible game with way-too-long loadtimes.
Agreed, the zones are annoying.
Take away the peeing and exploding anthrax cow-heads and you have a boring, repetative game that takes forever to load.
That is like saying "Take the guns out of quake and you have aboring repetative game
Plus, you didn't mention taking out the anal raping of cats with shotguns, the priests with guns, making women vomit and pee themselves by shocking them with a tazer, the insane amount of politically incorrect humor in the game, etc etc.
I grant you, this isn't Final Fantasy, Quake, KoTR, Madden 2003, etc. It isn't innovative in anyway, it's just funny, and fun to play.
There are plenty of movies that appeal to nothing other than crude humor, and that is their selling point. Why is this an invalid selling point for a game?
It's becoming more obvious that people who review video games are becoming more and more snobbish against violence and sex in video games. It's kind of silly for them to attack postal 2 because you can pee on people. The fact is a game geared twards adults can be fun. Postal2 is fun if you play it for what it is (a virtual violence sandbox).
Actually, FFXI is a great MMORPG...it has things for you to do other than level...
like chat?