EU wants to play hardball? If they're smart, Microsoft could REALLY play this off to their advantage, making themselves look like a victim and getting the EU to back down.
Aside from the fact that M$ has already shown they're stubborn, not smart, no I can not imagine how they could play this to their advantage.
Most Europeans don't like the EU bureaucracy. But we dislike arrogant american corporations even less.
Stop selling products in Europe. Deny tech support to companies/users in Europe. Buy advertising stating why they're pulling out of the market.
Please, let them try that. They'll learn that the EU can play hardball, too. You think a small fine is hardball? You'll be surprised. The EU does have the authority to simply size all assets of M$ in Europe. That's a couple billions right there. They could even, if they decide to go for it seriously, claim the copyrights to european windos versions are part of those assets, and declare it's now property of the EU. That'd probably be the start of a long battle with the WTO/WIPO but hey, so what?
Plus, of course, it isn't even a remote option for M$ to lose the european market, which is considerably larger than the US. Doing so would cause a shock to their stock price, which is already being held up by various artificial schemes, and a shock of that magnitude could well cause a chain reaction that makes it all break down.
It's not a risk Balmer can talk if he wants to remain a free man. The M$ stockholders would sue him into oblivion and back, both in civil and criminal cases.
No, there will be one of two things happening here: One, M$ gets a bloody nose and backs off, either sooner or later depending on how much pain they want. Two, they find the right people to buy off and offer them enough.
It took him that long? For all I know, he and some corporate PHBs (who themselves, of course, have nice little offices) were the only ones who ever thought cubicles are a good idea.
I feel there's a void of uselessness in sizes between the PDA and the laptop.
There is, and that's not going to change until someone invites inflatable screens and keyboards that don't suck.
The notebook has a full keyboard, a touchpad and a large screen. The PDA is small enough to fit in your pocket and has whatever screen real-estate that provides, sacrificing the keyboard.
There simply isn't a go-inbetween. "half a keyboard" doesn't cut it. A slightly-larger-than-PDA screen immediately loses all the advantages of the PDA while not gaining much on notebooks. It's a curve with two peaks, and the valley inbetween is there to stay.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll buy from the company that says "available today" regularily, not the one that promises and promises and promises, and pretty much all it's products so far have been late, more expensive and less powerful than promised.
You seem to be looking for something that in reality doesn't exist.
Probably. But let's name the ideal so we can approach it, even if it's ultimately impossible to reach.
You want some uber reward that only you with your uber skills can get, and you can get with little time investment. Meanwhile everyone else without your uber skills will never be able to get it.
Not really, my skills are fairly weak. And that's the point. There are some things in the game I currently play (Guild Wars, which fortunately has a very low farming aspect) that I realize I simply won't get because I don't have the time, patience or nerve to gather what's necessary. So I profit from those who absolutely want to and sell them the few rare materials I find every now and then for much gold.
That's a good concept, I think. If the low-level players can both profit and help the high-level players achieve their ubergoals, everyone has more fun doing it. MMORPGs should take a hint from real life: Not everyone can be president or CEO, but that doesn't mean they don't play important (at their level) roles.
Project Entropia - while I didn't like it at all - appears to have something like that built in. There are certain things only low-level characters can gather, but they are important for higher-level characters who need them. So the top people rely on the lower people. Excellent concept, with some more work it could become really great.
The only way I can see to reward skill over time is to make it easy to lose progress you've made as a result of your failures. There are already games like this, but they are niche games, not massively popular ones like World of Warcraft.
I happen to have designed a multiplayer online game. Not quite a MMORPG, but still. See.sig for details.
Here's what I do:
First, progress gets slower towards the top, but there's no "level cap", there's no limit as to how much you can get. This accomplishes two goals: One, it gives everyone, even the top-notch something to improve on. And two, it allows newbies to gain up on them quickly, at least seemingly. When you see yourself closing in fast you don't realize and/or don't mind that the first 50% are easy to get, but the rest gets harder.
Two, I make losses higher for those higher up. The same thing will cause a loss of 2-3 prestige for a low level character and 6-8 for a higher one. This makes things "expensive" for those who already have much. Again, it helps closing the gaps, and those who are on top don't seem to mind much because they see it as "capital" they can "spend".
Three, everyone plays the same playing field. You get the same amount to spend (in-game time in my case, maybe XP for an MMORPG) per day no matter how much time you sit in front of the game. But, the advantages of spending more time are still there. They are mostly on the social level. Top-notch diplomacy as the king of your realm will take time. The more time and effort you put into negotiations with other kings, the better. Of course, your social skills are important, too (i.e. your skills, not character skills).
It's been an experiment, it still is. But it's been running well for over 5 years now, and there's a lot in it that I think could be applied to an MMORPG.
If anyone wants to hire me as game designer for their next MMORPG... send mail.:-)
you seem to be working under the assumption that all objectively good games should require little time.
In fact, I do. Note that I consider the word "require" to be important. I don't mind if it's possible to sink a hundred hours into the game. But it should not be required. More importantly, however, the comparison with the book is slightly flawed. The point is not that it's a long game, but that it's repetitive, boring, farming, you-get-paid-by-the-hour gamestyle. If there were 100 hours of content to be discovered - be my guest. I still play GTA:SA simply because I'm still playing through the story and it's been months (I don't play that often). But why would a good game require me to do the same boring task 50 times just so I collect the 50 gems/bones/hides/whatever needed for some item?
The answer is pretty simple. If its relatively easy to get extravagantly good rewards then everyone would have them and the wouldn't be anything special. Everyone would have them so they would be average not exceptional.
No, that's not the answer, well at least not to the question I asked.
Special items could still be there. But how about making acquiring them a matter of skill instead of level and brute-force time investment? How about me being able to get the super-whatever when I can do X, no matter what level I am or how many hundred resources I've farmed? Well, maybe a combination. A reasonable amount of resources or a minimum level, but then it depends on whether I can do something that requires skill.
But as a working professional, I don't have the same time to devote to the game that high-school and college students do.
Exactly. That's where I completely agree.
The problem is that it's not your fault. It's a game-design fault. Why does the game require ridiculous amounts of game time?
EVE Online - while I only played it shortly - appears to have one big part of the problem solved: Skills increase through automatic training that depends on only one factor: Real time passed. Whether you're online playing or offline sleeping/working/whatever doesn't matter. You gain x experience points per hour.
A good game should reward good playing, not more playing.
I'd rather spend the $60 on another game, preferably one that realizes I want to play, not work.
Somehow, somewhere, this meme got into the MMORPG world that players have to "earn" their stuff, preferably through repetitive tasks.
Unfortunately, somehow it works. We all play along and accept it as normal, pretty much like computer crashes (try telling any admin of a 1970s mainframe that regular computer crashes are nothing special).
Yes, it is a shortcut. It most definitely beats having to do the same nonsense another 100 times. It is probably cheaper, as well (i.e. you earn more money in the time you saved than it costs you). But damn, it should make you re-check your priorities and ask yourself if you're sure you want to sink more money into that game, and why. And whether you're ready to do it again, and again, as it's unlikely that phase of the game was unique.
Can we cut this Nostradamus-wannabe-nonsense from/.? Please?
With a sufficiently old, vague and twice-translated generic phrase, you can interpret whatever you like.
There's a great book, I think the title was "my paranormal bycicle" where a scientist reveals the art of finding "mystical" numbers. This is no different. The keyword is "a mark", which can (and has been) interpreted as any one of about 50 different things.
Ok, that's right. But parent misses the point. If you use a packet system, then you don't mess with it manually. That's what/usr/local is for, and it's quite obvious that you will break things if you bypass the package manager.
More importantly, M$ regularily delivers less than was promised, later than promised. Apple quite often delivers earlier than promised (see PPC-Intel switch) and often more than promised (see MacBook Pro CPU upgrade just prior to shipping).
Google says it is moving search records out of China and back to the U.S. to prevent the Chinese government from accessing them
That's a joke, right? For all we know, the US government is trying to get a hand on their search records, not the chinese one. How about moving them to Canada or some other still-free country?
Gates indicated that the device should have an 'all-day' battery life, weigh less than a pound and cost between $500 and $800.
Sure it should. But how about talking what it will have? Throwing up a list of "nice to have" features is so trivial, any/. troll can do it, we don't need Gates for that.
What many of us fail to see - and I've only started to understand - is that people don't have reasons. They make up reasons. The only real reason is that people dislike change. Some are afraid, some just don't want to change their habits, some project bad past experiences with change, whatever.
But if you look closely, whenever you argue with a windos fanatic, you realize he's making it all up. "Word has that", "Word has this", "OpenOffice doesn't", "Firefox is", "Thunderbird can't" - it'll all strawmen. What he's really saying is: "I don't want to change, for reasons of my own, and if you come at me all logical and argumentative, well I can play that game, too."
Most customers get what is bundled with their computer.
Exactly. Plus, of course, if they'd care one inch about the customer, they'd offer a version with Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice in it instead of their own bloatware replacements.
Nah, as always, when M$ spokesmen speak about "customer" the proper translation is "our bottom line". What they really want is you paying once for the crippled (but cheap) Windows Vista Reduced Features OEM Rip-Off, and then again for the Windows Vista Home Full (well, mostly) Edition. And possibly a third time when you realize your small home-business needs the Windows Vista Let's-Take-The-Business-User-For-A-Ride-Too Edition.
Yeah, 90% of the users will pirate it. But if you look at M$ sales figures, you realize the remaining 10% are still a huge market. And the more you can milk them...
I absolutely agree with you there. And maybe the situations are even more similar than that. I have no idea why the iranians or the palestenians(sp?) voted the way they do, but then again I don't understand the americans, either.
At first glance, intentionally angering someone with enforcement powers over you seems to be the dumbest move imaginable.
But then again, it worked in the US case. The judge was found to be not impartial enough in the retrial, because M$ pushed him so far that he made a few unfortunate statements in an interview./me, I hope that someone at the EU commission now stays level-headed enough to simply issue a 500 mio.-per-day fine on M$, without any angry statements.
Nobody is forced to use Explorer (even if it is a part of the OS). Nobody is forced to use Outlook, Active Directory, or WMP.
This isn't about forcing users. It's about forcing competitors, namely forcing them out of the market place. Antitrust legislation is not anti-monopoly legislation. What is illegal is not having a monopoly, but leveraging it into other markets. And that's what M$ is doing. Sure, nobody is forced to use Explorer, just very strongly encouraged, and the methods of distribution (with the OS and free) practically destroy the market for competitors.
I can't be the only one to see this -- but I just don't get why people keep talking about the big, bad Microsoft monopoly -- then looking right PAST the one thing they *do* have a monopoly on. It's all very confusing to me.
Nobody is looking past that. It just isn't illegal.
An I'm certain that if you ask people on the streets in Iran as to why they elected him, you'll hear as many different reasons as you would if you asked people in the USA why they elected Bush.
You'll consider many of their reasons foolish and stupid, some outright idiotic, but also many understandable (if shortsighted) or even acceptable (even if you don't personally agree). And I'm sure it's the same for the guy in Iran.
Slashdot Mirror
EU wants to play hardball? If they're smart, Microsoft could REALLY play this off to their advantage, making themselves look like a victim and getting the EU to back down.
Aside from the fact that M$ has already shown they're stubborn, not smart, no I can not imagine how they could play this to their advantage.
Most Europeans don't like the EU bureaucracy. But we dislike arrogant american corporations even less.
Stop selling products in Europe.
Deny tech support to companies/users in Europe.
Buy advertising stating why they're pulling out of the market.
Please, let them try that. They'll learn that the EU can play hardball, too. You think a small fine is hardball? You'll be surprised. The EU does have the authority to simply size all assets of M$ in Europe. That's a couple billions right there. They could even, if they decide to go for it seriously, claim the copyrights to european windos versions are part of those assets, and declare it's now property of the EU. That'd probably be the start of a long battle with the WTO/WIPO but hey, so what?
Plus, of course, it isn't even a remote option for M$ to lose the european market, which is considerably larger than the US. Doing so would cause a shock to their stock price, which is already being held up by various artificial schemes, and a shock of that magnitude could well cause a chain reaction that makes it all break down.
It's not a risk Balmer can talk if he wants to remain a free man. The M$ stockholders would sue him into oblivion and back, both in civil and criminal cases.
No, there will be one of two things happening here: One, M$ gets a bloody nose and backs off, either sooner or later depending on how much pain they want. Two, they find the right people to buy off and offer them enough.
It took him that long? For all I know, he and some corporate PHBs (who themselves, of course, have nice little offices) were the only ones who ever thought cubicles are a good idea.
I feel there's a void of uselessness in sizes between the PDA and the laptop.
There is, and that's not going to change until someone invites inflatable screens and keyboards that don't suck.
The notebook has a full keyboard, a touchpad and a large screen. The PDA is small enough to fit in your pocket and has whatever screen real-estate that provides, sacrificing the keyboard.
There simply isn't a go-inbetween. "half a keyboard" doesn't cut it. A slightly-larger-than-PDA screen immediately loses all the advantages of the PDA while not gaining much on notebooks. It's a curve with two peaks, and the valley inbetween is there to stay.
The new PCs are expected to sell ...
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll buy from the company that says "available today" regularily, not the one that promises and promises and promises, and pretty much all it's products so far have been late, more expensive and less powerful than promised.
You seem to be looking for something that in reality doesn't exist.
Probably. But let's name the ideal so we can approach it, even if it's ultimately impossible to reach.
You want some uber reward that only you with your uber skills can get, and you can get with little time investment. Meanwhile everyone else without your uber skills will never be able to get it.
Not really, my skills are fairly weak. And that's the point. There are some things in the game I currently play (Guild Wars, which fortunately has a very low farming aspect) that I realize I simply won't get because I don't have the time, patience or nerve to gather what's necessary. So I profit from those who absolutely want to and sell them the few rare materials I find every now and then for much gold.
That's a good concept, I think. If the low-level players can both profit and help the high-level players achieve their ubergoals, everyone has more fun doing it. MMORPGs should take a hint from real life: Not everyone can be president or CEO, but that doesn't mean they don't play important (at their level) roles.
Project Entropia - while I didn't like it at all - appears to have something like that built in. There are certain things only low-level characters can gather, but they are important for higher-level characters who need them. So the top people rely on the lower people. Excellent concept, with some more work it could become really great.
The only way I can see to reward skill over time is to make it easy to lose progress you've made as a result of your failures. There are already games like this, but they are niche games, not massively popular ones like World of Warcraft.
.sig for details.
:-)
I happen to have designed a multiplayer online game. Not quite a MMORPG, but still. See
Here's what I do:
First, progress gets slower towards the top, but there's no "level cap", there's no limit as to how much you can get.
This accomplishes two goals: One, it gives everyone, even the top-notch something to improve on. And two, it allows newbies to gain up on them quickly, at least seemingly. When you see yourself closing in fast you don't realize and/or don't mind that the first 50% are easy to get, but the rest gets harder.
Two, I make losses higher for those higher up. The same thing will cause a loss of 2-3 prestige for a low level character and 6-8 for a higher one. This makes things "expensive" for those who already have much. Again, it helps closing the gaps, and those who are on top don't seem to mind much because they see it as "capital" they can "spend".
Three, everyone plays the same playing field. You get the same amount to spend (in-game time in my case, maybe XP for an MMORPG) per day no matter how much time you sit in front of the game.
But, the advantages of spending more time are still there. They are mostly on the social level. Top-notch diplomacy as the king of your realm will take time. The more time and effort you put into negotiations with other kings, the better. Of course, your social skills are important, too (i.e. your skills, not character skills).
It's been an experiment, it still is. But it's been running well for over 5 years now, and there's a lot in it that I think could be applied to an MMORPG.
If anyone wants to hire me as game designer for their next MMORPG... send mail.
you seem to be working under the assumption that all objectively good games should require little time.
In fact, I do. Note that I consider the word "require" to be important. I don't mind if it's possible to sink a hundred hours into the game. But it should not be required.
More importantly, however, the comparison with the book is slightly flawed. The point is not that it's a long game, but that it's repetitive, boring, farming, you-get-paid-by-the-hour gamestyle. If there were 100 hours of content to be discovered - be my guest. I still play GTA:SA simply because I'm still playing through the story and it's been months (I don't play that often).
But why would a good game require me to do the same boring task 50 times just so I collect the 50 gems/bones/hides/whatever needed for some item?
The answer is pretty simple. If its relatively easy to get extravagantly good rewards then everyone would have them and the wouldn't be anything special. Everyone would have them so they would be average not exceptional.
No, that's not the answer, well at least not to the question I asked.
Special items could still be there. But how about making acquiring them a matter of skill instead of level and brute-force time investment? How about me being able to get the super-whatever when I can do X, no matter what level I am or how many hundred resources I've farmed?
Well, maybe a combination. A reasonable amount of resources or a minimum level, but then it depends on whether I can do something that requires skill.
But as a working professional, I don't have the same time to devote to the game that high-school and college students do.
Exactly. That's where I completely agree.
The problem is that it's not your fault. It's a game-design fault. Why does the game require ridiculous amounts of game time?
EVE Online - while I only played it shortly - appears to have one big part of the problem solved: Skills increase through automatic training that depends on only one factor: Real time passed. Whether you're online playing or offline sleeping/working/whatever doesn't matter. You gain x experience points per hour.
A good game should reward good playing, not more playing.
I'd rather spend the $60 on another game, preferably one that realizes I want to play, not work.
Somehow, somewhere, this meme got into the MMORPG world that players have to "earn" their stuff, preferably through repetitive tasks.
Unfortunately, somehow it works. We all play along and accept it as normal, pretty much like computer crashes (try telling any admin of a 1970s mainframe that regular computer crashes are nothing special).
Yes, it is a shortcut. It most definitely beats having to do the same nonsense another 100 times. It is probably cheaper, as well (i.e. you earn more money in the time you saved than it costs you).
But damn, it should make you re-check your priorities and ask yourself if you're sure you want to sink more money into that game, and why. And whether you're ready to do it again, and again, as it's unlikely that phase of the game was unique.
Why didn't anyone ever think to just explain it to them?
Because for much of history since then, they killed anyone who tried.
Can we cut this Nostradamus-wannabe-nonsense from /.? Please?
With a sufficiently old, vague and twice-translated generic phrase, you can interpret whatever you like.
There's a great book, I think the title was "my paranormal bycicle" where a scientist reveals the art of finding "mystical" numbers. This is no different. The keyword is "a mark", which can (and has been) interpreted as any one of about 50 different things.
At least Nostradamus used interesting language.
Ok, that's right. But parent misses the point. If you use a packet system, then you don't mess with it manually. That's what /usr/local is for, and it's quite obvious that you will break things if you bypass the package manager.
tried installing the new Firefox 1.5.0.1 over 5.10's default 1.0.7 and hosed it pretty good, I couldn't install or remove firefox then.
/usr/local
What's so hard about
# cd
# wget (mirror-of-your-choices)/firefox-1.5.0.tar.gz
# tar xzvf firefox-1.5.0.tar.gz
and 30 seconds of clicking to add it to the Gnome/KDE menu?
Good explanation, yes.
More importantly, M$ regularily delivers less than was promised, later than promised. Apple quite often delivers earlier than promised (see PPC-Intel switch) and often more than promised (see MacBook Pro CPU upgrade just prior to shipping).
Nothing to see here, move on. Just standard lawyer tricks - if you can't win based on the merits of your case, try to win based on formalities.
Google says it is moving search records out of China and back to the U.S. to prevent the Chinese government from accessing them
That's a joke, right? For all we know, the US government is trying to get a hand on their search records, not the chinese one. How about moving them to Canada or some other still-free country?
The difference becomes more and more visible:
Apple: "Available today"
M$: "Real soon now. No, really! We're serious this time, not like last, or, uh, the one before..."
Gates indicated that the device should have an 'all-day' battery life, weigh less than a pound and cost between $500 and $800.
/. troll can do it, we don't need Gates for that.
Sure it should. But how about talking what it will have? Throwing up a list of "nice to have" features is so trivial, any
What many of us fail to see - and I've only started to understand - is that people don't have reasons. They make up reasons. The only real reason is that people dislike change. Some are afraid, some just don't want to change their habits, some project bad past experiences with change, whatever.
But if you look closely, whenever you argue with a windos fanatic, you realize he's making it all up. "Word has that", "Word has this", "OpenOffice doesn't", "Firefox is", "Thunderbird can't" - it'll all strawmen.
What he's really saying is: "I don't want to change, for reasons of my own, and if you come at me all logical and argumentative, well I can play that game, too."
Most customers get what is bundled with their computer.
Exactly. Plus, of course, if they'd care one inch about the customer, they'd offer a version with Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice in it instead of their own bloatware replacements.
Nah, as always, when M$ spokesmen speak about "customer" the proper translation is "our bottom line". What they really want is you paying once for the crippled (but cheap) Windows Vista Reduced Features OEM Rip-Off, and then again for the Windows Vista Home Full (well, mostly) Edition. And possibly a third time when you realize your small home-business needs the Windows Vista Let's-Take-The-Business-User-For-A-Ride-Too Edition.
Yeah, 90% of the users will pirate it. But if you look at M$ sales figures, you realize the remaining 10% are still a huge market. And the more you can milk them...
I absolutely agree with you there. And maybe the situations are even more similar than that. I have no idea why the iranians or the palestenians(sp?) voted the way they do, but then again I don't understand the americans, either.
Seems Balmer got his way this time. Or maybe not.
/me, I hope that someone at the EU commission now stays level-headed enough to simply issue a 500 mio.-per-day fine on M$, without any angry statements.
At first glance, intentionally angering someone with enforcement powers over you seems to be the dumbest move imaginable.
But then again, it worked in the US case. The judge was found to be not impartial enough in the retrial, because M$ pushed him so far that he made a few unfortunate statements in an interview.
Nobody is forced to use Explorer (even if it is a part of the OS). Nobody is forced to use Outlook, Active Directory, or WMP.
This isn't about forcing users. It's about forcing competitors, namely forcing them out of the market place. Antitrust legislation is not anti-monopoly legislation. What is illegal is not having a monopoly, but leveraging it into other markets. And that's what M$ is doing. Sure, nobody is forced to use Explorer, just very strongly encouraged, and the methods of distribution (with the OS and free) practically destroy the market for competitors.
I can't be the only one to see this -- but I just don't get why people keep talking about the big, bad Microsoft monopoly -- then looking right PAST the one thing they *do* have a monopoly on. It's all very confusing to me.
Nobody is looking past that. It just isn't illegal.
An I'm certain that if you ask people on the streets in Iran as to why they elected him, you'll hear as many different reasons as you would if you asked people in the USA why they elected Bush.
You'll consider many of their reasons foolish and stupid, some outright idiotic, but also many understandable (if shortsighted) or even acceptable (even if you don't personally agree). And I'm sure it's the same for the guy in Iran.