"Even more dangerous - if pushed I'll produce my own technology and content that is high quality and DRM proof. I think there is a market for it and I have the skills and connections. Want to make us geeks your competition?"
If you don't have anything better to do with your nights than bitch about DRM on Slashdot, you aren't a person with the money and connections it would take to compete against the big content providers and the big DRM licensers.
Does this mean that Infogrames, which sells products under the Atari name in some parts of the world, is going down the tubes, or just that the division of Infogrames selling under the name Atari is doing poorly?
What exactly is the FTC planning to do to shame adware companies? Aren't most of them sleazy businesses selling penis pumps or fly-by-nights paying to have their advertisements plastered over images on the web sites of legitimate businesses? If a business is pathetic enough to stoop to advertising via adware, chances are that the FTC won't have much luck with embarassment as a deterrent.
"And then other days, I feel it's just like porn or motion rides, where there's no capacity to reach high emotional levels."
This is from a guy who made a painfully derivative game chock full of gore and titties. He is getting WAY too much attention from the gaming press lately - probably because Sony keeps buying advertising for God of War.
"Is it wrong for me to feel used and abused at the idea that Microsoft wants to charge for this service?"
Not really - after all, if you just install Microsoft's free updates and secure your computer using methods available online for free, you shouldn't need Microsoft's antivirus services to begin with.
The big purchasers of this product will be corporate and government IT departments looking to save money by buying bulk quantities of Microsoft antivirus as opposed to other products that cost more. It's unlikely that the sleazy side of Microsoft selling antivirus software for its own OS will defer customers, as sleazy business practices have already tainted Symantec and McAffee. Microsoft can afford to undercut every other vendor's pricing and watch them all go under, and as long as the new software isn't bundled with the OS, the DOJ and EU will probably let it be.
You're so right. OpenOffice is doomed if people can't add even MORE code. It really needs other big companies kicking in their ideas, so we can make it even slower and more bloated. OpenOffice will definately succeed if developers can make it take longer to load up than Photoshop CS2.
So graphics professionals still aren't using GIMP because the interface blows and it doesn't support formats that have long been important in the professional world? Wow, I've never heard that before! Gee, next you'll be telling me that people don't use Blender because the UI is deplorably bad! Oh wait, I just realized that these topics have been getting regular coverage in the OSS communinity for years and it's not getting any better!
People not using OSS because the UI sucks or because it's crammed full of useless widgets and oddball features nobody but the original programmers needed isn't a new phenomenon. It certainly isn't one that deserves continued discussion. We all know that the GIMP isn't really useful for anything other than simple image manipulation for the web (or creating tacky web graphics circa 1999.), we all know that Blender is only good for crazy people with limitless free time to spend trying to make the interface not suck, and that OpenOffice is more bloated than Oprah Winfrey. Why not just stop covering these crappy old products and start giving some attention to newer, better alternatives?
"But how can it even be legal for Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to agree to discontinue free service, or reduce output (where "output" is service to the customer, in this case)? Seriously, IANAL, how can this be legal?"
It will be legal because there will never be an agreement. Just because they're all planning to start doing the same thing doesn't mean that they're having clandestine meetings conspiring to all start shafting consumers simultaneously. As long as they're all just following the lead of the first company to push the idea, it will be perfectly legal. And that's just what they'll do. Those companies have very cautious lawyers who have probably been a part of this process from day one. As long as those lawyers can keep the companies from actually discussing their plans with each other, they'll have no problems with the law.
What you're missing here is that Gun -- like the vast majority of American westerns -- is set in a time that never really existed. There weren't armies of savage indians rampaging across the west, slaughtering innocent white settlers, raping the women and scalping everyone in sight. In fact, it all pretty much worked the other way around. Gun perpetuates the old lie - that indians were savage monsters who deserved genocide.
This is about being PC. This is about Americans trying to end this nation's tradition of pretending that until the the 1970's our greatest leaders were active in a genocidal war that dwarfs the holocaust. Dozens of civilizations were wiped out entirely, and it's disgusting that people are still creating entertainment that pretends America's genocidal founding was somehow anything but depraved and morally bankrupt.
This is great - the only reason I bought an XBox was to play fighting games on line. If the Playstation 3 actually has decent online capabilities I'll NEVER buy a 360!
I can think of a few explanations: 1. Nobody actually wants to use it, but WB has crap marketing staff who think that P2P is hip with the kids. 2. If it is cheaper for end users than iTunes/Google/Whatever, WB can use less bandwidth than competitors, not have to give anyone else a distribution cut, and make more many than it would using a third party. 3. Nobody really wants to use it, but if WB plays down the P2P part when it actually releases the software and builds up a userbase, WB can then claim to be a major player in the P2P space and have an easier time working on P2P regulations skeptical about letting content giants help write the law. This fits into the MPAA strategy of dealing with piracy and new distribution methods without suing individual downloaders, preventing all the nasty publicity that the record companies are getting.
I'm all for MMOs requiring players to work together, but Blizzard's raid dungeons killed the game for me. Competition between raids, PVP, and the lesser high-end dungeons made it nearly impossible to put together a group big enough to handle a raid, and the smaller dungeons just got tedious in no time.
The article is a just a thinly veiled attack on Jobs' liberal political leaning.
"Jobs' wife is also absent from these philanthropic lists, although she has made dozens of political donations totaling tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrats, according to the Open Secrets database."
If this article is about charitable giving, why does the political party recieving the money matter?
"To the best of my knowledge, in the last decade or more, Jobs has not spoken up on any social or political issue he believes in -- with the exception of admitting he's a big Bob Dylan fan."
Oooh, that awful hippy Bob Dylan.
"Jobs once offered to be an advisor to Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election, and he invited President Clinton over for dinner when Bubba visited Silicon Valley in 1996 -- hardly evidence of deep political convictions."
He tried to help Democrats! And everyone knows Clinton is evil, so drag him into it and then tag on a line about Jobs just schmoozing with big Democrats but not really caring about politics.
Is there any liberal a right-wing kook with a Blog won't attack anymore? And why the hell are the right-wingers always so bad at it?
A lot of people take sick leave to go to job interviews. Maybe it's time for your kids to catch a nasty flu or for you to start come down with strange migraines that require you to leave work often and go to the doctor at least weekly.
I used to just be really brazen about it, showing up for work in a nice suit, disappearing for three hours, and taking phone calls from recruiters in front of my coworkers. It got one employer to give me two huge bonuses, a nice raise, and hire a junior SA to handle some of the work. There's this old proverb about squeaky wheels and grease...
Re:$15 = one movie with popcorn and a drink
on
MMOGs Branch Out
·
· Score: 1
"I don't get why people are adverse to such a small monthly fee."
Given the growth of the industry since the release of Everquest, it seems that people don't mind paying the monthly fee as long as the games are enjoyable. I think most articles about MMO fees are really a symptom of the industry being afraid to write anything meaningful that might piss of an advertiser.
"Of course, most folks don't realize that like every other company, the moment money comes into picture, all values go out of the window."
You have far too much faith in human nature to have believed that Google's values were every anything but a marketing/recruiting scheme. What better way to look good than to promise to do no evil while Microsoft is under constant attack for criminal behavior around the world? Google's values never went out the window, because the were never serious about them to begin with. It's a all facade, and it was absurd for them to think that it would last. Google should know better than anyone that nobody can control all of the media, and that people would start spotting the holes eventually.
"If its freeware, Sparkle WILL kill Flash. If its cheapware($99 or less) it will hurt Flash..."
The price of Flash, or Flash competitors, is all but irrelevant. Now that Macromedia is owned by Adobe, Flash and Dreamweaver, will be added into the Adobe Creative suite bundle. Since most designers end up buying the CS bundle for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign anyway, they'll be getting Flash for free. The inclusion of Dreamweaver and Flash into the CS suite is going to make Adobe the king of the hill for graphic designers in print and web work, and trying to beat them on cost isn't going to work - only someone who can make a product so good it compels users to get out of the Adobeland is going to have a chance.
And given Microsoft's recent history with design apps, they don't have a shot in hell.
"As a group, we simply don't award creativity or innovation in gaming. 'Cult' hits are a sign of the disease, intelligent, thought provoking gaming like Planescape: Torment simply do not get the sales they deserve..."
Maybe the problem isn't the mainstream gamers - it's the players and developers who think that Americans want intelligent, thought provoking gaming. There's very little that's intelligent or thought provoking in contemporary American culture. Anyone stupid enough to sink millions of dollars developing content for a culture that embraces the 'American Pie' movies, the music of 50 Cent, and books by Ann Coulter is destined to fail, and while it is sad that such a situation exists, I'm not about to sympathize with Majesco's terrible business decisions.
"Scientists believe that deuterium can be extracted from the sea and an enormous amount of energy can be obtained from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under huge temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius. After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water will produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline."
I just know that in 2106 we'll all be freaking out by some horrible climate problem caused by nobody ever bothering to find out if important plankton or algae can survive in seawater that's had the deuterium removed.
A little more specifically, he should consider if anyone running anything older than IE/Netscape 6 really has money to spend. If one isn't selling to the nonprofit, banking or government sectors it's pretty unlikely that a customer with money will be using an ancient browser.
If you don't like MMO's designed for people who aren't losers with nothing better to do that play MMO's 40+ hours a week, play games like UO and FFXI, and leave WoW to people who just want to game a little and spend the rest of their lives doing something worthwhile.
At least now we know that Microsoft and Yahoo aren't just aiding the Chinese government in opressing citizens, they're happy to help out the US Government.
Slashdot Mirror
"Even more dangerous - if pushed I'll produce my own technology and content that is high quality and DRM proof. I think there is a market for it and I have the skills and connections. Want to make us geeks your competition?"
If you don't have anything better to do with your nights than bitch about DRM on Slashdot, you aren't a person with the money and connections it would take to compete against the big content providers and the big DRM licensers.
Does this mean that Infogrames, which sells products under the Atari name in some parts of the world, is going down the tubes, or just that the division of Infogrames selling under the name Atari is doing poorly?
What exactly is the FTC planning to do to shame adware companies? Aren't most of them sleazy businesses selling penis pumps or fly-by-nights paying to have their advertisements plastered over images on the web sites of legitimate businesses? If a business is pathetic enough to stoop to advertising via adware, chances are that the FTC won't have much luck with embarassment as a deterrent.
"And then other days, I feel it's just like porn or motion rides, where there's no capacity to reach high emotional levels."
This is from a guy who made a painfully derivative game chock full of gore and titties. He is getting WAY too much attention from the gaming press lately - probably because Sony keeps buying advertising for God of War.
"Is it wrong for me to feel used and abused at the idea that Microsoft wants to charge for this service?"
Not really - after all, if you just install Microsoft's free updates and secure your computer using methods available online for free, you shouldn't need Microsoft's antivirus services to begin with.
The big purchasers of this product will be corporate and government IT departments looking to save money by buying bulk quantities of Microsoft antivirus as opposed to other products that cost more. It's unlikely that the sleazy side of Microsoft selling antivirus software for its own OS will defer customers, as sleazy business practices have already tainted Symantec and McAffee. Microsoft can afford to undercut every other vendor's pricing and watch them all go under, and as long as the new software isn't bundled with the OS, the DOJ and EU will probably let it be.
"I'm curious, what does one do with ten 60GB iPods?"
Buy a big USB 2 hub a build a small RAID 0+1 array.
You're so right. OpenOffice is doomed if people can't add even MORE code. It really needs other big companies kicking in their ideas, so we can make it even slower and more bloated. OpenOffice will definately succeed if developers can make it take longer to load up than Photoshop CS2.
So graphics professionals still aren't using GIMP because the interface blows and it doesn't support formats that have long been important in the professional world? Wow, I've never heard that before! Gee, next you'll be telling me that people don't use Blender because the UI is deplorably bad! Oh wait, I just realized that these topics have been getting regular coverage in the OSS communinity for years and it's not getting any better!
People not using OSS because the UI sucks or because it's crammed full of useless widgets and oddball features nobody but the original programmers needed isn't a new phenomenon. It certainly isn't one that deserves continued discussion. We all know that the GIMP isn't really useful for anything other than simple image manipulation for the web (or creating tacky web graphics circa 1999.), we all know that Blender is only good for crazy people with limitless free time to spend trying to make the interface not suck, and that OpenOffice is more bloated than Oprah Winfrey. Why not just stop covering these crappy old products and start giving some attention to newer, better alternatives?
"But how can it even be legal for Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to agree to discontinue free service, or reduce output (where "output" is service to the customer, in this case)? Seriously, IANAL, how can this be legal?"
It will be legal because there will never be an agreement. Just because they're all planning to start doing the same thing doesn't mean that they're having clandestine meetings conspiring to all start shafting consumers simultaneously. As long as they're all just following the lead of the first company to push the idea, it will be perfectly legal. And that's just what they'll do. Those companies have very cautious lawyers who have probably been a part of this process from day one. As long as those lawyers can keep the companies from actually discussing their plans with each other, they'll have no problems with the law.
Cable networks can slip anything by the FCC, because the FCC doesn't regulate content on cable television.
"Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?""
Enriching the field of legal thought often does little to enrich the senior partners at law firms.
What you're missing here is that Gun -- like the vast majority of American westerns -- is set in a time that never really existed. There weren't armies of savage indians rampaging across the west, slaughtering innocent white settlers, raping the women and scalping everyone in sight. In fact, it all pretty much worked the other way around. Gun perpetuates the old lie - that indians were savage monsters who deserved genocide.
This is about being PC. This is about Americans trying to end this nation's tradition of pretending that until the the 1970's our greatest leaders were active in a genocidal war that dwarfs the holocaust. Dozens of civilizations were wiped out entirely, and it's disgusting that people are still creating entertainment that pretends America's genocidal founding was somehow anything but depraved and morally bankrupt.
This is great - the only reason I bought an XBox was to play fighting games on line. If the Playstation 3 actually has decent online capabilities I'll NEVER buy a 360!
I can think of a few explanations:
1. Nobody actually wants to use it, but WB has crap marketing staff who think that P2P is hip with the kids.
2. If it is cheaper for end users than iTunes/Google/Whatever, WB can use less bandwidth than competitors, not have to give anyone else a distribution cut, and make more many than it would using a third party.
3. Nobody really wants to use it, but if WB plays down the P2P part when it actually releases the software and builds up a userbase, WB can then claim to be a major player in the P2P space and have an easier time working on P2P regulations skeptical about letting content giants help write the law. This fits into the MPAA strategy of dealing with piracy and new distribution methods without suing individual downloaders, preventing all the nasty publicity that the record companies are getting.
/applause
I'm all for MMOs requiring players to work together, but Blizzard's raid dungeons killed the game for me. Competition between raids, PVP, and the lesser high-end dungeons made it nearly impossible to put together a group big enough to handle a raid, and the smaller dungeons just got tedious in no time.
The article is a just a thinly veiled attack on Jobs' liberal political leaning.
"Jobs' wife is also absent from these philanthropic lists, although she has made dozens of political donations totaling tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrats, according to the Open Secrets database."
If this article is about charitable giving, why does the political party recieving the money matter?
"To the best of my knowledge, in the last decade or more, Jobs has not spoken up on any social or political issue he believes in -- with the exception of admitting he's a big Bob Dylan fan."
Oooh, that awful hippy Bob Dylan.
"Jobs once offered to be an advisor to Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election, and he invited President Clinton over for dinner when Bubba visited Silicon Valley in 1996 -- hardly evidence of deep political convictions."
He tried to help Democrats! And everyone knows Clinton is evil, so drag him into it and then tag on a line about Jobs just schmoozing with big Democrats but not really caring about politics.
Is there any liberal a right-wing kook with a Blog won't attack anymore? And why the hell are the right-wingers always so bad at it?
A lot of people take sick leave to go to job interviews. Maybe it's time for your kids to catch a nasty flu or for you to start come down with strange migraines that require you to leave work often and go to the doctor at least weekly.
I used to just be really brazen about it, showing up for work in a nice suit, disappearing for three hours, and taking phone calls from recruiters in front of my coworkers. It got one employer to give me two huge bonuses, a nice raise, and hire a junior SA to handle some of the work. There's this old proverb about squeaky wheels and grease...
"I don't get why people are adverse to such a small monthly fee."
Given the growth of the industry since the release of Everquest, it seems that people don't mind paying the monthly fee as long as the games are enjoyable. I think most articles about MMO fees are really a symptom of the industry being afraid to write anything meaningful that might piss of an advertiser.
"Of course, most folks don't realize that like every other company, the moment money comes into picture, all values go out of the window."
You have far too much faith in human nature to have believed that Google's values were every anything but a marketing/recruiting scheme. What better way to look good than to promise to do no evil while Microsoft is under constant attack for criminal behavior around the world? Google's values never went out the window, because the were never serious about them to begin with. It's a all facade, and it was absurd for them to think that it would last. Google should know better than anyone that nobody can control all of the media, and that people would start spotting the holes eventually.
"If its freeware, Sparkle WILL kill Flash. If its cheapware($99 or less) it will hurt Flash..."
The price of Flash, or Flash competitors, is all but irrelevant. Now that Macromedia is owned by Adobe, Flash and Dreamweaver, will be added into the Adobe Creative suite bundle. Since most designers end up buying the CS bundle for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign anyway, they'll be getting Flash for free. The inclusion of Dreamweaver and Flash into the CS suite is going to make Adobe the king of the hill for graphic designers in print and web work, and trying to beat them on cost isn't going to work - only someone who can make a product so good it compels users to get out of the Adobeland is going to have a chance.
And given Microsoft's recent history with design apps, they don't have a shot in hell.
"As a group, we simply don't award creativity or innovation in gaming. 'Cult' hits are a sign of the disease, intelligent, thought provoking gaming like Planescape: Torment simply do not get the sales they deserve..."
Maybe the problem isn't the mainstream gamers - it's the players and developers who think that Americans want intelligent, thought provoking gaming. There's very little that's intelligent or thought provoking in contemporary American culture. Anyone stupid enough to sink millions of dollars developing content for a culture that embraces the 'American Pie' movies, the music of 50 Cent, and books by Ann Coulter is destined to fail, and while it is sad that such a situation exists, I'm not about to sympathize with Majesco's terrible business decisions.
"Scientists believe that deuterium can be extracted from the sea and an enormous amount of energy can be obtained from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under huge temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius. After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water will produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline."
I just know that in 2106 we'll all be freaking out by some horrible climate problem caused by nobody ever bothering to find out if important plankton or algae can survive in seawater that's had the deuterium removed.
A little more specifically, he should consider if anyone running anything older than IE/Netscape 6 really has money to spend. If one isn't selling to the nonprofit, banking or government sectors it's pretty unlikely that a customer with money will be using an ancient browser.
If you don't like MMO's designed for people who aren't losers with nothing better to do that play MMO's 40+ hours a week, play games like UO and FFXI, and leave WoW to people who just want to game a little and spend the rest of their lives doing something worthwhile.
At least now we know that Microsoft and Yahoo aren't just aiding the Chinese government in opressing citizens, they're happy to help out the US Government.