You read it correctly. Achievement unlocked for reading article.:)
Apart from the obvious of it not equating to users downloading, the iPhone as itself is not great for reading. Screen is small. Your have to tap a lot, or zoom in/out.
There is one company (BeamItDown) who have an excellent reader app. It auto scrolls with a speed based on the angle of reading. Makes it very easy to read large amounts of data with little tapping on screen.
But the books are all public domain stuff. Would be nice to get the app separate.
Personally I've bought Advance War three times. It is a great game for the DS, but I loose carts very easy.
I haven't lost any games for iPhone since getting it. I can even download again when I lose it (similar to Steam).
DS is nice, but personally I found the iPhone a much better game system. The main reason is I am not carrying multiple devices on me. Also price of software is a fraction of the price for a DS yet in a lot of cases the quality is a lot better.
I think what you say is fine if your just a normal run of the mill job that isn't going to go anywhere.
But what if you want to become a speaker on the technology you sell? To some extent your personal life will impact your business life.
Btw, in relation to your example on your mobile phone. Some companies just bringing your mobile phone into work constitutes it falling under the business.
Now this avatar business I don't see it as extreme as the old days where IBM had employees who measured your clothing to ensure you followed the strict dress code.
But just thinking that what you do in your private life should have no impact is wrong.
I think your talking about non-contract position? MS are renowned for not employing fulltime people. Instead fobbing them off to the a consultancy agency so they can drop them without having to incur the usual stuff (eg. redundancy).
Although Final Frontier was extremely impressive coding for its time (despite the bugs).
They had a 3D game you can fly in space, land on planets with millions of star systems and missions/ships/etc. All on one 3.5" floppy disk.
Prior to that you were looking at a swapping CDs mid game to get anything halfway decent.
Re:There was a bug in the Spectrum version
on
Elite Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
To go one step further on the Spectrum when you loaded the game for the first time, rather then starting the game hit save instead. Then load that back in and you had max amount of cash and elite status.
The better thing to do is have the software locked to the device and then insure the device that way.
Insurance companies (outside of USA) will in fact insure your phone. I got mine insured without AAC software on it. They covered everything that applecare won't. So yes if I dropped it down the toilet I would get a new one of the exact same specification.
Cheap is a relative term. iPhone AAC apps can run around $100 along with the device (iphone/itouch). So would be expensive. If you compare it to AAC devices on the market then yes it is much cheaper.
This is an ongoing issue on a mailing list I am on for software we use.
My son has ASD (non-verbal). We initially used PECS but the book is troublesome to carry. So we settled on Proloquo2go. It is for the iPhone/itouch. It is expensive (100 euros). By standards of other stuff out there it is very cheap. (Even the PECS isn't cheap when you add everything up).
There are other factors like training that costs money as well. It is not like the child with ASD will pick this up just by using.
Now I don't live in the US so I can claim some of the money back where I am (in some cases done automatically). But I think if your child is already diagnosed with the condition, then that should be used as a pre-req to help in getting a cheap device. Yes there will be scammers, but work on combating them and not hamstringing those that need it.
It is hard enough having to deal with a child with Autism, but being crucified in prices can't be just as stressful.
Or you could just use PAYG (Pay as you Go). I am not sure if you have in the USA but we have it in Europe. Most I can lose is the amount I put onto the phone, which is rarely much more then 10-20 euros at any given time.
Pretty you didn't mean to infer I didn't exercise.:P:) Actually the game wasn't a "go get some exercise" type game. I tried it initially but after wandering around housing estates I don't live just so I could progress the issue and then it is expecting me to travel 5 miles to get something only to travel a similar distance in some other random direction.
Also it had no concept of geography where I lived. So 5 miles doesn't mean "go for a run", it can mean "Spend the next couple of hours trying to navigate a housing estate you have never been in before just to get closer to the point".
I am sure someone would find it fun. Doesn't mean it will sell well.
There are already games like this. I got one for my Nokia N95 a couple of years back. The problem with the game really though was you were expected to say travel 5 miles to progress the adventure in the game.
It is a bit like that Vampire game on Nintendo DS that required to have sunlight to play. Great in theory until you actually try to play the game. In Ireland the game was virtually unplayable for 90% of the year.
"I understand they just need a bit more time to conclude their purchase of the Duke Nukem Forever codebase and issue a call for investors to fund completion of this vital work."
Based on previous experience I suspect they would be more likely to buy that codebase, then claim others had stolen that code in their own FPS games and offer to allow end users to license to use a product for a small fee. Then sue EA, pump shares, dump shares, lose and then file for bankruptcy.
I went to China a couple of years back. I had to apply for a visa (by mail) which took less then a week. When I got to China they stamped the visa document and not my passport. They didn't ask for fingerprints or anything else like that. Likewise when I left.
Last time I was in the US I got treated like I was a criminal. The fact they were treating everyone else the same way didn't make me feel any better.
"Maybe you enjoyed having your miner constantly PK'd. Myself and many others did not."
No I didn't enjoy it. Which is why the guild I was in we would protect each other. When the guild weren't on I didn't do stupid things like naked mining or hopscotching ore. I went armed enough to be able to flee. We created miner traps, ore traps, etc.
We didn't stand by and cry and quit.
"A well designed game wouldn't even _need_ those plugins in the first place."
I would disagree. The ability to extend the game without adversely breaking the game mechanics is a boon to keeping players.
There is a sweet spot in relation to number of subscribers and your game. Each subscriber takes up resources on your server and bandwidth. Normally there is a percentage of players in the game at any given time. If you have a 100K subs but only say 5-10% log in at any given time then the costs of maintaining your systems are a lot lower. In such an instance you haven't failed.
If you have 100K subs and 90% of the population want to play then yea you probably have a failed model.
I don't know enough of the back end mechanics in WOW but there are a number of points in the game where there is forced downtime which can help lower bandwidth. For example flying to another city could be pretty much nearly all client side with only a final load at the destination.
"There is no way in hell they would win in court."
Actually there is. What it might not stand up in is in front of SCOTUS. But the US government gets around that by throwing out any cases that might get that far. That way no real ruling can be made on it.
> "You seem to forget that when UO introduced Trammal, 90%+ of the population said F.U. to Felucca."
You give children all the candy they can eat and they will eat themselves sick.
UO pre-trammal wasn't that bad and the attacks were what brought people together. I still recall one server where 1 PK'er who had terrorized the population of a particular town actually brought the town together to help in protecting each other as well pooling resources. When that happened the attacks stopped because it stopped being fun for the PK'er. People who probably would never of talked to each other formed friendships through conflict.
That was controlled PvP. I've played UO PvP server and it was very different. There was a more relaxed attitude to being attacked or attacking others. It was more akin to playing Quake/CS. Not everyones liking agreed.
Trammel effectively gave you a game with 0 risk. Areas in the game that were dangerous were insanely easy. The only real threat was having some guy come out of stealth claiming the 8 mobs you were whacking on where his and that he was going to report you to a GM. In the old days they would just fight it out.
Where UO went wrong was in letting their GM's becomes visible entities in the world. So much so that it was easier to have your guild log 40-50 complaints on one player then actually deal with the player with the game mechanics.
> "it took a while to save up enough money for a house. "
It went further then that. I knew of a number of people who stopped playing the game completely yet still logged in once a week to refresh their houses. Almost zero impact on the servers and still paying revenue. The best kind of players for the company.:)
> "This is a total Joke in WOW."
Wintergrasp does a good job of it. Every two hours there is control for a castle and whoever wins gives boost to everyones stats in around Wintergrasp for 2 hours. Well worth the fight for levelling purposes.
Some of the others are OK'ish in that you get rare items from holding zones.
> "It only took WoW how many years to offer a "haircut" ?"
I am referring to customizing the client itself. For example people have quest watchers, pvp plugins, UI changes, etc.
"You cannot create an MMO at the same "polished" level as WoW"
Sorry but your wrong. Apart from the other. There are a few MMOs out there that are very polished. Eve Online, City of Heroes are two recent ones. Older ones like for example Asherons Call would be on par (excepting graphics) of WoW.
The issue isn't with being polished. There is a formula that makes a great game. For example take Neocron. I played it pre-dome of york. It was extremely buggy, crashed a lot , graphics were OK'ish, limited maps in relation to other MMOs. Yet it was a horribly addictive game. Playing it gave a rush. The fact the client was a buggy pile of poo is what kept others joining the game (was nightmare to install). Having the subscription raised is what pushed me out of the game.
1. For a great MMO you need to satisfy all the Bartle food groups. While at the same time ensuring they don't adversely impact each other.
2. You have to give rewards that mean something (feel you accomplished something in game). Rewards without some level of work do not act as rewards.
3. You have to give an investment to the player. In UO+AC for example this was housing. A bad example of housing is CoX for Supergroup bases.
4. The players have to feel they actually impact the environment. Not have everything reset later. Eve Online does this very well. Likewise with WOW some maps controlled impact gameplay elsewhere. Best one I saw was Asherons call (a town was nuked based on some random players comments). Even the virus outbreak in WOW gave a feeling of the players impacting the environment.
5. You have to build (controlled) conflict, so that communities form. Alliance v Horde, Eve corps.
6. A level of customization. Most of long standing WOW players actually run with multiple plugins.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for clarifying what allows IDF to shoot your laptop. /s
It is actually quite good and makes reading on a small device so much easier.
One of my biggest peeves with ebook devices is that I can read the page fast enough that turning pages actually becomes annoying fast.
You read it correctly. Achievement unlocked for reading article. :)
Apart from the obvious of it not equating to users downloading, the iPhone as itself is not great for reading. Screen is small. Your have to tap a lot, or zoom in/out.
There is one company (BeamItDown) who have an excellent reader app. It auto scrolls with a speed based on the angle of reading. Makes it very easy to read large amounts of data with little tapping on screen.
But the books are all public domain stuff. Would be nice to get the app separate.
Not sure what country you are in, so it may vary. But where I am Apple would take the machine back and replace with later one.
I actually got my MacMini for cheaper and better spec for the exact same reason (bought it just as the new line came in).
Personally I've bought Advance War three times. It is a great game for the DS, but I loose carts very easy.
I haven't lost any games for iPhone since getting it. I can even download again when I lose it (similar to Steam).
DS is nice, but personally I found the iPhone a much better game system. The main reason is I am not carrying multiple devices on me. Also price of software is a fraction of the price for a DS yet in a lot of cases the quality is a lot better.
Seriously in this day and age there is no reason to have a pirate copy of an office suite. Open Office or Symphony work fine and have 0 adverts.
I don't know anyone who would having the choice of free Office software with and without adverts would take the first choice.
Although I can see Clippy now.. "Hi I see your trying to write a letter to your girlfriend, would you like to buy some Viagra?"
I think what you say is fine if your just a normal run of the mill job that isn't going to go anywhere.
But what if you want to become a speaker on the technology you sell? To some extent your personal life will impact your business life.
Btw, in relation to your example on your mobile phone. Some companies just bringing your mobile phone into work constitutes it falling under the business.
Now this avatar business I don't see it as extreme as the old days where IBM had employees who measured your clothing to ensure you followed the strict dress code.
But just thinking that what you do in your private life should have no impact is wrong.
You should probably not google doug winger if your in work (and what is seen cannot be unseen) O_O
I think your talking about non-contract position? MS are renowned for not employing fulltime people. Instead fobbing them off to the a consultancy agency so they can drop them without having to incur the usual stuff (eg. redundancy).
Although Final Frontier was extremely impressive coding for its time (despite the bugs).
They had a 3D game you can fly in space, land on planets with millions of star systems and missions/ships/etc. All on one 3.5" floppy disk.
Prior to that you were looking at a swapping CDs mid game to get anything halfway decent.
To go one step further on the Spectrum when you loaded the game for the first time, rather then starting the game hit save instead. Then load that back in and you had max amount of cash and elite status.
TBH just focusing on China is laughable. Some years back the EU did a report on ECHELON and what they got up to on what you consider is your allies.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do;jsessionid=7B9ED0C4A4792505626B9FE5464FFC33.node1?language=EN&pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+NOT+XML+V0//EN
Well worth the read.
There was also another report on Israels spying on the USA. Some months back, but I don't have the URL handy.
I don't follow your line of logic.
The better thing to do is have the software locked to the device and then insure the device that way.
Insurance companies (outside of USA) will in fact insure your phone. I got mine insured without AAC software on it. They covered everything that applecare won't. So yes if I dropped it down the toilet I would get a new one of the exact same specification.
Cheap is a relative term. iPhone AAC apps can run around $100 along with the device (iphone/itouch). So would be expensive. If you compare it to AAC devices on the market then yes it is much cheaper.
I think your going about this the wrong way.
This is an ongoing issue on a mailing list I am on for software we use.
My son has ASD (non-verbal). We initially used PECS but the book is troublesome to carry. So we settled on Proloquo2go. It is for the iPhone/itouch. It is expensive (100 euros). By standards of other stuff out there it is very cheap. (Even the PECS isn't cheap when you add everything up).
There are other factors like training that costs money as well. It is not like the child with ASD will pick this up just by using.
Now I don't live in the US so I can claim some of the money back where I am (in some cases done automatically). But I think if your child is already diagnosed with the condition, then that should be used as a pre-req to help in getting a cheap device. Yes there will be scammers, but work on combating them and not hamstringing those that need it.
It is hard enough having to deal with a child with Autism, but being crucified in prices can't be just as stressful.
Or you could just use PAYG (Pay as you Go). I am not sure if you have in the USA but we have it in Europe. Most I can lose is the amount I put onto the phone, which is rarely much more then 10-20 euros at any given time.
"Some call that exercise,"
Pretty you didn't mean to infer I didn't exercise. :P :) Actually the game wasn't a "go get some exercise" type game. I tried it initially but after wandering around housing estates I don't live just so I could progress the issue and then it is expecting me to travel 5 miles to get something only to travel a similar distance in some other random direction.
Also it had no concept of geography where I lived. So 5 miles doesn't mean "go for a run", it can mean "Spend the next couple of hours trying to navigate a housing estate you have never been in before just to get closer to the point".
I am sure someone would find it fun. Doesn't mean it will sell well.
There are already games like this. I got one for my Nokia N95 a couple of years back. The problem with the game really though was you were expected to say travel 5 miles to progress the adventure in the game.
It is a bit like that Vampire game on Nintendo DS that required to have sunlight to play. Great in theory until you actually try to play the game. In Ireland the game was virtually unplayable for 90% of the year.
"I understand they just need a bit more time to conclude their purchase of the Duke Nukem Forever codebase and issue a call for investors to fund completion of this vital work."
Based on previous experience I suspect they would be more likely to buy that codebase, then claim others had stolen that code in their own FPS games and offer to allow end users to license to use a product for a small fee. Then sue EA, pump shares, dump shares, lose and then file for bankruptcy.
I went to China a couple of years back. I had to apply for a visa (by mail) which took less then a week. When I got to China they stamped the visa document and not my passport. They didn't ask for fingerprints or anything else like that. Likewise when I left.
Last time I was in the US I got treated like I was a criminal. The fact they were treating everyone else the same way didn't make me feel any better.
Just saying.
"Maybe you enjoyed having your miner constantly PK'd. Myself and many others did not."
No I didn't enjoy it. Which is why the guild I was in we would protect each other. When the guild weren't on I didn't do stupid things like naked mining or hopscotching ore. I went armed enough to be able to flee. We created miner traps, ore traps, etc.
We didn't stand by and cry and quit.
"A well designed game wouldn't even _need_ those plugins in the first place."
I would disagree. The ability to extend the game without adversely breaking the game mechanics is a boon to keeping players.
"100k subs? You failed! Big time!"
There is a sweet spot in relation to number of subscribers and your game. Each subscriber takes up resources on your server and bandwidth. Normally there is a percentage of players in the game at any given time. If you have a 100K subs but only say 5-10% log in at any given time then the costs of maintaining your systems are a lot lower. In such an instance you haven't failed.
If you have 100K subs and 90% of the population want to play then yea you probably have a failed model.
I don't know enough of the back end mechanics in WOW but there are a number of points in the game where there is forced downtime which can help lower bandwidth. For example flying to another city could be pretty much nearly all client side with only a final load at the destination.
"There is no way in hell they would win in court."
Actually there is. What it might not stand up in is in front of SCOTUS. But the US government gets around that by throwing out any cases that might get that far. That way no real ruling can be made on it.
> "You seem to forget that when UO introduced Trammal, 90%+ of the population said F.U. to Felucca."
You give children all the candy they can eat and they will eat themselves sick.
UO pre-trammal wasn't that bad and the attacks were what brought people together. I still recall one server where 1 PK'er who had terrorized the population of a particular town actually brought the town together to help in protecting each other as well pooling resources. When that happened the attacks stopped because it stopped being fun for the PK'er. People who probably would never of talked to each other formed friendships through conflict.
That was controlled PvP. I've played UO PvP server and it was very different. There was a more relaxed attitude to being attacked or attacking others. It was more akin to playing Quake/CS. Not everyones liking agreed.
Trammel effectively gave you a game with 0 risk. Areas in the game that were dangerous were insanely easy. The only real threat was having some guy come out of stealth claiming the 8 mobs you were whacking on where his and that he was going to report you to a GM. In the old days they would just fight it out.
Where UO went wrong was in letting their GM's becomes visible entities in the world. So much so that it was easier to have your guild log 40-50 complaints on one player then actually deal with the player with the game mechanics.
> "it took a while to save up enough money for a house. "
It went further then that. I knew of a number of people who stopped playing the game completely yet still logged in once a week to refresh their houses. Almost zero impact on the servers and still paying revenue. The best kind of players for the company. :)
> "This is a total Joke in WOW."
Wintergrasp does a good job of it. Every two hours there is control for a castle and whoever wins gives boost to everyones stats in around Wintergrasp for 2 hours. Well worth the fight for levelling purposes.
Some of the others are OK'ish in that you get rare items from holding zones.
> "It only took WoW how many years to offer a "haircut" ?"
I am referring to customizing the client itself. For example people have quest watchers, pvp plugins, UI changes, etc.
"You cannot create an MMO at the same "polished" level as WoW"
Sorry but your wrong. Apart from the other. There are a few MMOs out there that are very polished. Eve Online, City of Heroes are two recent ones. Older ones like for example Asherons Call would be on par (excepting graphics) of WoW.
The issue isn't with being polished. There is a formula that makes a great game. For example take Neocron. I played it pre-dome of york. It was extremely buggy, crashed a lot , graphics were OK'ish, limited maps in relation to other MMOs. Yet it was a horribly addictive game. Playing it gave a rush. The fact the client was a buggy pile of poo is what kept others joining the game (was nightmare to install). Having the subscription raised is what pushed me out of the game.
1. For a great MMO you need to satisfy all the Bartle food groups. While at the same time ensuring they don't adversely impact each other.
2. You have to give rewards that mean something (feel you accomplished something in game). Rewards without some level of work do not act as rewards.
3. You have to give an investment to the player. In UO+AC for example this was housing. A bad example of housing is CoX for Supergroup bases.
4. The players have to feel they actually impact the environment. Not have everything reset later. Eve Online does this very well. Likewise with WOW some maps controlled impact gameplay elsewhere. Best one I saw was Asherons call (a town was nuked based on some random players comments). Even the virus outbreak in WOW gave a feeling of the players impacting the environment.
5. You have to build (controlled) conflict, so that communities form. Alliance v Horde, Eve corps.
6. A level of customization. Most of long standing WOW players actually run with multiple plugins.