I wouldn't have a problem with that as I find RTS games boring, but I get the point!
I don't think you can patent a genre though. Saints Row is almost a direct rip-off of GTA (but with some nice improvements actually), but they didn't get sued for it AFAIK. Here in the UK/Europe I don't think any form of software patents are allowed yet.
I'm in the UK too, but the only ads I see are the ones at the cinema since I don't watch TV, listen to the radio or really pay attention to any forms of advertising (billboards, bus stops, etc).
I do think that if WinPho7 does gain traction it will be at the expense of Android unless Apple makes some serious mistakes in the near future or Microsoft decides to target Apple
I think Microsoft has already targeted Apple actually, what with the Zune, and now this. I had a look at some YouTube vids and the GUI is certainly very nice. Microsoft's UIs are usually awful, but this one seems nice and clean, and all swooshy as you'd expect from a modern smartphone.
My room mate is an Apple fanboy by now, he loves his iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and was tempted by an iMac recently. He said that if it weren't for all his iTunes purchases he probably would have got a WinPho7 device, and would have considered Google TV or similar instead of Apple TV.
I think that's the greatest barrier that any other company faces when trying to lure people away from Apple - the iTunes ecosystem. Once you have a lot of purchases tied to your account, you're hardly going to want to just dump them and move on without giving it some serious thought.
Hence why he said it's being stored as fat. I thought he was making a joke.
Alcohol consumption raises the levels of cortisol in your system - which makes you store more fat around the belly area; it also reduces testosterone levels, making it harder to build muscle. Artificial sweeteners have been linked to cortisol levels too since at least some of them are broken down by the liver.
Well there's also the scenario of using your password somewhere, and the server being breached, or even of that service being run by some malicious party.
I had a friend forward me an emails with something like "type in your MSN details here to find out who has blocked you". I advised her to change her password immediately, because she no doubt just put her username and password in there without thinking. If she also used that email address and password combo in other places then they could get access to those too though. I didn't consider that at the time.
Maybe that site was a scam, maybe it wasn't, but there's a lot of opportunity for sites like eBuddy or similar to collect people's login details.
There's even an XKCD about this, so even those who were too dumb to think of it before will probably be trying it by now.
I still follow the "strong password that I don't change very often" philosophy myself, but I know I probably should change it more often, and I'm careful which sites I use my currently preferred strongest password with.
Are you going to have a different one for every website you visit? It's not just your bank that you have to worry about. Paypal, Amazon and many other places store card details for example.. plus you could even do a lot of damage to someone with just their Facebook or email accounts.
"Never write them down" isn't really a problem as long as you keep them somewhere safe, like your wallet. If you wrote down all your credit card details, someone could use it online just as effectively as if they had your actually credit card (though some places also use a "SecureCode" or whatever, in which case not storing your securecode in your wallet would be a nice idea).
Personally I make my passwords relatively strong, though I do often re-use them and don't like to change very often. I do have some passwords that aren't too strong for accounts that I don't care about that much though. It wouldn't be that big a deal if my Slashdot account were hacked for example, since it's essentially anonymous anyway.
Yeah, the whole idea is rather amusing. It's like an independent book store threatening to stop selling any books that are also available in eBook format.
Good luck guys, you are just guaranteeing that you will get left behind.
They're all full length films though (and relatively standalone for the ones I actually enjoyed, ie the original Star Wars and The Matrix - I found the LOTR books and movies below average for entertainment value). When I first read the PoP episodic content concept it sounded more like you getting charged half of normal ticket price for watching 1/3 of a film, and then waiting months to see the rest of it. You'd end up paying 150% the price of a full game for one full game, while losing out on a lot of the immersion.
I don't watch TV series when they're on TV these days because I can't be bothered waiting a week before the next episode. I buy DVD box sets.
If I hadn't already read all the Harry Potter books I probably would wait until both halves of the last movie are out before watching the first.
If they were actually charging at a price proportional to the amount of gameplay you get, I wouldn't complain, but I'd still wait until all the parts are released - I did this with Monkey Island 5.
I didn't even know it was out yet. I guess I've mostly ignored the Win7 articles for a while now though, and wasn't psyched for it. I moved from years of Windows Mobile phones to Android a couple of months ago.
Example: I come to you with this great game idea. You ask for a sample and I throw something together, maybe just a proof of concept. It looks promising, so you send me a money (whatever seems reasonable, between $X,XXX and $XXX,XXX) for a more polished copy. I now have a few bucks to throw around and find freelancer programmers and designers and throw money at them and come up with a decent alpha. You really like it, so you either buy the idea off me or hire me and maybe even the freelancers to continue working on the game with your professional developers. Now a real game comes out and it all started with some guy's idea
Isn't that pretty much exactly what big publishing houses do already?
If they see a profit from these things though, they will continue to let the indie groups do their thing. If they're not seeing a profit, then of course they should kill off the idea as obviously customers aren't enjoying the results.
I think they've already been taking risks and trying new things anyway though. As I mentioned above, I noticed some original games coming out from EA in the last few years (especially since people here are always complaining about EA being all about the remakes and sequels). Mirror's Edge, Brutal Legend and DeathSpank are all pretty original games in their own ways. I've no idea how popular they are with the general public, but I enjoyed them at least. I wouldn't have tried Brutal Legend and DeathSpank had I not known the creators of the original Monkey Island games were involved:)
The results of these departments work would be the main product, since the main product is games. Creating smaller teams to work on new ideas rather than just have everyone making new Need For Speed/Sports titles would be pretty cool.
I'll admit I do enjoy a lot of the Need For Speed games, but seeing more slightly quirky original games would be great. EA already published stuff like Mirror's Edge, DeathSpank, and Brutal Legend (and probably more, but those are the ones I know about and enjoyed) in the last couple of years, all of which take a new direction on well established gaming concepts, but I'd like to see more of that kind of thing.
I thought it was Prince of Persia that popularised the idea. It's the first game I remember being released in episodes anyway. I've still not played any of them beyond the original, as I didn't like the idea of paying two times the cost of a normal full game to get all the parts, not to mention having to wait weeks/months in between each portion of the game.
Having said that I did buy the HD remake of the original, which definitely is a cash in of course..
Being scammed is not a great comparison to being burgled. When you're scammed you have to make an actively stupid decision to take part in the scam.
When you're burgled, you don't get a direct choice. You can however do a few things to make your house less attractive to burglars. You most definitely should if you have already been subject to a burglary, just as you should learn a bit more about common scams if you have generally poor common sense (as I do, and I still manage not to give my bank account details out to every email that asks).
No need to sign your name at the end of all your posts either.
The more effort you put into your social life, the more you will have sex. I really can't be bothered with being sociable right now. Wouldn't object to the sex, but what can you do (legally)?
Well, I've played it for over 100 hours so far and it has been as good as most PC games I've played. I think it did freeze completely one time, but I can't remember any other issues that caused me major annoyance.
Slashdot Mirror
Would make LAN parties slightly easier to organise at least.
I wouldn't call it artificial though, it's present naturally in foods and even produced in body apparently.
It's the chemicals that we haven't evolved to ingest with that I'm worried about.
I wouldn't have a problem with that as I find RTS games boring, but I get the point!
I don't think you can patent a genre though. Saints Row is almost a direct rip-off of GTA (but with some nice improvements actually), but they didn't get sued for it AFAIK. Here in the UK/Europe I don't think any form of software patents are allowed yet.
I'm in the UK too, but the only ads I see are the ones at the cinema since I don't watch TV, listen to the radio or really pay attention to any forms of advertising (billboards, bus stops, etc).
I do think that if WinPho7 does gain traction it will be at the expense of Android unless Apple makes some serious mistakes in the near future or Microsoft decides to target Apple
I think Microsoft has already targeted Apple actually, what with the Zune, and now this. I had a look at some YouTube vids and the GUI is certainly very nice. Microsoft's UIs are usually awful, but this one seems nice and clean, and all swooshy as you'd expect from a modern smartphone.
My room mate is an Apple fanboy by now, he loves his iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and was tempted by an iMac recently. He said that if it weren't for all his iTunes purchases he probably would have got a WinPho7 device, and would have considered Google TV or similar instead of Apple TV.
I think that's the greatest barrier that any other company faces when trying to lure people away from Apple - the iTunes ecosystem. Once you have a lot of purchases tied to your account, you're hardly going to want to just dump them and move on without giving it some serious thought.
Hence why he said it's being stored as fat. I thought he was making a joke.
Alcohol consumption raises the levels of cortisol in your system - which makes you store more fat around the belly area; it also reduces testosterone levels, making it harder to build muscle. Artificial sweeteners have been linked to cortisol levels too since at least some of them are broken down by the liver.
Well there's also the scenario of using your password somewhere, and the server being breached, or even of that service being run by some malicious party.
I had a friend forward me an emails with something like "type in your MSN details here to find out who has blocked you". I advised her to change her password immediately, because she no doubt just put her username and password in there without thinking. If she also used that email address and password combo in other places then they could get access to those too though. I didn't consider that at the time.
Maybe that site was a scam, maybe it wasn't, but there's a lot of opportunity for sites like eBuddy or similar to collect people's login details.
There's even an XKCD about this, so even those who were too dumb to think of it before will probably be trying it by now.
I still follow the "strong password that I don't change very often" philosophy myself, but I know I probably should change it more often, and I'm careful which sites I use my currently preferred strongest password with.
Are you going to have a different one for every website you visit? It's not just your bank that you have to worry about. Paypal, Amazon and many other places store card details for example.. plus you could even do a lot of damage to someone with just their Facebook or email accounts.
"Never write them down" isn't really a problem as long as you keep them somewhere safe, like your wallet. If you wrote down all your credit card details, someone could use it online just as effectively as if they had your actually credit card (though some places also use a "SecureCode" or whatever, in which case not storing your securecode in your wallet would be a nice idea).
Personally I make my passwords relatively strong, though I do often re-use them and don't like to change very often. I do have some passwords that aren't too strong for accounts that I don't care about that much though. It wouldn't be that big a deal if my Slashdot account were hacked for example, since it's essentially anonymous anyway.
Yeah, the whole idea is rather amusing. It's like an independent book store threatening to stop selling any books that are also available in eBook format.
Good luck guys, you are just guaranteeing that you will get left behind.
They're all full length films though (and relatively standalone for the ones I actually enjoyed, ie the original Star Wars and The Matrix - I found the LOTR books and movies below average for entertainment value). When I first read the PoP episodic content concept it sounded more like you getting charged half of normal ticket price for watching 1/3 of a film, and then waiting months to see the rest of it. You'd end up paying 150% the price of a full game for one full game, while losing out on a lot of the immersion.
I don't watch TV series when they're on TV these days because I can't be bothered waiting a week before the next episode. I buy DVD box sets.
If I hadn't already read all the Harry Potter books I probably would wait until both halves of the last movie are out before watching the first.
If they were actually charging at a price proportional to the amount of gameplay you get, I wouldn't complain, but I'd still wait until all the parts are released - I did this with Monkey Island 5.
It's not just a sugar free gum, it apparently contains a protein that actively kills bacteria.
Besides, artificial sweeters are bad for you. I've just stopped chewing gum altogether..
I didn't even know it was out yet. I guess I've mostly ignored the Win7 articles for a while now though, and wasn't psyched for it. I moved from years of Windows Mobile phones to Android a couple of months ago.
Example: I come to you with this great game idea. You ask for a sample and I throw something together, maybe just a proof of concept. It looks promising, so you send me a money (whatever seems reasonable, between $X,XXX and $XXX,XXX) for a more polished copy. I now have a few bucks to throw around and find freelancer programmers and designers and throw money at them and come up with a decent alpha. You really like it, so you either buy the idea off me or hire me and maybe even the freelancers to continue working on the game with your professional developers. Now a real game comes out and it all started with some guy's idea
Isn't that pretty much exactly what big publishing houses do already?
If they see a profit from these things though, they will continue to let the indie groups do their thing. If they're not seeing a profit, then of course they should kill off the idea as obviously customers aren't enjoying the results.
I think they've already been taking risks and trying new things anyway though. As I mentioned above, I noticed some original games coming out from EA in the last few years (especially since people here are always complaining about EA being all about the remakes and sequels). Mirror's Edge, Brutal Legend and DeathSpank are all pretty original games in their own ways. I've no idea how popular they are with the general public, but I enjoyed them at least. I wouldn't have tried Brutal Legend and DeathSpank had I not known the creators of the original Monkey Island games were involved :)
The results of these departments work would be the main product, since the main product is games. Creating smaller teams to work on new ideas rather than just have everyone making new Need For Speed/Sports titles would be pretty cool.
I'll admit I do enjoy a lot of the Need For Speed games, but seeing more slightly quirky original games would be great. EA already published stuff like Mirror's Edge, DeathSpank, and Brutal Legend (and probably more, but those are the ones I know about and enjoyed) in the last couple of years, all of which take a new direction on well established gaming concepts, but I'd like to see more of that kind of thing.
I thought it was Prince of Persia that popularised the idea. It's the first game I remember being released in episodes anyway. I've still not played any of them beyond the original, as I didn't like the idea of paying two times the cost of a normal full game to get all the parts, not to mention having to wait weeks/months in between each portion of the game.
Having said that I did buy the HD remake of the original, which definitely is a cash in of course..
Being scammed is not a great comparison to being burgled. When you're scammed you have to make an actively stupid decision to take part in the scam.
When you're burgled, you don't get a direct choice. You can however do a few things to make your house less attractive to burglars. You most definitely should if you have already been subject to a burglary, just as you should learn a bit more about common scams if you have generally poor common sense (as I do, and I still manage not to give my bank account details out to every email that asks).
No need to sign your name at the end of all your posts either.
The more effort you put into your social life, the more you will have sex. I really can't be bothered with being sociable right now. Wouldn't object to the sex, but what can you do (legally)?
The guy has (or at least, had) access to over $20,000,000. Quite a few people would consider that worth the effort.
People should really be taught about scams in school. Then things like viruses and spam wouldn't be anywhere near as prevalent.
But unless this was the first time this guy has ever been deceived, it's his own fault. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me", etc.
Uncomfortable? I find it pleasantly warm. However according to one poster this is a good way to get ringworm or similar.
And who can forget the rapists? Certainly not me
Well, I've played it for over 100 hours so far and it has been as good as most PC games I've played. I think it did freeze completely one time, but I can't remember any other issues that caused me major annoyance.
He must be doing it for the bitches then, right?