I can't help but feel that Eben took the wrong approach with pre-orders. I think pre-orders and taking cash up front was exactly what was what needed.
Its a good thing that they've done the first 10,000 manufacturing batch, but on top of that they mismarketed the release date by combinging it with the RS Components and Farnell annoucement. They should have made that annoucement separately to test demand through the supplier websites and then making a preorders annoucement with a view to deliver on all preorders (be it 1000, or 100,000). I imagine will pan out ok, and that consumers will get hold of boards now that the major manufacturers are involved and the stellar publicity that the RPi has received. The bad news it will take time for them to gear up to full production.
Today's mess was that they tried to annouce public release with news about new (untested) suppliers, and pulled all the strings in their long running BBC News campaign. Too much focus all in one place. Now the general public is involved and expecting cheap computers, when what is actually being sold is nothing more then a motherboard. The public needs to wait for technical folk to get there hands on them, to test out SD cards, distros, cases, wireless adapters, etc. and then do a proper launch. The only thing that seems to have glued it all together was Twitter, so congrats to those guys.
At the end of the article, "it's very nice that they're considering it now."... maybe so, but it sure would be nasty if they had to post a terminally ill astronaut home, kill them on the spot, or dump the body in an asteroid field...
I spent all my last summer looking into the XMLHttpRequest object, Google maps, Local Live, Dojo, prototype.js, and found them to be very resourceful and capable tools for developing web applications. Most useful for FireFox 2 for debugging js. Any programmer can take an idea and make it fly in a matter of weeks (that was my commerical task, find out the possibilities).
Since then, I've moved jobs and settled back into normal web dev. Web 2.0 is a distant memory, a tool to smooth over the mudane page refreshing we do, like submitting ratings, and quickening the auto-fill bar in answers.com (aka Google suggest?). As for GWT, I found their tools very restrictive. Compared to the flexibility of working with designs directly in HTML/CSS - GWT provided more barriers then solutions for me. Well designed software, written in JavaScript is as effective software written in any other framework GWT, VisualWeb developer, Ruby, etc..
Personally, I would prefer to develop plainly for the web using server side scripts, and add JavaScript as an afterthought. Overuse complicates user experience and muddies the code, which is bad all round. Good website and web application design does not require JavaScript.
Halo 1 on the PC still has a strong on-line presence, ~800 active users at any one time? I bought an Xbox, with Halo 2, and stopped playing it because I got frustrated. Sure, I loved the maps and the weapons and it has a fantastic matching system, but hey... the traditional server system that Halo PC uses works for me.
I play it -almost- every night. I find a subscription service to Xbox hard to justify considering the amount of time I play on consoles. They're just too inconvenient compared to PCs, but that's down to life-style I guess.
I don't know if anyone is still using Token rings but I damn well have to write assignments on the technology. I disccussed this with my lecturer and wrote in a paragraph explaining how out-of-date the technology was in current markets.
I just gotta say how amazingly similar this is to use Macromedia Flash, and I think its great. I was wondering if these guys were inspired by Flash. Seriously, its like drawing in Flash but 3D.
If the pro version wasn't so expensive I'd be much keener. The speed to build and publish ideas and models is fantastic, but as long as you can export to other 3D apps then rendering and utilisation of those models isn't a problem.
Whatever, this is a bit technological leap forward in 3D modelling in my opinion. I hope we see this more and more in the future, and I think its great that Google is helping by making it available to the masses - they've certainly seen the potential.
The analogy of "I can buy a first class ticket" applies to him as a consumer, not to a company trying to shoulder barge its way infront of other companies.
Heres a worse idea (for us poor consumers): Try selling priority access to certain users. Pay more, get faster access times to websites. Pay less/basic rate, you'll have to wait for everyone else's traffic first. That'd make playing network FPS games a nightmare, or a maybe godsend for gamers who can pay more. I'm sure that'd sort of be easier to prioritise in a network.
I saw the movie this morning with a group of friends. I have no doubt they'll be trying to find decent copys of it on the net very soon. However, given the chance I'd go see the film with other's who haven't, and at the same time try to get my hands on a copy of a decent digital one.
Why? Because I liked it, and I want to see it. I'll go to the cinema when I can.
Most the films I don't see in the cinema and do find through the internet are through bad advertising, and its often difficult to get to the cinema before they dissapear from the listings. Film products seem to have such a short lifespan these days which is a shame because many films deserve regular (weekly?) reruns.
Lucas deserves all the money he gets, I thought it was a very good film with plenty of action, effects, suspense - even if the acting was severely over the top.
I think the whole idea of buying extra cash for an online game just plain sucks. You should play these sort of games for fun. I played the demo of WoW for 2 weeks and did find it utterly boring - addictive, but boring.
They really do need to think about the economies - the better characters all have the best gear / weapons, and they basically hand it down to lower levels. You never see any low level people making stuff for high level creatures. Its all based around what gear you've got, your actual level is pretty pointless... I certainly felt no sense of acheivement leveling up.
People should be doing better things with their time then playing computer games for that long, to make money out of other people playing computer games. Blizzard are right putting a stop to that kinda thing, and I'm sure they'll make plenty of cash out of the game regardless of the money farmers.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't help but feel that Eben took the wrong approach with pre-orders. I think pre-orders and taking cash up front was exactly what was what needed.
Its a good thing that they've done the first 10,000 manufacturing batch, but on top of that they mismarketed the release date by combinging it with the RS Components and Farnell annoucement. They should have made that annoucement separately to test demand through the supplier websites and then making a preorders annoucement with a view to deliver on all preorders (be it 1000, or 100,000). I imagine will pan out ok, and that consumers will get hold of boards now that the major manufacturers are involved and the stellar publicity that the RPi has received. The bad news it will take time for them to gear up to full production.
Today's mess was that they tried to annouce public release with news about new (untested) suppliers, and pulled all the strings in their long running BBC News campaign. Too much focus all in one place. Now the general public is involved and expecting cheap computers, when what is actually being sold is nothing more then a motherboard. The public needs to wait for technical folk to get there hands on them, to test out SD cards, distros, cases, wireless adapters, etc. and then do a proper launch. The only thing that seems to have glued it all together was Twitter, so congrats to those guys.
At the end of the article, "it's very nice that they're considering it now."... maybe so, but it sure would be nasty if they had to post a terminally ill astronaut home, kill them on the spot, or dump the body in an asteroid field...
... are they considering bringing them back home?
I spent all my last summer looking into the XMLHttpRequest object, Google maps, Local Live, Dojo, prototype.js, and found them to be very resourceful and capable tools for developing web applications. Most useful for FireFox 2 for debugging js. Any programmer can take an idea and make it fly in a matter of weeks (that was my commerical task, find out the possibilities).
Since then, I've moved jobs and settled back into normal web dev. Web 2.0 is a distant memory, a tool to smooth over the mudane page refreshing we do, like submitting ratings, and quickening the auto-fill bar in answers.com (aka Google suggest?). As for GWT, I found their tools very restrictive. Compared to the flexibility of working with designs directly in HTML/CSS - GWT provided more barriers then solutions for me. Well designed software, written in JavaScript is as effective software written in any other framework GWT, VisualWeb developer, Ruby, etc..
Personally, I would prefer to develop plainly for the web using server side scripts, and add JavaScript as an afterthought. Overuse complicates user experience and muddies the code, which is bad all round. Good website and web application design does not require JavaScript.
Halo 1 on the PC still has a strong on-line presence, ~800 active users at any one time? I bought an Xbox, with Halo 2, and stopped playing it because I got frustrated. Sure, I loved the maps and the weapons and it has a fantastic matching system, but hey... the traditional server system that Halo PC uses works for me.
I play it -almost- every night. I find a subscription service to Xbox hard to justify considering the amount of time I play on consoles. They're just too inconvenient compared to PCs, but that's down to life-style I guess.
I don't know if anyone is still using Token rings but I damn well have to write assignments on the technology. I disccussed this with my lecturer and wrote in a paragraph explaining how out-of-date the technology was in current markets.
I just gotta say how amazingly similar this is to use Macromedia Flash, and I think its great. I was wondering if these guys were inspired by Flash. Seriously, its like drawing in Flash but 3D.
If the pro version wasn't so expensive I'd be much keener. The speed to build and publish ideas and models is fantastic, but as long as you can export to other 3D apps then rendering and utilisation of those models isn't a problem.
Whatever, this is a bit technological leap forward in 3D modelling in my opinion. I hope we see this more and more in the future, and I think its great that Google is helping by making it available to the masses - they've certainly seen the potential.
The analogy of "I can buy a first class ticket" applies to him as a consumer, not to a company trying to shoulder barge its way infront of other companies.
Heres a worse idea (for us poor consumers): Try selling priority access to certain users. Pay more, get faster access times to websites. Pay less/basic rate, you'll have to wait for everyone else's traffic first. That'd make playing network FPS games a nightmare, or a maybe godsend for gamers who can pay more. I'm sure that'd sort of be easier to prioritise in a network.
Wimbledon, its where the latest tennis tournament is at - London, England.
Why? Because I liked it, and I want to see it. I'll go to the cinema when I can.
Most the films I don't see in the cinema and do find through the internet are through bad advertising, and its often difficult to get to the cinema before they dissapear from the listings. Film products seem to have such a short lifespan these days which is a shame because many films deserve regular (weekly?) reruns.
Lucas deserves all the money he gets, I thought it was a very good film with plenty of action, effects, suspense - even if the acting was severely over the top.
I think the whole idea of buying extra cash for an online game just plain sucks. You should play these sort of games for fun. I played the demo of WoW for 2 weeks and did find it utterly boring - addictive, but boring.
They really do need to think about the economies - the better characters all have the best gear / weapons, and they basically hand it down to lower levels. You never see any low level people making stuff for high level creatures. Its all based around what gear you've got, your actual level is pretty pointless... I certainly felt no sense of acheivement leveling up.
People should be doing better things with their time then playing computer games for that long, to make money out of other people playing computer games. Blizzard are right putting a stop to that kinda thing, and I'm sure they'll make plenty of cash out of the game regardless of the money farmers.