The prediction is that as the PC gaming market gets flooded with increasingly lousy console ports, that there will be a backlash against them, which will lead to a renaissance in PC gaming in a few years.
In other words--like everything else--console-port hell is cyclical.
Have you ever worked as a consultant? If so, would you like to be responsible for whether or not any of your clients were terrorists?
As an accountant, I'd hate to go to jail because I did the taxes for someone who turned out to be a terrorist. I'd hate it so much, that I might turn down business from a lot of people that I thought *might* be terrorists. Certain classes of people might then find it awfully hard to get their taxes done at a reasonable price. *Thats* the problem with this section.
I don't think that's right.
What you *do* get to do is capitalize all the costs that go towards obtaining the patent, rather than expensing them. Then you amortize them over the life of the patent.
So... your income looks a lot better in the short term, and you spread the pain over a lot of years. I'd imagine that it's actually upping your taxes, since it's helping your bottom line, but then, income is a good thing too.
Or maybe you're thinking of some specialized tax breaks that are out there? There might be, but they're probably industry-specific.
Exactly. Shadowbane was designed with *lots* of money sinks:
Training skills
Upkeep on city assets
Salary for NPC crafters
Repair on items (use leads to mild repairs, death leads to major repairs)
If it hadn't been for all the duped gold from the first six months, the economy would pretty amazing.
Of course, that leads to the opposite problem, where the players feel like they have to spend too much time farming for gold. You really can't win for losing, sometimes.
Well, since they were probably searching for any evidence of copying or distributing these screeners, I would think that pretty much any audio-visual equipment would be fair game for the warrant.
I know there is at least one state (Iowa? It's a midwestern state, I know that.) that does award its electors proportionally to the popular vote in the state. So the states can go that way if they so choose.
(Of course the states could also choose not to gerrymander their legislative districts if they wanted to, and by and large they don't. So that doesn't help much.)
Honestly, the first thing that I would do is talk to my boss, and find out what (s)he thought this was all about. Because it makes a difference if this is the get-acquainted portion of some sort of "re-engineering process" or if this is supposed to be a morale booster for the IT staff. Also, that way you can find out what your boss wants the "company line" to be.
Not that you have to follow the "company line," if you feel strongly that its wrong (and are willing to take the consequences). But you need to know what it is, so that you don't cross it on accident.
And if your boss won't give you any guidance, here, that's a bad thing. It either means (s)he is completely clueless...or what you might say is completely meaningless.
In my opinion, this is one of the things that Shadowbane got right. There is a small newbie area with no PvP, and 3 safehold cities with no PvP. Everywhere else, anyone can kill anyone. At any time, for any reason.
But...
The penalties for dying are few. And you get full information on the person who killed you, and their guild.
So if you've been griefed you just round up your guild (and maybe some others) and go after them. Maybe right then, maybe later. Pretty soon, respectable guilds don't put up with loose cannons. And PK guilds end up seeing a lot of combat...which is what they wanted anyway.
For the first several months, there were some things that got out of hand, but now there are some real community "norms" set up. Guilds that go beyond those eventually get slapped down. The self-policing aspect actually works. (However, you *have* to join a guild. Otherwise you have no one to police on your behalf. But there's plenty of choice there.)
There are plenty of things about Shadowbane that are broken. It's sad to me that this part of things, which actually works well, will probably be ignored by future designers, because of all the other things that went wrong with the game.
Let's face it, if it's *critically important* that you physically appear in another city, you probably should be flying in a private jet.
My grandfather was a pilot, (Air Force test pilot & private planes) and he always said that the first rule of flying was that if you absolutely had to be somewhere at a certain time, don't fly. A pilot has to be willing and able to scrub a flight if everything doesn't look exactly like it should. If you don't have that mindset, it will eventually catch up with you.
So that said, if it's *critically important* that you be somewhere in person, what you need to do, whatever mode you take, is to leave a day (or more) early.
My experience with lucid dreams is a little bit different. First of all, pretty much all of my dreams have been lucid since I was a teenager. And for a long time what would happen is that I would be able to give myself magic powers to get out of situations, but that there was sort of an arms race going on. So, one night, I'd be able to fly away from my dream monster, and that would be great. But if I did that every time, then soon the monster would learn how to fly and come after me, so I'd have to come up with something new, like turning invisible. And that would work for a few nights until they figured out how to counter that, etc etc etc. Evolution in action, I guess.
But for about the last 10 years, what happens is that when I have a dream, I will have the same dream about 3 or 4 times in a row in the same night (or occasionally consecutive nights), and that in each successive iteration of the dream, I will have "edited" it somewhat. Maybe I change the setting, or some of the characters, or change a tiny bit of the plot (which can have a cascade effect on the action, but usually doesn't). And the overall effect is to get a final dream which isn't necessarily happy, but which ends up "feeling right".
All that said, I rarely ever dream anymore that I recall. Maybe once every month or two. Probably cause it's too much work.
What I expect from WoW is the first major North American MMOG where Mac & PC users can seamlessly interact together.
Yes, Lineage did it first. Not enough NA market penetration, apparently.
Yes EQ has a Mac version. With separate Mac servers only.
Shadowbane has this currently (and has a large proportion of Mac players as a result), but has its problems technically. However, being a mixed game has helped player retention somewhat, in that there is no other game that mixed guilds can migrate to without leaving some of their players behind.
I trust Blizzard to get us all playing together seamlessly, and that that will help them in forming a solid, loyal player base.
And this problem was the one that Shadowbane was trying to overcome, by giving you a framework to compete in with fully leveled characters.
If they can just finish getting all the technical problems worked out, we'll get to see if they were right.
Interesting. The City of Seattle recently decided that they are going to start fining people for putting recyclable materials in the garbage, instead of in the recycling bins.
"For the record, Costco IS unionized AND they PAY MORE than Sams Club and Wal-Mart."
Unless, of course, you're the CEO. News out today is that the CEO of Costco has made a $350k salary each year for the last year, and has turned down a bonus each of those years. They also listed his "other" compensation, which I don't remember exactly, but was about $25k - $50k .
That probably doesn't include any stock he owns, though.
Costco's compensation committee went on to say that he was underpaid, and compared these earnings to other CEOs. He may be. But the real issue is probably the other CEOs are overpaid.
I personally see holding the line on upper management salaries as an indication of good management.
"So, if Saddam didn't have WMD, why would he throw out weapons inspectors and risk being thrown out of power?"
The reports I've heard suggest that Saddam wanted us to believe that he still had WMD, because he thought that the only reason we hadn't attacked him was that we were afraid of his WMD.
Obviously, he was wrong. He was thinking like a bully, and not a diplomat. But, you know, it was being a bully that had kept him in power for so long, so what do you expect.
The problem is a slightly different one than what you have stated.
The way that feature works, is that the DISH box tunes the TV to the correct station, and then sends out the IR pulse which tells your VCR "start recording" at the beginning of the program and "stop recording" at the end of the program.
So, (assuming you have your PVR set up correctly to record when ordered), you don't have to convince the DISH box of anything. What you do have to do is teach your PVR to respond to the IR signals that will be sent out.
(And make sure that everything is situated so that the PVR receives the IR signals. That's our problem--we rearranged our furniture, and now the VCR won't pick up the signals anymore. Grumble grumble.)
Well, when I think "strategy" I think of fighting out the whole war, not just one battle. Resource and troop allocation, and that whole bit. Probably more of a turn-based game than RTS, though you could probably do it both ways. (You know, something with the Europa Universalis engine would be fiendish, now that I think about it.)
Of course, I also played Middle-Earth PBM for several years, where you do just that, so maybe I'm biased. (MEPBM is a fun game, btw, if you've got a year or two.)
Wow, all of a sudden my strategy is starting to look cost-effective.
I game on a Mac laptop. Since it's a laptop, I can't upgrade anything on it. So that costs me nothing! Since it's a Mac, all the games come out 3-6 months later than on a PC, so that extends the amount of time before it can't run the newest games! Plus, having already waited 6 months, it's easy to just wait another 3 till the game is marked down. So I save there too!
So all this time I thought I was being difficult, I was really just being thrifty. Who knew?
I'm sure games (online and otherwise) are part of the decline, but there are plenty of other reasons, too.
Other than sports, I haven't watched a TV show live in years. I either record it for viewing later (skipping the commercials) or do without. Plus now, you figure if a show is any good, it will be released on DVD in a year or two.
When I was a boy, there was a sense of urgency about watching TV, because if you missed an episode, it was gone forever. That's just not true anymore.
Actually, the real thing is that efficiency is over-rated. There is a function (albeit an annoying one) for bureaucratic, in-efficient systems, and that is redundancy. This is important for anything that has to function in the "real world," and the more choatic the situation it has to operate in, the more important it is. The best example of this is the military, which isn't even close to efficient, but *is* effective.
Those are the sorts of things that governments seem to be best at: things where it's worthwhile to overpay, because the end result is important enough that all you care about is that it works. (Not to say that governments don't mess that up, too, but if all you measure them on is "Does it work, eventually" they don't do so badly.)
What I find funny about your comment is that Garriott is now at NCSoft. So maybe he's bringing Lineage to the masses, instead?:)
But seriously, as well as RPGs do on the Mac, I would expect MMORPGs to sell extremely well there. So my impression is that they're extremely hard to do cross-platform. But the first company to do it well is should rake it in. As frustrating as it can be on a bad day, I do still see a lot of Mac users playing Shadowbane. (And on a good day, it is still damn fun.)
Note, I don't even count Everquest as a cross-platform MMORPG, since Mac users and PC users are on separate servers.
Slashdot Mirror
The prediction is that as the PC gaming market gets flooded with increasingly lousy console ports, that there will be a backlash against them, which will lead to a renaissance in PC gaming in a few years.
In other words--like everything else--console-port hell is cyclical.
As an accountant, I'd hate to go to jail because I did the taxes for someone who turned out to be a terrorist. I'd hate it so much, that I might turn down business from a lot of people that I thought *might* be terrorists. Certain classes of people might then find it awfully hard to get their taxes done at a reasonable price. *Thats* the problem with this section.
So... your income looks a lot better in the short term, and you spread the pain over a lot of years. I'd imagine that it's actually upping your taxes, since it's helping your bottom line, but then, income is a good thing too.
Or maybe you're thinking of some specialized tax breaks that are out there? There might be, but they're probably industry-specific.
Training skills
Upkeep on city assets
Salary for NPC crafters
Repair on items (use leads to mild repairs, death leads to major repairs)
If it hadn't been for all the duped gold from the first six months, the economy would pretty amazing.
Of course, that leads to the opposite problem, where the players feel like they have to spend too much time farming for gold. You really can't win for losing, sometimes.
(Of course the states could also choose not to gerrymander their legislative districts if they wanted to, and by and large they don't. So that doesn't help much.)
Not that you have to follow the "company line," if you feel strongly that its wrong (and are willing to take the consequences). But you need to know what it is, so that you don't cross it on accident.
And if your boss won't give you any guidance, here, that's a bad thing. It either means (s)he is completely clueless...or what you might say is completely meaningless.
If you're an optimist, you can believe that that will increase the quality of shows, since the idea would be to make them good enough to pay for.
If you're a pessimist, you can believe that that just means they'll try to appeal even more to the lowest common denominator.
But...
The penalties for dying are few. And you get full information on the person who killed you, and their guild.
So if you've been griefed you just round up your guild (and maybe some others) and go after them. Maybe right then, maybe later. Pretty soon, respectable guilds don't put up with loose cannons. And PK guilds end up seeing a lot of combat...which is what they wanted anyway.
For the first several months, there were some things that got out of hand, but now there are some real community "norms" set up. Guilds that go beyond those eventually get slapped down. The self-policing aspect actually works. (However, you *have* to join a guild. Otherwise you have no one to police on your behalf. But there's plenty of choice there.)
There are plenty of things about Shadowbane that are broken. It's sad to me that this part of things, which actually works well, will probably be ignored by future designers, because of all the other things that went wrong with the game.
My grandfather was a pilot, (Air Force test pilot & private planes) and he always said that the first rule of flying was that if you absolutely had to be somewhere at a certain time, don't fly. A pilot has to be willing and able to scrub a flight if everything doesn't look exactly like it should. If you don't have that mindset, it will eventually catch up with you.
So that said, if it's *critically important* that you be somewhere in person, what you need to do, whatever mode you take, is to leave a day (or more) early.
But for about the last 10 years, what happens is that when I have a dream, I will have the same dream about 3 or 4 times in a row in the same night (or occasionally consecutive nights), and that in each successive iteration of the dream, I will have "edited" it somewhat. Maybe I change the setting, or some of the characters, or change a tiny bit of the plot (which can have a cascade effect on the action, but usually doesn't). And the overall effect is to get a final dream which isn't necessarily happy, but which ends up "feeling right".
All that said, I rarely ever dream anymore that I recall. Maybe once every month or two. Probably cause it's too much work.
Yes, Lineage did it first. Not enough NA market penetration, apparently. Yes EQ has a Mac version. With separate Mac servers only. Shadowbane has this currently (and has a large proportion of Mac players as a result), but has its problems technically. However, being a mixed game has helped player retention somewhat, in that there is no other game that mixed guilds can migrate to without leaving some of their players behind.
I trust Blizzard to get us all playing together seamlessly, and that that will help them in forming a solid, loyal player base.
----
And this problem was the one that Shadowbane was trying to overcome, by giving you a framework to compete in with fully leveled characters. If they can just finish getting all the technical problems worked out, we'll get to see if they were right.
So that won't work for me.
link=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/152676_re cycle16.html
Unless, of course, you're the CEO. News out today is that the CEO of Costco has made a $350k salary each year for the last year, and has turned down a bonus each of those years. They also listed his "other" compensation, which I don't remember exactly, but was about $25k - $50k .
That probably doesn't include any stock he owns, though.
Costco's compensation committee went on to say that he was underpaid, and compared these earnings to other CEOs. He may be. But the real issue is probably the other CEOs are overpaid.
I personally see holding the line on upper management salaries as an indication of good management.
The reports I've heard suggest that Saddam wanted us to believe that he still had WMD, because he thought that the only reason we hadn't attacked him was that we were afraid of his WMD.
Obviously, he was wrong. He was thinking like a bully, and not a diplomat. But, you know, it was being a bully that had kept him in power for so long, so what do you expect.
Which has the same end result as what you said, only it happens in reverse.
The way that feature works, is that the DISH box tunes the TV to the correct station, and then sends out the IR pulse which tells your VCR "start recording" at the beginning of the program and "stop recording" at the end of the program.
So, (assuming you have your PVR set up correctly to record when ordered), you don't have to convince the DISH box of anything. What you do have to do is teach your PVR to respond to the IR signals that will be sent out.
(And make sure that everything is situated so that the PVR receives the IR signals. That's our problem--we rearranged our furniture, and now the VCR won't pick up the signals anymore. Grumble grumble.)
Of course, I also played Middle-Earth PBM for several years, where you do just that, so maybe I'm biased. (MEPBM is a fun game, btw, if you've got a year or two.)
There's Skull-and-Bones. And the Bildebergs. Probably the TriLateral Commission.
I'm sure there are scads more.
I game on a Mac laptop. Since it's a laptop, I can't upgrade anything on it. So that costs me nothing! Since it's a Mac, all the games come out 3-6 months later than on a PC, so that extends the amount of time before it can't run the newest games! Plus, having already waited 6 months, it's easy to just wait another 3 till the game is marked down. So I save there too!
So all this time I thought I was being difficult, I was really just being thrifty. Who knew?
Other than sports, I haven't watched a TV show live in years. I either record it for viewing later (skipping the commercials) or do without. Plus now, you figure if a show is any good, it will be released on DVD in a year or two.
When I was a boy, there was a sense of urgency about watching TV, because if you missed an episode, it was gone forever. That's just not true anymore.
Those are the sorts of things that governments seem to be best at: things where it's worthwhile to overpay, because the end result is important enough that all you care about is that it works. (Not to say that governments don't mess that up, too, but if all you measure them on is "Does it work, eventually" they don't do so badly.)
But seriously, as well as RPGs do on the Mac, I would expect MMORPGs to sell extremely well there. So my impression is that they're extremely hard to do cross-platform. But the first company to do it well is should rake it in. As frustrating as it can be on a bad day, I do still see a lot of Mac users playing Shadowbane. (And on a good day, it is still damn fun.)
Note, I don't even count Everquest as a cross-platform MMORPG, since Mac users and PC users are on separate servers.
Ummm, a big pile of rubble in your front yard isn't an attractive nuisance. It's an ugly nuisance.