But that's exactly my point: he's not. In every sense that matters, he's investing it.
Worst-case scenario: Gates is vaccinating destitute children so that they can grow to become the cheap workforce the West needs.
Best-case scenario: out of a genuine concern for human life, Gates is vaccinating destitute children so that they can grow and live happy, productive lives.
Even in the worst possible case that I can come up with, what he's doing will improve the lives of human beings.
Honestly, I think you're projecting a lot of Microsoft monopoly hate unnecessarily here.
Until you figure out which nice-to-have services you want to provide students, give back by dedicating some of the unused server resources to research projects.
http://grid.org/ comes to mind. I'm sure others will be able to suggest a long list of great organizations that need help!
I wonder about The Elder Scrolls.
It's always delayed by a few months.
It's always unplayable until the first service pack is released.
If by "The Elder Scrolls" you mean "Daggerfall", I agree with you 100%.
Arena and Morrowind were most certainly playable out of the box (and yes, Morrowind was delayed probably to make certain that it was not buggy to the point of being unplayable).
To me, the recipe for a good game is mostly two-fold:
1) Ample time spent in PRE-PRODUCTION! Making sure that the game concepts work and that the project plan is as thought-out as possible. A "gameplay proof-of-concept" before full development begins (artwork, music, etc).
If ample time is put into pre-production, there's a smaller chance that the game will have to be completely reworked mid-development, which most of the time results in a crappy and late product.
2) A cohesive team of developers that believe in the project, WHO ARE SUPPORTED by their parent company and given the necessary amount of time to achieve the game's potential. This means not shipping a half-baked product just to release before Christmas.
Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?
The best incentive for a gamer to buy something he's never heard of before is the search for a game that goes beyond the mass-produced flashy emptiness of today's games. Direct purchasing is just icing on that cake. However, I don't know whether the "average" gamer would do this.
I remember when I was 14 and I walked into the Electronics Boutique to buy a game for my 486/33. I didn't have a lot of money, and there were a lot of choices. Some of the games I'd heard of before and read reviews on, but in the corner of the store I saw a game called The Elder Scrolls: Arena. I'd never heard of it before, but I gave it a chance anyway. Over 10 years later, I still play Arena and get that feeling of awe and amazement when I step into the "virtual world" that they had created.
While that story is not a great parallel to the current situation (independent and smaller game shops had a better chance then and they were willing to actually create innovative games and not churn out sequels substituting pixel shader effects for gameplay and content), I just wanted to point out that there are certainly diamonds in the rough.
I think smaller game companies, or perhaps a small number of larger companies that listen to their fans instead of their marketing statistics, have a good chance of reversing this trend but it's going to be an uphill battle for sure.
I use torrents instead of the TiVo I don't own. I've got fully legit paid for HBO but lately I've been too busy to watch Rome so I've just been d/l-ing them. I wonder how that falls under fair-use?
If you're uploading any parts of the file while you're downloading it, I doubt it will be covered by "fair use".
There's just one more lesson Microsoft needs to learn from Longhorn/Vista: Don't start promising features and showing Powerpoint presentations to the press until you understand the scale of the project.
I love Google, because they rarely promise something and don't deliver. Actually, they rarely promise something. It just shows up one day and it's elegant, clean, and fast.
He pointed out previous advances in communications technology anymore - specifical AT&T - anyone remember what the second T is? American Telephone and Telegraph - who uses a Telegraph anymore? Exactly: NOBODY.
VoIP is the infancy of the next generation of communications technology - not a bubble.
When people speculate on whether VOIP will become a bubble in this context, I think it's referring more to the over-valuation of the stock at IPO.
I don't think anyone argues that VOIP technology isn't the future of communications, though, and may be worthy of long-term investment.
Back when I was in school, researching a subject typically meant going through encyclopedia after encyclopedia, which wasn't a bad thing. I learned quite a bit by being FORCED to over-research topics. Today, I can generally straight-shoot to whatever I need to find, giving my brain a good set of blinders to everything else along the way.
Wikipedia has a few nice features for this: the Today's Featured Article, Did You Know..., and my favorite, the Random Page.
When I have a few minutes with nothing to do, I like to click a few random pages and see what I come up with.
I see what you're saying but while for us, numbers are obstacles or challenges, for him, going to the market to pick up food turns into a difficult and uncomfortable experience.
The article also mentions how he can't go to the beach because there are too many pebbles; he would feel lost and unable to make sense of the numbers.
I think both the average person and the savant have their own personal challenges in life.
Google seems to understand that knowledge, and the dissemination of knowledge, is power.
If you can provide people the most efficient way of providing information important to them, people will deal with advertisements and other methods to generate revenue, as long as they are inobtrusive.
Wikipedia is a great source for many different types of general knowledge, and while it may not be the ultimate resource for obtaining information about a certain topic, it is a great place to start to get a general overview.
Maybe Google sees this as a great addition their search engine: when searching, a person is supplied with a brief description of the topic at hand and search results to further their research, perhaps grouped into categories. If Google can make themselves a living, breathing entity like Wikipedia has, with input from users, perhaps they can gain an edge over other search engines.
I can only conclude that either I've been very lucky for the last 6 years, or else there are alot of morons out there who can't fill out rebates properly and don't know how to finesse their way into a successful return/exchange.
If I spend money on a warranty or service plan, I shouldn't have to "finesse" my way into a successful return/exchange.
Judging by the few people I know in my area that have had a terrible ordeal trying to make good on a PSP, it seems like you've been very lucky.
I bet if you took a poll of the best movies of all time of the moviegoers in the United States today, you would find very few instances of films released before 1990.
IMDB user rankings puts The Godfather first, and it was early 1970s.
I agree that this was a bad analogy, however I do think that the demographic that will ultimately participate in this poll will have a much lower average age than those that vote the top 100 films of all time on IMDB, and therefore will vote for games that appeal to them - games that have been popular most recently.
This will skew the "greatest game of all time" and become a "greatest game for the average age-group of the participants" poll.
Microsoft will take all appropriate legal actions to protect its intellectual property. These actions include communicating both directly and indirectly with those who possess or seek to possess, post, download or share the illegally disclosed source code.
So does this mean that if I go into a P2P program and do a search for "Windows 2000 Source", I am seeking to possess the sourcecode?
That would be a pretty big assumption by Microsoft!
The first thing I did when I heard the source had been leaked was to hop on my favorite P2P network and search to see how many people had it. I did _NOT_ download it. If, for whatever reason, I get a letter in the mail from Microsoft ( highly doubt it ), I will be so pissed off. I mean, what would be the next step? If someone does a Google News search for "Leaked Microsoft Source", they're attempting to locate a place to download it?
"Our customers are playing to relax and unwind from the day to day grind. They don't want to be reminded that they're idiots or lack hand-eye coordination," Nixon explained.
So his users are constantly being told that they're idiots who lack hand-eye coordination?
Slashdot Mirror
But that's exactly my point: he's not. In every sense that matters, he's investing it.
Worst-case scenario: Gates is vaccinating destitute children so that they can grow to become the cheap workforce the West needs.
Best-case scenario: out of a genuine concern for human life, Gates is vaccinating destitute children so that they can grow and live happy, productive lives.
Even in the worst possible case that I can come up with, what he's doing will improve the lives of human beings.
Honestly, I think you're projecting a lot of Microsoft monopoly hate unnecessarily here.
Until you figure out which nice-to-have services you want to provide students, give back by dedicating some of the unused server resources to research projects.
http://grid.org/ comes to mind. I'm sure others will be able to suggest a long list of great organizations that need help!
I was thinking to myself "how lazy can people be?" when I realized that I was actively using one of the devices in the article:
http://www.theemptyroom.com/ST_14.jpg
: /
Arena and Morrowind were most certainly playable out of the box (and yes, Morrowind was delayed probably to make certain that it was not buggy to the point of being unplayable).
To me, the recipe for a good game is mostly two-fold:
1) Ample time spent in PRE-PRODUCTION! Making sure that the game concepts work and that the project plan is as thought-out as possible. A "gameplay proof-of-concept" before full development begins (artwork, music, etc). If ample time is put into pre-production, there's a smaller chance that the game will have to be completely reworked mid-development, which most of the time results in a crappy and late product.
2) A cohesive team of developers that believe in the project, WHO ARE SUPPORTED by their parent company and given the necessary amount of time to achieve the game's potential. This means not shipping a half-baked product just to release before Christmas.
Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?
The best incentive for a gamer to buy something he's never heard of before is the search for a game that goes beyond the mass-produced flashy emptiness of today's games. Direct purchasing is just icing on that cake. However, I don't know whether the "average" gamer would do this.
I remember when I was 14 and I walked into the Electronics Boutique to buy a game for my 486/33. I didn't have a lot of money, and there were a lot of choices. Some of the games I'd heard of before and read reviews on, but in the corner of the store I saw a game called The Elder Scrolls: Arena. I'd never heard of it before, but I gave it a chance anyway. Over 10 years later, I still play Arena and get that feeling of awe and amazement when I step into the "virtual world" that they had created.
While that story is not a great parallel to the current situation (independent and smaller game shops had a better chance then and they were willing to actually create innovative games and not churn out sequels substituting pixel shader effects for gameplay and content), I just wanted to point out that there are certainly diamonds in the rough.
I think smaller game companies, or perhaps a small number of larger companies that listen to their fans instead of their marketing statistics, have a good chance of reversing this trend but it's going to be an uphill battle for sure.
I use torrents instead of the TiVo I don't own. I've got fully legit paid for HBO but lately I've been too busy to watch Rome so I've just been d/l-ing them. I wonder how that falls under fair-use?
If you're uploading any parts of the file while you're downloading it, I doubt it will be covered by "fair use".
There's just one more lesson Microsoft needs to learn from Longhorn/Vista: Don't start promising features and showing Powerpoint presentations to the press until you understand the scale of the project.
I love Google, because they rarely promise something and don't deliver. Actually, they rarely promise something. It just shows up one day and it's elegant, clean, and fast.
There's no time to put paper in, so you have to feed raw lumber in.
When people speculate on whether VOIP will become a bubble in this context, I think it's referring more to the over-valuation of the stock at IPO.
I don't think anyone argues that VOIP technology isn't the future of communications, though, and may be worthy of long-term investment.
I would like to see a game where you take on religious zealots.
How about Ultima 7?
drinking too much rubbing alcohol
Drinking ANY rubbing alcohol is too much if you ask me.
The only "diverse ecosystem" I know of lives in my dirty laundry.
Back when I was in school, researching a subject typically meant going through encyclopedia after encyclopedia, which wasn't a bad thing. I learned quite a bit by being FORCED to over-research topics. Today, I can generally straight-shoot to whatever I need to find, giving my brain a good set of blinders to everything else along the way.
Wikipedia has a few nice features for this: the Today's Featured Article, Did You Know..., and my favorite, the Random Page.
When I have a few minutes with nothing to do, I like to click a few random pages and see what I come up with.
I see what you're saying but while for us, numbers are obstacles or challenges, for him, going to the market to pick up food turns into a difficult and uncomfortable experience.
The article also mentions how he can't go to the beach because there are too many pebbles; he would feel lost and unable to make sense of the numbers.
I think both the average person and the savant have their own personal challenges in life.
Google seems to understand that knowledge, and the dissemination of knowledge, is power.
If you can provide people the most efficient way of providing information important to them, people will deal with advertisements and other methods to generate revenue, as long as they are inobtrusive.
Wikipedia is a great source for many different types of general knowledge, and while it may not be the ultimate resource for obtaining information about a certain topic, it is a great place to start to get a general overview.
Maybe Google sees this as a great addition their search engine: when searching, a person is supplied with a brief description of the topic at hand and search results to further their research, perhaps grouped into categories. If Google can make themselves a living, breathing entity like Wikipedia has, with input from users, perhaps they can gain an edge over other search engines.
I can only conclude that either I've been very lucky for the last 6 years, or else there are alot of morons out there who can't fill out rebates properly and don't know how to finesse their way into a successful return/exchange.
If I spend money on a warranty or service plan, I shouldn't have to "finesse" my way into a successful return/exchange.
Judging by the few people I know in my area that have had a terrible ordeal trying to make good on a PSP, it seems like you've been very lucky.
If this record stands, maybe it will be called the Kessler Run. Anyone have a link to the video?
So Windows is bloatware by their own definition.
I agree that this was a bad analogy, however I do think that the demographic that will ultimately participate in this poll will have a much lower average age than those that vote the top 100 films of all time on IMDB, and therefore will vote for games that appeal to them - games that have been popular most recently.
This will skew the "greatest game of all time" and become a "greatest game for the average age-group of the participants" poll.
So does this mean that if I go into a P2P program and do a search for "Windows 2000 Source", I am seeking to possess the sourcecode?
That would be a pretty big assumption by Microsoft!
The first thing I did when I heard the source had been leaked was to hop on my favorite P2P network and search to see how many people had it. I did _NOT_ download it. If, for whatever reason, I get a letter in the mail from Microsoft ( highly doubt it ), I will be so pissed off. I mean, what would be the next step? If someone does a Google News search for "Leaked Microsoft Source", they're attempting to locate a place to download it?
"Our customers are playing to relax and unwind from the day to day grind. They don't want to be reminded that they're idiots or lack hand-eye coordination," Nixon explained.
So his users are constantly being told that they're idiots who lack hand-eye coordination?