At that point, every game would be developed for the 361, and it would "technically" still run on the 360. Horrible framerates, unplayable multiplayer, the whole nine yards... but it technically works!
This is why I switched from PC to console gaming years ago. If I'm playing against you on a console, it comes down to skill: we both have the same console, so it's a level playing field. On a PC, we could be equally matched in whatever game... but since you spent that extra $100 on your video card, you're going to slay me.
The Google+ project is currently working out all the kinks with a small group of testers. If you're not able to access Google+, please check back again soon.
...which links me to a page that says:
We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon.
It sets a cookie on your computer, so even if you don't buy that book (and why wouldn't you?!), you'll send them a few nickels next week when you buy a DVD... unless you click someone else's referral link in the meantime.
I have no idea if it's different in your country, but over here in the US, we have minimum wages as well... only, employers can pay you less if you are allowed to accept tips.
Example, the pizza guy who makes the pizza and doesn't take tips? Minimum wage, $7.50 / hour or whatever MW is these days.
The delivery guy who actually takes it to your house? $2.00 / hour + tips (maybe slightly more or less than $2, I don't deliver pizza, but you get the idea).
"Players have three options: 400 points ($5) grants a dual-platform license (playable on Xbox 360 and PC), 240 points ($3) gets you the virtual arcade cabinet on one platform (Xbox 360 or PC), and, for the old-fashioned types, 40 points ($0.50) is exactly "two quarters" worth of playtime -- for an authentic arcade experience, minus the sticky floors."
If you have to send it in for warranty repair/work then you get a refurbished unit
Not entirely true. I know that they send a refurb if your console is beyond repair or in other special circumstances, but myself and a couple of friends have all had to send in the console for RRoD repair - we've all got our original, repaired consoles back (verified by the serial number, and in one guy's case, the stickers).
Personally, I dislike the Silverlight version.... but that's only because I'm using a computer that I built on a budget three or four years ago. The older version worked fine on it, but this new version is just too much for my pitiful rig (1.34 GHz, 768 megs of RAM). Note that this is a personal complaint - it sucks, but I don't expect companies to cater to old hardware forever.
With that said, it works like a dream on my wife's computer (which isn't bleeding edge hardware, but it's very powerful), and I can't say anything negative about the quality or the overall performance on it.
I wonder how many of the protesters are in my boat (low-end hardware, maybe better than mine, but still not up to snuff) and just don't put two and two together.
You do need to pay for the gold membership for that account if you want that extra set of features (can't speak for your household, but my ol' lady doesn't need it). You do get a free month when you make the account, though.
For arcade games, I didn't notice a problem... I just tested again with Doom (which I bought on my account), and I could play the full version from her account with no problems. I've heard of that getting screwy if you buy the game on one hard drive, replace said drive, and redownload the game, but I've never had to replace the drive so I don't know how it works.
Here's some food for thought. I've had my Xbox for a couple of years now, and in that time, both the woman of the house and my daughter have had no interest in it. Sure, they watch me play every now and then, but that was really the extent of it.
Yesterday, they saw me playing around with the avatar. My wife then wanted to make her own avatar, which led to her getting her own account on my box, which further led to her checking out the arcade and buying a couple of games ("I didn't know they had Pac-Man! Frogger! Whoa!"). My kid, not content with her own account on my box, now wants one for herself for Christmas.
Funny how that silly little system brings in the casual crowd, eh?
Amen to the above - I got rid of a bunch of junk by using this site. Even the stuff I knew I should have thrown away long ago ("box of random wires", "dead LCD monitor", "VCR, needs repair") got claimed within hours, and the best part - as mentioned - is that the people come to your house to pick it up.
"Hey, how are you? Great. Yeah, see this room? Don't touch my TV, my Xbox, my DVD player, or that stack of movies over there. Anything else, knock yourself out."
"Holy crap - the only things left in here are my TV, my Xbox, my DVD player, and that stack of movies over there."
However, I'm not sure if you can use the same account with the 360 and with Roku.
From their help files: 1-disc plans may watch on one device at a time, 2-disc plans on up to two devices at the same time, 3-disc plans on up to three devices, and plans with four or more discs on up to four devices simultaneously.
Also, you can apparently deactivate a device at any time - so, if you're on the 1-disc plan and want to use your Xbox, you'd just deactivate the Roku box. Can't confirm as this little nugget of info came from a forum and I can't test it, but sounds logical.
Me: "It seems as though site1.com, site2.com, and site3.com have been blocked. My friends can view these sites. I can view them through my other ISP. I can view them with Comcast through a proxy. I can not view them normally with Comcast."
Them: Have you tried using IE? Turning off antivirus? Disabling your firewall? Deleting temporary files? Deleting cookies? Refreshing? Restarting your computer?
I gave up when they suggested deleting my history, but sadly, the sites are still blocked. Oh, and before anyone suggests that I change ISP's, I really wish that I could.
Let's say your favorite sites are Slashdot, Site1, Site2, and Site3. You check these sites a couple of times daily for new content, which consists of you manually visiting slashdot.org, site1.com, site2.com, and site3.com every time the mood strikes you and then scanning said sites for updates.
With an RSS reader, you simply go to your feed reader of choice (or open your preferred program, or however you get your content - there's hundreds of options) and scan down the list - "Oh, Slashdot updated with three new stories, that one looks interesting, [click]."
Now, say that you want to stay up to date with dozens or even hundreds of sites, and you'll see the benefit of feeds.
More importantly, are we expecting these customers to physically move? Because often, the big ISPs have a physical monopoly on an area. Amen, this is the thing that people keep forgetting about. In my little hometown (and the towns immediately surrounding it), we've got four choices:
1. delaware.net - Can't complain about their service or policies as I was a member for years, but... it's dialup.
2. Comcast.
3. Verizon (they aren't available for me, but if I lived a little further to the north and to the east, I could get it).
4. AOL.
Those are my choices if I want to get online. I'm not going to be so silly as to pull a number out of my ass, but I doubt that I'm in the extreme minority there.
Wait, what? GH3 has the bonus bands this time around...
An Endless Sporadic - Impulse
Backyard Babies - Minus Celsius
Bret Michaels Band - Go That Far
Die Toten Hosen - Hier kommit Alex
Dope - Nothing For Me Here
Dragonforce - Through the Fire and the Flames
Fall of Troy - FCP Remix
Gallows - In the Belly of a Shark
The Hellacopters - I'm in the Band
Heroes del Silencio - Avalancha
In Flames - Take This Life
Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
Killswitch Engage - My Curse
LA Slum Lords - Down N Dirty
Lacuna Coil - Closer
Lions - Metal Heavy Lady
NAAST - Mauvis Garcon
Prototype - The Way It Ends
Revolverheld - Generation Rock
Rise Against - Prayer of the Refugee
Scouts of St. Sebastian- In Love
Senses Fail - Can't Be Saved
The Sleeping - Don't Hold Back
The Stone Roses - She Bangs the Drums
Superbus - Radio Song
I spoke to a guy who does DRM for an online game publisher. Once, they rewrote their algorithm which instantly rendered all existing cracks for the games useless. Sales jumped by 40% that month. Why? surely none of those who cracked the stuff would have bought it anyway?
I get where you're coming from on that, but cracks also sell more than a couple of items as well. There are far too many programs out there that are crippled until you purchase them, and of course, you can't really find out if they do what you want until you purchase them.
As an example, I was looking for a program to catalog my DVD collection a few months ago and stumbled across Movie Collector. The main thing that I wanted from this program was the ability to easily export to HTML... this program does that, but you have to pay to use that feature. Had it not exported in a way that I desired (not all fields are supported, bad formatting, etc. - I saw a lot of horrible design / functionality decisions in other programs before finding this), that would have been $40 wasted. So, I cracked it, found that it did what I wanted, and then...
Thank you for your Collectorz.com purchase. This e-mail is to confirm that we have received your payment information and that your order is being processed. Once the order is complete, we will send you the license key(s) for your software products and installation instructions to get the full version up and running.
Had I not found a crack in order to decide whether or not the export feature did exactly what I wanted, they never would have got my money.
Completely off subject, but is there some magic trickery involved with getting these CDs to actually boot? I decided to try Ubuntu a couple of weeks ago after hearing everyone and their mother talk about it, so I downloaded the LiveCD (on dialup, no less!), burned the image, and... nothing.
Now, I know how to burn the image files - done it plenty of times with, ahem, "other" downloads and never had any problems. However, every time I try to burn this particular image, one of two things happens:
1) It fails with some sort of "bad sectors" error.
or
2) It successfully burns, but it's not bootable (and according to Windows Explorer, the disc is empty).
I've already thought of the obvious stuff: tried using a different burner (Nero and the suggested Infra Recorder), tried a different batch of CDs (even though I also tested other burns with the same spindles, no problems), confirmed that my computer will boot from the CD before the HD, confirmed the MD5 sum of the download... hell, I even copied the actual ISO file to a CD, took it to another computer, and tried burning it there in case the drive itself was being stupid. Still, after all this, I have yet to try Ubuntu thanks to these burning problems.
I run two different sites, both of which are far from being tech-oriented - one is a music site, and the other is a movie review site. The stats on both sites consistently show an increase in FF usage from month to month. I know I don't bring in a fraction of the hits that Google and the other "major" sites do, but if this is any indication...
Thus far this month, we're looking at the following:
MMMDI 1,867,564 hits
64.1% IE / 29.6% FF / 1.9% Safari (the big three)
MvMMDI 186,191 hits (yes, this site is still relatively new and unestablished)
59.9% IE / 34.5% FF / 2.1% Safari (the big three)
The value isn't in being able to produce a product, it's in being able to license it to someone else who wants to make it in the future.
Sure, they may not make anything off of this patent (since it seems pretty stupid, to be blunt), but it must be nice to see a new product hit the market and think "Alright, let's see if this violates any of the billion patents we own, and if so, we're getting paid!"
Think of it like the PS3 sales: you can go out and pay $600 for a system not because you want to use it, but because someone else would enjoy having said system and you can turn a profit based on that fact. The difference is that the PS3 will net you an almost immediate profit (find one - buy it - put it on eBay - profit!), while the patent game may take longer (patent something - wait for someone else to use or request to use it - profit!).
Slashdot Mirror
You haven't played Lollipop Chainsaw yet, have you?
At that point, every game would be developed for the 361, and it would "technically" still run on the 360. Horrible framerates, unplayable multiplayer, the whole nine yards... but it technically works!
This is why I switched from PC to console gaming years ago. If I'm playing against you on a console, it comes down to skill: we both have the same console, so it's a level playing field. On a PC, we could be equally matched in whatever game... but since you spent that extra $100 on your video card, you're going to slay me.
Charles XXX invited you to join him on Google+
...which links me to a page that says:
The Google+ project is currently working out all the kinks with a small group of testers. If you're not able to access Google+, please check back again soon.
We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon.
Ahhh well... thanks anyway!
Me too, please please please?
musicmademe atat gmail
High fives!
Even better question. And what is this "Google" they are speaking of?
It sets a cookie on your computer, so even if you don't buy that book (and why wouldn't you?!), you'll send them a few nickels next week when you buy a DVD... unless you click someone else's referral link in the meantime.
I have no idea if it's different in your country, but over here in the US, we have minimum wages as well... only, employers can pay you less if you are allowed to accept tips. Example, the pizza guy who makes the pizza and doesn't take tips? Minimum wage, $7.50 / hour or whatever MW is these days. The delivery guy who actually takes it to your house? $2.00 / hour + tips (maybe slightly more or less than $2, I don't deliver pizza, but you get the idea).
That sounded a little too specific to be merely a random example. Interesting friends.
"Players have three options: 400 points ($5) grants a dual-platform license (playable on Xbox 360 and PC), 240 points ($3) gets you the virtual arcade cabinet on one platform (Xbox 360 or PC), and, for the old-fashioned types, 40 points ($0.50) is exactly "two quarters" worth of playtime -- for an authentic arcade experience, minus the sticky floors."
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/07/xbox-game-room-pricing-partners-detailed/
If you have to send it in for warranty repair/work then you get a refurbished unit
Not entirely true. I know that they send a refurb if your console is beyond repair or in other special circumstances, but myself and a couple of friends have all had to send in the console for RRoD repair - we've all got our original, repaired consoles back (verified by the serial number, and in one guy's case, the stickers).
Personally, I dislike the Silverlight version.... but that's only because I'm using a computer that I built on a budget three or four years ago. The older version worked fine on it, but this new version is just too much for my pitiful rig (1.34 GHz, 768 megs of RAM). Note that this is a personal complaint - it sucks, but I don't expect companies to cater to old hardware forever.
With that said, it works like a dream on my wife's computer (which isn't bleeding edge hardware, but it's very powerful), and I can't say anything negative about the quality or the overall performance on it.
I wonder how many of the protesters are in my boat (low-end hardware, maybe better than mine, but still not up to snuff) and just don't put two and two together.
You do need to pay for the gold membership for that account if you want that extra set of features (can't speak for your household, but my ol' lady doesn't need it). You do get a free month when you make the account, though.
For arcade games, I didn't notice a problem... I just tested again with Doom (which I bought on my account), and I could play the full version from her account with no problems. I've heard of that getting screwy if you buy the game on one hard drive, replace said drive, and redownload the game, but I've never had to replace the drive so I don't know how it works.
Here's some food for thought. I've had my Xbox for a couple of years now, and in that time, both the woman of the house and my daughter have had no interest in it. Sure, they watch me play every now and then, but that was really the extent of it.
Yesterday, they saw me playing around with the avatar. My wife then wanted to make her own avatar, which led to her getting her own account on my box, which further led to her checking out the arcade and buying a couple of games ("I didn't know they had Pac-Man! Frogger! Whoa!"). My kid, not content with her own account on my box, now wants one for herself for Christmas.
Funny how that silly little system brings in the casual crowd, eh?
Amen to the above - I got rid of a bunch of junk by using this site. Even the stuff I knew I should have thrown away long ago ("box of random wires", "dead LCD monitor", "VCR, needs repair") got claimed within hours, and the best part - as mentioned - is that the people come to your house to pick it up.
"Hey, how are you? Great. Yeah, see this room? Don't touch my TV, my Xbox, my DVD player, or that stack of movies over there. Anything else, knock yourself out."
"Holy crap - the only things left in here are my TV, my Xbox, my DVD player, and that stack of movies over there."
However, I'm not sure if you can use the same account with the 360 and with Roku.
From their help files: 1-disc plans may watch on one device at a time, 2-disc plans on up to two devices at the same time, 3-disc plans on up to three devices, and plans with four or more discs on up to four devices simultaneously.
Also, you can apparently deactivate a device at any time - so, if you're on the 1-disc plan and want to use your Xbox, you'd just deactivate the Roku box. Can't confirm as this little nugget of info came from a forum and I can't test it, but sounds logical.
See: Comcast.
Me: "It seems as though site1.com, site2.com, and site3.com have been blocked. My friends can view these sites. I can view them through my other ISP. I can view them with Comcast through a proxy. I can not view them normally with Comcast."
Them: Have you tried using IE? Turning off antivirus? Disabling your firewall? Deleting temporary files? Deleting cookies? Refreshing? Restarting your computer?
I gave up when they suggested deleting my history, but sadly, the sites are still blocked. Oh, and before anyone suggests that I change ISP's, I really wish that I could.
Let's say your favorite sites are Slashdot, Site1, Site2, and Site3. You check these sites a couple of times daily for new content, which consists of you manually visiting slashdot.org, site1.com, site2.com, and site3.com every time the mood strikes you and then scanning said sites for updates.
With an RSS reader, you simply go to your feed reader of choice (or open your preferred program, or however you get your content - there's hundreds of options) and scan down the list - "Oh, Slashdot updated with three new stories, that one looks interesting, [click]."
Now, say that you want to stay up to date with dozens or even hundreds of sites, and you'll see the benefit of feeds.
1. delaware.net - Can't complain about their service or policies as I was a member for years, but... it's dialup.
2. Comcast.
3. Verizon (they aren't available for me, but if I lived a little further to the north and to the east, I could get it).
4. AOL.
Those are my choices if I want to get online. I'm not going to be so silly as to pull a number out of my ass, but I doubt that I'm in the extreme minority there.
Check out this article, particularly the fourth paragraph - it may change your opinions a bit.
Wait, what? GH3 has the bonus bands this time around...
An Endless Sporadic - Impulse
Backyard Babies - Minus Celsius
Bret Michaels Band - Go That Far
Die Toten Hosen - Hier kommit Alex
Dope - Nothing For Me Here
Dragonforce - Through the Fire and the Flames
Fall of Troy - FCP Remix
Gallows - In the Belly of a Shark
The Hellacopters - I'm in the Band
Heroes del Silencio - Avalancha
In Flames - Take This Life
Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
Killswitch Engage - My Curse
LA Slum Lords - Down N Dirty
Lacuna Coil - Closer
Lions - Metal Heavy Lady
NAAST - Mauvis Garcon
Prototype - The Way It Ends
Revolverheld - Generation Rock
Rise Against - Prayer of the Refugee
Scouts of St. Sebastian- In Love
Senses Fail - Can't Be Saved
The Sleeping - Don't Hold Back
The Stone Roses - She Bangs the Drums
Superbus - Radio Song
I spoke to a guy who does DRM for an online game publisher. Once, they rewrote their algorithm which instantly rendered all existing cracks for the games useless. Sales jumped by 40% that month. Why? surely none of those who cracked the stuff would have bought it anyway?
I get where you're coming from on that, but cracks also sell more than a couple of items as well. There are far too many programs out there that are crippled until you purchase them, and of course, you can't really find out if they do what you want until you purchase them.
As an example, I was looking for a program to catalog my DVD collection a few months ago and stumbled across Movie Collector. The main thing that I wanted from this program was the ability to easily export to HTML... this program does that, but you have to pay to use that feature. Had it not exported in a way that I desired (not all fields are supported, bad formatting, etc. - I saw a lot of horrible design / functionality decisions in other programs before finding this), that would have been $40 wasted. So, I cracked it, found that it did what I wanted, and then...
Thank you for your Collectorz.com purchase. This e-mail is to confirm that we have received your payment information and that your order is being processed. Once the order is complete, we will send you the license key(s) for your software products and installation instructions to get the full version up and running.
Had I not found a crack in order to decide whether or not the export feature did exactly what I wanted, they never would have got my money.
That was one of the first things I thought, indeed. But according to the MD5 sum, everything is fine.
Completely off subject, but is there some magic trickery involved with getting these CDs to actually boot? I decided to try Ubuntu a couple of weeks ago after hearing everyone and their mother talk about it, so I downloaded the LiveCD (on dialup, no less!), burned the image, and... nothing.
Now, I know how to burn the image files - done it plenty of times with, ahem, "other" downloads and never had any problems. However, every time I try to burn this particular image, one of two things happens:
1) It fails with some sort of "bad sectors" error.
or
2) It successfully burns, but it's not bootable (and according to Windows Explorer, the disc is empty).
I've already thought of the obvious stuff: tried using a different burner (Nero and the suggested Infra Recorder), tried a different batch of CDs (even though I also tested other burns with the same spindles, no problems), confirmed that my computer will boot from the CD before the HD, confirmed the MD5 sum of the download... hell, I even copied the actual ISO file to a CD, took it to another computer, and tried burning it there in case the drive itself was being stupid. Still, after all this, I have yet to try Ubuntu thanks to these burning problems.
So, any suggestions?
I run two different sites, both of which are far from being tech-oriented - one is a music site, and the other is a movie review site. The stats on both sites consistently show an increase in FF usage from month to month. I know I don't bring in a fraction of the hits that Google and the other "major" sites do, but if this is any indication...
Thus far this month, we're looking at the following:
MMMDI
1,867,564 hits
64.1% IE / 29.6% FF / 1.9% Safari (the big three)
MvMMDI
186,191 hits (yes, this site is still relatively new and unestablished)
59.9% IE / 34.5% FF / 2.1% Safari (the big three)
The value isn't in being able to produce a product, it's in being able to license it to someone else who wants to make it in the future.
Sure, they may not make anything off of this patent (since it seems pretty stupid, to be blunt), but it must be nice to see a new product hit the market and think "Alright, let's see if this violates any of the billion patents we own, and if so, we're getting paid!"
Think of it like the PS3 sales: you can go out and pay $600 for a system not because you want to use it, but because someone else would enjoy having said system and you can turn a profit based on that fact. The difference is that the PS3 will net you an almost immediate profit (find one - buy it - put it on eBay - profit!), while the patent game may take longer (patent something - wait for someone else to use or request to use it - profit!).