The real issue is they have three different departments who don't really work at all together.
The Developers design the game and hardly ever talk to 'the masses' with a few exceptions such as the one involved in keeping the UI mods side in sync.
The Community Managers whose job it is to put a pretty face on anything Blizzard does and who have no power to actually do anything in game and can only 'relay' concerns to the devs.
The Customer Support team who seemingly your normal CS group (i.e. low paid phone/chat slaves that are over worked and stressed and therefore not at all likely to be willing to go to any extraordinary steps to work with the customer.)
The devs, when they do appear are friendly and more than willing to help out but consider the game to be 'theirs' and are seldom willing to compromise their vision of what the game should be. This is actually a good thing in my eyes, since few people ever have a handle on what their requests actually entail or will result in.
The CM's are always friendly, but end up being screwed because no one trusts what a CM says since they can only pass along what the devs tell them (which can and has changed between the time of speaking and the time of implementation more than once). They also can't help with CS issues and can only tell you what 'in a perfect world' would happen.
And the CS team is just what you would expect. A sea of seemingly unhelpful people who actually would probably be willing to help you if they weren't so regimented on how to deal with things and if the last person they had spoken with hadn't spent 30 mins finding new ways to chew them out.
Given the Community Managers basicly put up a sticky indicating that there was no evidence of real duping going on in game, I doubt you'll get an answer that you'll consider useful for that question.
And you have the bonus of having that secret fingerprint in your OS so when you find the copies distributed online, you know who to black list from your trusted group for the next version.
Advertising is advertising. I don't care where it comes from, the only real metric is whether it annoys me.
We live in a commercial (as in based on commerce, not as in based on ads) world. I expect people to try to sell me things. The only requirement I've had is that you don't annoy or bore me. If you can do that, I don't care if your ad is at the start of a movie, in the middle of a show, embeded in a game, or plastered across a t-shirt. Hell, if you do it well enough I will even take the effort of actually seeking out your ad and products. One of my dreams is build a PVR that lets me cut commercials out of my recorded shows and interject ones favorites I've downloaded or 'clipped out'.
If you can't advertise without annoying me, then it doesn't matter where your ad is placed, you have already lost.
Can ads in games be done without annoying people or boring them? I'm certain they can. I'll applaud those for their ingenuity and boo the rest for their idiocy.
It isn't ads in games you should be caring about, it's crappy ads anywhere.
But publicly decrying Cnet news they're setting a precedent.
Except that they haven't publicly done anything.
The only information coming from this story is from Cnet, Google has not made any announcements or attacks other than setting a company policy. They did not publicize that policy, Cnet did.
And frankly, it's their right.
This is the equivalent of the high school jackass doing something to piss you off, and when you don't repsond with anything more than an annoyed face they start yelling loudly "Oh, I'm sorry! Did I piss you off?" and do their best to make a scene.
I don't see anything wrong with Google's actions here.
David Brin wrote Earth where that was one of the sub-plots of the story, started with the invasion Switzerland to end Swiss bank accounts or some such silliness. Might not be what you were looking for though.
Anyone research these "anti-bullying" groups to see if they are legit? Frankly, Rockstar Games seems like a company that lives off contraversy, I wouldn't put it past some publicity company to decide the best way to get the word out was the incite a protest.
In the US of A. If you are a common carrier, you can not be held liable for the information being transmitted over your lines. However, if you censor/filter/control access to what is sent over your lines, you no longer have that safe harbor and are considered to be liable for what is sent as if you are filtering and allow something to go through, it's an implict acceptance of it.
I don't know if this is something that applies to Canada as well. But it's be biggest reasons why ISP's in USA will not filter or control access to parts of the internet based on content. The end user has the option to filter, but it must be controlled by that user, not the ISP.
How do you convert stories which rely on and base most of their power from your own imagination to come up with the scariest most horriable things possible, to a medium which bases most of it's power and relies mostly on leaving nothing to the imagination?
Some things are just better when read by flashlight under the covers of your bed instead of being projected on a silver screen.
The trackers are just simple HTTP deamons, you can force them to do anything you can with a normal HTTPd. The problem is, if you rely on a tracker, you don't need access to a tracker to download via bittorrent any longer. Download Azureus and look into the dynamic hosting service for an example.
And even if you did need access to the tracker, once the file has been downloaded it's a simple task to re-torrent a file and pop it up an another tracker.
I don't think you can password or otherwise DRM an actual Torrent file directly, although there are plenty of general methods out there to encrypt a file, but at the end of the day it's still an issue of once the actual file has made it to your hard drive, it's infinately redistributeable.
To the point of how to handle pay content, the best solution to me would be to provide DRM'ed files, or ones which require activation prior to working, which means that it doesn't matter if the files are on every hard drive in the world.
While I realize that a number of people consider DRM to be akin to the devil, the majority of these people also aren't ones which are going to be willing to purchase commercial works via download anyway.
Locking down your tracker means very little, especially since many clients now support decentralized hosting which means if you can get ahold of the torrent file and have even one client that is using both DHS and the tracker, you've got a way to get the file.
Say it as many times as you want, that doesn't make it true. This might be a bad move in terms of alienating WW's customer base, but it is NOT wrong in the sense of unethical or immoral.
YOU want to create things and give them away for free, do it be happy and enjoy your choice. Just don't bitch because the rest of us want to feed our kids without having to be a factory worker or someone's peon. We work to create our IP and just because it's easier for you to steal it than it is to steal a physical object doesn't make it right to do so.
Perhaps I'm simply not 'hard core' enough. However after one instance where everyone on my server was given a day or so's worth of rested xp, I've not yet been able to actually empty the bar. Which is actually a bit of a hinderance, since it means that I get double xp for any kills I make and I'm quickly out leveling the quests in the area's I want to be in.
I think, for 'hard core' people the bonus might not be much. But for those of us with only an hour or so a day to play, it's pretty much a giant turbo button.
I'm fairly certain that while the stories themselves are just fed through, someone at yahoo is responsible for picking which are shown as news and which are just avaliable if you do a search. Both AP and Reuters have thousands of stories a day.
Re:What would it take to do it on the net
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 1
While I can see where people are coming up with $1 or $2 price tags, if you are realistic about it will probably be more like $10 or $20.
And while that might be daunting to alot of people, the fact of the matter is I'd be far more willing to pay $60 a month for 3-6 good shows with a new episode every week or so than I would be to pay $60 for a 100 channels full of dreck. Especially if I can store up the shows I've purchased.
But what I hate is... I'd rather you work for me than me get a job I don't want. Guess what? That unemployment check came from folks who have jobs they don't want.
Just a small bit of mis-information there, unemployment insurance is paid for by the company you were previously working for and is part of an account they have to pay to while you are employee. It is, for all intents and purposes, part of the cost of employing you.
It's not coming out of the pockets of working people.
What I was really pissed about was I was only able to get the first one before the crash. And when I found the last two in a dollar bin later, both had had their comics stolen.
It wasn't till a few years ago that I found pdf's of the comics online somewhere.
Which is why most devices designed to be used in this manner operate over bands that are almost undectectable unless you know exactly when and where to look. Stuff like Ultrawideband microbursts.
While a significantly advanced party would probably still be able to detect the signal, the majority of what a typical US soldier faces wouldn't have a snowball's chance.
They tried that, it was called Sims Online. Honestly, I wasn't sure how many S&M Brothels could be fit into one town was really a question that needed to be investigated, but TSO certainly made a good effort to try to answer the question.
I hear Second Life is something of a better setup, but given I've only heard of it via/. I can't say it's been that successful.
Or in a less glib manner, because allowing players to create content causes three issues.
Who owns the content?
Is the content suitable (both in quality and context)?
And how do you facilitate content creation when most of the MMORPG's are based on systems that even the developers have to take multiple go's at a project before it's ready to even become public beta?
Slashdot Mirror
The real issue is they have three different departments who don't really work at all together.
The Developers design the game and hardly ever talk to 'the masses' with a few exceptions such as the one involved in keeping the UI mods side in sync.
The Community Managers whose job it is to put a pretty face on anything Blizzard does and who have no power to actually do anything in game and can only 'relay' concerns to the devs.
The Customer Support team who seemingly your normal CS group (i.e. low paid phone/chat slaves that are over worked and stressed and therefore not at all likely to be willing to go to any extraordinary steps to work with the customer.)
The devs, when they do appear are friendly and more than willing to help out but consider the game to be 'theirs' and are seldom willing to compromise their vision of what the game should be. This is actually a good thing in my eyes, since few people ever have a handle on what their requests actually entail or will result in.
The CM's are always friendly, but end up being screwed because no one trusts what a CM says since they can only pass along what the devs tell them (which can and has changed between the time of speaking and the time of implementation more than once). They also can't help with CS issues and can only tell you what 'in a perfect world' would happen.
And the CS team is just what you would expect. A sea of seemingly unhelpful people who actually would probably be willing to help you if they weren't so regimented on how to deal with things and if the last person they had spoken with hadn't spent 30 mins finding new ways to chew them out.
Given the Community Managers basicly put up a sticky indicating that there was no evidence of real duping going on in game, I doubt you'll get an answer that you'll consider useful for that question.
And you have the bonus of having that secret fingerprint in your OS so when you find the copies distributed online, you know who to black list from your trusted group for the next version.
Bah! Novels created based on a screenplay always suck. :-P
Advertising is advertising. I don't care where it comes from, the only real metric is whether it annoys me.
We live in a commercial (as in based on commerce, not as in based on ads) world. I expect people to try to sell me things. The only requirement I've had is that you don't annoy or bore me. If you can do that, I don't care if your ad is at the start of a movie, in the middle of a show, embeded in a game, or plastered across a t-shirt. Hell, if you do it well enough I will even take the effort of actually seeking out your ad and products. One of my dreams is build a PVR that lets me cut commercials out of my recorded shows and interject ones favorites I've downloaded or 'clipped out'.
If you can't advertise without annoying me, then it doesn't matter where your ad is placed, you have already lost.
Can ads in games be done without annoying people or boring them? I'm certain they can. I'll applaud those for their ingenuity and boo the rest for their idiocy.
It isn't ads in games you should be caring about, it's crappy ads anywhere.
Except that they haven't publicly done anything.
The only information coming from this story is from Cnet, Google has not made any announcements or attacks other than setting a company policy. They did not publicize that policy, Cnet did.
And frankly, it's their right.
This is the equivalent of the high school jackass doing something to piss you off, and when you don't repsond with anything more than an annoyed face they start yelling loudly "Oh, I'm sorry! Did I piss you off?" and do their best to make a scene.
I don't see anything wrong with Google's actions here.
David Brin wrote Earth where that was one of the sub-plots of the story, started with the invasion Switzerland to end Swiss bank accounts or some such silliness. Might not be what you were looking for though.
Anyone research these "anti-bullying" groups to see if they are legit? Frankly, Rockstar Games seems like a company that lives off contraversy, I wouldn't put it past some publicity company to decide the best way to get the word out was the incite a protest.
In the US of A. If you are a common carrier, you can not be held liable for the information being transmitted over your lines. However, if you censor/filter/control access to what is sent over your lines, you no longer have that safe harbor and are considered to be liable for what is sent as if you are filtering and allow something to go through, it's an implict acceptance of it.
I don't know if this is something that applies to Canada as well. But it's be biggest reasons why ISP's in USA will not filter or control access to parts of the internet based on content. The end user has the option to filter, but it must be controlled by that user, not the ISP.
How do you convert stories which rely on and base most of their power from your own imagination to come up with the scariest most horriable things possible, to a medium which bases most of it's power and relies mostly on leaving nothing to the imagination?
Some things are just better when read by flashlight under the covers of your bed instead of being projected on a silver screen.
The trackers are just simple HTTP deamons, you can force them to do anything you can with a normal HTTPd. The problem is, if you rely on a tracker, you don't need access to a tracker to download via bittorrent any longer. Download Azureus and look into the dynamic hosting service for an example. And even if you did need access to the tracker, once the file has been downloaded it's a simple task to re-torrent a file and pop it up an another tracker. I don't think you can password or otherwise DRM an actual Torrent file directly, although there are plenty of general methods out there to encrypt a file, but at the end of the day it's still an issue of once the actual file has made it to your hard drive, it's infinately redistributeable.
To the point of how to handle pay content, the best solution to me would be to provide DRM'ed files, or ones which require activation prior to working, which means that it doesn't matter if the files are on every hard drive in the world.
While I realize that a number of people consider DRM to be akin to the devil, the majority of these people also aren't ones which are going to be willing to purchase commercial works via download anyway.
Locking down your tracker means very little, especially since many clients now support decentralized hosting which means if you can get ahold of the torrent file and have even one client that is using both DHS and the tracker, you've got a way to get the file.
I imagine it's a take on the name of a popular multi-protocol P2P client... Morpheus
Isn't that close to the natural resolution for OOA broadcasting?
Say it as many times as you want, that doesn't make it true. This might be a bad move in terms of alienating WW's customer base, but it is NOT wrong in the sense of unethical or immoral.
YOU want to create things and give them away for free, do it be happy and enjoy your choice. Just don't bitch because the rest of us want to feed our kids without having to be a factory worker or someone's peon. We work to create our IP and just because it's easier for you to steal it than it is to steal a physical object doesn't make it right to do so.
Perhaps I'm simply not 'hard core' enough. However after one instance where everyone on my server was given a day or so's worth of rested xp, I've not yet been able to actually empty the bar. Which is actually a bit of a hinderance, since it means that I get double xp for any kills I make and I'm quickly out leveling the quests in the area's I want to be in.
I think, for 'hard core' people the bonus might not be much. But for those of us with only an hour or so a day to play, it's pretty much a giant turbo button.
I've seen atleast one Podcast download util that can utilize a normal torrent ecapsulation.
I've also seen more than one plug-in for Bittorent clients to check a RSS feed and start queue up any torrents in the feed.
The solution is there, it's just getting people to use it.
I imagine the organizers will get a bit tired before it is all over. But I think you really mean leery rather than weary.
I'm fairly certain that while the stories themselves are just fed through, someone at yahoo is responsible for picking which are shown as news and which are just avaliable if you do a search. Both AP and Reuters have thousands of stories a day.
While I can see where people are coming up with $1 or $2 price tags, if you are realistic about it will probably be more like $10 or $20.
And while that might be daunting to alot of people, the fact of the matter is I'd be far more willing to pay $60 a month for 3-6 good shows with a new episode every week or so than I would be to pay $60 for a 100 channels full of dreck. Especially if I can store up the shows I've purchased.
I didn't have much time to play with it before work, but I did get into the tutorial on training your army for a few steps.
I think I can safely say that it shows alot of promise in the fun department.
Just a small bit of mis-information there, unemployment insurance is paid for by the company you were previously working for and is part of an account they have to pay to while you are employee. It is, for all intents and purposes, part of the cost of employing you.
It's not coming out of the pockets of working people.
What I was really pissed about was I was only able to get the first one before the crash. And when I found the last two in a dollar bin later, both had had their comics stolen.
It wasn't till a few years ago that I found pdf's of the comics online somewhere.
Which is why most devices designed to be used in this manner operate over bands that are almost undectectable unless you know exactly when and where to look. Stuff like Ultrawideband microbursts.
While a significantly advanced party would probably still be able to detect the signal, the majority of what a typical US soldier faces wouldn't have a snowball's chance.
I hear Second Life is something of a better setup, but given I've only heard of it via /. I can't say it's been that successful.
Or in a less glib manner, because allowing players to create content causes three issues.