Close, pre-orders are hype-machines. The fewer machine they put out means the easier it is to declare that all pre-orders sold out, and the bigger hype they can get from envious users who want to be able to claim that they have a PS3 pre-ordered as well. Think about it; would there be that much hype over the damn things if Sony released like 3.0 million world wide and every store had ~ 50 or so to shell out to people? (more in cities with higher populations) Hell, in that scenario, people would be more surprised about the fact that they actually had enough units on release to satisfy the initial rush. In that scenario, people would care about the release for about a week, then be busy playing because most everyone who was going to get one would have one already.
If Wal-Mart and Target want to retail movies, then do it in the manner that consumers want. Whining that a competitor is better at it is just sad.
Except that they are already doing it in a way the consumer wants. No, really, they are. Most consumers do not want to watch a.avi or.mp4 file on their computer; they want a physical DVD to pop into the $20 DVD player they bought at Target/Wal-Mart the week before. This is what I really don't get in all of this; Target/Wal-mart and any other retailer in the business is not really going to lose a market share it that it didn't already have before. There may be a minor loss, but the fact is that they are talking about two completely different products and two completely different consumer mindsets. When I think about the digital download services vs the DVD format, I think about who would purchase which. Take my Dad, for example. He's a pretty tech savvy guy for his age, and though he isn't out there downloading movies off Bit Torrent, he does hate paying $20 for a movie with includes three different language options and subtitle options, 5.1 surround sound options, wide screen vs full screen options, and the gillion little extras that come on a DVD. When he heard that iTunes and other services were offering you a movie, plain and simple, he was all ears. He is the target consumer for digital download services. Consider my Mom; she isn't as tech savvy, and enjoys all the extra features that come on DVDs. In fact, it's part of the reason she buys DVDs. You think you could get her to watch a full movie on a computer screen? Hell no. Unless it was a media center PC, she has no interest in it, since it's too much work just to watch a movie. This is the difference in consumer that I think Target/Wal-mart fail to see, and what they don't understand when they complain about digital download services.
Though I agree that Target and Wal-Mart are being very childish in this manner, the fact is that capitalism has never been a fair playing field, and this is sort of what it's all about. The fact is that the digital download services offer almost completely different content; their target audience is different, the intended market is different. Instead of whining about under-cutting their sales, the DVD retailers should promote their strengths; extras, language options, no need to download, etc, while they start making their own movie service options. Take the time to build business plans now while other companies deal with a relatively new plan (in a sense...), wait until broadband is better able to handle the movie downloads (speeds mainly), and then jump right in with both a digital service and also a "just the movie" DVD service in stores. Watch as the playing field suddenly falls into the retailers' favor again, as they hold both markets once more.
That article was terrible; it was like a camp director desperately trying to convince the mosquito-bitten, wet, cold, bruised, dirty, and sick campers that camp is really fun, despite all odds against it. I mean, look at some of the arguments:
"Recipients of these shared songs will be able to play them three times for up to three days free, after which they'll have to pay to listen. Songs received wirelessly can't be shared."
Three times? You can play the songs three times? How worthless is that? I know that in the ideal world, users would then go to the Zune Market Place and purchase it for themselves, but let's be realistic; what songs will they send? Songs they downloaded through bit torrent and the like. This "social" feature will become little more than an annoyance and people wonder why they purchased a player that has such an arbitrary limit.
"The Zune PC connection software requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, so Macintosh owners can't use it. "
I'm not going to touch on the stupidity of this.
"The company expects to have 200 million Vista users within two years. Apple faces the prospect of competing not with the Zune alone, but with a mighty Windows-Soapbox-Xbox-Zune industrial complex."
I lump these together because they both make incredulous assumptions. There will be 200 million Vista users in two years only when all of the programs are made for Vista only. But that's not the issue I have with this statement. It's the assumption that people are going to switch to Microsoft's version of *__Insert Product__* when there are already perfectly good versions of that product out there. The author assumes that users are going to get a Zune because...well, there is no reason. In fact, all he says it that it does everything that the iPod does, but a little more. It's cool; why? Because he says it is.
What the article doesn't address really is the simple fact that...30 million people own iPods already. Why would they buy another player unless it had some spectacular feature that they NEEDED? Nothing the Zune does cannot be done in some way on the iPod video, save wireless, which doesn't look to be an appealing feature. Nothing but spin here...the Zune will have to prove itself as a product; hype alone will not work.
While I would agree that it is really underhanded of Wal-Mart, the fact of the matter is that I don't really see Apple as being stupid enough to walk into a bad deal without some sort of reason for doing it. Apple isn't shy about taking things to court, and if there wasn't some benefit they could garner from this, I don't think they would open discussions.
Then again, something that is being over looked is that Apple and Wal-Mart are simply discussing things. What they are discussing is a whole different matter; it may not be a deal, as Wal-Mart wants, but instead, Apple showing them what's what.
I haven't been following this too closely during it's evolution, but from what I could gather from the front page news bits, it seems like Wal-mart has just been whining and bitching and now Apple is just trying to get them to shut up. Is this really Apple "going to bed with the devil?" Or is it Apple just dealing with a nuisance that has grown into a problem?
If Wal-Mart has had the effect of scaring off studios from dealing with Apple, then this is necessary. Very annoying and quite petulent of Wal-Mart, but necessary. In order for the whole movie aspect to work with iTunes, Apple needs to get more revenue than just Disney. They need the movies; if that means appeasing the childish needs of Wal-Mart, then no biggie.
Technology like this can definitely be good, but I think a few things are missing:
- Properly formatted Texts
Yeah, they are converting PDFs and such to display on the reader, but the reader should try to offer a portable solution to 8.5x11 sized papers that were made into PDFs. I know this is a little redundant, given how much complaining there is about Sony going nuts with its own formats, but I think that in this case, a new format (open source? well, let's start with making it workable) that is not only plausible on the reader, but on computers as well would be great. A more interactive version of a PDF or a.doc would be interesting not only for the reader, but for computers and the like.
- Stylus function
It needs a stylus for editing, scribble notes and whatever. Use PDA handwriting recognition or whatever, but it would be useful; so many people like to write in the margins and what not, so I can't see why they wouldn't do this.
- Secure a market for the reader
Yeah, there are sites that sell eBooks and what not, but a.) the prices are ridiculous b.) they are not well known enough to warrant trust in the eBook services or to make people shell out money for a dedicated eBook reader. Personally, I think that Sony is missing a gigantic market called College in regards to the reader. Could you imagine students paying $5-$10 per text instead of $50-$100 per text? I mean, if Sony would have worked with text book distributors a little, they could have hit a friggin' gold mine, and I am positive that within a year or two, every college campus would be flooded with Sony Readers.
- Multi-functionality
It was mentioned before in this discussion that not everything has to play mp3s, but $350 for a dedicated reader is just stupid, plain and simple. Granted, it doesn't need to play mp3's, watch movies, download files and the like, but a few extra functions would be nice. Mentioned before was a dictionary function (click and learn the word); limited software capabilities to incorperate programs that people deem necessary (I'm thinking more towards the college idea again). It doesn't have to have Bit Torrent and WMP and Quicktime and VLC and GIMP and blah blah blah, but a few simple things like an alarm clock, password protection on the system, schedule manager, text editor w/ text recognition...these are relatively simple things that people much smarter than myself could easily incorperate into the Sony Reader.
The sheer fact that there hasn't been much news about this seems to say to me that Sony either doesn't care or doesn't see a market for such a device, hence the impractical price tag. Most likely the Reader will be seen as a gimmick; a techno-fad that will fade out before it has a chance to become old. This is really sad, as I think that a lot of cool ideas could be implemented if they simply held the device back a bit and did a little more planning before release.
Depending on your coworkers and what happens during the little bits of downtime you get, how the stress affects you (well, me anyways) can change drastically. I work IT at a college, and we're being prepped for the onslaught of the students returning next week. Basically, we're having our shifts broken up, everyone is working, and we are keeping the workers in and out so no one gets fucked by the horde of students who don't know how to take care of spyware. That seems to be a fairly good model, and one that I know is used by the fast food industry, or at least places I've worked at.
On top of that, I think that a lot of the stress that common IT jobs have is from the repetitiveness of what happens all the time. Explaining the same thing not only to customers, but to your boss or to management several times is much more annoying that one would think. Sometimes I get pretty ecstatic when someone comes in with an extremely difficult problem as opposed to an easy one, simply because I get to actually think about what I'm doing instead of just regurgitating the same stuff over and over again. The stress doesn't necessarily have to come from the work load; sometimes it's just a lack of job satisfaction.
Hell, I'm getting Trauma Center soley for the fact that we get to dice people up a little. I have a roommate who would love to dive into a game like that, with simulated scalpel action and everything. If we could wire up a little machine to shoot blood at him, he'd never stop playing.
This is a very promising start, IMO, for the Wii. Good variety of games and enough "full" games that they don't come off as gimmicky. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, Far Cry, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (for some reason, I read Crystal Beers), The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Metal Slug Anthology, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, Trauma Center: Second Opinion.
All of these resonate as being good, solid starters on the Wii and giving us a reason to buy launch titles. The promise of more games to come seems just vunderbar.
I am curious as to what online features these games are going to introduce on launch, and if we are going to be waiting for the online features like we did for the DS.
Simply put, a "high brow" game, as TFA seems to try to define it, simply would not sell because conceptually it does not work for a game. If we take the intended definition of high brow as touching emotions and addressing subjects that are not usually handled by the low brow media, then in order to do so, a large focus of the game needs to be shifted to the story telling and the content rather than the gaming itself, which should be a factor. A large reason that it's hard to tap the deep emotions that most humans have is because of the freedom in games; take sandbox style RPGs like Oblivion which are the most likely candidates for the title of "High Brow" games. There are surely a lot of deaths in the game, but do the players feel any remorse over the death of these characters? Not really, because they have more control over it than the game does over them. Players are able to kill relentlessly with the only penalty being that they will be struck down by the wrath of the town guard, or have to pay a fine. Also, the all important save/load allows them to control the story in such a way that everything can turn out perfect in the end. Inevitably, it seems, the player will never have an unsatisfactory ending, since they are simply manufacturing the story as they see fit. True, the gamer can manufacture a story in which not everything is perfect, but whether the game can react to this is a completely different story.
On the contrary to that, however, it is often said by those who lament for the games of yesteryear that the stories and the lack of control over the plot is what makes the games golden. I'm mainly thinking about Chronotrigger and it's fan-base; often times, I see people saying how the story in Chronotrigger actually made you feel something simply because some things you did actually had an adverse affect on the game's ending. By the definition of high brow from the article, Chronotrigger is a high brow game in that case...but only to a certain degree, and even then, to experience what makes it high brow you need to commit a considerable amount of time to do so.
What it boils down to, I think, is that no one is really willing to dedicate the time to show that there are "high brow games" by the connotation of High Brow. To experience a game can take days; a movie or music can take a matter of hours, or less. Most people are not willing to dedicate that much time to experience a high brow item, or to rate it. On top of that, there is still the hurdle that needs to be overcome; we're talking about games here. Granted there are some masterpieces of visual and audio design, along with the coding, but it's still for a game. You can call it a bias if you wish, but I can understand while this is a difficult thing to get past when trying to discuss games in terms of low brow and high brow.
I certainly hope that nothing comes of this. D2L isn't any sort of super rich business, and I certainly do not want to have to tell a campus full of neophyte Professors and students that they have to learn a new system. Heck, it's not like D2L exactly puts on a good front for the online learning aides that are out there. One of the most frequent calls that my help desk gets is a new problem has arisen with D2L.
The phantom website has little more than some blurry pictures of an E-3 event and some obscure pictures of their Lapboard. Heck their stock quote link doesn't even work properly. Why do people still care?
This could be a spammers dream as well. Suppose that with a small tweak on a PDA or other such wireless-prone device, the range is extended and the chips are placed in high traffic areas? (Places in Malls, cities block, etc) Would these chips be capable of transmitting their 15 second video clip in a few seconds? Hell what if it's just a three or four second flash-style ad which runs continually until the user stops it? Are these sorts of things possible with the mini-chip?
On the flipside of that paranoia, places like Disney could have a field day with it, along with museums and any other sort of entertainment venue. Let those who want to just grab the data off of a receiving point and go. Or, bar menus in a crowded bar...
Don't they already do this at Animal Rescue Shelters for dogs and cats? If these chips work the same way, then I think you need to get pretty damn close to the chip before it can be read. Now I realize that other countries do have different definitions of personal space, but even then, guessing where the chip was put in is still a crap shoot. It's not like these things are broadcasting nation-wide. I honestly don't think it will be that much of a problem.
I wouldn't worry too much about this. It's nothing new really, just a few more devices added to the warning network. Plus, think of it this way; once the warning is over, all of those cell-phone folk who's conversation got interupted will have something new to talk about for hours on end...OMG, it's a money making scheme!11!
Having worked in a Career Development Office (read: job placement), I can recall telling dozens of students on my campus to keep their facebook exploits as a minimum, simply because there are so many people trying to get a look at their facebook. Facebook causes a lot of problems because of the things that are exchanged behind the wall of privacy that Facebook has, and companies are wary of it. On top of that, they are paranoid about who they are hiring and have trouble dis-associating a person's professional life from their personal life, and often times use things such as facebook as a sort of pre-judgement.
What this article tells me is that the paranoia of some employers has reached a new level of ape-shit. The fact that more time was spent during the interview discussing facets of his Facebook profile instead of interviewing him for the internship he applied for is a bit appalling. Imagine some future ramifications of agencies being able to plug Facebook; homosexuals being screened before the interview process even takes place, racial profiling, any of those things that employers simply are not supposed to do. While I agree that people need to be careful about what they put out online, it does strike me as a big no-no that we have employers actively seeking out the personal lives of prospective employees before they've had a chance to see what the employee has to offer to the company.
I think it's still fair to be quite unhappy with Sony's ad here. I mean, yeah, the knee-jerk reaction is to shout racism; it was intended to be that way. Granted there is nothing more than a little softcore SM to generate publicity, but Sony played with what is "underneath the underneath," to be cliche.
So everyone is saying racism, Sony made an ad that is most obviously going to be taken as racist; doesn't that still sound like they are exploiting race to promote a product? Granted that on the top level, there is no racism, but it seems to me that Sony wanted us to think racism, therefore, as far as I'm concerned, they're still being a wee bit racist, using the problem to their advantage.
One thing I always wondered about. Since Macs are so easy to use, why does it require a "genius" to fix one?
In spite of the obvious facetiousnes, it's the same reason that people go to "Geek" squad to have alleged geeks fix their computers. It's just a name is all, and it's a well chosen name. Genius sounds like you're getting the real shit, not some slacker who just played too much with their Mac and got hired by Apple after they messed up their hair a bit. Geek sounds like these people know a lot about computers; they apparently don't, but that is irrelevant. It sounds like they do.
This article just did not have any convincing arguments regarding Lara Croft as a positive thing for female role model. If the intent behind Lara was anything besides selling a game with a sexy icon, then there would be no need for the misproportionate breasts, the sexual innuendos, and the skimpy outfits. If the theory of the "Final Girl" is true, would it not work with any mildly appealing women? Well, the answer to that is even revealed in his article, and that is no; the anonymous gamer, anonymous being indicative of the reliablity of his source, even says that he feels like he's protecting Lara; He's protecting Lara. As much as I dislike the Tomb Raider games, I know enough about them to know that anyone who thinks they are "protecting" Lara is disillusioned and just as misonganistic as any man from the 40's. Lara is not a person who needs protecting; the games make that clear.
Lara is indeed a girl that every boy wants to be with, but not in a plutonic way; they want to control her, and have her be the object of their sexual fantasies.
Ultimately, with Boot Camp, Apple is only helping Microsoft sell more copies of Windows XP. How sweet of them.
Que? Why, good sir, would people not do what they already do and simply reuse Windows CDs they already have and/or download? Why would people be good little consumers and go out to repurchase software they already have?
It's actually a big research project he's undertaken; the next step is to test the effects of the Bed-Zero G (B0G) when combined with the effects of alcohol and cheese balls. Step three, albeit dangerous, combines the effects of long-term B0G with the effects of long term exposure to low levels of light radiation from a CRT device, as well as the brains ability to drink, eat, and comprehend images at B0G.
In certain situations, like offices or campus computer systems, spam e-mails fester pretty well. Because all of my office is able to connect to one mailbox (we are a Career Center, so we get tons of jobs daily), if any spam gets sent to our job e-mail, everyone gets it. On top of that, because of the pretty insecure windows network the campus has, it is incredulously easy for one person to start giving the entire campus tons of spam.
Now, my Mac back in the room does a nice job of catching all of this junk and puts it where it belongs...in the trash. The Outlook program at my office...well, let's just say that we used to only get ~30 e-mails in the job inbox a day. Now it's up to ~80 with spam that gets through. Situations like this are ripe for spammers.
I work at a career developmentoffice at my college, and most of our business is conducted via an online website. Basically, employers and students sign up separately, get different types of accounts, and see different things. This accomplishes several things:
1.) We act as a barrier between employers and students, meaning less "random contact" and also less recruiters just fishing.
2.) We are better able to screen employers, and can set their access levels different depending on whether they are recruiters or actual employers. Recruiters are not allowed to search our resume database.
3.) Students are able to see a wider variety of jobs, ranging from close part time to far away internships and career starters.
Basically, we just put ourselves between the employers and the students. Employers can search the student database to find resumes, but only if we approve them to do so. A lot of employers do not get this feature, as we do get a lot of recruiters (fishers). Hence, in almost a message board like system, employers get rewarded for actually posting jobs, and after several successful job posts where the position is filled, they are able to search the database for resumes that meet their qualifications. On top of that, students are able to send resumes and contact employers via the same method, meaning that they are able to take the initiative in some cases.
In addition to this, while we encourage employers to post their own jobs, we also will post ones that the more inept send in either via snail mail or e-mail. This allows us a great amount of control over what the employers are putting out there. If it looks like the employers are really just putting out half-assed jobs, we don't post them, and when asked why, we tell them that there isn't enough information. Despite the tight reins that we keep on the employers, we have actually seen significant increases in students and employers signing up for our website, and almost a 200% increase in the amount of jobs that we posted from the year prior, and those are just ones that we went through and posted for employers.
The silly thing is that even with this relatively large operation (we service ~22,000 students in our database and I forget the number of employers), the majority of this operation is run by 4 people, including myself. One person focuses on the part-time jobs sent in, two of us focus on the full-time positions and employer verification, and the last person oversees the operation and dictates website redesigns to me.
I guess what I'm saying is that it is quite possible to get an incredible job system up online with relatively few workers if they are just willing to adapt a decent system. If four people can handle a website and tens of thousands of students and employees
I got in a little late in the game (slightly younger/.-er alert) with a Macintosh Quadra 800, which moved at godly speeds and did all these things my NES didn't...like draw stuff, design stuff, and make papers at school a lot easier. Also introduced me to my first desktop publishing items (edited in some little Mac word program), my first little crack at page design (pagemaker x.0 where x is 5), and tons of other cool yet worthless things. I got so excited when OS 8.0 came out...first computer that I actually owned was some random tower that ran Mac OS 8...I can't seem to remember the model though.
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Close, pre-orders are hype-machines. The fewer machine they put out means the easier it is to declare that all pre-orders sold out, and the bigger hype they can get from envious users who want to be able to claim that they have a PS3 pre-ordered as well. Think about it; would there be that much hype over the damn things if Sony released like 3.0 million world wide and every store had ~ 50 or so to shell out to people? (more in cities with higher populations) Hell, in that scenario, people would be more surprised about the fact that they actually had enough units on release to satisfy the initial rush. In that scenario, people would care about the release for about a week, then be busy playing because most everyone who was going to get one would have one already.
Except that they are already doing it in a way the consumer wants. No, really, they are. Most consumers do not want to watch a .avi or .mp4 file on their computer; they want a physical DVD to pop into the $20 DVD player they bought at Target/Wal-Mart the week before. This is what I really don't get in all of this; Target/Wal-mart and any other retailer in the business is not really going to lose a market share it that it didn't already have before. There may be a minor loss, but the fact is that they are talking about two completely different products and two completely different consumer mindsets. When I think about the digital download services vs the DVD format, I think about who would purchase which. Take my Dad, for example. He's a pretty tech savvy guy for his age, and though he isn't out there downloading movies off Bit Torrent, he does hate paying $20 for a movie with includes three different language options and subtitle options, 5.1 surround sound options, wide screen vs full screen options, and the gillion little extras that come on a DVD. When he heard that iTunes and other services were offering you a movie, plain and simple, he was all ears. He is the target consumer for digital download services. Consider my Mom; she isn't as tech savvy, and enjoys all the extra features that come on DVDs. In fact, it's part of the reason she buys DVDs. You think you could get her to watch a full movie on a computer screen? Hell no. Unless it was a media center PC, she has no interest in it, since it's too much work just to watch a movie. This is the difference in consumer that I think Target/Wal-mart fail to see, and what they don't understand when they complain about digital download services.
Though I agree that Target and Wal-Mart are being very childish in this manner, the fact is that capitalism has never been a fair playing field, and this is sort of what it's all about. The fact is that the digital download services offer almost completely different content; their target audience is different, the intended market is different. Instead of whining about under-cutting their sales, the DVD retailers should promote their strengths; extras, language options, no need to download, etc, while they start making their own movie service options. Take the time to build business plans now while other companies deal with a relatively new plan (in a sense...), wait until broadband is better able to handle the movie downloads (speeds mainly), and then jump right in with both a digital service and also a "just the movie" DVD service in stores. Watch as the playing field suddenly falls into the retailers' favor again, as they hold both markets once more.
That article was terrible; it was like a camp director desperately trying to convince the mosquito-bitten, wet, cold, bruised, dirty, and sick campers that camp is really fun, despite all odds against it. I mean, look at some of the arguments:
"Recipients of these shared songs will be able to play them three times for up to three days free, after which they'll have to pay to listen. Songs received wirelessly can't be shared."
Three times? You can play the songs three times? How worthless is that? I know that in the ideal world, users would then go to the Zune Market Place and purchase it for themselves, but let's be realistic; what songs will they send? Songs they downloaded through bit torrent and the like. This "social" feature will become little more than an annoyance and people wonder why they purchased a player that has such an arbitrary limit.
"The Zune PC connection software requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, so Macintosh owners can't use it. "
I'm not going to touch on the stupidity of this.
"The company expects to have 200 million Vista users within two years.
Apple faces the prospect of competing not with the Zune alone, but with a mighty Windows-Soapbox-Xbox-Zune industrial complex."
I lump these together because they both make incredulous assumptions. There will be 200 million Vista users in two years only when all of the programs are made for Vista only. But that's not the issue I have with this statement. It's the assumption that people are going to switch to Microsoft's version of *__Insert Product__* when there are already perfectly good versions of that product out there. The author assumes that users are going to get a Zune because...well, there is no reason. In fact, all he says it that it does everything that the iPod does, but a little more. It's cool; why? Because he says it is.
What the article doesn't address really is the simple fact that...30 million people own iPods already. Why would they buy another player unless it had some spectacular feature that they NEEDED? Nothing the Zune does cannot be done in some way on the iPod video, save wireless, which doesn't look to be an appealing feature. Nothing but spin here...the Zune will have to prove itself as a product; hype alone will not work.
While I would agree that it is really underhanded of Wal-Mart, the fact of the matter is that I don't really see Apple as being stupid enough to walk into a bad deal without some sort of reason for doing it. Apple isn't shy about taking things to court, and if there wasn't some benefit they could garner from this, I don't think they would open discussions. Then again, something that is being over looked is that Apple and Wal-Mart are simply discussing things. What they are discussing is a whole different matter; it may not be a deal, as Wal-Mart wants, but instead, Apple showing them what's what.
I haven't been following this too closely during it's evolution, but from what I could gather from the front page news bits, it seems like Wal-mart has just been whining and bitching and now Apple is just trying to get them to shut up. Is this really Apple "going to bed with the devil?" Or is it Apple just dealing with a nuisance that has grown into a problem? If Wal-Mart has had the effect of scaring off studios from dealing with Apple, then this is necessary. Very annoying and quite petulent of Wal-Mart, but necessary. In order for the whole movie aspect to work with iTunes, Apple needs to get more revenue than just Disney. They need the movies; if that means appeasing the childish needs of Wal-Mart, then no biggie.
Technology like this can definitely be good, but I think a few things are missing:
.doc would be interesting not only for the reader, but for computers and the like.
- Properly formatted Texts
Yeah, they are converting PDFs and such to display on the reader, but the reader should try to offer a portable solution to 8.5x11 sized papers that were made into PDFs. I know this is a little redundant, given how much complaining there is about Sony going nuts with its own formats, but I think that in this case, a new format (open source? well, let's start with making it workable) that is not only plausible on the reader, but on computers as well would be great. A more interactive version of a PDF or a
- Stylus function
It needs a stylus for editing, scribble notes and whatever. Use PDA handwriting recognition or whatever, but it would be useful; so many people like to write in the margins and what not, so I can't see why they wouldn't do this.
- Secure a market for the reader
Yeah, there are sites that sell eBooks and what not, but a.) the prices are ridiculous b.) they are not well known enough to warrant trust in the eBook services or to make people shell out money for a dedicated eBook reader. Personally, I think that Sony is missing a gigantic market called College in regards to the reader. Could you imagine students paying $5-$10 per text instead of $50-$100 per text? I mean, if Sony would have worked with text book distributors a little, they could have hit a friggin' gold mine, and I am positive that within a year or two, every college campus would be flooded with Sony Readers.
- Multi-functionality
It was mentioned before in this discussion that not everything has to play mp3s, but $350 for a dedicated reader is just stupid, plain and simple. Granted, it doesn't need to play mp3's, watch movies, download files and the like, but a few extra functions would be nice. Mentioned before was a dictionary function (click and learn the word); limited software capabilities to incorperate programs that people deem necessary (I'm thinking more towards the college idea again). It doesn't have to have Bit Torrent and WMP and Quicktime and VLC and GIMP and blah blah blah, but a few simple things like an alarm clock, password protection on the system, schedule manager, text editor w/ text recognition...these are relatively simple things that people much smarter than myself could easily incorperate into the Sony Reader.
The sheer fact that there hasn't been much news about this seems to say to me that Sony either doesn't care or doesn't see a market for such a device, hence the impractical price tag. Most likely the Reader will be seen as a gimmick; a techno-fad that will fade out before it has a chance to become old. This is really sad, as I think that a lot of cool ideas could be implemented if they simply held the device back a bit and did a little more planning before release.
Depending on your coworkers and what happens during the little bits of downtime you get, how the stress affects you (well, me anyways) can change drastically. I work IT at a college, and we're being prepped for the onslaught of the students returning next week. Basically, we're having our shifts broken up, everyone is working, and we are keeping the workers in and out so no one gets fucked by the horde of students who don't know how to take care of spyware. That seems to be a fairly good model, and one that I know is used by the fast food industry, or at least places I've worked at.
On top of that, I think that a lot of the stress that common IT jobs have is from the repetitiveness of what happens all the time. Explaining the same thing not only to customers, but to your boss or to management several times is much more annoying that one would think. Sometimes I get pretty ecstatic when someone comes in with an extremely difficult problem as opposed to an easy one, simply because I get to actually think about what I'm doing instead of just regurgitating the same stuff over and over again. The stress doesn't necessarily have to come from the work load; sometimes it's just a lack of job satisfaction.
Hell, I'm getting Trauma Center soley for the fact that we get to dice people up a little. I have a roommate who would love to dive into a game like that, with simulated scalpel action and everything. If we could wire up a little machine to shoot blood at him, he'd never stop playing.
This is a very promising start, IMO, for the Wii. Good variety of games and enough "full" games that they don't come off as gimmicky. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, Far Cry, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (for some reason, I read Crystal Beers), The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Metal Slug Anthology, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, Trauma Center: Second Opinion.
All of these resonate as being good, solid starters on the Wii and giving us a reason to buy launch titles. The promise of more games to come seems just vunderbar.
I am curious as to what online features these games are going to introduce on launch, and if we are going to be waiting for the online features like we did for the DS.
Simply put, a "high brow" game, as TFA seems to try to define it, simply would not sell because conceptually it does not work for a game. If we take the intended definition of high brow as touching emotions and addressing subjects that are not usually handled by the low brow media, then in order to do so, a large focus of the game needs to be shifted to the story telling and the content rather than the gaming itself, which should be a factor. A large reason that it's hard to tap the deep emotions that most humans have is because of the freedom in games; take sandbox style RPGs like Oblivion which are the most likely candidates for the title of "High Brow" games. There are surely a lot of deaths in the game, but do the players feel any remorse over the death of these characters? Not really, because they have more control over it than the game does over them. Players are able to kill relentlessly with the only penalty being that they will be struck down by the wrath of the town guard, or have to pay a fine. Also, the all important save/load allows them to control the story in such a way that everything can turn out perfect in the end. Inevitably, it seems, the player will never have an unsatisfactory ending, since they are simply manufacturing the story as they see fit. True, the gamer can manufacture a story in which not everything is perfect, but whether the game can react to this is a completely different story.
On the contrary to that, however, it is often said by those who lament for the games of yesteryear that the stories and the lack of control over the plot is what makes the games golden. I'm mainly thinking about Chronotrigger and it's fan-base; often times, I see people saying how the story in Chronotrigger actually made you feel something simply because some things you did actually had an adverse affect on the game's ending. By the definition of high brow from the article, Chronotrigger is a high brow game in that case...but only to a certain degree, and even then, to experience what makes it high brow you need to commit a considerable amount of time to do so.
What it boils down to, I think, is that no one is really willing to dedicate the time to show that there are "high brow games" by the connotation of High Brow. To experience a game can take days; a movie or music can take a matter of hours, or less. Most people are not willing to dedicate that much time to experience a high brow item, or to rate it. On top of that, there is still the hurdle that needs to be overcome; we're talking about games here. Granted there are some masterpieces of visual and audio design, along with the coding, but it's still for a game. You can call it a bias if you wish, but I can understand while this is a difficult thing to get past when trying to discuss games in terms of low brow and high brow.
I certainly hope that nothing comes of this. D2L isn't any sort of super rich business, and I certainly do not want to have to tell a campus full of neophyte Professors and students that they have to learn a new system. Heck, it's not like D2L exactly puts on a good front for the online learning aides that are out there. One of the most frequent calls that my help desk gets is a new problem has arisen with D2L.
The phantom website has little more than some blurry pictures of an E-3 event and some obscure pictures of their Lapboard. Heck their stock quote link doesn't even work properly. Why do people still care?
This could be a spammers dream as well. Suppose that with a small tweak on a PDA or other such wireless-prone device, the range is extended and the chips are placed in high traffic areas? (Places in Malls, cities block, etc) Would these chips be capable of transmitting their 15 second video clip in a few seconds? Hell what if it's just a three or four second flash-style ad which runs continually until the user stops it? Are these sorts of things possible with the mini-chip?
On the flipside of that paranoia, places like Disney could have a field day with it, along with museums and any other sort of entertainment venue. Let those who want to just grab the data off of a receiving point and go. Or, bar menus in a crowded bar...
Don't they already do this at Animal Rescue Shelters for dogs and cats? If these chips work the same way, then I think you need to get pretty damn close to the chip before it can be read. Now I realize that other countries do have different definitions of personal space, but even then, guessing where the chip was put in is still a crap shoot. It's not like these things are broadcasting nation-wide. I honestly don't think it will be that much of a problem.
I wouldn't worry too much about this. It's nothing new really, just a few more devices added to the warning network. Plus, think of it this way; once the warning is over, all of those cell-phone folk who's conversation got interupted will have something new to talk about for hours on end...OMG, it's a money making scheme!11!
Having worked in a Career Development Office (read: job placement), I can recall telling dozens of students on my campus to keep their facebook exploits as a minimum, simply because there are so many people trying to get a look at their facebook. Facebook causes a lot of problems because of the things that are exchanged behind the wall of privacy that Facebook has, and companies are wary of it. On top of that, they are paranoid about who they are hiring and have trouble dis-associating a person's professional life from their personal life, and often times use things such as facebook as a sort of pre-judgement.
What this article tells me is that the paranoia of some employers has reached a new level of ape-shit. The fact that more time was spent during the interview discussing facets of his Facebook profile instead of interviewing him for the internship he applied for is a bit appalling. Imagine some future ramifications of agencies being able to plug Facebook; homosexuals being screened before the interview process even takes place, racial profiling, any of those things that employers simply are not supposed to do. While I agree that people need to be careful about what they put out online, it does strike me as a big no-no that we have employers actively seeking out the personal lives of prospective employees before they've had a chance to see what the employee has to offer to the company.
I think it's still fair to be quite unhappy with Sony's ad here. I mean, yeah, the knee-jerk reaction is to shout racism; it was intended to be that way. Granted there is nothing more than a little softcore SM to generate publicity, but Sony played with what is "underneath the underneath," to be cliche.
So everyone is saying racism, Sony made an ad that is most obviously going to be taken as racist; doesn't that still sound like they are exploiting race to promote a product? Granted that on the top level, there is no racism, but it seems to me that Sony wanted us to think racism, therefore, as far as I'm concerned, they're still being a wee bit racist, using the problem to their advantage.
In spite of the obvious facetiousnes, it's the same reason that people go to "Geek" squad to have alleged geeks fix their computers. It's just a name is all, and it's a well chosen name. Genius sounds like you're getting the real shit, not some slacker who just played too much with their Mac and got hired by Apple after they messed up their hair a bit. Geek sounds like these people know a lot about computers; they apparently don't, but that is irrelevant. It sounds like they do.
Lara is indeed a girl that every boy wants to be with, but not in a plutonic way; they want to control her, and have her be the object of their sexual fantasies.
I mean, I think it's only fair; he is suing the Association, which they have a right to defend, right? So, lawyer battle royale?
Que? Why, good sir, would people not do what they already do and simply reuse Windows CDs they already have and/or download? Why would people be good little consumers and go out to repurchase software they already have?
It's actually a big research project he's undertaken; the next step is to test the effects of the Bed-Zero G (B0G) when combined with the effects of alcohol and cheese balls. Step three, albeit dangerous, combines the effects of long-term B0G with the effects of long term exposure to low levels of light radiation from a CRT device, as well as the brains ability to drink, eat, and comprehend images at B0G.
Now, my Mac back in the room does a nice job of catching all of this junk and puts it where it belongs...in the trash. The Outlook program at my office...well, let's just say that we used to only get ~30 e-mails in the job inbox a day. Now it's up to ~80 with spam that gets through. Situations like this are ripe for spammers.
1.) We act as a barrier between employers and students, meaning less "random contact" and also less recruiters just fishing.
2.) We are better able to screen employers, and can set their access levels different depending on whether they are recruiters or actual employers. Recruiters are not allowed to search our resume database.
3.) Students are able to see a wider variety of jobs, ranging from close part time to far away internships and career starters.
Basically, we just put ourselves between the employers and the students. Employers can search the student database to find resumes, but only if we approve them to do so. A lot of employers do not get this feature, as we do get a lot of recruiters (fishers). Hence, in almost a message board like system, employers get rewarded for actually posting jobs, and after several successful job posts where the position is filled, they are able to search the database for resumes that meet their qualifications. On top of that, students are able to send resumes and contact employers via the same method, meaning that they are able to take the initiative in some cases.
In addition to this, while we encourage employers to post their own jobs, we also will post ones that the more inept send in either via snail mail or e-mail. This allows us a great amount of control over what the employers are putting out there. If it looks like the employers are really just putting out half-assed jobs, we don't post them, and when asked why, we tell them that there isn't enough information. Despite the tight reins that we keep on the employers, we have actually seen significant increases in students and employers signing up for our website, and almost a 200% increase in the amount of jobs that we posted from the year prior, and those are just ones that we went through and posted for employers.
The silly thing is that even with this relatively large operation (we service ~22,000 students in our database and I forget the number of employers), the majority of this operation is run by 4 people, including myself. One person focuses on the part-time jobs sent in, two of us focus on the full-time positions and employer verification, and the last person oversees the operation and dictates website redesigns to me.
I guess what I'm saying is that it is quite possible to get an incredible job system up online with relatively few workers if they are just willing to adapt a decent system. If four people can handle a website and tens of thousands of students and employees
I got in a little late in the game (slightly younger /.-er alert) with a Macintosh Quadra 800, which moved at godly speeds and did all these things my NES didn't...like draw stuff, design stuff, and make papers at school a lot easier. Also introduced me to my first desktop publishing items (edited in some little Mac word program), my first little crack at page design (pagemaker x.0 where x is 5), and tons of other cool yet worthless things. I got so excited when OS 8.0 came out...first computer that I actually owned was some random tower that ran Mac OS 8...I can't seem to remember the model though.