.. waiting for them to overturn this ruling. the bottom line is that blizzard has all the resources they need to fluff this case up as some kind of crime against humanity and the loss of freedom for every man woman and child in america when the bottom line is they are fighting to poison themselves for the long haul. I must say that as a consumer I HATE when any company wants me to pay for something I wont own. my first thought is always "if you dont want me to own your products, I wont buy them." They will learn this lesson eventually along with the "if we dont make things work easily, the pirates will" lesson after billions wasted and a soured market turns around and bites them in the ass.
With film its previews and trailers, with music its promotional tracks and samples, with books its the synopsis or just reading the first page or so before you buy it, with TV its promos and commercials, hell with newspapers its headlines. The point being that EVERY major entertainment medium for at least a hundred years uses this model of giving a little bit away for free to create interest and to promote themselves. The problem with EA and now Crytek is they are looking at peoples interest in game demos not as curiosity as to if they will purchase but rather a lead in to a definite purchase and hope to sell the same product twice much the same way that companies are toying with selling downloadable content already in game and then "unlocking" it. I think they will find very quickly that it just doesn't work that way. the sad thing is that they still scream bloody murder about piracy because they are losing sales and never consider for a moment that they're aggressive and offensive sales model and draconian protection schemes may be a factor.
...but there really should be a minimum security standard for infrastructure items like any city's power grid (or voting machines, or traffic systems, or water supplies, or any number of things you dont want folks monkeying with). Its really insane to hear about this considering how power stations and utilities are tightly regulated. It doesnt matter that the system is only open on the far end of the line because eventually someone will mess with it and show just why its a bad idea. Either make the system secure or dont make them so accessable.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." - I really doubt they planned on designing crappy DRM so that they can remove it and gain the good will of the fans.
I think it's much more likely a bunch of execs thinking they can do whatever they want and "those desperate suckers will buy it anyway".
This *IS* EA... the company that plans to start selling game demo's calling them "Pre-Downloadable Content" couldn't it be malicious stupidity? maybe stupid malice? Dont forget the rest of that quote you are using " Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice." The PR arm of a mega-corperation can often be perfectly happy being both mean and dumb in equal parts.
..its likely a planned statement. The guy is supposed to be a "mouthpeice" for the company. I highly doubt he would just up and "go rogue" on EA since its a really good way to lose his job in the long run. More than likely the intent is a bit more subtle. Perhaps to throw the (slow selling) game under the bus for awhile only to result in either a patch after the story is run awhile to ramp up news reaction to the break. Giving them quite a bit of press for having to "listened to the fans" or just allow them to retain cred by trashing a game thats not going anywhere anyway cutting thier losses and putting a good spin on a bad move "hey, it sucks, but we admitted it sucks. So, we're cool and can keep the money you paid us right?" or something along those lines.
The way that most modern fingerprint scanners work is by using matching algorithms. They scan your fingerprint and translate that into a numeric value and then store that. Not a copy of your fingerprint itself. This numeric value cannot be used to recreate your fingerprint but it can however be used to match the output that only your fingerprint will produce when scanned. To be perfectly candid its far easier to steal your fingerprints by stealing something you own than it is to take them from a fingerprint security/tracking system.
I think that Sony will find this happening more and more as they continue to put out crazy marketing. Its gotten to the point that the PR that they dole out is so innacurate that bloggers find themselves actually researching stories on thier own to get accurate information. Sony doesnt want this because the actual news regarding thier plans is nowhere near as good as they would like us to belive.
I'm an independant since my vote kinda swings depending on the issue but if I was a republican and I heard that my donations to the party were going towards producing amature hour vid's on youtube I would be highly pissed and think twice about contributing in the future.
It sounds like your problem is the company you went with. Its like anything else you buy theres a good way and a bad way. If your getting locked into proprietary hardware, service contracts, and crap service the fault doesnt lie with the technology it falls on the crap company thats roped you into that bad deal. Here is some advice on how to switch to VOIP and its something my company does with all our clients: get a free assesment to evaluate the quality and service of said company, Make sure that they use OPEN SOURCE hardware this way if you dont like working with them you wont have to buy all new equipment to switch, and DO NOT sign up for multiple year contracts. once you sign them your screwed because they dont have to worry about you quiting thier service. all this BS about saving money with multi year deals is BS because VOIP doesnt work like that(meaning the cost of implementation is the same in year one as year three) if they wont let you take it monthly then its not worth your time working with them because they dont care if your satisfied. stick with those tips and that should help once your deal is up with the guys your currently with.
Alot of the issues mentioned in this article are worked out for everyday use. I work for a company that bids on and installs VOIP systems for large business's and the reason its getting so big is that switching from a legacy system to a VOIP system nearly PROMISES a 20% reduction in communication costs. We put together a package for FSU that saved them about 40-50% over the system they had been using. the biggest problem the VOIP market faces these days is disbelief from controllers regarding the potential savings. they just dont think its possible.
Of course they are saying that it will last ten years, With the estimated price point being somewhere above cloud level it would be suicide to let slip that after paying all that money that it will be obsolete in 4-5 years or so. The computer game industry has been wrestling with this for years trying to make games that can scale to play both on ultra expensive high end rigs and also fit on the average casual game machine.
This is not so out of place. I'm a gamer and *I* dont like most video game movies. Everytime I see one I think to myself: "Well, hollywood has seen the rise and success of videogames and they hope to leach all they can from another game to feed thier dying empire." Admittedly that is a weird thing to think to oneself but ehh.
"We all know Duke Nukem Forever is going to be a Phantom release title, it'll be released as soon as the console is released"
Be careful with that joke. Its an antique.
Granted HD takes more space but with less than 10% market there isnt a huge market appeal for the format in the first place. I honestly think that they are rushing the whole concept to market to be first only to kill whatever interest there would be by being too far ahead of its time. Laserdisk's anyone? I think schoolboards and local governments were the only ones to buy into that one.
Am I the only one who thinks HD-DVD is a bit premature? Existing DVD products fail to add compelling extra features in most cases with well done bonus features being few and far between. What do they hope to accomplish with all that freakin SPACE!? (saddled along with all that extra COST no less)
This should be VERY clear to the folks at valve that the reason people are not going nuts over HL2 is that steam always wants to play monkey in the middle between the players and the game. Why this is not effecting HL1 is a mystery to me. I personaly gave up HL1 as well and dont play HL2 anymore because of the hassle that steam represents.
Yeah I noticed that. I must say I am a little dissapointed. I figured I'd maybe get modded redundant as I was like 4 seconds behind your post but offtopic.. Just WOW. I can only hope that in the karmic sense I am given justice by some meta-mod.
In any case i dont have anything AGAINST pen and paper games but it is hard to get into them these days. Lets face it this isnt something you get into by yourself more often than not people who play pen and paper are introduced to it by someone who already plays. As the playerbase shrinks so does the growth.
Here I was expecting a story about the paperless office and it's so called progress and rather I get a story about the pen and paper games industry. Perhaps "State of the Pen and Paper *GAMES* Industry" would have been more appropriate title.
My point is that there is little need to create "Virtual Paint Game" in and of itself. For the money you spend on the game you can buy real paint and brushes give it to your kid then depending how old they are take the leftover money and pay someone to clean up the mess. Unless its point is to teach painting (much like Ross did) the game will be pointless. I think it would be an affront to his work if all they did was put his picture on the box and some voice recordings in here and there and made no effort to TEACH. Thats just my opinion though, I could be wrong.
But it depends on what angle they approach it with. If is some lame sandbox type game along the lines of mario paint I would just as soon pass it up. After all I already have photoshop should I want my kids to play around with paint. But if its approached more as a learning tool I.E. Bob Ross teaches to paint by example I could really get behind that for any kid that might be interested in computer graphics.
Yes thats true but last I heard these places you speak of have no large occasion for April first. It would be like celebrating thanksgiving for those same countries you mention. It just isnt for them.
I think it would be great if companies defended against this sort of thing by premptively suing the families of these madmen. For example here Take two would sue the family of this nutball for allowing a mental midget to be influenced by thier game prior to his acting out years of neglect from said family and thereby tarnishing thier name in the media and thus causing financial harm.
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.. waiting for them to overturn this ruling. the bottom line is that blizzard has all the resources they need to fluff this case up as some kind of crime against humanity and the loss of freedom for every man woman and child in america when the bottom line is they are fighting to poison themselves for the long haul. I must say that as a consumer I HATE when any company wants me to pay for something I wont own. my first thought is always "if you dont want me to own your products, I wont buy them." They will learn this lesson eventually along with the "if we dont make things work easily, the pirates will" lesson after billions wasted and a soured market turns around and bites them in the ass.
With film its previews and trailers, with music its promotional tracks and samples, with books its the synopsis or just reading the first page or so before you buy it, with TV its promos and commercials, hell with newspapers its headlines. The point being that EVERY major entertainment medium for at least a hundred years uses this model of giving a little bit away for free to create interest and to promote themselves. The problem with EA and now Crytek is they are looking at peoples interest in game demos not as curiosity as to if they will purchase but rather a lead in to a definite purchase and hope to sell the same product twice much the same way that companies are toying with selling downloadable content already in game and then "unlocking" it. I think they will find very quickly that it just doesn't work that way. the sad thing is that they still scream bloody murder about piracy because they are losing sales and never consider for a moment that they're aggressive and offensive sales model and draconian protection schemes may be a factor.
...but there really should be a minimum security standard for infrastructure items like any city's power grid (or voting machines, or traffic systems, or water supplies, or any number of things you dont want folks monkeying with). Its really insane to hear about this considering how power stations and utilities are tightly regulated. It doesnt matter that the system is only open on the far end of the line because eventually someone will mess with it and show just why its a bad idea. Either make the system secure or dont make them so accessable.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." - I really doubt they planned on designing crappy DRM so that they can remove it and gain the good will of the fans.
I think it's much more likely a bunch of execs thinking they can do whatever they want and "those desperate suckers will buy it anyway".
This *IS* EA... the company that plans to start selling game demo's calling them "Pre-Downloadable Content" couldn't it be malicious stupidity? maybe stupid malice? Dont forget the rest of that quote you are using " Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice." The PR arm of a mega-corperation can often be perfectly happy being both mean and dumb in equal parts.
..its likely a planned statement. The guy is supposed to be a "mouthpeice" for the company. I highly doubt he would just up and "go rogue" on EA since its a really good way to lose his job in the long run. More than likely the intent is a bit more subtle. Perhaps to throw the (slow selling) game under the bus for awhile only to result in either a patch after the story is run awhile to ramp up news reaction to the break. Giving them quite a bit of press for having to "listened to the fans" or just allow them to retain cred by trashing a game thats not going anywhere anyway cutting thier losses and putting a good spin on a bad move "hey, it sucks, but we admitted it sucks. So, we're cool and can keep the money you paid us right?" or something along those lines.
The way that most modern fingerprint scanners work is by using matching algorithms. They scan your fingerprint and translate that into a numeric value and then store that. Not a copy of your fingerprint itself. This numeric value cannot be used to recreate your fingerprint but it can however be used to match the output that only your fingerprint will produce when scanned. To be perfectly candid its far easier to steal your fingerprints by stealing something you own than it is to take them from a fingerprint security/tracking system.
I think that Sony will find this happening more and more as they continue to put out crazy marketing. Its gotten to the point that the PR that they dole out is so innacurate that bloggers find themselves actually researching stories on thier own to get accurate information. Sony doesnt want this because the actual news regarding thier plans is nowhere near as good as they would like us to belive.
I'm an independant since my vote kinda swings depending on the issue but if I was a republican and I heard that my donations to the party were going towards producing amature hour vid's on youtube I would be highly pissed and think twice about contributing in the future.
It sounds like your problem is the company you went with. Its like anything else you buy theres a good way and a bad way. If your getting locked into proprietary hardware, service contracts, and crap service the fault doesnt lie with the technology it falls on the crap company thats roped you into that bad deal. Here is some advice on how to switch to VOIP and its something my company does with all our clients: get a free assesment to evaluate the quality and service of said company, Make sure that they use OPEN SOURCE hardware this way if you dont like working with them you wont have to buy all new equipment to switch, and DO NOT sign up for multiple year contracts. once you sign them your screwed because they dont have to worry about you quiting thier service. all this BS about saving money with multi year deals is BS because VOIP doesnt work like that(meaning the cost of implementation is the same in year one as year three) if they wont let you take it monthly then its not worth your time working with them because they dont care if your satisfied. stick with those tips and that should help once your deal is up with the guys your currently with.
Alot of the issues mentioned in this article are worked out for everyday use. I work for a company that bids on and installs VOIP systems for large business's and the reason its getting so big is that switching from a legacy system to a VOIP system nearly PROMISES a 20% reduction in communication costs. We put together a package for FSU that saved them about 40-50% over the system they had been using. the biggest problem the VOIP market faces these days is disbelief from controllers regarding the potential savings. they just dont think its possible.
Of course they are saying that it will last ten years, With the estimated price point being somewhere above cloud level it would be suicide to let slip that after paying all that money that it will be obsolete in 4-5 years or so. The computer game industry has been wrestling with this for years trying to make games that can scale to play both on ultra expensive high end rigs and also fit on the average casual game machine.
This is not so out of place. I'm a gamer and *I* dont like most video game movies. Everytime I see one I think to myself: "Well, hollywood has seen the rise and success of videogames and they hope to leach all they can from another game to feed thier dying empire." Admittedly that is a weird thing to think to oneself but ehh.
"We all know Duke Nukem Forever is going to be a Phantom release title, it'll be released as soon as the console is released" Be careful with that joke. Its an antique.
Granted HD takes more space but with less than 10% market there isnt a huge market appeal for the format in the first place. I honestly think that they are rushing the whole concept to market to be first only to kill whatever interest there would be by being too far ahead of its time. Laserdisk's anyone? I think schoolboards and local governments were the only ones to buy into that one.
Am I the only one who thinks HD-DVD is a bit premature? Existing DVD products fail to add compelling extra features in most cases with well done bonus features being few and far between. What do they hope to accomplish with all that freakin SPACE!? (saddled along with all that extra COST no less)
This should be VERY clear to the folks at valve that the reason people are not going nuts over HL2 is that steam always wants to play monkey in the middle between the players and the game. Why this is not effecting HL1 is a mystery to me. I personaly gave up HL1 as well and dont play HL2 anymore because of the hassle that steam represents.
Yeah I noticed that. I must say I am a little dissapointed. I figured I'd maybe get modded redundant as I was like 4 seconds behind your post but offtopic.. Just WOW. I can only hope that in the karmic sense I am given justice by some meta-mod. In any case i dont have anything AGAINST pen and paper games but it is hard to get into them these days. Lets face it this isnt something you get into by yourself more often than not people who play pen and paper are introduced to it by someone who already plays. As the playerbase shrinks so does the growth.
Here I was expecting a story about the paperless office and it's so called progress and rather I get a story about the pen and paper games industry. Perhaps "State of the Pen and Paper *GAMES* Industry" would have been more appropriate title.
My point is that there is little need to create "Virtual Paint Game" in and of itself. For the money you spend on the game you can buy real paint and brushes give it to your kid then depending how old they are take the leftover money and pay someone to clean up the mess. Unless its point is to teach painting (much like Ross did) the game will be pointless. I think it would be an affront to his work if all they did was put his picture on the box and some voice recordings in here and there and made no effort to TEACH. Thats just my opinion though, I could be wrong.
But it depends on what angle they approach it with. If is some lame sandbox type game along the lines of mario paint I would just as soon pass it up. After all I already have photoshop should I want my kids to play around with paint. But if its approached more as a learning tool I.E. Bob Ross teaches to paint by example I could really get behind that for any kid that might be interested in computer graphics.
Yes thats true but last I heard these places you speak of have no large occasion for April first. It would be like celebrating thanksgiving for those same countries you mention. It just isnt for them.
Isnt this a day early? Someone needs to get a proper calender!
Link?
That they keep putting this off is because of the embarassment it would cause when .xxx sites outnumber all .com .net .biz and .org sites put together.
I think it would be great if companies defended against this sort of thing by premptively suing the families of these madmen. For example here Take two would sue the family of this nutball for allowing a mental midget to be influenced by thier game prior to his acting out years of neglect from said family and thereby tarnishing thier name in the media and thus causing financial harm.