This made me laugh out loud.
Gonna be posted to my office wall for all eternity, or duration of my employment here, whichever is longer.
Excuse me whilst I go partake of a hot dog.
Yes, you're hearing me correctly (I expect your hearing is very good). I do love music, but I don't consider myself an audiophile and such "degradations in quality" are imperceptible to my ear. Saves me money in audio equipment and headphones, too.
No, I think the free market has said in this case, "Weak DRM is ok as long as we can nullify it when we feel like it."
I wonder what would happen to iTMS's popularity if Apple did away with burning CDs/ripping DRMless MP3s, and made their DRM airtight in iTunes 8. THe **IA's would be exuberant. And sales would plummet.
As an ITMS customer, the only reason I buy from iTMS is because I know I can convert all my purchases to DRMless MP3--and I do, every one. If Apple makes (breaks) it such that I can't do that anymore, I just won't buy from iTMS anymore.
I don't see what the problem is. You can listen to individual tracks on iTMS without making them available for sale individually.. the button just says "BUY ALBUM" rather than "BUY SONG". And once you've bought the album (all MP3s) what's the difference between having a collection of MP3s on your iPod and having a CD in your CD player? You still can skip tracks and rearrange playing order with a CD. So I don't understand what they're kvetching about.
Re:Who says older folks don't play games?
on
Gaming When We're 64
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
How much do you want to bet there's a huge boom in MMOs about the time the Gen Xers reach retirement age?
Imagine how easy it will be to take care of senior citizens in nursing homes then.. forget bingo and Scrabble, just plug them into their MMORPG of choice and just keep bringing em coffee (or soft drink, whichever).. by that time you won't be wondering if that hot blonde elf you've been cybering is being played by a 14 year old boy, but a 70 year old codger in an assisted living facility. And hey, LAN parties every day..
"Ms. Daisy? Time for your evening medicine Ms. Daisy.. come on, time to log off, the Covenant will be there in the morning Ms. Daisy.. now, Ms. Daisy.."
> No, they need to verbize another noun when there was a perfectly good word in the language that means *exactly* what they want. feh.
Not exactly. To motivate someone, you are making someone want to do something. You motivate a person. You incentivize a goal, meaning you provide an incentive for whomever achieves that goal, which is one way to motivate someone but not the only way. Likewise you can incent someone to perform a task for you by offering an incentive, which is a form of motivation, but the concept is not always interchangable with "to motivate".
I'm not crazy about either word (incent or incentivize) but they do have their uses in certain rare circumstances.. regardless, whenever I find myself tempted to use either of the words, I figure there's probably a better sentence out there to deliver the idea I'm trying to express, and I start over.
Then what happens when you do all your surfing (and Google searching) from behind an IP anonymizer?
And what I really want to know is, for how long does Google keep search engine queries? A few years? Forever? Why the hell isn't that info given in the original story, or was the question even asked? Another triumph of modern journalism..
That's right.. Commodore disks were just 170K. (664 blocks free!)
And I had one of those tape consoles too. Yeah technology was much slower then, but realize that back when Mozart and Beethoven were writing their grand orchestral scores, they were penning them by hand, and all the copies for each member of the orchestra were copied by hand so really the analogy still applies.
Games like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Mail Order Monsters, Tetris and the brilliant Infocom series of games were masterpieces of gameplay, craftsmanship and ingenuity. Games today have much better graphics, but originality and creativity? That can be argued.
My kid sister (who is 29) and I still regularly fire up the old Commodore to play M.U.L.E. Ah, the 640K floppy disk, no entering mystic serial numbers and checking with the company server to grant you "permission" to play your game.. those were the good ol' days.
"Recently"? Calling a computer a PC has always implied that it ran Windows or DOS since I can remember--and I can remember back to the mid-80s. Show me marketing literature from Apple after 1985 that refers to its computers as PCs, please.
There are faction bank accounts in MxO. They're just not localized.
And the purpose of player/faction housing is more than just "hang out" space. Management of inventory is one. The fact of the sheer volume and variety of clothing, weapon and miscellanous items combined with the realities of limited inventory room has forced players to get creative, creating alts solely for the purpose of keeping extra items, emailing items to themselves and maintaining an email "closet" for overflow, etc etc. If my character had an apartment that was his and could keep all his items there, that would make it so much easier AND more fun. Plus it would give me a reason to continue earning money (grinding or farming) because I would expect to have to pay rent for the space on a regular basis, with larger and more luxurious apartment spaces demanding more money, and so forth. Frankly, this would be a feature I would pay actual money for, say, an additional $2/month, for the right to rent and control access to a particular apartment and keep inventory there, maybe even decorate and furnish. This would add IMMENSELY to the game experience and keep me personally invested in my characters there.
This also opens up possibilities for inter-faction conflict, if one faction wants the rights to control a particular club, for instance, and the surrounding properties. Another faction might challenge that claim in some in-game RP related way, and the challenging faction could either PVP the other into surrendering the property, or an in-game mechanism could be developed by which a hostile takeover could be accomplished.
MxO has not failed, but is failing. SOE is concentrating its resources on SWG and EQ2, and the dev support team on MxO has probably dwindled to just a handful of overworked guys trying to deal with hotfixes and combat balancing patches. The key selling point of MxO was supposed to be storyline and although there was much emphasis on story in its first year, this has pretty much dwindled to token glances toward something resembling a story that is far too cryptic and disjointed for anyone but the hardcore gamers to appeal to (and many of the hardcore MxO players are disappointed, at best, in the story as it stands now). Sony spent a lot of time and effort modifying the combat engine, with much success. Now they need to put that same effort and care into game content.
For MxO to survive past 2006 it needs to be treated as something better than the red-headed stepchild it's become in SOE's MMO portfolio. It needs player/faction housing, it needs at least one new neighborhood and maybe a few new constructs, it needs more direct dev participation with the players in-game, and it needs Paul Chadwick to get out of his rut and come up with some really compelling storyline keyframes like we know he can do. Maybe he needs to get on the phone with the W. bros., because unless something major happens story-wise, more and more gamers are going to bail and Sony is going to just pull the plug.
Slashdot Mirror
This made me laugh out loud. Gonna be posted to my office wall for all eternity, or duration of my employment here, whichever is longer. Excuse me whilst I go partake of a hot dog.
Yes, you're hearing me correctly (I expect your hearing is very good). I do love music, but I don't consider myself an audiophile and such "degradations in quality" are imperceptible to my ear. Saves me money in audio equipment and headphones, too.
No, I think the free market has said in this case, "Weak DRM is ok as long as we can nullify it when we feel like it."
I wonder what would happen to iTMS's popularity if Apple did away with burning CDs/ripping DRMless MP3s, and made their DRM airtight in iTunes 8. THe **IA's would be exuberant. And sales would plummet.
As an ITMS customer, the only reason I buy from iTMS is because I know I can convert all my purchases to DRMless MP3--and I do, every one. If Apple makes (breaks) it such that I can't do that anymore, I just won't buy from iTMS anymore.
Why stop there?
This is not a patch. A patch fixes a problem and makes software usable again.
This takes usable, functioning software (FairUse4WM) and breaks it.
"Patch" my ass, this is a bug, which users are expected to install themselves.
He may be on to something there. I mean, when I read this, I thought it sounded like the next John Carpenter movie.
I don't see what the problem is. You can listen to individual tracks on iTMS without making them available for sale individually .. the button just says "BUY ALBUM" rather than "BUY SONG". And once you've bought the album (all MP3s) what's the difference between having a collection of MP3s on your iPod and having a CD in your CD player? You still can skip tracks and rearrange playing order with a CD. So I don't understand what they're kvetching about.
... start ... the reactor .....
See you at the pahty, Victah!
How much do you want to bet there's a huge boom in MMOs about the time the Gen Xers reach retirement age?
Imagine how easy it will be to take care of senior citizens in nursing homes then .. forget bingo and Scrabble, just plug them into their MMORPG of choice and just keep bringing em coffee (or soft drink, whichever) .. by that time you won't be wondering if that hot blonde elf you've been cybering is being played by a 14 year old boy, but a 70 year old codger in an assisted living facility. And hey, LAN parties every day ..
"Ms. Daisy? Time for your evening medicine Ms. Daisy .. come on, time to log off, the Covenant will be there in the morning Ms. Daisy .. now, Ms. Daisy .."
Ramen!
Beliefs not based on logic cannot be swayed by logic.
What a shame that so many people believe this is an either/or thing. It makes me sad. I thought most Americans were smarter than that.
Heh. I've found a thread where my sig actually sounds relevant.
> No, they need to verbize another noun when there was a perfectly good word in the language that means *exactly* what they want. feh.
Not exactly. To motivate someone, you are making someone want to do something. You motivate a person. You incentivize a goal, meaning you provide an incentive for whomever achieves that goal, which is one way to motivate someone but not the only way. Likewise you can incent someone to perform a task for you by offering an incentive, which is a form of motivation, but the concept is not always interchangable with "to motivate".
I'm not crazy about either word (incent or incentivize) but they do have their uses in certain rare circumstances .. regardless, whenever I find myself tempted to use either of the words, I figure there's probably a better sentence out there to deliver the idea I'm trying to express, and I start over.
PC? Politically-correct? Wasn't too hard to figure out .. I thought it worth a Funny modpoint, but whatever.
Then what happens when you do all your surfing (and Google searching) from behind an IP anonymizer?
And what I really want to know is, for how long does Google keep search engine queries? A few years? Forever? Why the hell isn't that info given in the original story, or was the question even asked? Another triumph of modern journalism ..
That's right .. Commodore disks were just 170K. (664 blocks free!)
And I had one of those tape consoles too. Yeah technology was much slower then, but realize that back when Mozart and Beethoven were writing their grand orchestral scores, they were penning them by hand, and all the copies for each member of the orchestra were copied by hand so really the analogy still applies.
Oh I disagree.
Games like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Mail Order Monsters, Tetris and the brilliant Infocom series of games were masterpieces of gameplay, craftsmanship and ingenuity. Games today have much better graphics, but originality and creativity? That can be argued.
My kid sister (who is 29) and I still regularly fire up the old Commodore to play M.U.L.E. Ah, the 640K floppy disk, no entering mystic serial numbers and checking with the company server to grant you "permission" to play your game .. those were the good ol' days.
So the author spun it about Macs because of his aura of smugness on security. How refreshing.
The two clocks are in the top right corner of the ad.
Penny Arcade has recently joined the peanut gallery ...
"Recently"? Calling a computer a PC has always implied that it ran Windows or DOS since I can remember--and I can remember back to the mid-80s. Show me marketing literature from Apple after 1985 that refers to its computers as PCs, please.
Their Web site is a blatant ripoff of Apple's.
Somebody just threw a bunch of money as someone and said, "Make it look as much like Apple as possible, and let's just hope nobody pays attention."
If they can barely hide their ripping-off of another's design style, it's probably not unsafe to assume they're ripping off other things as well.
There are faction bank accounts in MxO. They're just not localized.
And the purpose of player/faction housing is more than just "hang out" space. Management of inventory is one. The fact of the sheer volume and variety of clothing, weapon and miscellanous items combined with the realities of limited inventory room has forced players to get creative, creating alts solely for the purpose of keeping extra items, emailing items to themselves and maintaining an email "closet" for overflow, etc etc. If my character had an apartment that was his and could keep all his items there, that would make it so much easier AND more fun. Plus it would give me a reason to continue earning money (grinding or farming) because I would expect to have to pay rent for the space on a regular basis, with larger and more luxurious apartment spaces demanding more money, and so forth. Frankly, this would be a feature I would pay actual money for, say, an additional $2/month, for the right to rent and control access to a particular apartment and keep inventory there, maybe even decorate and furnish. This would add IMMENSELY to the game experience and keep me personally invested in my characters there.
This also opens up possibilities for inter-faction conflict, if one faction wants the rights to control a particular club, for instance, and the surrounding properties. Another faction might challenge that claim in some in-game RP related way, and the challenging faction could either PVP the other into surrendering the property, or an in-game mechanism could be developed by which a hostile takeover could be accomplished.
MxO has not failed, but is failing. SOE is concentrating its resources on SWG and EQ2, and the dev support team on MxO has probably dwindled to just a handful of overworked guys trying to deal with hotfixes and combat balancing patches. The key selling point of MxO was supposed to be storyline and although there was much emphasis on story in its first year, this has pretty much dwindled to token glances toward something resembling a story that is far too cryptic and disjointed for anyone but the hardcore gamers to appeal to (and many of the hardcore MxO players are disappointed, at best, in the story as it stands now). Sony spent a lot of time and effort modifying the combat engine, with much success. Now they need to put that same effort and care into game content.
For MxO to survive past 2006 it needs to be treated as something better than the red-headed stepchild it's become in SOE's MMO portfolio. It needs player/faction housing, it needs at least one new neighborhood and maybe a few new constructs, it needs more direct dev participation with the players in-game, and it needs Paul Chadwick to get out of his rut and come up with some really compelling storyline keyframes like we know he can do. Maybe he needs to get on the phone with the W. bros., because unless something major happens story-wise, more and more gamers are going to bail and Sony is going to just pull the plug.
Like maybe this one?