Depends on what they're using it for. I might be a minority, but I hardly ever use the radio feature - I use the site as a way to track what I've been listening to, and use the recommendations to find new artists to buy or download from iTunes or Amazon.
Those kind of practices would just lead to even more people who wouldn't bother with theaters at all, choosing to buy or rent movies and watch them at home.
Since it wasn't included in the summary and searching for "Matt Smith" brings up page after page of listings on IMDB, here's the profile of the actor in question.
It looks like he hasn't done much in his career so far, and (other than one episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl) I don't see anything that American audiences would be familiar with there.
On the other hand, it's 500 points, or five dollars. Unless something is slipping my mind (and no, DLC extra features don't count), that's cheaper than (or, for NES games, the same price as) everything else offered in the shop channel.
It may not be free, but it's definitely affordable.
Is it ignored with no more patches to come? Or sit there, abandoned -- and never run? Does it become obsolete Or turn into freeware -- to become something sweet?
I am complaining about the price because I don't want 18 AC/DC songs. I only want a few of them, and that's not worth $40 to me. AC/DC says they sell albums, not songs, and that's their right. It's also my right to complain about it and not purchase any of their stuff.
Fair enough. The Beatles are an album band too, though, and with the exception of "1" and the Cirque du Soleil show, their albums haven't been chopped up and rearranged. I'd expect the same kind of treatment here.
By the way, I just noticed this update [xbox360fanboy.com] to the news. Apparently, this Beatles "thing" is not going to be a Rock Band-branded game. So there's a possibility that the songs won't even be transferable to Rock Band.
According to this, the game's going to be compatible with the Rock Band instruments, and they haven't said that the music WON'T appear in Rock BAnd, dodging that question when it came up. Don't discount the possibility based on what we don't know.
The AC/DC version of Rock Band costs $40 for 18 songs, and you can't buy individual songs - it's all or nothing.
I hope you're not complaining about the pricing - assuming the a la carte download pricing two dollars per song, yo'ure only paying four dollars more for the physical product. Admittedly, it'd be cheaper than $36 if it were up as DLC and you bought the entire album, but I'm pretty sure this isn't a value problem.
AC/DC and the Beatles have been two of the bands that have shown the most resistance to downloading - unless you've got a particular cell phone you can't legally download AC/DC's catalog, and you can't get the Beatles anywhere. I'd be willing to bet that this was the only way to get the bands into the game...but given the size of the "get" this is for Harmonix (the world's most popular band, and one that made one of America's all-time best-selling albums), I don't think they argued much over how the content would be delivered.
Getting these bands into the game is more important than letting you pick and choose songs. It's more important to Harmonix, it's more important to the fans of the bands, it's more important to the bands, and it's more important to legitimize the importance of Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
Good point; I'd forgotten that Alexa requires the toolbar installation.
That said; Yahoo! still gets a pretty significant amount of traffic according to the sites you listed. It may not be popular with the younger set of internet users (the only thing I use Yahoo! for now is for old and disposable e-mail addresses, and their fantasy sports leagues), but just remember how long AOL has stuck around thanks to its base of older users who don't know or don't care about alternatives.
Patches are EXPECTED to be continually released after a game (look at almost any game you like, find the web site and there will be a patch).
Yes, but for a decade after release? Find me another company that's still providing new support to titles that long after their initial release. I know that I've had trouble finding support or servers for games even two or three years after launch, but that's never been a problem with Starcraft.
Now take a look at it's other games: Diablo 1, lost ALL support/patches after Diablo 2 came out, hacks are beyond abundant there. Once Starcraft 2 comes out, expect the same lack of support for Starcraft. To say you are getting your money's worth because they host (4?) servers that allow you to chat and find others (the servers don't really host the games) is a far stretch.
Fine. Let's look at their other games: Warcraft 3 - released in 2002, most recent patch June 2008. Still has free Battle.net play. Diablo 2 - released in 2000, most recent patch June 2008. Still has free Battle.net play. Warcraft 2 - released in 1997, still has free Battle.net play.
And for the record, Diablo (arguably the game with the least support from Blizzard) still had four years of patches (and still has Battle.net support), which is longer than most other games see. At this end of the tail, most companies don't provide ANYTHING (even if chat/matchmaking is all we're talking about), so the fact that Blizzard still offers support for their games should mean something.
Starcraft (and Brood War) came out in 1998. Since then, Blizzard's been providing online play AND a continued stream of patches and updates, completely free of charge. Even if you paid full price for each piece back when they launched (let's say $50 each), I think you've gotten your money's worth out of the game over the past decade.
Yes, Starcraft 2 may cost more up front by being packaged this way, but if Blizzard's past is any indication, the game's going to give you years of play, with the online support free for the duration. This, of course, is on top of the game itself, which (again, judging from the past) is going to be polished, balanced, and a blast to play.
Blizzard's doing the smart thing here - if they were to rush the game and risk the content being broken or unbalanced even slightly, they'd get ripped apart for this. Even if people bitch now, giving the chunks of the game more development time will lead to a better product...and let's face it, probably 95%+ of the people here whining are going to buy the game and its expansions as soon as they're able to.
And for the record, Starcraft was March '98, and Brood War was November '98. The game and its expansion pack were eight months apart - that's not exactly a long time between the two of them, and, given how long development and marketing take, I'm willing to bet that Brood War wasn't conceived after they'd had time to digest the sales figures from Starcraft for a while. Same goes for Retribution and Insurrection - more content, sold separately, mere months after the release of Starcraft.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the vast majority of people with iPods use iTunes. Most of the people I know with iTunes don't have the knowledge or interest to set up one of the alternatives, because iTunes does what they want and they're happy with it.
Also, while it's hard to know for sure without knowing more about the WaveNet game, I suspect that a 2D 16-bit-era fighter is going to send significantly less data back and forth than Street Fighter IV would need to.
Just wait a day or two. The germs will die, you shouldn't get sick again since you just got done fighting it, and if your wife's going to get sick, I don't think the MacBook is going to be the reason why.
Can Solitaire really eat up more hours than have been sacrificed to Tetris? Given that Tetris isn't installed on every Windows desktop...do you even have to ask?
Of course the death of Windows will be a slow process, for one reason and one reason only: Microsoft's got enough money to guarantee it happens that way. I kind of doubt they're going to go bankrupt in the near future, especially given the other pots they've got their spoons in, like video games or software.
I haven't had a chance to use Vista for an extended period, but if it's anything like the new Office it's got to be a complete disaster. It still amazes me that they managed to break features that used to work - when you copy a graph into Word from Excel, for instance, the font size and alignment of the graph change to the point where it's completely illegible. That used to work.
Slashdot Mirror
has this killed Last.fm's appeal, globally?
Depends on what they're using it for. I might be a minority, but I hardly ever use the radio feature - I use the site as a way to track what I've been listening to, and use the recommendations to find new artists to buy or download from iTunes or Amazon.
I blame 4Chan.
Those kind of practices would just lead to even more people who wouldn't bother with theaters at all, choosing to buy or rent movies and watch them at home.
If they forgot the angle for obtaining revenue, then I wouldn't say they have all the angles just yet.
They've got an angle. It's called "console gaming."
Fair enough. I'm in college right now - I'm definitely familiar with lack of sleep. :)
I distinctly remember comments comparing the VCR to the Boston Strangler. I'm too lazy to track it down, and most of you should remember...
Well, that must mean you're REALLY lazy - that took all of five seconds on Google. :)
Valenti's "Boston Strangler" Testimony
No thanks. I'll stick with BitTorrent, if only because I live outside the US, and it won't be available outside the US, for some reason.
That reason is copyright law...which, unless I'm mistaken, CBS doesn't control.
The opposite is also true. See Nintendo.
As much as I loved my N64 and GameCube, I was in a minority.
Since it wasn't included in the summary and searching for "Matt Smith" brings up page after page of listings on IMDB, here's the profile of the actor in question.
It looks like he hasn't done much in his career so far, and (other than one episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl) I don't see anything that American audiences would be familiar with there.
On the other hand, it's 500 points, or five dollars. Unless something is slipping my mind (and no, DLC extra features don't count), that's cheaper than (or, for NES games, the same price as) everything else offered in the shop channel.
It may not be free, but it's definitely affordable.
The Police are thugs.
What did Sting ever do to you?
What happens to a code deferred?
Is it ignored
with no more patches to come?
Or sit there, abandoned --
and never run?
Does it become obsolete
Or turn into freeware --
to become something sweet?
Maybe it's reused
To spawn newer code.
OR DOES IT EXPLODE?
I am complaining about the price because I don't want 18 AC/DC songs. I only want a few of them, and that's not worth $40 to me. AC/DC says they sell albums, not songs, and that's their right. It's also my right to complain about it and not purchase any of their stuff.
Fair enough. The Beatles are an album band too, though, and with the exception of "1" and the Cirque du Soleil show, their albums haven't been chopped up and rearranged. I'd expect the same kind of treatment here.
By the way, I just noticed this update [xbox360fanboy.com] to the news. Apparently, this Beatles "thing" is not going to be a Rock Band-branded game. So there's a possibility that the songs won't even be transferable to Rock Band.
According to this, the game's going to be compatible with the Rock Band instruments, and they haven't said that the music WON'T appear in Rock BAnd, dodging that question when it came up. Don't discount the possibility based on what we don't know.
The AC/DC version of Rock Band costs $40 for 18 songs, and you can't buy individual songs - it's all or nothing.
I hope you're not complaining about the pricing - assuming the a la carte download pricing two dollars per song, yo'ure only paying four dollars more for the physical product. Admittedly, it'd be cheaper than $36 if it were up as DLC and you bought the entire album, but I'm pretty sure this isn't a value problem.
AC/DC and the Beatles have been two of the bands that have shown the most resistance to downloading - unless you've got a particular cell phone you can't legally download AC/DC's catalog, and you can't get the Beatles anywhere. I'd be willing to bet that this was the only way to get the bands into the game...but given the size of the "get" this is for Harmonix (the world's most popular band, and one that made one of America's all-time best-selling albums), I don't think they argued much over how the content would be delivered.
Getting these bands into the game is more important than letting you pick and choose songs. It's more important to Harmonix, it's more important to the fans of the bands, it's more important to the bands, and it's more important to legitimize the importance of Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
Good point; I'd forgotten that Alexa requires the toolbar installation.
That said; Yahoo! still gets a pretty significant amount of traffic according to the sites you listed. It may not be popular with the younger set of internet users (the only thing I use Yahoo! for now is for old and disposable e-mail addresses, and their fantasy sports leagues), but just remember how long AOL has stuck around thanks to its base of older users who don't know or don't care about alternatives.
Seriously, couldn't this space on /. be taken up by something that matters on the intarweb?
According to Alexa, Yahoo! is the most popular site on the internet. I'd say that that's more than enough to make a website matter, personally.
Patches are EXPECTED to be continually released after a game (look at almost any game you like, find the web site and there will be a patch).
Yes, but for a decade after release? Find me another company that's still providing new support to titles that long after their initial release. I know that I've had trouble finding support or servers for games even two or three years after launch, but that's never been a problem with Starcraft.
Now take a look at it's other games: Diablo 1, lost ALL support/patches after Diablo 2 came out, hacks are beyond abundant there. Once Starcraft 2 comes out, expect the same lack of support for Starcraft. To say you are getting your money's worth because they host (4?) servers that allow you to chat and find others (the servers don't really host the games) is a far stretch.
Fine. Let's look at their other games:
Warcraft 3 - released in 2002, most recent patch June 2008. Still has free Battle.net play.
Diablo 2 - released in 2000, most recent patch June 2008. Still has free Battle.net play.
Warcraft 2 - released in 1997, still has free Battle.net play.
And for the record, Diablo (arguably the game with the least support from Blizzard) still had four years of patches (and still has Battle.net support), which is longer than most other games see. At this end of the tail, most companies don't provide ANYTHING (even if chat/matchmaking is all we're talking about), so the fact that Blizzard still offers support for their games should mean something.
Starcraft (and Brood War) came out in 1998. Since then, Blizzard's been providing online play AND a continued stream of patches and updates, completely free of charge. Even if you paid full price for each piece back when they launched (let's say $50 each), I think you've gotten your money's worth out of the game over the past decade.
Yes, Starcraft 2 may cost more up front by being packaged this way, but if Blizzard's past is any indication, the game's going to give you years of play, with the online support free for the duration. This, of course, is on top of the game itself, which (again, judging from the past) is going to be polished, balanced, and a blast to play.
Blizzard's doing the smart thing here - if they were to rush the game and risk the content being broken or unbalanced even slightly, they'd get ripped apart for this. Even if people bitch now, giving the chunks of the game more development time will lead to a better product...and let's face it, probably 95%+ of the people here whining are going to buy the game and its expansions as soon as they're able to.
And for the record, Starcraft was March '98, and Brood War was November '98. The game and its expansion pack were eight months apart - that's not exactly a long time between the two of them, and, given how long development and marketing take, I'm willing to bet that Brood War wasn't conceived after they'd had time to digest the sales figures from Starcraft for a while. Same goes for Retribution and Insurrection - more content, sold separately, mere months after the release of Starcraft.
A lot more people with iPods do use iTunes. Fact.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the vast majority of people with iPods use iTunes. Most of the people I know with iTunes don't have the knowledge or interest to set up one of the alternatives, because iTunes does what they want and they're happy with it.
There aren't many sources out there about it, but it looks like the WaveNet version of the game never made it out of testing in Chicago.
Also, while it's hard to know for sure without knowing more about the WaveNet game, I suspect that a 2D 16-bit-era fighter is going to send significantly less data back and forth than Street Fighter IV would need to.
Just wait a day or two. The germs will die, you shouldn't get sick again since you just got done fighting it, and if your wife's going to get sick, I don't think the MacBook is going to be the reason why.
When Blizzard can make millions and get 10+ years of sales out of a PC title, there isn't much incentive for a console port.
Good points - I'm not quite old enough to remember 1990, so I'd forgotten about Tetris as a pack-in and never knew about the Gamesampler disc.
Tetris Worlds was bundled with the original Xbox for a while, on a disc with Star Wars: Clone Wars. Definitely an odd pairing.
Of course the death of Windows will be a slow process, for one reason and one reason only: Microsoft's got enough money to guarantee it happens that way. I kind of doubt they're going to go bankrupt in the near future, especially given the other pots they've got their spoons in, like video games or software.
I haven't had a chance to use Vista for an extended period, but if it's anything like the new Office it's got to be a complete disaster. It still amazes me that they managed to break features that used to work - when you copy a graph into Word from Excel, for instance, the font size and alignment of the graph change to the point where it's completely illegible. That used to work.