They look at and sign a contract and then after a while they just decide the contract is utterly worthless and want a new one? This is unbelievable and insulting. It's funny how they claim to respect the law and then crap all over anyone who dares negotiate a contract with them (including the artists!).
I wasnt allowed to use print encyclopedias for any of my research papers starting in high school. I was told that the encyclopedias were good for quick overviews but its up to me to find where the information in the encyclopedias come from (aka, primary sources). Of course Wikipedia was not around when I was in high school but I am positive, if it were, I would not be allowed to use it, either. Using encyclopedias for research papers is lazy and of poor form; it should not be allowed.
"Gadget Bloggers
Bruce E. Williams
Jeff Sandquist
Lou Amadio
Sanaz Ahari
Scott Isaacs
Sean Alexander
Shawn Morrissey
Start.com team
Steve Makofsky
Steve Rider"
Where does Alexander find the time to work for Microsoft and be a star running back for the Seahawks? Amazing!
The only thing morally wrong in the music industry is how everyone is getting rich off the artist's music except the artist.
Downloading a track I would never have paid for anyway is possibly the most victimless crime that can exist. Especially if I go and buy a t-shirt or poster from the artist's site.
Yes, it is. Back in the day you had the old game networks like Gamers.com, Stomped, GameSpy, GameFan Network, and even IGN which were just loose networks of gamers writing about the industry. They were big, the networks were flush with cash and sharing the goodies with the writers, and new networks were coming out all the time. Then the bottom fell out, most of the people who were making the sites got hosed, and the only way many of them survived was by ditching the network model and becoming massive monolithic catch-alls (GameSpy, IGN).
The same thing will happen here. I just hope the people who are making cash off blogging realize this and save their inflated profits for the rainy days. A few good ones will survive but blogs are mainly just the Geocities homepage of the 2000s.
It's a matter of game quality, though. SOE's games aren't that good IMO and the subscriber numbers kinda reflect that (probably the best data is here. I'd rather pay $20 a month for one really good game than $20 a month for 4 bad games, 5 mediocre ones, and 1 sorta-good one. If the small operator has a better game than it already has SOE (or whoever) beat.
And even if there were 10 really good games on one bill, who would find time to play any more than one of them in this world of 800-hour MMORPGs? Seems more like a bullet point to get quick sales than an actual legitimate good deal - and as I said the smaller operator will be fine as long as the game is good.
Re:My problem with those game:
on
Review: Dragonshard
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I guess you have never heard of control groups...
Re:Those numbers are extremely over-inflated
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Take away the 1.2 million Spiderman 2 discs bundled with the system, and you still have 3.8 million UMDs sold - thats really good for a newbie format. The hardware companies also care about hardware/software ratio - thats about 3 discs per person, also very solid for a launch. And two discs already sold over 100,000. All these indications point to a bright future for UMD.
Most internet nerds were calling the UMD DOA and thats definitely not the case. But then again/. said the iPod was DOA.
I thought ATI was going to seize the advantage from Nvidia with these cards but from what the article is telling me it appears to be a GF5900-style bust. I was thinking the X1600 would've been exactly what I needed but I may just get the 6800GT instead. Oh well.
Exactly. I spent four months looking for a job, and I was selective, and I found a great one. Looking for a job fresh out of college in this economy is the pits.
Uwe Boll films are fantastically horrible and I, for one, dont care if someone decides to make a stupid, worthless movie based on Alone in the Dark/House of the Dead (and Im a gamer). Quite frankly, it speaks more of the worthless, juvenile stories/scripts in games than of the director - Uwe Boll didnt make Super Mario Bros: The Movie (which was oddly pretentious). Pick games that have good potential as movies, and Im not sure Halo does.
Of course Hollywood is just a giant pit of whorish cash-grabbing so who cares.
Rehnquist also clerked for Justice Jackson, and was assistant Attorney General for Nixon. In other words, he did plenty of work that forced him to grapple with the subtleties and workings of the Constitution and the Supreme Court's relationship with it. This is similar to Earl Warren, who was California Attorney General, Regent of the UC, *and* Governor of California.
Ms. Miers graduated from a 2nd rate law school and has done work as a private lawyer and as the Texas Lottery Commissioner. I dont know how running the lottery turns you into a Constitutional Scholar, and neither does anyone else. She's not nearly as qualified as Rehnquist, Warren, et. al, and anyone who says "well Renquist wasn't a judge either" is leaving out all the details that matter.
I worked at a game store and was amazed by the margins made on used games... and it has gotten worse, way worse over the years. When I started (in 1999) used versions of recent titles would be $5-$10 cheaper than the new and we would give about 60-70% of the value. For example, new game X comes out at $50, we give $30-$35 for it, and charge $40. When the new price dipped to $40, the used price would go to $30-$35.
By the time I left, new game X would come out at $50, we would give $17 (or, with the very big games, no more than $25), and sell it at $44.99. And the used game prices would be only 10% less... so when that game dipped to $40, the used would be $37, and when it dropped to $20, the used game would be $18. And the value of the trade-in was dropping even more severely - $10 for a $40 game, $7 for a $30, and $3-$5 for a $20.
That is to say nothing of the quality of the disc - when I started we didnt even take incomplete or too-scratched games, when I left it was whatever. And then we started giving out cash for games, albeit with a 20% hit in value.
EB and GameStop have twisted the used game market into garbage, we need some quality competition in there. I used to trade in my games all the time, now Id rather just give them away to my friends.
I started college at a midlevel state school as a Computer Science major. I did well in high school but was by no means a superstar.
None of the CS, Math, or Physics teachers knew English that well or were, indeed, very good teachers. The classes went by at a VERY fast pace compared to high school. You were covering stuff in 2 weeks that took 2 months in HS! I could barely keep up. Every teacher assigned homework like his/her class was the only one that mattered. I was struggling and my first semester was a wash.
This is where Kern's story ends, however my story ends with me realizing I needed to work harder. It felt like a new, interesting challenge like I never got in HS. I graduated at a different, much better school, in arguably a harder major (Math). But the work never got easier (it got harder), the pace never slowed down (it got faster), and the teachers never learned English.
The things I learned in school were wonderful and valuable intellectually and I pride myself in not giving up. Why do high school superstars like Kern give up so easily and then blame everyone else?
I refused to get a GBA SP. I dropped the money on an original GBA at launch and was frustrated by the dim screen and cramped design (I had technolust at the time, and I played it in the store pre-release, where the screen wasnt a problem). Nintendo adamantly swore they couldnt do a lit system. Until that Afterburner add-on came out, then they rushed out the SP. So it was about that time I just gave my GBA to my sister, choosing to spend my dollars more wisely. Most of the good stuff on the GBA was just SNES games I already beat anyway.
that is NOT an argument against the inclusion of radio for those of us who live in major cities and have a lot more channel options
LOL! Right! I live outside New York City and the radio is trash, pure trash, unredeemable garbage. I can't stand my commute because of it (thankfully, its only 20 minutes or so). Before that I lived in Los Angeles and with the sole exception of Indie 103.1 (which may or may not be around anymore, I heard it was having $$ problems) it was trash, pure trash, unredeemable garbage. Now, maybe LA and NYC aren't major cities anymore, I dunno. But the radio stations here and there are junk and basically forcing me to satellite.
I've never, not once ever wished an iPod would have an FM Radio. Because anything I have in the iPod is so much better than what I can get out of FM. Satellite... not so much. I love the variety. But FM is about playing the same 15 or 20 songs over and over complete with worthless DJs and endless commercials. Its not a good thing and I can see why Apple didn't want to include it (considering they market to chic urbanites who, like me, are suffering under the cloud of awful FM Radio).
My third year at college I had a roommate who believed in the Intelligent Design thing. I had no idea what he was talking about, really, this was a few years ago, before this movement started gaining traction. Though I didnt agree with him he believed in them adamantly.
I think the main thing ID has going for it is that it is logical. You tell someone, "the world, the human body, the eye, its all too complex to come about through a natural process over thousands of generations. Something HAD to have been there to design it", and you know what, it makes sense. In our little human brains, it is very hard to fathom the idea of thousands of generations, and the mutations needed to evolve. Evolution is a tough thing to grasp at first. So I think thats what it has going for it, and why its gained so much traction across the country.
Then the ID people say something like, "what so we came from a monkey?" or some other garbage to dispute evolution. Then you see whats really going on. ID isnt a science, and its not provable. Its just religious people using it to win hearts and minds. Its a PR campaign. And if we have people not educated on biology, not educated on the sciences, and so forth, making these decisions, it is DISASTROUS because they will go by the PR campaign and put it in schools to teach students.
I also hear people saying, "just teach the controversey! Not even every scientist believes in evolution!". So what scientists dont? What respected biologists do not believe in evolution? Id love to see a list... I really would. Because you know, not everyone believes the earth is round.
NM School of Mining and Tech, back when it was just New Mexico School of Mines, was also the alma mater of Conrad Hilton, of Hilton Hotels fame.
Nothing else to add to this, just that.
"Rarely is it possible to describe a game anymore as simply "fun", and to some extent that's a credit to the growth of the industry."
I dont understand this reasoning. Half-Life 2 is fun. World of Warcraft is fun. Metal Gear Solid 3 is fun. San Andreas is fun. Super Monkey Ball Deluxe is fun. Morrowind is fun (and Oblivion will almost surely be). WipeOut Pure is fun. Rome Total War is fun. Etc.
A lot of these games have other adjectives too - intense, exciting, addictive, etc., but theyre fun, too. Theyre fun to play and fun to beat. I say theyre fun because I enjoy playing them. The nice graphics, physics engines, etc. are just bonuses. Heaven forbid the developers put great graphics and technology behind a fun game! OH NO!
Evidently you dont read videogame forums enough (for better or worse). Plenty of people complain about Madden.
As for Final Fantasy... until FFX2 there was no reuse of characters or settings. Metal Gear, all the games are pretty different (especially MGS3, which is the best game in the series too).
I too am sick of Nintendo's constant rehashing. Not only do they reuse the same characters, but the games arent as good. Double Dash wasnt nearly as good as MK64, which wasnt nearly as good as the original. The GBA game was fun but because it played almost identically to the SNES one.
And right on down the list. You could talk about this for virtually every Nintendo property, and you dont even need to get into the dull, lifeless rehashes Mario Tennis and Mario Golf got this generation (and now theyre making a Mario Baseball, a Mario Soccer, and a Mario DDR).
Well... WOW is better than every other MMORPG, and its certainly reached a far larger audience than anything else. EQ used to be the biggest and it had like 400,000 subscribers.
So this mystical game was released, and it is better than everything else... its just not perfect.
A lot of these bugs have been ironed out, and the game is a lot more balanced than it was. WOW is *much, much* better than it was at launch. Its not perfect, but what is? Especially a game as huge and complex as WOW.
Not trying to be a jerk here, possibly Ive been reading the WOW forums too much, but really - the game's a lot better than it was at launch.
Slashdot Mirror
They look at and sign a contract and then after a while they just decide the contract is utterly worthless and want a new one? This is unbelievable and insulting. It's funny how they claim to respect the law and then crap all over anyone who dares negotiate a contract with them (including the artists!).
I wasnt allowed to use print encyclopedias for any of my research papers starting in high school. I was told that the encyclopedias were good for quick overviews but its up to me to find where the information in the encyclopedias come from (aka, primary sources). Of course Wikipedia was not around when I was in high school but I am positive, if it were, I would not be allowed to use it, either. Using encyclopedias for research papers is lazy and of poor form; it should not be allowed.
"Gadget Bloggers Bruce E. Williams Jeff Sandquist Lou Amadio Sanaz Ahari Scott Isaacs Sean Alexander Shawn Morrissey Start.com team Steve Makofsky Steve Rider" Where does Alexander find the time to work for Microsoft and be a star running back for the Seahawks? Amazing!
Downloading a track I would never have paid for anyway is possibly the most victimless crime that can exist. Especially if I go and buy a t-shirt or poster from the artist's site.
The same thing will happen here. I just hope the people who are making cash off blogging realize this and save their inflated profits for the rainy days. A few good ones will survive but blogs are mainly just the Geocities homepage of the 2000s.
It's a matter of game quality, though. SOE's games aren't that good IMO and the subscriber numbers kinda reflect that (probably the best data is here. I'd rather pay $20 a month for one really good game than $20 a month for 4 bad games, 5 mediocre ones, and 1 sorta-good one. If the small operator has a better game than it already has SOE (or whoever) beat. And even if there were 10 really good games on one bill, who would find time to play any more than one of them in this world of 800-hour MMORPGs? Seems more like a bullet point to get quick sales than an actual legitimate good deal - and as I said the smaller operator will be fine as long as the game is good.
I guess you have never heard of control groups...
Take away the 1.2 million Spiderman 2 discs bundled with the system, and you still have 3.8 million UMDs sold - thats really good for a newbie format. The hardware companies also care about hardware/software ratio - thats about 3 discs per person, also very solid for a launch. And two discs already sold over 100,000. All these indications point to a bright future for UMD. Most internet nerds were calling the UMD DOA and thats definitely not the case. But then again /. said the iPod was DOA.
I thought ATI was going to seize the advantage from Nvidia with these cards but from what the article is telling me it appears to be a GF5900-style bust. I was thinking the X1600 would've been exactly what I needed but I may just get the 6800GT instead. Oh well.
Exactly. I spent four months looking for a job, and I was selective, and I found a great one. Looking for a job fresh out of college in this economy is the pits.
Uwe Boll films are fantastically horrible and I, for one, dont care if someone decides to make a stupid, worthless movie based on Alone in the Dark/House of the Dead (and Im a gamer). Quite frankly, it speaks more of the worthless, juvenile stories/scripts in games than of the director - Uwe Boll didnt make Super Mario Bros: The Movie (which was oddly pretentious). Pick games that have good potential as movies, and Im not sure Halo does. Of course Hollywood is just a giant pit of whorish cash-grabbing so who cares.
Rehnquist also clerked for Justice Jackson, and was assistant Attorney General for Nixon. In other words, he did plenty of work that forced him to grapple with the subtleties and workings of the Constitution and the Supreme Court's relationship with it. This is similar to Earl Warren, who was California Attorney General, Regent of the UC, *and* Governor of California. Ms. Miers graduated from a 2nd rate law school and has done work as a private lawyer and as the Texas Lottery Commissioner. I dont know how running the lottery turns you into a Constitutional Scholar, and neither does anyone else. She's not nearly as qualified as Rehnquist, Warren, et. al, and anyone who says "well Renquist wasn't a judge either" is leaving out all the details that matter.
I worked at a game store and was amazed by the margins made on used games... and it has gotten worse, way worse over the years. When I started (in 1999) used versions of recent titles would be $5-$10 cheaper than the new and we would give about 60-70% of the value. For example, new game X comes out at $50, we give $30-$35 for it, and charge $40. When the new price dipped to $40, the used price would go to $30-$35. By the time I left, new game X would come out at $50, we would give $17 (or, with the very big games, no more than $25), and sell it at $44.99. And the used game prices would be only 10% less... so when that game dipped to $40, the used would be $37, and when it dropped to $20, the used game would be $18. And the value of the trade-in was dropping even more severely - $10 for a $40 game, $7 for a $30, and $3-$5 for a $20. That is to say nothing of the quality of the disc - when I started we didnt even take incomplete or too-scratched games, when I left it was whatever. And then we started giving out cash for games, albeit with a 20% hit in value. EB and GameStop have twisted the used game market into garbage, we need some quality competition in there. I used to trade in my games all the time, now Id rather just give them away to my friends.
I started college at a midlevel state school as a Computer Science major. I did well in high school but was by no means a superstar.
None of the CS, Math, or Physics teachers knew English that well or were, indeed, very good teachers. The classes went by at a VERY fast pace compared to high school. You were covering stuff in 2 weeks that took 2 months in HS! I could barely keep up. Every teacher assigned homework like his/her class was the only one that mattered. I was struggling and my first semester was a wash.
This is where Kern's story ends, however my story ends with me realizing I needed to work harder. It felt like a new, interesting challenge like I never got in HS. I graduated at a different, much better school, in arguably a harder major (Math). But the work never got easier (it got harder), the pace never slowed down (it got faster), and the teachers never learned English.
The things I learned in school were wonderful and valuable intellectually and I pride myself in not giving up. Why do high school superstars like Kern give up so easily and then blame everyone else?
I love SimCity 4 and play it at least twice a week to this day. But I didnt like Sims when I tried it. I didnt play Sims 2, though.
Wow, your group discovered the exact same thing I discovered three years ago when Wired wrote an article about it. Hooray college!
I refused to get a GBA SP. I dropped the money on an original GBA at launch and was frustrated by the dim screen and cramped design (I had technolust at the time, and I played it in the store pre-release, where the screen wasnt a problem). Nintendo adamantly swore they couldnt do a lit system. Until that Afterburner add-on came out, then they rushed out the SP. So it was about that time I just gave my GBA to my sister, choosing to spend my dollars more wisely. Most of the good stuff on the GBA was just SNES games I already beat anyway.
LOL! Right! I live outside New York City and the radio is trash, pure trash, unredeemable garbage. I can't stand my commute because of it (thankfully, its only 20 minutes or so). Before that I lived in Los Angeles and with the sole exception of Indie 103.1 (which may or may not be around anymore, I heard it was having $$ problems) it was trash, pure trash, unredeemable garbage. Now, maybe LA and NYC aren't major cities anymore, I dunno. But the radio stations here and there are junk and basically forcing me to satellite.
I've never, not once ever wished an iPod would have an FM Radio. Because anything I have in the iPod is so much better than what I can get out of FM. Satellite... not so much. I love the variety. But FM is about playing the same 15 or 20 songs over and over complete with worthless DJs and endless commercials. Its not a good thing and I can see why Apple didn't want to include it (considering they market to chic urbanites who, like me, are suffering under the cloud of awful FM Radio).
I think the main thing ID has going for it is that it is logical. You tell someone, "the world, the human body, the eye, its all too complex to come about through a natural process over thousands of generations. Something HAD to have been there to design it", and you know what, it makes sense. In our little human brains, it is very hard to fathom the idea of thousands of generations, and the mutations needed to evolve. Evolution is a tough thing to grasp at first. So I think thats what it has going for it, and why its gained so much traction across the country.
Then the ID people say something like, "what so we came from a monkey?" or some other garbage to dispute evolution. Then you see whats really going on. ID isnt a science, and its not provable. Its just religious people using it to win hearts and minds. Its a PR campaign. And if we have people not educated on biology, not educated on the sciences, and so forth, making these decisions, it is DISASTROUS because they will go by the PR campaign and put it in schools to teach students.
I also hear people saying, "just teach the controversey! Not even every scientist believes in evolution!". So what scientists dont? What respected biologists do not believe in evolution? Id love to see a list... I really would. Because you know, not everyone believes the earth is round.
ID is just a PR campaign.
Last generation (PS2/Xbox) was cheap, but with these new systems, and especially PS3 having Blu-Ray, its gonna be pricier.
NM School of Mining and Tech, back when it was just New Mexico School of Mines, was also the alma mater of Conrad Hilton, of Hilton Hotels fame. Nothing else to add to this, just that.
"Rarely is it possible to describe a game anymore as simply "fun", and to some extent that's a credit to the growth of the industry." I dont understand this reasoning. Half-Life 2 is fun. World of Warcraft is fun. Metal Gear Solid 3 is fun. San Andreas is fun. Super Monkey Ball Deluxe is fun. Morrowind is fun (and Oblivion will almost surely be). WipeOut Pure is fun. Rome Total War is fun. Etc. A lot of these games have other adjectives too - intense, exciting, addictive, etc., but theyre fun, too. Theyre fun to play and fun to beat. I say theyre fun because I enjoy playing them. The nice graphics, physics engines, etc. are just bonuses. Heaven forbid the developers put great graphics and technology behind a fun game! OH NO!
Evidently you dont read videogame forums enough (for better or worse). Plenty of people complain about Madden. As for Final Fantasy... until FFX2 there was no reuse of characters or settings. Metal Gear, all the games are pretty different (especially MGS3, which is the best game in the series too). I too am sick of Nintendo's constant rehashing. Not only do they reuse the same characters, but the games arent as good. Double Dash wasnt nearly as good as MK64, which wasnt nearly as good as the original. The GBA game was fun but because it played almost identically to the SNES one. And right on down the list. You could talk about this for virtually every Nintendo property, and you dont even need to get into the dull, lifeless rehashes Mario Tennis and Mario Golf got this generation (and now theyre making a Mario Baseball, a Mario Soccer, and a Mario DDR).
Well... WOW is better than every other MMORPG, and its certainly reached a far larger audience than anything else. EQ used to be the biggest and it had like 400,000 subscribers. So this mystical game was released, and it is better than everything else... its just not perfect.
A lot of these bugs have been ironed out, and the game is a lot more balanced than it was. WOW is *much, much* better than it was at launch. Its not perfect, but what is? Especially a game as huge and complex as WOW.
Not trying to be a jerk here, possibly Ive been reading the WOW forums too much, but really - the game's a lot better than it was at launch.