can I be the first to say ugh, frames are bad mmmkay. there is absolutely no reason to need frames in a modern website and their appearance makes me hiss like a vampire. bad google, bad, down!
the significance that we attach to art is not necessarily unique to us; We can't prove that an animal that builds a display to attract a mate is not as as proud of his creation and that it is not appreciated as much by those around it.
Why are you attached to the idea of setting animals so low when there is significant evidence to show that animals have complex, excitingly dynamic societies.
it's not unreasonable to expect a website that serves news to have a reasonable quality of journalism. Slashdots is way below par, and I've been reading it for a long time and it has got progressively worse as time has gone by.
this article should be trashed, really it should. I hate having to complain about dupes but I'm getting sick of the quality of journalism on slashdot. At the least the editors should check for dupe links in the articles before they approve them, even if they don't happen to have time to check that what the submitter has written matches the content of the article they link to.
seeing as this is one of the most high profile geek news websites that is on the web expecting a high quality of journalism is reasonable; and to mention the point about arbitrating what's newsworthy, that exactly was slashdot does due to having a massive readership, when something is posted on slashdot people pay attention. Whether or not their editors have said it they are in a position of power and these poor journalistic practices do reflect badly on them.
while there is a certain amount of humour to this i find little in a journalistic website having such poor standards set for theirselves. surely they wish to be taken seriously? To compare, how often do you see a newspaper running exactly the same story day after day? When you fail to even do the simplest checks to see that something has already been reported on your own website then you start losing journalistic integrity.
I can quite honestly say that in some cases the game DOES do it. I have been a long time player of World of Warcraft, playing since the private beta up until now and to be frank I've come to realize how incredibly unhealthily it has been designed, to create an addiction in its player.
Blizzard set out to create a game with a system of rewards that benefits those who put in the most time, not those who are most skillful. The net result of this is that to achieve anything worthwhile you have to put in hundreds of play hours. If you want to put this into perspective then ask an average level 60 player who has been here since the beginning how much time they have spent on one character; There is an uptime command/played which tells you how many days/hours/minutes you've spent on a given character and mine currently reads 30+ days for one character. That's not to mention the 14+ days on another. I'm not a particularly hardcore player either, and only have one level 60 character. Other people have 2 or 3 level 60s, if an average player takes between 16-20 days to reach level 60 then that's up to and probably 60 days of their life they've spent playing WoW. Now WoW was released in November 2004, so in a year of peoples life they could have spent 60 of those days playing a computer game. I don't mean a couple of hours every day for 60 days, I mean literally 60 days. This isn't by any means abnormal for WoW gamers.
MMO games are harmful in my opinion. They have a massive problem in the form of creating new and exciting content for an audience that furiously devours it, so what they do is create content that is based on grinding to succeed. Grinding means to do a repetative task hundreds, maybe thousands of times till you gain enough experience/reputation to get your reward. The worst case of this in WoW are the Player Vs Player Battlegrounds. There is a ranking system with 14 levels, the 14th being the hardest to get. To be able to reach the 14 and become grand marshal or high warlord depending on your faction, you need to play every day of the week, for upwards of 12 hours a day, in co-operation with team-mates who allow you to attain rank by forgoing rank theirselves. I have personally experienced many burnt out friends who have have mini-nervous breakdowns trying to attain a certain rank on PvP. The funny thing is that if you stop grinding for rank then your current rank decays, so if you decide to give yourself a break then you lose all the work you've already done. An excellent explanation of WoW pvp grinding and why it's so unhealthy can be read here.
Blizzard have created a game with the intent of people becoming addicted to it. They reward you for your addiction, and punish you if you are too 'casual'. It's very amusing to see the stigma attached to being a 'casual' WoW player, whenever they voice their opinion on anything they are very quickly drowned out in a chorus of 14 year old boys telling them to "stfu learn2play n00b". This is encouraged by Blizzard by creating content that only appeals to hardcore players and reinforces divides. Blizz want these divides though as they depend on the hardcore players for their revenue, because they know however badly they treat them nothing they do will make these players cancel their accounts, to the point where someone might get their account banned and simply start a new one, even though they have to begin from square 1 again.
When a developer sets out to make a game that is addictive and unhealthy as WoW then thats prett bad, but when there is no or little expression of concern from the industry watchdogs then that is something truly shocking. I simply don't understand.
erm how's that a prize? If my face got plastered in public infront of millions of people then I'd feel like I won the boobie prize/hisses/slams hermit hut door shut
it's incredibly simple to build a game then keep on adding new content. that's exactly what xbox live and all those console services are, i hadn't even thought about that. that has massive potential by itself. Also my example of the origin of books as a commodity came about due to the advent of better printing methods which made it cheaper. this is the same principle of the advent of a new technology encouraging a new form of publishing; or indeed a return to an old form of publishing with a new emphasis on content as a reward for loyalty. Yes in some ways it's like getting stampcards/loyalty cards, but the content itself is extremely easy to serialize. and every single ones a cliff hanger;)
What an interesting idea. back when books first became readily available one of the ways in which people could afford them was to buy them bit by bit, rather than all at once. Authors such as dickens took advantage of this to become the first successful authors to market their work and commodify it. on a side note this is where the modern library sprung forth from, not being a place to lend books but rather to sell them. Dickens realized that he could make a lot out of serializing books and indeed did. On a regular basis a new episode in one of his books would be published and people would literally jump on it, so excited were they by this new medium.
Now of course the serial would be a reward for purchasing something else, so it's role is slightly changed, but I can certainly see the rise of the serial again. Just imagine independently commisioning artists/animators to do content on a regular basis, it would be an amazing way to publish without the middleman. Obviously now I'm not just thinking of walt disney, i can imagine a lot of cool places wanting to jump on the bandwagon.
but how you promote those assets is entirely another. The combo of MS+Time warner AOL would indeed be formidable, if that is they learn how to target advertising in the way that google has, and to work with the viewer, not harangue them with flashing banners. Of course it's not hard to take a page from the good google book and emulate its successes. Of course as it's suggested if this deal does happen google stands to loose a great deal of revenue as AOL would no longer use Google to provide their search services. This might proove to be more damaging than any competition in advertising, because as has been seen google thrives just as much when in competition as when forging ahead in new directions.
is this isn't license for a million geeks to drink theirselves to an early - jittery - caffeine grave then I don't know what is. Yes I'm typing this with a doctor Pepper in one hand.
oh and ps, who has beaten fry's coffee record?
funny, because it struck me that it's kinda like flesh-life where you meet lots of people, don't get on with most and generally think most people are dull/morons/idiots/jackasses and find a few gems here and there.
i'm sorry but however you write it this is a dupe. please editors have a bit selectivity then this! all you need to do is click on your own google story picture and you'll see slightly down the page a link to this:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/233620 3&tid=217&tid=99
which is exactly the same story. if you want to do proper journalism then put some effort into it.
With the emergence of Ajax there is soon going to be little reason to have apps like email clients on our computers, however if companies like MS take the bull by the horns and intergrate this into their product line there is no reason we won't see an AJAX powered outlook express sometime soon.
the last.fm proxy is excellent and I truly love last.fm radio. the only complaint I would make is that the music selection when you select similar artists to any given artist isn't a massive collection, and quickly loops the same stuff again and again. more info can be found about last.fm proxy here too: http://www.last.fm/group/LastFMProxy/
don't forget the first rule for a good anti-virus company, make sure there are viruses (ICEbreakers) for your anti-virus software(ICE) to fix! The norton of tomorrow will be bring the premier ICE to your shop window, and the best ICEbreakers to the blackmarket in chiba!
Slashdot Mirror
can I be the first to say ugh, frames are bad mmmkay. there is absolutely no reason to need frames in a modern website and their appearance makes me hiss like a vampire. bad google, bad, down!
I also use avast and have had it filter out many a virus; I chuck it an orange now and then to prevent scurvy and it seems happy. arrrrrr
the significance that we attach to art is not necessarily unique to us; We can't prove that an animal that builds a display to attract a mate is not as as proud of his creation and that it is not appreciated as much by those around it. Why are you attached to the idea of setting animals so low when there is significant evidence to show that animals have complex, excitingly dynamic societies.
it's not unreasonable to expect a website that serves news to have a reasonable quality of journalism. Slashdots is way below par, and I've been reading it for a long time and it has got progressively worse as time has gone by.
this article should be trashed, really it should. I hate having to complain about dupes but I'm getting sick of the quality of journalism on slashdot. At the least the editors should check for dupe links in the articles before they approve them, even if they don't happen to have time to check that what the submitter has written matches the content of the article they link to.
the editors are little more likely to care about trolls than they dupes, of which this story is one.
you're blow up doll is on the way sir. double plus good!
seeing as this is one of the most high profile geek news websites that is on the web expecting a high quality of journalism is reasonable; and to mention the point about arbitrating what's newsworthy, that exactly was slashdot does due to having a massive readership, when something is posted on slashdot people pay attention. Whether or not their editors have said it they are in a position of power and these poor journalistic practices do reflect badly on them.
while there is a certain amount of humour to this i find little in a journalistic website having such poor standards set for theirselves. surely they wish to be taken seriously? To compare, how often do you see a newspaper running exactly the same story day after day? When you fail to even do the simplest checks to see that something has already been reported on your own website then you start losing journalistic integrity.
I can quite honestly say that in some cases the game DOES do it. I have been a long time player of World of Warcraft, playing since the private beta up until now and to be frank I've come to realize how incredibly unhealthily it has been designed, to create an addiction in its player. /played which tells you how many days/hours/minutes you've spent on a given character and mine currently reads 30+ days for one character. That's not to mention the 14+ days on another. I'm not a particularly hardcore player either, and only have one level 60 character. Other people have 2 or 3 level 60s, if an average player takes between 16-20 days to reach level 60 then that's up to and probably 60 days of their life they've spent playing WoW. Now WoW was released in November 2004, so in a year of peoples life they could have spent 60 of those days playing a computer game. I don't mean a couple of hours every day for 60 days, I mean literally 60 days. This isn't by any means abnormal for WoW gamers.
Blizzard set out to create a game with a system of rewards that benefits those who put in the most time, not those who are most skillful. The net result of this is that to achieve anything worthwhile you have to put in hundreds of play hours. If you want to put this into perspective then ask an average level 60 player who has been here since the beginning how much time they have spent on one character; There is an uptime command
MMO games are harmful in my opinion. They have a massive problem in the form of creating new and exciting content for an audience that furiously devours it, so what they do is create content that is based on grinding to succeed. Grinding means to do a repetative task hundreds, maybe thousands of times till you gain enough experience/reputation to get your reward. The worst case of this in WoW are the Player Vs Player Battlegrounds. There is a ranking system with 14 levels, the 14th being the hardest to get. To be able to reach the 14 and become grand marshal or high warlord depending on your faction, you need to play every day of the week, for upwards of 12 hours a day, in co-operation with team-mates who allow you to attain rank by forgoing rank theirselves. I have personally experienced many burnt out friends who have have mini-nervous breakdowns trying to attain a certain rank on PvP. The funny thing is that if you stop grinding for rank then your current rank decays, so if you decide to give yourself a break then you lose all the work you've already done. An excellent explanation of WoW pvp grinding and why it's so unhealthy can be read here.
Blizzard have created a game with the intent of people becoming addicted to it. They reward you for your addiction, and punish you if you are too 'casual'. It's very amusing to see the stigma attached to being a 'casual' WoW player, whenever they voice their opinion on anything they are very quickly drowned out in a chorus of 14 year old boys telling them to "stfu learn2play n00b". This is encouraged by Blizzard by creating content that only appeals to hardcore players and reinforces divides. Blizz want these divides though as they depend on the hardcore players for their revenue, because they know however badly they treat them nothing they do will make these players cancel their accounts, to the point where someone might get their account banned and simply start a new one, even though they have to begin from square 1 again.
When a developer sets out to make a game that is addictive and unhealthy as WoW then thats prett bad, but when there is no or little expression of concern from the industry watchdogs then that is something truly shocking. I simply don't understand.
what, have chimps and keep computers in cages? I heard a G5 attacked his owner recently....
yahoo! chunky widgets, 5 for $0.99 Tomato sauce extra
gah I only ever used it because of the funky name, now... i don't want Yahoo! widgets, sounds like really cheap and nasty fast food.
erm how's that a prize? If my face got plastered in public infront of millions of people then I'd feel like I won the boobie prize /hisses /slams hermit hut door shut
it's incredibly simple to build a game then keep on adding new content. that's exactly what xbox live and all those console services are, i hadn't even thought about that. that has massive potential by itself. Also my example of the origin of books as a commodity came about due to the advent of better printing methods which made it cheaper. this is the same principle of the advent of a new technology encouraging a new form of publishing; or indeed a return to an old form of publishing with a new emphasis on content as a reward for loyalty. Yes in some ways it's like getting stampcards/loyalty cards, but the content itself is extremely easy to serialize. and every single ones a cliff hanger ;)
What an interesting idea. back when books first became readily available one of the ways in which people could afford them was to buy them bit by bit, rather than all at once. Authors such as dickens took advantage of this to become the first successful authors to market their work and commodify it. on a side note this is where the modern library sprung forth from, not being a place to lend books but rather to sell them. Dickens realized that he could make a lot out of serializing books and indeed did. On a regular basis a new episode in one of his books would be published and people would literally jump on it, so excited were they by this new medium. Now of course the serial would be a reward for purchasing something else, so it's role is slightly changed, but I can certainly see the rise of the serial again. Just imagine independently commisioning artists/animators to do content on a regular basis, it would be an amazing way to publish without the middleman. Obviously now I'm not just thinking of walt disney, i can imagine a lot of cool places wanting to jump on the bandwagon.
but how you promote those assets is entirely another. The combo of MS+Time warner AOL would indeed be formidable, if that is they learn how to target advertising in the way that google has, and to work with the viewer, not harangue them with flashing banners. Of course it's not hard to take a page from the good google book and emulate its successes. Of course as it's suggested if this deal does happen google stands to loose a great deal of revenue as AOL would no longer use Google to provide their search services. This might proove to be more damaging than any competition in advertising, because as has been seen google thrives just as much when in competition as when forging ahead in new directions.
please don't eat my son!
is this isn't license for a million geeks to drink theirselves to an early - jittery - caffeine grave then I don't know what is. Yes I'm typing this with a doctor Pepper in one hand. oh and ps, who has beaten fry's coffee record?
funny, because it struck me that it's kinda like flesh-life where you meet lots of people, don't get on with most and generally think most people are dull/morons/idiots/jackasses and find a few gems here and there.
i'm sorry but however you write it this is a dupe. please editors have a bit selectivity then this! all you need to do is click on your own google story picture and you'll see slightly down the page a link to this: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/233620 3&tid=217&tid=99
which is exactly the same story. if you want to do proper journalism then put some effort into it.
I for one look forward to EPIC
With the emergence of Ajax there is soon going to be little reason to have apps like email clients on our computers, however if companies like MS take the bull by the horns and intergrate this into their product line there is no reason we won't see an AJAX powered outlook express sometime soon.
the last.fm proxy is excellent and I truly love last.fm radio. the only complaint I would make is that the music selection when you select similar artists to any given artist isn't a massive collection, and quickly loops the same stuff again and again. more info can be found about last.fm proxy here too: http://www.last.fm/group/LastFMProxy/
don't forget the first rule for a good anti-virus company, make sure there are viruses (ICEbreakers) for your anti-virus software(ICE) to fix! The norton of tomorrow will be bring the premier ICE to your shop window, and the best ICEbreakers to the blackmarket in chiba!