If i were tPB guys, i would have deleted everything, including the backups and burned all the remaining hardware and swag. You want it? Here it is. i'd sooner destroy it than give it away.
Any drop/gain will be the biggest drop/gain in X $time_unit. Markets cannot expand indefinitely, eventually there is a saturation. They will also go up and down. Statistics are not inherently meaningful. Trends usually break. Do they count sales of monthly subscriptions as sales? People are buying some games over and over and over and over and over and over. The more MMOs there are, the less NEW games people will buy.
Wednesday i was older than i've ever been! Stop the presses! i've been getting older every day for 34 years going. Analysts wonder how much longer this unprecedented aging can continue.
Video Game Makers,
Consider making your games less expensive, more re-playable and more interesting. With the monstrous processing power and high def TVs and monitors and other wizbang input systems... this should be easy.
Here's another thought: be grateful that your sales are as good as they are. Money is tight for most families. If you're turning a profit at all, you should be grateful, not bitchy that you're not making as much as last year.
What if Dish Network made their money from advertisers instead of subscribers and then gave the signal away? Then any company could produce hardware to convert the signal and render it (including Dish Network). i go to Radio Shack or Best Buy and pick up a box made by whoever. This allows more companies to make money and compete.
Or Dish Network could sell licenses to companies that give them the ability to decode that signal. The license would change the keys every so often, so it could be a subscription. That would be much like we have now, except that i'd be paying Radio Shack instead of the owners of the satellites.
When i was a kid my family enjoyed the Sky network on the cheap by buying cards that decoded the signal.
++
So when does a thought experiment/research into something that would be illegal to do become a crime?
Speaking of gathering dust... inventory COSTS a business money (in a big picture sense). An item sitting on the shelf is not only NOT giving them income and NOT recovering the item's cost, it's preventing them from putting something else in that spot. This is why we have discounted games after the initial sales, of course.
Hmm... car metaphor. OK, the sale of box 18486084320 on the self is gas flowing to the cash generating engine. If that box sits there, no other gas can take it's place. So we lose the energy of that box and the box behind it.
PC Speaker: fuck the M-P-double-A comin straight out the underground a young pirate got it bad cause I'm down, loadin DVDs like a motherfuckin fiend, bring my camera to the movies and I put em on BT, back all that stolen content up on DVD-ROMs, cause my tip's been piracy since I dropped out my Mom's, and just because I share my MP3s, they got the government comin after me, instead of suin kids why don't you step on up, and release a couple albums that don't completely suck, stop puttin DRM onto audio CDs, that don't make it any harder to steal your MP3s, if I want your shit for free, I ain't gonna have to pay, and all your bullshit is why the fuck I say, hack the Gibson, hack the Gibson, I'm seedin BitTorrents like a digital pimp, son
Chorus: fuck the M-P-double-A fuck the R-I-double-A fuck the suits behind the BSA and fuck em all for the DMCA
Recycle Bin: robot pirates, we get our shit for free, parental advisory you'll never fuckin see, been a couple years since I seen an FBI warning, cut it out cause that shit's mad boring, ya'll fuckin dumber than that bitch from bad boys, step to the Bin and it's grandma's sex toys, I'ma just keep fillin up muh drives, the ones that disapear when the lawsuit arrives, all you fuckin suits can suck my balls, when you get done you gonna make some calls, I better see some changes or it's time to fight, you ain't gonna manage my digital rights
Subrandom: remember when anti-trust was the thing, now you're set up for downloadin Sting, treatin payin customers like criminals, pens filled up with music nerd animals, buyin off senators left and right, my vote doesnt count in this fuckin fight, on the 56k had hundreds of songs, drives partitioned like asses in thongs, now its gigs of illegal content, if I get caught im joinin a convent fuck what you heard, it's all a scam, if they at your door burn em in a van,
Coaxke: they got dollar signs in their fuckin eyes, with heads in-between politicians thighs, fat checks endorsed by senators that lie, pullin fake dollar losses straight outta the sky, and i don't trust trusted computing, they don't want it around to stop looting, the internet is the only place you're still free, if you disagree, just you wait and see, you wanna lock down the web and throw away the key? well, you better not touch my fuckin technology, so back the fuck off or you're fuckin dead, yellin 1337 on a motherfuckin fed
You're forgetting that saying something like that makes the speaker feel good about themselves, therefore evidence and logic are irrelevant. Making the US to be the bad guy/in decline is still very trendy with the kids despite Obama's election. Might take them a while to unlearn that reflexive cynicism and paranoia./voted for Obama
"The" doesn't deserve capitalization any more than "of". You wouldn't capitalize the in the book title either. For abbreviations show all articles and prepositions as lower case. If you have an article or preposition at the beginning of the abbreviation, show it as lower case. Of Mice and Men would be oMaM.
By showing articles in lower case you give a clue to the reader that the letter represents something small and structural, rather than a 'real' word. LoTR would suggest Lord of Token Rings.
Side note: Not all abbreviations are acronyms. It's like rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares. An acronym is a TYPE of abbreviation SPOKEN as a word, rather than spelled. SCUBA is, CIA is not. Some twat blithers, "but, but, the dictionary says...". Dictionaries record how words are USED (correctly or otherwise), not just what they mean. If acronym means abbreviation, why have two words? How do we communicate the lost specificity of the word acronym?
Here's where you call me a pedant/prescriptivist/grammar nazi so you don't have to learn.
i built one of these in electronics school in the Air Force. We called it a "Pinger detector". Pingers are tech school students just out of Basic Training. PINGERS is supposed to mean person in great need of recreation and sex.
It's an easy project and it gives the kids a cute thing to fiddle with for a few hours.
You could have saved yourself tens of hours and $50 by doing a YouTube search for the end game videos. If that's what you value in a game i suspect many games will disappoint.
i played for the journey. i found it a joy to play. Just moving around in the space, the fighting, using the powers, hacking stuff, setting traps, the voice acting.... Other meaningful choices would have helped re-playability. But while i was playing it, i looked forward to getting home from work so i could get back to Rapture.
On a side note: Check out the difference between opinions and facts when you get a chance.
For me it was about the journey. Playing tens of hours for the purpose of watching a video i could find on youtube seems like a horrible waste of time.
That's the Apple business model. They're not about letting others play as a means to control user experience. If M$ built a winPhone many companies could sell apps through several channels. The trade off would be that M$ couldn't guarantee/control what happened on those sites. If you want a gimped system that "just works", go with Apple. It you're feeling lucky there's everyone else.
Personally, i like the M$ model of letting others play. Windows created shit tons of jobs despite the quirkiness of their software and anti-competitive practices. Their product/system is also, overall, cheaper and more flexible.
i despise iTunes. My employer gives me a free iPhone, so i use it. But i wouldn't pay for it if i had to. It's a chore to use.
There's no way to send PMs here AFAICT, so here goes:
- Censorship is obscene.
Show goatse to your children, and let me know how that goes for you. i hope you don't have children. Or, make it your computer wall paper at work.
- Patriotism is bigotry.
Which would mean that loving your family is bigotry. Patriotism is nothing like bigotry (or racism). Bigotry and racism are about fear. Patriotism is about pride and love. Some people take patriotism too far and into the realm of nationalism, patriotism's evil little brother. Don't confuse the two.
- Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Opinions are not facts and should not be expressed as such. Try something more adult, like... "I don't like Slashdot 2.0 because of X and Y".
And no, i won't be reading your whiny ass response. Try to learn and grow. Maybe be a bit less cynical.
Also, building characters is a blast, esp the females.
i'd love to see a truly revolutionary MRPG. But it seems unlikely now that the formula for a cash machine is so clear.
1) Draw in the obsessive by pushing back the upper limits, having one more thing to do 2) Draw in the insecure by having a power curve that can make some characters many times more powerful than others. 3) Make the game reward time in game more than skill/understanding. 4) Allow player trade to encourage gold farming, twinking and mom's buying WoW gold for their spoiled brats.
PlanetSide is still my game of choice for most of these reasons.
- Atheism is not a religion, it is the absence of religion.
No. It's the absence of belief in god(s), nothing more or less.
- Agnosticism is the absence of decisiveness.
No. It's the absence of KNOWLEDGE of god(s), nothing more or less.
One concerns belief, the other is about knowledge. Knowledge and belief are different.
A Venn Diagram of atheists and agnostics would look like two discs stacked almost exactly on top of each other. The idea that agnostic is some sort of halfway position is a pop culture myth. It's also a myth that atheists believe there are no gods.
Don't be fooled by dictionaries either. Dictionaries record how words are USED (rightly or wrongly), not just what they mean. If people used 'bagel' to mean "stuff a cabbage in your ear on Tuesday", Webster would create an entry for it. Fucking descriptivists.
All living people are agnostic. They might believe there are gods, they might even belief they KNOW there are gods, but they don't actually know. Some people are honest enough to admit it, so aren't.
Here is the test: Do you KNOW god(s) exist(s)?
If the answer is no, you're agnostic.
Do you HOLD a belief that god(s) exist(s)?
If the answer is no, you're atheist.
Most people who say no to one would say no to the other. It's hard to imagine someone saying they know gods exist but don't believe they do. Virtually all atheists are agnostic and vice versa.
Why does it matter?
Whenever we use words incorrectly we reinforce that mistake and encourage spreading it. We lose meaning and distinction as we make words less and less meaningful. We non-believers have a hard enough time dealing with zealots who misuse words that we shouldn't make it worse. If we get people to understand what these words actually mean (and what they DON'T mean) we can maybe get them to understand rather than assume. Many theists think that atheism means denial of god(s), when that's just not the case. Some people mistakenly think that agnostic is some sort of safe/golden mean... it isn't. It's just an adjective that names the state on not knowing there are gods.
So far i can say, like Guild Wars (also by NC Soft)... it is gorgeous. It makes WoW look like a cat turd vomited by the dog. i didn't get far enough in to play with flight, but it's pretty fun. i'm looking forward to the next round.
However comma it's still just like all the other fantasy MRPGs. Grinding, twinking, gold farming, inane quests for golden rat spleens that change nothing. WoW - Warhammer look + Guild Wars look + Flying. Adding flight and gorgeous graphics isn't enough to make it truly different than all the other life drains for me. i prolly wouldn't play it for more than a few hours a week for a month or two.
i'm waiting for a replacement to PlanetSide. Something that involves... skill, teamwork, strategy, tactics, etc.
GW used instancing beautifully to move your character *through* the story. In other games, no matter how many golden rats you kill, there are always more. The NPCs don't seem to notice, neither does the story.
Slashdot Mirror
Got to teach and everything you learn /obscure?
will point to the fact that porn is eternal
If i were tPB guys, i would have deleted everything, including the backups and burned all the remaining hardware and swag. You want it? Here it is. i'd sooner destroy it than give it away.
Any drop/gain will be the biggest drop/gain in X $time_unit. Markets cannot expand indefinitely, eventually there is a saturation. They will also go up and down. Statistics are not inherently meaningful. Trends usually break. Do they count sales of monthly subscriptions as sales? People are buying some games over and over and over and over and over and over. The more MMOs there are, the less NEW games people will buy.
Wednesday i was older than i've ever been! Stop the presses! i've been getting older every day for 34 years going. Analysts wonder how much longer this unprecedented aging can continue.
Video Game Makers,
Consider making your games less expensive, more re-playable and more interesting. With the monstrous processing power and high def TVs and monitors and other wizbang input systems... this should be easy.
Here's another thought: be grateful that your sales are as good as they are. Money is tight for most families. If you're turning a profit at all, you should be grateful, not bitchy that you're not making as much as last year.
Heh. So it seems....
What if Dish Network made their money from advertisers instead of subscribers and then gave the signal away? Then any company could produce hardware to convert the signal and render it (including Dish Network). i go to Radio Shack or Best Buy and pick up a box made by whoever. This allows more companies to make money and compete.
Or Dish Network could sell licenses to companies that give them the ability to decode that signal. The license would change the keys every so often, so it could be a subscription. That would be much like we have now, except that i'd be paying Radio Shack instead of the owners of the satellites.
When i was a kid my family enjoyed the Sky network on the cheap by buying cards that decoded the signal.
++
So when does a thought experiment/research into something that would be illegal to do become a crime?
JCTM,
Thanks for using the correct word of cracker instead of hacker.
Speaking of gathering dust... inventory COSTS a business money (in a big picture sense). An item sitting on the shelf is not only NOT giving them income and NOT recovering the item's cost, it's preventing them from putting something else in that spot. This is why we have discounted games after the initial sales, of course.
Hmm... car metaphor. OK, the sale of box 18486084320 on the self is gas flowing to the cash generating engine. If that box sits there, no other gas can take it's place. So we lose the energy of that box and the box behind it.
Fuck the MPAA
PC Speaker:
fuck the M-P-double-A comin straight out the underground
a young pirate got it bad cause I'm down,
loadin DVDs like a motherfuckin fiend,
bring my camera to the movies and I put em on BT,
back all that stolen content up on DVD-ROMs,
cause my tip's been piracy since I dropped out my Mom's,
and just because I share my MP3s,
they got the government comin after me,
instead of suin kids why don't you step on up,
and release a couple albums that don't completely suck,
stop puttin DRM onto audio CDs,
that don't make it any harder to steal your MP3s,
if I want your shit for free, I ain't gonna have to pay,
and all your bullshit is why the fuck I say,
hack the Gibson, hack the Gibson,
I'm seedin BitTorrents like a digital pimp, son
Chorus:
fuck the M-P-double-A
fuck the R-I-double-A
fuck the suits behind the BSA
and fuck em all for the DMCA
Recycle Bin:
robot pirates, we get our shit for free,
parental advisory you'll never fuckin see,
been a couple years since I seen an FBI warning,
cut it out cause that shit's mad boring,
ya'll fuckin dumber than that bitch from bad boys,
step to the Bin and it's grandma's sex toys,
I'ma just keep fillin up muh drives,
the ones that disapear when the lawsuit arrives,
all you fuckin suits can suck my balls,
when you get done you gonna make some calls,
I better see some changes or it's time to fight,
you ain't gonna manage my digital rights
Subrandom:
remember when anti-trust was the thing,
now you're set up for downloadin Sting,
treatin payin customers like criminals,
pens filled up with music nerd animals,
buyin off senators left and right,
my vote doesnt count in this fuckin fight,
on the 56k had hundreds of songs,
drives partitioned like asses in thongs,
now its gigs of illegal content,
if I get caught im joinin a convent
fuck what you heard, it's all a scam,
if they at your door burn em in a van,
Coaxke:
they got dollar signs in their fuckin eyes,
with heads in-between politicians thighs,
fat checks endorsed by senators that lie,
pullin fake dollar losses straight outta the sky,
and i don't trust trusted computing,
they don't want it around to stop looting,
the internet is the only place you're still free,
if you disagree, just you wait and see,
you wanna lock down the web and throw away the key?
well, you better not touch my fuckin technology,
so back the fuck off or you're fuckin dead,
yellin 1337 on a motherfuckin fed
Thanks! That makes sense.
Please?
You're forgetting that saying something like that makes the speaker feel good about themselves, therefore evidence and logic are irrelevant. Making the US to be the bad guy/in decline is still very trendy with the kids despite Obama's election. Might take them a while to unlearn that reflexive cynicism and paranoia. /voted for Obama
"The" doesn't deserve capitalization any more than "of". You wouldn't capitalize the in the book title either. For abbreviations show all articles and prepositions as lower case. If you have an article or preposition at the beginning of the abbreviation, show it as lower case. Of Mice and Men would be oMaM.
By showing articles in lower case you give a clue to the reader that the letter represents something small and structural, rather than a 'real' word. LoTR would suggest Lord of Token Rings.
Side note: Not all abbreviations are acronyms. It's like rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares. An acronym is a TYPE of abbreviation SPOKEN as a word, rather than spelled. SCUBA is, CIA is not. Some twat blithers, "but, but, the dictionary says...". Dictionaries record how words are USED (correctly or otherwise), not just what they mean. If acronym means abbreviation, why have two words? How do we communicate the lost specificity of the word acronym?
Here's where you call me a pedant/prescriptivist/grammar nazi so you don't have to learn.
i built one of these in electronics school in the Air Force. We called it a "Pinger detector". Pingers are tech school students just out of Basic Training. PINGERS is supposed to mean person in great need of recreation and sex.
It's an easy project and it gives the kids a cute thing to fiddle with for a few hours.
You could have saved yourself tens of hours and $50 by doing a YouTube search for the end game videos. If that's what you value in a game i suspect many games will disappoint.
i played for the journey. i found it a joy to play. Just moving around in the space, the fighting, using the powers, hacking stuff, setting traps, the voice acting.... Other meaningful choices would have helped re-playability. But while i was playing it, i looked forward to getting home from work so i could get back to Rapture.
On a side note: Check out the difference between opinions and facts when you get a chance.
For me it was about the journey. Playing tens of hours for the purpose of watching a video i could find on youtube seems like a horrible waste of time.
Where are these nuclear wessels?
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/216.html
That's the Apple business model. They're not about letting others play as a means to control user experience. If M$ built a winPhone many companies could sell apps through several channels. The trade off would be that M$ couldn't guarantee/control what happened on those sites. If you want a gimped system that "just works", go with Apple. It you're feeling lucky there's everyone else.
Personally, i like the M$ model of letting others play. Windows created shit tons of jobs despite the quirkiness of their software and anti-competitive practices. Their product/system is also, overall, cheaper and more flexible.
i despise iTunes. My employer gives me a free iPhone, so i use it. But i wouldn't pay for it if i had to. It's a chore to use.
There's no way to send PMs here AFAICT, so here goes:
- Censorship is obscene.
Show goatse to your children, and let me know how that goes for you. i hope you don't have children. Or, make it your computer wall paper at work.
- Patriotism is bigotry.
Which would mean that loving your family is bigotry. Patriotism is nothing like bigotry (or racism). Bigotry and racism are about fear. Patriotism is about pride and love. Some people take patriotism too far and into the realm of nationalism, patriotism's evil little brother. Don't confuse the two.
- Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Opinions are not facts and should not be expressed as such. Try something more adult, like... "I don't like Slashdot 2.0 because of X and Y".
And no, i won't be reading your whiny ass response. Try to learn and grow. Maybe be a bit less cynical.
*sniff*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apeiron_(cosmology)
Also, building characters is a blast, esp the females.
i'd love to see a truly revolutionary MRPG. But it seems unlikely now that the formula for a cash machine is so clear.
1) Draw in the obsessive by pushing back the upper limits, having one more thing to do
2) Draw in the insecure by having a power curve that can make some characters many times more powerful than others.
3) Make the game reward time in game more than skill/understanding.
4) Allow player trade to encourage gold farming, twinking and mom's buying WoW gold for their spoiled brats.
PlanetSide is still my game of choice for most of these reasons.
i'm trying to get in that beta too!
- Atheism is not a religion, it is the absence of religion.
No. It's the absence of belief in god(s), nothing more or less.
- Agnosticism is the absence of decisiveness.
No. It's the absence of KNOWLEDGE of god(s), nothing more or less.
One concerns belief, the other is about knowledge. Knowledge and belief are different.
A Venn Diagram of atheists and agnostics would look like two discs stacked almost exactly on top of each other. The idea that agnostic is some sort of halfway position is a pop culture myth. It's also a myth that atheists believe there are no gods.
Don't be fooled by dictionaries either. Dictionaries record how words are USED (rightly or wrongly), not just what they mean. If people used 'bagel' to mean "stuff a cabbage in your ear on Tuesday", Webster would create an entry for it. Fucking descriptivists.
All living people are agnostic. They might believe there are gods, they might even belief they KNOW there are gods, but they don't actually know. Some people are honest enough to admit it, so aren't.
Here is the test:
Do you KNOW god(s) exist(s)?
If the answer is no, you're agnostic.
Do you HOLD a belief that god(s) exist(s)?
If the answer is no, you're atheist.
Most people who say no to one would say no to the other. It's hard to imagine someone saying they know gods exist but don't believe they do. Virtually all atheists are agnostic and vice versa.
Why does it matter?
Whenever we use words incorrectly we reinforce that mistake and encourage spreading it. We lose meaning and distinction as we make words less and less meaningful. We non-believers have a hard enough time dealing with zealots who misuse words that we shouldn't make it worse. If we get people to understand what these words actually mean (and what they DON'T mean) we can maybe get them to understand rather than assume. Many theists think that atheism means denial of god(s), when that's just not the case. Some people mistakenly think that agnostic is some sort of safe/golden mean... it isn't. It's just an adjective that names the state on not knowing there are gods.
Check out PlanetSide, an MFPS. Your machine should find it very easy.
So far i can say, like Guild Wars (also by NC Soft)... it is gorgeous. It makes WoW look like a cat turd vomited by the dog. i didn't get far enough in to play with flight, but it's pretty fun. i'm looking forward to the next round.
However comma it's still just like all the other fantasy MRPGs. Grinding, twinking, gold farming, inane quests for golden rat spleens that change nothing. WoW - Warhammer look + Guild Wars look + Flying. Adding flight and gorgeous graphics isn't enough to make it truly different than all the other life drains for me. i prolly wouldn't play it for more than a few hours a week for a month or two.
i'm waiting for a replacement to PlanetSide. Something that involves... skill, teamwork, strategy, tactics, etc.
GW used instancing beautifully to move your character *through* the story. In other games, no matter how many golden rats you kill, there are always more. The NPCs don't seem to notice, neither does the story.
Whose ass was it? i want to know who is the owner of that shiny magenta badonkadonk? That chick looked pretty hot.