Ok, maybe this is just me, but I see this as a way for Walmart to try to reach out to the most sought after demographic, which just so happens to be the same demographic that Myspace caters to.
This demographic traditionally sees Walmart as an uncool place, but by setting up this website, they can, at best, change that image, and, at worst, get a ton of free focus group-like situations on which to base future brand ideas.
As much as I think this will tank horribly, it's a fantastic idea.
If this does become successful, however, watch for anti-hubster, anti-Walmart viral backlash on Myspace. Subversive, networked anti-advertisements are the wave of future.
But do these particular timings need to actually coincide with the particular time of day? Sure, I'm all for inventing ways to time how long it takes for microbes to blink, but we dont need to use them as our clocks, do we?
I see this as an inevitable, unavoidable future that we have brought on ourselves.
We wanted our hobby (gaming) to become successful, widespread and more mainstream, but, in that happening, more people, and thusly, more money become involved. Due to that, we get bigger publishers with bigger monetary risks and less willingness to take risk on new IP's, un-fomulaic games and so on.
Unless the industry were to collapse upon itself and become "indie" and "uncool" again, this whole situation is simply going to get worse.
It's reminiscent of how Hollywood got huge and decided to start churning out idiotic sequels and any movie by Michael Bay. Eventually something will come along and shake up the system, but it's going to be a long time in coming, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
At what point do people simply say that our time keeping methods are good enough?
We already have a clock that only loses 1 second every 70 million years! The odds of the current time keeping system (or mankind, for that matter) continuing in it's current form for the next 70 million years are rather low, so why do we really need one that only loses a second every 400 million?
Sure, it's nice to be able to improve, but can't the research money go to something more useful? Like, maybe cancer research or studies into how we can build giant robots that transform into dinosaurs...
Yes, compared to Sony and Microsoft, they did have much greater profit percentage, but as far as overall numbers, Sony EASILY outsold the N64. Also Sony (and Microsoft, in the US) outsold the Gamecube as well.
Not to mention the drop in mindshare that Nintendo experienced.
By "slumping sales", I mean "the massive drop off in the popularity of Nintendo as a brand and as THE force in videogames since the NES/SNES era". I suppose I should have clarified for those who couldn't read between the lines.
By the way, I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy, own two DS's and have a Wii on pre-order, but the above are all undeniable facts.
Since the development costs of games are skyrocketing and companies want to maximize their profit with little risk, they seek out ways to provide as much pleasure as possible to as many people as possible for the lowest amount of money possible.
The budget to create something like this could be much more readily implemented into providing better AI for enemies, which is something that more people would appreciate, and get more use out of. Not only that, but it's quite a bit easier for the developer to make a multiplayer system that rewards people for playing against other people and excelling at that, than it would be to code a tutorbot.
Sega-16 has a ton of fantastic interviews and historical pieces on what Sega did and did not do right during the 90's that led to the company dropping out of the hardware industry.
I'd recommend reading their many interviews with the more prominent names from Sega Of America, including Tom Kalinske, Scott Berfield, and Steve Woita.
Mascots existed for one primary reason, to give people a reason to empathize with the protaganist of the story being told.
Since that time, the focus in videogames has shifted to trying to impress the lowest common denominator with "shiny things" and "reflective slime" and other graphical enhancements. Since the general public (the same people who were not gamers back during the mascot era, ie: the kids who watch MTV and go to the latest action flick directed by Michael Bay) is so easily swayed by shiny things, and shiny things are easier, and cheaper to provide than actual compelling characters, that's what you have in the majority of games nowadays.
Of course, you still see Mario and Link and Samus over in Nintendo's camp, but Nintendo never appealed to (or tried to market to) the MTV kiddies, and they paid for it in slumping sales.
It's not that the mascots turned useless, it's that the gamer demographic shifted from geeks who care more about story and characters (because they've seen all the shiny graphical advancements ahead of time, and on PC's) to the average fratboy who gets a hard-on from the rocket launcher in Halo being able to push dead bodies around.
Maybe I sound elitist, and mod me down if you must, but that's the reality of the market nowadays.
... and I'll say it again; Nintendo renaming the 'Revolution' to the 'Wii' was one of the most ingenious strokes of marketing I've ever witnessed. Never before has the name of videogame console been so talked about, argued about and generally advertised to the average (read: non-gamer) person.
I get the feeling that in the upcoming console war this name change is going to be proof of the old adage "There's no such thing as bad publicity".
Technically, not a lot stops them from insituting such policies. I imagine the public backlash would be severe enough to cause them to avoid such ideas, though.
As far as the students who are not minors, well, I suppose that would be up to any student who decided to take this issue to court. IANAL, but I would like to see what one might think of that situation.
What these kids don't understand is that simply by attending the school they lose the majority of their rights. Since they are minors, the school becomes their de facto guardian while they are there, and thusly, it has power that supercedes their rights.
It clearly encapsulates how utterly powerful the internet as a medium for interaction on a world-wide scale has become over the last few decades. From such humble DARPA beginnings to an entity capable of brokering amazingly complicated details (hundreds of thousands of times a day, for that matter), the internet is THE technological advancement of our lifetime.
How isn't that news for nerds / stuff that matters?
So, they bought up all of Acclaim's useless crap... good for them!
Couldn't they at least have gotten Turok or NBA Jam or Mortal Kombat?
I can't even imagine what their plans are for these properties, but then, I also can't imagine who came up with the fantastic idea to buy up an anthropomorphic mascot character who couldn't compete with Bubsy, a shoddy Wipeout clone and a terrible beach volleyball game whose actual volleyball aspect couldn't even compete with a game whose sole purpose was to make 14 year old boys "manipulate their joysticks" with one hand.
This story, more than anything else I've seen, shows the amazing powers of the internet. Simply by connecting so many people in almost-real-time, stuff like this has become a possibility. Admittedly, I'm sure many of the trades only came about via the publicity and novelty of the idea, but before we had the world literally at our fingertips, such ideas wouldn't have been even remotely possible.
I applaud this guy simply for trying something new and having it work out for him nicely.
This reminds me a lot of how ancient cultures would witness natural phenomena and make up elaborate mythologies to explain them. The Greeks And Romans had their pantheons, the Native Americans had earth spirits, etc, etc...
It seems that to this otherwise well-educated lawmaker, the internet is quite literally such a mystical place that he has concocted an elaborate, entirely false explanation for how it works to appease his human desire to explain things. It's fascinating really.
Of course, I'm sure he's not the only lawmaker who happens to be this far removed from the realities of the tech that we are all so familiar with. This leads to simply ridiculous laws regarding this tech (**AA's, the whole net neutrality thing, etc), and should clearly illustrate the fact that someone needs to educate these people or tell them to sit down and stop putting their nose into grown up business.
Wouldn't that cause major issues similar to how certain US states have MANY more representatives in power based on their larger populations? I can only imagine how greatly the US' server numbers overshadow those of other countries, at least until everyone moves their servers to Sweden to evade/screw the **AA's.
Besides, the internet should be used to elevate countries in dire need of economic development, and since they would currently be poorer, less tech-saavy countries, they would almost certainly be under-represented in your solution, if they are even represented at all.
... which I don't think it will, I can only imagine the horrors of playing through a game like Doom 3 with this sort of thing added in. It's bad enough that I have to see the terrible creatures of hell as I cut them to pieces with my chaingun, but I can only wince in fear at what they must smell like.
And, for that matter, this is going to require yet another PCI card, isn't it? Like I have all that many slots left after putting 2 GPU's, a PPU and a sound card in!
As to being a security issue, unless someone compiles all quotes from all movies into a text file, it is not.
And how difficult a task would that really be?
See, movies these days, have these things called "scripts"...
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, maybe this is just me, but I see this as a way for Walmart to try to reach out to the most sought after demographic, which just so happens to be the same demographic that Myspace caters to.
This demographic traditionally sees Walmart as an uncool place, but by setting up this website, they can, at best, change that image, and, at worst, get a ton of free focus group-like situations on which to base future brand ideas.
As much as I think this will tank horribly, it's a fantastic idea.
If this does become successful, however, watch for anti-hubster, anti-Walmart viral backlash on Myspace. Subversive, networked anti-advertisements are the wave of future.
But do these particular timings need to actually coincide with the particular time of day? Sure, I'm all for inventing ways to time how long it takes for microbes to blink, but we dont need to use them as our clocks, do we?
I see this as an inevitable, unavoidable future that we have brought on ourselves.
We wanted our hobby (gaming) to become successful, widespread and more mainstream, but, in that happening, more people, and thusly, more money become involved. Due to that, we get bigger publishers with bigger monetary risks and less willingness to take risk on new IP's, un-fomulaic games and so on.
Unless the industry were to collapse upon itself and become "indie" and "uncool" again, this whole situation is simply going to get worse.
It's reminiscent of how Hollywood got huge and decided to start churning out idiotic sequels and any movie by Michael Bay. Eventually something will come along and shake up the system, but it's going to be a long time in coming, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
At what point do people simply say that our time keeping methods are good enough?
We already have a clock that only loses 1 second every 70 million years! The odds of the current time keeping system (or mankind, for that matter) continuing in it's current form for the next 70 million years are rather low, so why do we really need one that only loses a second every 400 million?
Sure, it's nice to be able to improve, but can't the research money go to something more useful? Like, maybe cancer research or studies into how we can build giant robots that transform into dinosaurs...
Yes, compared to Sony and Microsoft, they did have much greater profit percentage, but as far as overall numbers, Sony EASILY outsold the N64. Also Sony (and Microsoft, in the US) outsold the Gamecube as well.
Not to mention the drop in mindshare that Nintendo experienced.
By "slumping sales", I mean "the massive drop off in the popularity of Nintendo as a brand and as THE force in videogames since the NES/SNES era". I suppose I should have clarified for those who couldn't read between the lines.
By the way, I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy, own two DS's and have a Wii on pre-order, but the above are all undeniable facts.
You will never see this "feature" in a game.
Since the development costs of games are skyrocketing and companies want to maximize their profit with little risk, they seek out ways to provide as much pleasure as possible to as many people as possible for the lowest amount of money possible.
The budget to create something like this could be much more readily implemented into providing better AI for enemies, which is something that more people would appreciate, and get more use out of. Not only that, but it's quite a bit easier for the developer to make a multiplayer system that rewards people for playing against other people and excelling at that, than it would be to code a tutorbot.
Sega-16 has a ton of fantastic interviews and historical pieces on what Sega did and did not do right during the 90's that led to the company dropping out of the hardware industry.
I'd recommend reading their many interviews with the more prominent names from Sega Of America, including Tom Kalinske, Scott Berfield, and Steve Woita.
Mascots existed for one primary reason, to give people a reason to empathize with the protaganist of the story being told.
Since that time, the focus in videogames has shifted to trying to impress the lowest common denominator with "shiny things" and "reflective slime" and other graphical enhancements. Since the general public (the same people who were not gamers back during the mascot era, ie: the kids who watch MTV and go to the latest action flick directed by Michael Bay) is so easily swayed by shiny things, and shiny things are easier, and cheaper to provide than actual compelling characters, that's what you have in the majority of games nowadays.
Of course, you still see Mario and Link and Samus over in Nintendo's camp, but Nintendo never appealed to (or tried to market to) the MTV kiddies, and they paid for it in slumping sales.
It's not that the mascots turned useless, it's that the gamer demographic shifted from geeks who care more about story and characters (because they've seen all the shiny graphical advancements ahead of time, and on PC's) to the average fratboy who gets a hard-on from the rocket launcher in Halo being able to push dead bodies around.
Maybe I sound elitist, and mod me down if you must, but that's the reality of the market nowadays.
... and I'll say it again; Nintendo renaming the 'Revolution' to the 'Wii' was one of the most ingenious strokes of marketing I've ever witnessed. Never before has the name of videogame console been so talked about, argued about and generally advertised to the average (read: non-gamer) person.
I get the feeling that in the upcoming console war this name change is going to be proof of the old adage "There's no such thing as bad publicity".
Technically, not a lot stops them from insituting such policies. I imagine the public backlash would be severe enough to cause them to avoid such ideas, though.
As far as the students who are not minors, well, I suppose that would be up to any student who decided to take this issue to court. IANAL, but I would like to see what one might think of that situation.
What these kids don't understand is that simply by attending the school they lose the majority of their rights. Since they are minors, the school becomes their de facto guardian while they are there, and thusly, it has power that supercedes their rights.
most of the trades occurred because of the publicity and novelty of the thing.
I'd be much more impressed by the second person to do this, or the fourth.
How can the article even claim to know what Vista is?
Based on a few betas?
Seems like PR hype for Leopard to me.
In such an eloquent post, I managed to prove that I am an idiot.
"details" = "deals"
It clearly encapsulates how utterly powerful the internet as a medium for interaction on a world-wide scale has become over the last few decades. From such humble DARPA beginnings to an entity capable of brokering amazingly complicated details (hundreds of thousands of times a day, for that matter), the internet is THE technological advancement of our lifetime.
How isn't that news for nerds / stuff that matters?
So, they bought up all of Acclaim's useless crap... good for them!
Couldn't they at least have gotten Turok or NBA Jam or Mortal Kombat?
I can't even imagine what their plans are for these properties, but then, I also can't imagine who came up with the fantastic idea to buy up an anthropomorphic mascot character who couldn't compete with Bubsy, a shoddy Wipeout clone and a terrible beach volleyball game whose actual volleyball aspect couldn't even compete with a game whose sole purpose was to make 14 year old boys "manipulate their joysticks" with one hand.
ReVolt was also a flop, at least at retail.
Compared to the other titles, it was a fantastic game, but it certainly didn't sell well.
This story, more than anything else I've seen, shows the amazing powers of the internet. Simply by connecting so many people in almost-real-time, stuff like this has become a possibility. Admittedly, I'm sure many of the trades only came about via the publicity and novelty of the idea, but before we had the world literally at our fingertips, such ideas wouldn't have been even remotely possible.
I applaud this guy simply for trying something new and having it work out for him nicely.
Did you really just get pissed at someone for wanting to change the term for it to a better, more logical term?
Jesus man, calm down! Take a Xanax or something!
This reminds me a lot of how ancient cultures would witness natural phenomena and make up elaborate mythologies to explain them. The Greeks And Romans had their pantheons, the Native Americans had earth spirits, etc, etc...
It seems that to this otherwise well-educated lawmaker, the internet is quite literally such a mystical place that he has concocted an elaborate, entirely false explanation for how it works to appease his human desire to explain things. It's fascinating really.
Of course, I'm sure he's not the only lawmaker who happens to be this far removed from the realities of the tech that we are all so familiar with. This leads to simply ridiculous laws regarding this tech (**AA's, the whole net neutrality thing, etc), and should clearly illustrate the fact that someone needs to educate these people or tell them to sit down and stop putting their nose into grown up business.
Now if only we launch them from Naomi Campbell they'd have some viable military applications...
Wouldn't that cause major issues similar to how certain US states have MANY more representatives in power based on their larger populations? I can only imagine how greatly the US' server numbers overshadow those of other countries, at least until everyone moves their servers to Sweden to evade/screw the **AA's.
Besides, the internet should be used to elevate countries in dire need of economic development, and since they would currently be poorer, less tech-saavy countries, they would almost certainly be under-represented in your solution, if they are even represented at all.
... which I don't think it will, I can only imagine the horrors of playing through a game like Doom 3 with this sort of thing added in. It's bad enough that I have to see the terrible creatures of hell as I cut them to pieces with my chaingun, but I can only wince in fear at what they must smell like.
And, for that matter, this is going to require yet another PCI card, isn't it? Like I have all that many slots left after putting 2 GPU's, a PPU and a sound card in!
As to being a security issue, unless someone compiles all quotes from all movies into a text file, it is not. And how difficult a task would that really be?
See, movies these days, have these things called "scripts"...
Agreed. Plus Google has always been nice enough to tell us that they're monitoring us, if not tell us what they're doing with that data.
As much as I despise being forced to trust a large company, I'd certainly rather be forced to trust Google over, say Comcast or a Telco.