I bought all the DLC for Fallout 3 via Games for Windows Live (I didn't have a lot of options mind you) that service has since been discontinued and as a result I can't actually load the DLC anymore. Apparently the activation keys are installed as part of the software but unless I had the DLC already installed I couldn't get the keys back.
So I ended up buying the "GOTY" edition just to get my whole game back, I don't particularly enjoy paying for the same game twice even at a significant discount but lesson learnt. Virtual products suck, virtual products through services that don't last suck more.
I started with a company in 2005 that had been around since the 60s. It was well established, plenty of regular clients and new work coming in but not at a stupid (read: greedy) pace and growing at a reasonable rate so as not to overstretch things. The people at the top seemed to actually care about the company and they empowered us all to do great things as client consultants (gave decision making powers to the people on the ground? Unpossible!) we were very successful, so successful that a capitol investment firm swooped in like a plague and bought up the company, things went to shit very quickly:
1. Systematically removed existing management 2. Hired cheap-o whip crackin' style managers 3. Created new workflows that added bottlenecks by design 4. Bid on more work than we were capable of handling 5. When not enough bids came back laid off several long term employees ("redundancies" created by braindead managers who can't math) 6. Set unreasonable quarterly goals 7. Bought and merged us with a useless consulting company just to get the contracts - slowly removed employees of that company (I'm pretty sure that's illegal but nobody cared then so I'm guessing nobody cares now) 8. Changed the benefits plan 3 weeks before I was eligible (it went to 7 years rather than 5) 9. Didn't hand out raises to devs after 2008 (they were a US company and getting slammed by the recession while business continued as usual in Canada RIP)
All these things plus putting me on a contract I told management I didn't want to work on, having that project bleed people until I was the core leader / developer / support person, having to work overtime and not attend my 5 year anniversary while my coworkers fucked off and attended it was absolutely galling (your cake tasted great - SERIOUSLY?? fuck u) I mention that because it is emblematic of the kinds of shit they got up to. That is to say the ritual was more important than the purpose.
I got the app stable in just under a year to the point where we went from an avg of 9 trouble tickets a week to 1 every two weeks, I gutted the app another company wrote that we were maintaining and re-wrote the majority of it and fixed accounting errors that had been prevalent from the first month of activation (at first they didn't believe I had fixed it and did a manual audit, turns out they were used to seeing a specific imbalance in all their reporting... for a decade *sigh*)
Long story short, the company started out awesome (some of my favourite memories working in IT really) but got bought by some dunderheaded capitol investment firm and turned into a standard consulting shit-show.
Most of the good people were gone by the time my friend rang me up with an actually interesting sounding job opportunity. I threw them a number I figured I should be at (as a highball number I was sure we'd negotiate) and it turned out that was slightly below avg and so they accepted my offer.
And I've been working here for 8 years without much looking back, well, none really. The old place I worked at is a shadow of its former self, only occupying one office space now and people slowly swirling around the bowl, too valuable to make redundant but nothing new or interesting coming down the pipe anymore.
I still like the work I'm doing here after 8 years, it's always interesting and I feel I'm compensated well for it. The main thing is they treat me like a human being and to me that counts for a lot these days.
"Events Near You" has been a rather creepy feature for while on Facebook, I suspect it will only get creepier with Googles fingers in your search history / predictive algorithms...
Idea: telemarketers can only use automation if the recipient is automated. Have two computers talk to each other; one selling, the other just saying fuck off over and over. Heck you wouldn't even have to do this over the phone, just don't even do it at all and save everyone the trouble!
Just between you and me my carpets DO need cleaning but I'll never EVER use a service that thinks cold-calling me at 7 PM is a good idea.
I travel to the UK occasionally and have to remind myself that gratuities are not a thing (and in some cases seen as a rude gesture) the theory being that the people who tend bar or serve food are paid adequately enough that they don't need any extra.
Here in Canada its generally accepted that you tip your server (most Interac machines even have built in tip percentiles) this is factored into the system, I read the other day that many systems also only let servers keep a portion of the tip they get and the rest goes into a pool for all servers. At this point I don't understand the system at all, pay people to work a difficult job that absolutely requires you to be "nice" to every asshole that walks off the street to ensure you get a gratuity so you can make a halfway decent wage. This is almost like haggling the bill (which I have seen in Europe oddly enough) the expectation is that my service was satisfactory enough for me to allow this person to work at a livable wage.
I think the problem compounds for chain restaurants that may be off the beaten trail, so if you happen to work at a heavily trafficked location you are gonna do pretty well but if you work at a low traffic location you might barely be scraping by despite getting an hourly wage - that's management sticking it to the servers for something they have little control over.
I dunno, to me the whole system sucks and should just go away. Pay servers a decent wage and throw tipping out the window.
Granted they've always been a bit weird with how they show content in search results and the like but lately it's become much more extreme, to the point that result sets being given to me through their search rarely matches up with what I want. They use previous search data to coach the next result despite being in another subject area altogether and it drives me bonkers.
I've almost completely moved over to DuckDuckGo now, it's not the greatest but at least searches seem to come back with what I want and not what Google seems to think I want... which is a problem for Google. The main reason I started using Google way back when because: a) it returned very good results b) ads were unobtrusive c) no-frills UI
Since they are abandoning these core elements it's time to move on.
For video services, YouTube is the 600 lb gorilla but as much as they are fawning over cable-like content and pushy strategies (like re-ordering your feeds) a lot of people who make AND watch videos are feeling that ol wind of change blowing. All a new platform has to do is emulate YouTube from around 2010 long enough to tip the scales for content creators. If creators come over in dribs and drabs all it will take are a few viral videos to start snagging users. If they can work out how to make lucrative partnership programs for creators and provide a genuinely pleasant experience for users... well first we unplugged from cable, next we unplug from YouTube.
I had hopes that Twitch might morph into a more YouTube like platform but I doubt that will happen, I feel like PornHub could do something with their vast experience however they also do weird things with search results that attempts to guess what you want to see vs giving you actual results which is a problem.
As it stands we need some kinda video hero to put the fear of not sucking back into Google (which hopefully leads to change and not heavy handed "it's good to be the king" style political maneuvering)
TL;DR Google has lost touch with reality, please somebody make a replacement
Well, it kinda says what the honour criteria is in the summary "that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general"
There's no doubt in my mind that FF7 fits the bill, heck I bet there's somebody cosplaying Cloud right now somewhere in the world. There are a lot of great games (FF6 among them) but there are some that stick out more than others.
Obviously "Hall of Fame" type organizations are strange in that they seek to honour stuff that quite frankly is already pretty well known, so the accolade rings somewhat hollow. Then there's almost always drama about inductees and sometimes even the order they are inducted. But at least we got an article on what appears to be a slow news day.
ALSO I don't think I've ever seen a post disappear before in real time but there were two anon posts when I first read this article, one was already modded -1 but now its gone (whatever it was, I didn't read it). Weird.
Back then the advertising was obvious and obnoxious but it was on a website with content.
Now the site you use is a sophisticated, often gamified means of collecting your most intimate details so they can sell that information to advertisers (or other agents interested in demographic information...) Ad networks pay for a slot on every site you visit so they can gather even more creepy information about you while also shoving their highly targeted ads in yo face.
Monkey Punching I could ignore, having to reciprocate social expectations like joining TwitterBook or FaceTagram and being datamined up the wazoo is a lot more difficult to avoid.
If I didn't use a drawing tablet every other day I think I might use a pen/pencil maybe four times a year??
When you use a stylus of any kind a lot you build up your hand as well as just learn to write and draw some things almost as a reflex. When diagramming on whiteboards or making scratch notes coworkers almost always comment on how neat and orderly it is - but like I say most people don't wrap their hands around any kind of writing utensil for months so I chalk it up to experience.
I guess they've phased out cursive writing in schools (I don't know, getting this second hand), I can't say I'm surprised if that's true.
When my Wii crapped out it was about 3 months after the Wii U launch, rather than buy another Wii I decided to invest in the new console with the expectation that I'd be able to keep playing my Wii games and pick from the selection of new games for the Wii U...
New titles were few and very far between, titles that were expected to drop in or around launch ended up taking far longer to get out the door or were just outright cancelled. There was hardly any 3rd party support and the online experiences it offered were fairly weak.
The only titles that really stood out were Splatoon and Mario Maker both released near the end of life of the console.
The Switch on the other hand has so far done everything right, the first year saw two absolutely colossal hit games drop from Nintendo as well as ports or sequels of Wii U games that were pretty good. On top of that there's been far more 3rd party support, with some fairly big titles getting ported over. The eShop has a good selection however the pricing is unbelievable (in most cases it's actually cheaper to just buy the physical cartridge) nothing really off the wall there except they DO have a good selection of games. And that's what it comes down to, buy this thing and there's a library of games to play right off the bat. The Wii-U was a solid system but the trickle of games was inexcusable and in my opinion the real killer.
Of course Nintendo hasn't launched it's online services (or the pricing model) yet so who knows how that will impact the future...
Slashdot Mirror
Aim the noisy end away from face (or whatever the AI equivalent is)
I bought all the DLC for Fallout 3 via Games for Windows Live (I didn't have a lot of options mind you) that service has since been discontinued and as a result I can't actually load the DLC anymore. Apparently the activation keys are installed as part of the software but unless I had the DLC already installed I couldn't get the keys back.
So I ended up buying the "GOTY" edition just to get my whole game back, I don't particularly enjoy paying for the same game twice even at a significant discount but lesson learnt. Virtual products suck, virtual products through services that don't last suck more.
Ironically as a result of the Tengen Tetris debacle on the original NES
I started with a company in 2005 that had been around since the 60s. It was well established, plenty of regular clients and new work coming in but not at a stupid (read: greedy) pace and growing at a reasonable rate so as not to overstretch things. The people at the top seemed to actually care about the company and they empowered us all to do great things as client consultants (gave decision making powers to the people on the ground? Unpossible!) we were very successful, so successful that a capitol investment firm swooped in like a plague and bought up the company, things went to shit very quickly:
1. Systematically removed existing management
2. Hired cheap-o whip crackin' style managers
3. Created new workflows that added bottlenecks by design
4. Bid on more work than we were capable of handling
5. When not enough bids came back laid off several long term employees ("redundancies" created by braindead managers who can't math)
6. Set unreasonable quarterly goals
7. Bought and merged us with a useless consulting company just to get the contracts - slowly removed employees of that company (I'm pretty sure that's illegal but nobody cared then so I'm guessing nobody cares now)
8. Changed the benefits plan 3 weeks before I was eligible (it went to 7 years rather than 5)
9. Didn't hand out raises to devs after 2008 (they were a US company and getting slammed by the recession while business continued as usual in Canada RIP)
All these things plus putting me on a contract I told management I didn't want to work on, having that project bleed people until I was the core leader / developer / support person, having to work overtime and not attend my 5 year anniversary while my coworkers fucked off and attended it was absolutely galling (your cake tasted great - SERIOUSLY?? fuck u) I mention that because it is emblematic of the kinds of shit they got up to. That is to say the ritual was more important than the purpose.
I got the app stable in just under a year to the point where we went from an avg of 9 trouble tickets a week to 1 every two weeks, I gutted the app another company wrote that we were maintaining and re-wrote the majority of it and fixed accounting errors that had been prevalent from the first month of activation (at first they didn't believe I had fixed it and did a manual audit, turns out they were used to seeing a specific imbalance in all their reporting... for a decade *sigh*)
Long story short, the company started out awesome (some of my favourite memories working in IT really) but got bought by some dunderheaded capitol investment firm and turned into a standard consulting shit-show.
Most of the good people were gone by the time my friend rang me up with an actually interesting sounding job opportunity. I threw them a number I figured I should be at (as a highball number I was sure we'd negotiate) and it turned out that was slightly below avg and so they accepted my offer.
And I've been working here for 8 years without much looking back, well, none really. The old place I worked at is a shadow of its former self, only occupying one office space now and people slowly swirling around the bowl, too valuable to make redundant but nothing new or interesting coming down the pipe anymore.
I still like the work I'm doing here after 8 years, it's always interesting and I feel I'm compensated well for it. The main thing is they treat me like a human being and to me that counts for a lot these days.
"Events Near You" has been a rather creepy feature for while on Facebook, I suspect it will only get creepier with Googles fingers in your search history / predictive algorithms...
**Nearby Event: midget clown orgy**
Th-thanks Google
Idea: telemarketers can only use automation if the recipient is automated. Have two computers talk to each other; one selling, the other just saying fuck off over and over. Heck you wouldn't even have to do this over the phone, just don't even do it at all and save everyone the trouble!
Just between you and me my carpets DO need cleaning but I'll never EVER use a service that thinks cold-calling me at 7 PM is a good idea.
NEVER EVER.
I travel to the UK occasionally and have to remind myself that gratuities are not a thing (and in some cases seen as a rude gesture) the theory being that the people who tend bar or serve food are paid adequately enough that they don't need any extra.
Here in Canada its generally accepted that you tip your server (most Interac machines even have built in tip percentiles) this is factored into the system, I read the other day that many systems also only let servers keep a portion of the tip they get and the rest goes into a pool for all servers. At this point I don't understand the system at all, pay people to work a difficult job that absolutely requires you to be "nice" to every asshole that walks off the street to ensure you get a gratuity so you can make a halfway decent wage. This is almost like haggling the bill (which I have seen in Europe oddly enough) the expectation is that my service was satisfactory enough for me to allow this person to work at a livable wage.
I think the problem compounds for chain restaurants that may be off the beaten trail, so if you happen to work at a heavily trafficked location you are gonna do pretty well but if you work at a low traffic location you might barely be scraping by despite getting an hourly wage - that's management sticking it to the servers for something they have little control over.
I dunno, to me the whole system sucks and should just go away. Pay servers a decent wage and throw tipping out the window.
At this point nothing surprises me something-something television watches you... I'll be under a bridge with Ice-T
Bart Fargo Conquers the Martians
...which is all about drone-based AI assisted ... "package" ""delivery"".
I mean... I GUESS you could use this Death Ray as a weapon - but it's for PEACEFUL purposes - I swear
...lets the Terrorists Win don't'cha know
Granted they've always been a bit weird with how they show content in search results and the like but lately it's become much more extreme, to the point that result sets being given to me through their search rarely matches up with what I want. They use previous search data to coach the next result despite being in another subject area altogether and it drives me bonkers.
I've almost completely moved over to DuckDuckGo now, it's not the greatest but at least searches seem to come back with what I want and not what Google seems to think I want... which is a problem for Google. The main reason I started using Google way back when because:
a) it returned very good results
b) ads were unobtrusive
c) no-frills UI
Since they are abandoning these core elements it's time to move on.
For video services, YouTube is the 600 lb gorilla but as much as they are fawning over cable-like content and pushy strategies (like re-ordering your feeds) a lot of people who make AND watch videos are feeling that ol wind of change blowing. All a new platform has to do is emulate YouTube from around 2010 long enough to tip the scales for content creators. If creators come over in dribs and drabs all it will take are a few viral videos to start snagging users. If they can work out how to make lucrative partnership programs for creators and provide a genuinely pleasant experience for users... well first we unplugged from cable, next we unplug from YouTube.
I had hopes that Twitch might morph into a more YouTube like platform but I doubt that will happen, I feel like PornHub could do something with their vast experience however they also do weird things with search results that attempts to guess what you want to see vs giving you actual results which is a problem.
As it stands we need some kinda video hero to put the fear of not sucking back into Google (which hopefully leads to change and not heavy handed "it's good to be the king" style political maneuvering)
TL;DR
Google has lost touch with reality, please somebody make a replacement
I knew it
Maybe we're hurtling at great speed and it's standing still. Or maybe I need to back off so much coffee in the morning - either or
If a person is up all night worrying about their number of Twitter followers the game is playing them
When this conversation comes up it's always good to take a look back at good ol' Lenny
https://www.youtube.com/playli...
Well, it kinda says what the honour criteria is in the summary "that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general"
There's no doubt in my mind that FF7 fits the bill, heck I bet there's somebody cosplaying Cloud right now somewhere in the world. There are a lot of great games (FF6 among them) but there are some that stick out more than others.
Obviously "Hall of Fame" type organizations are strange in that they seek to honour stuff that quite frankly is already pretty well known, so the accolade rings somewhat hollow. Then there's almost always drama about inductees and sometimes even the order they are inducted. But at least we got an article on what appears to be a slow news day.
ALSO I don't think I've ever seen a post disappear before in real time but there were two anon posts when I first read this article, one was already modded -1 but now its gone (whatever it was, I didn't read it). Weird.
I call it immaterial design, thousands of controls and options that all do nothing.
beetle juice
beetle juice
Back then the advertising was obvious and obnoxious but it was on a website with content.
Now the site you use is a sophisticated, often gamified means of collecting your most intimate details so they can sell that information to advertisers (or other agents interested in demographic information...) Ad networks pay for a slot on every site you visit so they can gather even more creepy information about you while also shoving their highly targeted ads in yo face.
Monkey Punching I could ignore, having to reciprocate social expectations like joining TwitterBook or FaceTagram and being datamined up the wazoo is a lot more difficult to avoid.
Apologize. To. The Car.
If I didn't use a drawing tablet every other day I think I might use a pen/pencil maybe four times a year??
When you use a stylus of any kind a lot you build up your hand as well as just learn to write and draw some things almost as a reflex. When diagramming on whiteboards or making scratch notes coworkers almost always comment on how neat and orderly it is - but like I say most people don't wrap their hands around any kind of writing utensil for months so I chalk it up to experience.
I guess they've phased out cursive writing in schools (I don't know, getting this second hand), I can't say I'm surprised if that's true.
Does anyone use cursive anymore?
Can only be traded for Flanian Pobble Beads (but at a very good exchange)
Our crystals start blinking at 45 and we proceed to Carousel...
When my Wii crapped out it was about 3 months after the Wii U launch, rather than buy another Wii I decided to invest in the new console with the expectation that I'd be able to keep playing my Wii games and pick from the selection of new games for the Wii U...
New titles were few and very far between, titles that were expected to drop in or around launch ended up taking far longer to get out the door or were just outright cancelled. There was hardly any 3rd party support and the online experiences it offered were fairly weak.
The only titles that really stood out were Splatoon and Mario Maker both released near the end of life of the console.
The Switch on the other hand has so far done everything right, the first year saw two absolutely colossal hit games drop from Nintendo as well as ports or sequels of Wii U games that were pretty good. On top of that there's been far more 3rd party support, with some fairly big titles getting ported over. The eShop has a good selection however the pricing is unbelievable (in most cases it's actually cheaper to just buy the physical cartridge) nothing really off the wall there except they DO have a good selection of games. And that's what it comes down to, buy this thing and there's a library of games to play right off the bat. The Wii-U was a solid system but the trickle of games was inexcusable and in my opinion the real killer.
Of course Nintendo hasn't launched it's online services (or the pricing model) yet so who knows how that will impact the future...