I completely agree. As a kid, I'd have hated this system because it would mean there was no chance to talk my parents into 'just a few more minutes.' From their side, however, it would have relieved a lot of the tension to have the console be the bad guy instead of my parents. Not to mention that I had a sister and she got equal time on everything as well... No more fights about that.
But the console isn't really the 'bad guy'... It's still the parents. The console by itself does nothing. The parents are still parenting if they use tools to do so. Everyone's childhood was filled with devices that help the parent: Cribs, walkers, swings, etc. This is just aimed at a more mature child.
Yesterday, I got my first call in years that wasn't from a wrong number or someone I knew.
They started off asking for me by name, and I asked why. They said they wanted to do a survey. I said, 'Do you not know I'm on the Do Not Call list?' 'We're not trying to sell anything.' After about 2 minutes of nastily telling him that he was profiting from me, and therefore WAS selling something, he said 'We'll call back tomorrow.' and hung up before I could reply. That was at 5pm... Yeah, dinner time. Another 'Unknown' number called at 8pm, but I hung up before they could talk.
I'm hoping they do call back again today so I can yell at another one of them and waste their time. I'm asking for a manager straight off this time.
It's kind of nice to have someone to yell at again... It's almost a shame the DNC list works so well.
What if you don't have to, because it's still under warranty? That's all that has saved their ass so far...
I will say, though, that I buy/rent games on my PS3 rather than my 360 if given the choice now because my 360 is acting weird sometimes (graphical corruption that goes away when it's turned off and back on) and I don't want to have to wait 6 weeks until I can play it again. It's easier to just get them for the PS3 and not have to worry about it.
Maybe if I can make my 360 last long enough, they'll replace it with one that won't break when it finally does go down.
I think you're worried for nothing. NCSoft makes GuildWars under the ArenaNet name and they definitely DO listen to the players and the internet in general. The game is filled with references to popular internet sites and phenomena and each new version has things that people have been asking for. I don't see why they'd nix this policy when they make sure liberal use of it themselves.
That's not even mentioning that the majority of the dev team will remain the same, and it's only an ownership change.
Doing nothing with it? Their entire business depends on this lawsuit. If they lose this, EVERY product they sell will die. This is an excellent example of a patent doing what it is -supposed- to do: Protect the innovation and allow the innovator to profit from it.
Sun used the product from the patent and created a Free version without permission. That makes them a great 'Robin Hood', but it also makes them the 'bad guy' in the eyes of the law.
While I agree that it made no sense, it was a fun little mini game. I enjoyed it for quite some time and only towards the very end of the game did I start buying them off instead of playing the game, when money meant very little and my time was more valuable.
Would I play them on a second run through? Probably. 'good game' and 'bad game' are very subjective things. Very few games will be called 'bad' by everyone.
Oh c'mon, you can't tell me that the first time someone told you how a record player worked, you weren't amazed! I'm still amazed to this day that someone figured out how to make recordings like that. It's so primitive, and yet seems like it would be a major feat to accomplish the first time.
Who said automatically? They said they COULD have gone a step further. They could have placed a trojan on the computer, which would then contact the TS computer and allow remote access. They are saying that they DO that when the customer requests it, but it was not requested in this case.
"I never call the number given by the person or on their badge or paperwork."
Would you similarly distrust the number given to you from the email that was sent and appeared to be from management? I know I would assume that if the number differs from the public one on the web, it's because we have a corporate plan and have priority support from them. I -do- distrust anyone who claims to be X and give me the phone number to prove it. WAY too easy to fake.
"There are lots of other ways. also you don't need access to the server room to install a rogue AP and gain a wireless cracking point. one hidden nicely under the a desk on the 2nd floor corner office is a better place."
You do if the network is secured properly. Especially if they bothered to have 2 networks.
There's an insane number of those that aren't left facing, and an even crazier number of them that don't look anything like sheep. They have legs... And a body and head... But look more like dogs or rats.
I mean, I'm not artist... But when I draw a sheep, you it's supposed to be a sheep without being told.
Even more disturbing... They were paid $.02 per sheep, and spent an average of 105 seconds, making it $.69/hr... And there were only 7759 unique IP addresses. Yes, quite a few people went back over and over to draw 2cent sheep, or a few people drew a hell of a lot of them. Amazing.
"Out of 28 avatars approached this way, 12 simply moved away and 20 also responded via text chat."
So they 'simply moved away' and some also responded by text? Then they didn't 'simply move away'.
And 28 is a pretty small sample. Why bother having a bot for so small a sample? Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just do it by hand? Or just let it run a few days before publishing the results? And those who stayed put... How many were idling (not even at their computer) and how many simply ignored the childish idiot that was harrassing them? (You don't have to play online games for long until you've met enough idiots and learn that ignoring them is the best possible course of action, especially the ones that want to get right up on you and do stupid things.)
Then I've apparently been living under a rock, too, despite surfing GameSpot, GameFAQs, Joystiq, and other sites. Somehow, I don't think so. They weren't on 'every site you can imagine'.
If they release a trial period for this, I'll likely try it. Until then, I'll let people get over the initial rush and see what they really think.
I know you're joking, but there's some truth to that. I was looking for a certain few Bluray movies about 2 months ago and Kmart was one of the places I looked. (I was there for other stuff anyhow.) Not a single bloody one on the rack and the clerks had NEVER seen a movie with a blue box.
I think it's pretty safe to say that Kmart was never very interesting in Bluray in the first place.
So far, Circuit City is the best place for Bluray movie selection that I've found. They were better than BestBuy by a bit, and Target by a -lot-.
It'll depend on how instrumental it is in bringing about Skynet. Personally, I think it'll be pretty useful for it, so it goes in the 'evil' bucket. (Despite how unutterably cool it is.)
And if part of the 'bribe' is ifnorming Nigeria about all the software that -won't- run on Mandriva but will run on Windows? Maybe they've already GOT some of that software, and they don't want to have to spend money replacing it as well.
Or perhaps they already wanted Windows, but decided they couldn't afford it. The price doesn't even have to reach zero for that to be a good deal for them.
He's right: You don't know the full details. It's pointless to go off on a witchhunt without knowing what really happened. All we have is a letter (complete with typos... I assume they aren't grammar mistakes) from someone who is pissed off and ALSO doesn't have all the information.
Who says they don't already compare in-genre? I'll give you a hint: They do.
And some review sites already DO have multiple ratings for a game. GameSpot has their own, their readers', and other critics all listed at once. Reader reviews almost always score the game higher than GameSpot does, meaning that GS looks for a little more quality at the top end of the scale than their readers do.
No, but you could turn it off for the rest of the time and save energy instead. Not to mention your power bill.
I ran SETI for a while when I thought it was neat. I quit when they announced they'd been through all the records 3 times and found nothing. Sure, they're doing it again with more detailed information, but that's apparently just not how we're going to find the aliens.
This project is a little more down-to-earth, but in the end they're still asking us to use our money to fund their research, however indirectly. It's not just 'unused cycles', it's money spent.
That's the -same thing-. It's a numerical score. We already have that, just with a different number.
You see, there's no such thing as a perfect restaurant, either, but there -are- 5-star restaurants. That's 5/5 on the game scoring chart. Or 10/10. Or 100/100. It's all the same thing.
Just like a restaurant, 10/10 for a gaming score simply means 'it's as good as could possibly be expected' or 'it's better than expected, even when you expect excellence.' Nobody claims it means perfection anymore since that is humanly impossible to create.
From the summary (which seems to be a lot clearly than the actual article) it appears they are simply going to put out bad movies on DVD with some preface by actors from mst3k. -yawn-
If they were going to publish the most popular mst3k episodes (with the comedy intact) that might be quite a bit more interesting and enticing.
I was reading through the comments, and the last one of the guy who quit submitting because they delete without even informing those who have submitted... It made me think: Is there a Delete Storm coming? Where people just go to every page they can find and hit delete on everything?
Slashdot tends to draw attention to things in a massive way, and that Delete button is pretty high-profile right now.
I'm not saying people should do it, but if they did... Would it cause a policy change? A LOT of useful articles will disappear if it happens.
Personally, I think Wikipedia is only good for the non-obvious stuff... You know, the stuff you -can't- find in a 'real' encyclopedia. Anything I could find in a real one, I'd go there first, since I'd likely want to cite it.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely agree. As a kid, I'd have hated this system because it would mean there was no chance to talk my parents into 'just a few more minutes.' From their side, however, it would have relieved a lot of the tension to have the console be the bad guy instead of my parents. Not to mention that I had a sister and she got equal time on everything as well... No more fights about that.
But the console isn't really the 'bad guy'... It's still the parents. The console by itself does nothing. The parents are still parenting if they use tools to do so. Everyone's childhood was filled with devices that help the parent: Cribs, walkers, swings, etc. This is just aimed at a more mature child.
Yesterday, I got my first call in years that wasn't from a wrong number or someone I knew.
They started off asking for me by name, and I asked why. They said they wanted to do a survey. I said, 'Do you not know I'm on the Do Not Call list?' 'We're not trying to sell anything.' After about 2 minutes of nastily telling him that he was profiting from me, and therefore WAS selling something, he said 'We'll call back tomorrow.' and hung up before I could reply. That was at 5pm... Yeah, dinner time. Another 'Unknown' number called at 8pm, but I hung up before they could talk.
I'm hoping they do call back again today so I can yell at another one of them and waste their time. I'm asking for a manager straight off this time.
It's kind of nice to have someone to yell at again... It's almost a shame the DNC list works so well.
http://www.arenanet.com/about.php
"Located in Bellevue, Washington, ArenaNet is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation."
Tell me again how independent they are?
What if you don't have to, because it's still under warranty? That's all that has saved their ass so far...
I will say, though, that I buy/rent games on my PS3 rather than my 360 if given the choice now because my 360 is acting weird sometimes (graphical corruption that goes away when it's turned off and back on) and I don't want to have to wait 6 weeks until I can play it again. It's easier to just get them for the PS3 and not have to worry about it.
Maybe if I can make my 360 last long enough, they'll replace it with one that won't break when it finally does go down.
I think you're worried for nothing. NCSoft makes GuildWars under the ArenaNet name and they definitely DO listen to the players and the internet in general. The game is filled with references to popular internet sites and phenomena and each new version has things that people have been asking for. I don't see why they'd nix this policy when they make sure liberal use of it themselves.
That's not even mentioning that the majority of the dev team will remain the same, and it's only an ownership change.
Doing nothing with it? Their entire business depends on this lawsuit. If they lose this, EVERY product they sell will die. This is an excellent example of a patent doing what it is -supposed- to do: Protect the innovation and allow the innovator to profit from it.
Sun used the product from the patent and created a Free version without permission. That makes them a great 'Robin Hood', but it also makes them the 'bad guy' in the eyes of the law.
While I agree that it made no sense, it was a fun little mini game. I enjoyed it for quite some time and only towards the very end of the game did I start buying them off instead of playing the game, when money meant very little and my time was more valuable.
Would I play them on a second run through? Probably. 'good game' and 'bad game' are very subjective things. Very few games will be called 'bad' by everyone.
Oh c'mon, you can't tell me that the first time someone told you how a record player worked, you weren't amazed! I'm still amazed to this day that someone figured out how to make recordings like that. It's so primitive, and yet seems like it would be a major feat to accomplish the first time.
Who said automatically? They said they COULD have gone a step further. They could have placed a trojan on the computer, which would then contact the TS computer and allow remote access. They are saying that they DO that when the customer requests it, but it was not requested in this case.
"I never call the number given by the person or on their badge or paperwork."
Would you similarly distrust the number given to you from the email that was sent and appeared to be from management? I know I would assume that if the number differs from the public one on the web, it's because we have a corporate plan and have priority support from them. I -do- distrust anyone who claims to be X and give me the phone number to prove it. WAY too easy to fake.
"There are lots of other ways. also you don't need access to the server room to install a rogue AP and gain a wireless cracking point. one hidden nicely under the a desk on the 2nd floor corner office is a better place."
You do if the network is secured properly. Especially if they bothered to have 2 networks.
There's an insane number of those that aren't left facing, and an even crazier number of them that don't look anything like sheep. They have legs... And a body and head... But look more like dogs or rats.
... And there were only 7759 unique IP addresses. Yes, quite a few people went back over and over to draw 2cent sheep, or a few people drew a hell of a lot of them. Amazing.
I mean, I'm not artist... But when I draw a sheep, you it's supposed to be a sheep without being told.
Even more disturbing... They were paid $.02 per sheep, and spent an average of 105 seconds, making it $.69/hr
There were still humans involved, and even being experimented ON. If that was truly their reasoning, it's idiotic.
"Out of 28 avatars approached this way, 12 simply moved away and 20 also responded via text chat."
So they 'simply moved away' and some also responded by text? Then they didn't 'simply move away'.
And 28 is a pretty small sample. Why bother having a bot for so small a sample? Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just do it by hand? Or just let it run a few days before publishing the results? And those who stayed put... How many were idling (not even at their computer) and how many simply ignored the childish idiot that was harrassing them? (You don't have to play online games for long until you've met enough idiots and learn that ignoring them is the best possible course of action, especially the ones that want to get right up on you and do stupid things.)
Then I've apparently been living under a rock, too, despite surfing GameSpot, GameFAQs, Joystiq, and other sites. Somehow, I don't think so. They weren't on 'every site you can imagine'.
If they release a trial period for this, I'll likely try it. Until then, I'll let people get over the initial rush and see what they really think.
I know you're joking, but there's some truth to that. I was looking for a certain few Bluray movies about 2 months ago and Kmart was one of the places I looked. (I was there for other stuff anyhow.) Not a single bloody one on the rack and the clerks had NEVER seen a movie with a blue box.
I think it's pretty safe to say that Kmart was never very interesting in Bluray in the first place.
So far, Circuit City is the best place for Bluray movie selection that I've found. They were better than BestBuy by a bit, and Target by a -lot-.
It'll depend on how instrumental it is in bringing about Skynet. Personally, I think it'll be pretty useful for it, so it goes in the 'evil' bucket. (Despite how unutterably cool it is.)
Just skimmed the first page, huh? Maybe you should read the rest of it and then comment on their speaker recommendations.
And if part of the 'bribe' is ifnorming Nigeria about all the software that -won't- run on Mandriva but will run on Windows? Maybe they've already GOT some of that software, and they don't want to have to spend money replacing it as well.
Or perhaps they already wanted Windows, but decided they couldn't afford it. The price doesn't even have to reach zero for that to be a good deal for them.
He's right: You don't know the full details. It's pointless to go off on a witchhunt without knowing what really happened. All we have is a letter (complete with typos... I assume they aren't grammar mistakes) from someone who is pissed off and ALSO doesn't have all the information.
Who says they don't already compare in-genre? I'll give you a hint: They do.
And some review sites already DO have multiple ratings for a game. GameSpot has their own, their readers', and other critics all listed at once. Reader reviews almost always score the game higher than GameSpot does, meaning that GS looks for a little more quality at the top end of the scale than their readers do.
No, but you could turn it off for the rest of the time and save energy instead. Not to mention your power bill.
I ran SETI for a while when I thought it was neat. I quit when they announced they'd been through all the records 3 times and found nothing. Sure, they're doing it again with more detailed information, but that's apparently just not how we're going to find the aliens.
This project is a little more down-to-earth, but in the end they're still asking us to use our money to fund their research, however indirectly. It's not just 'unused cycles', it's money spent.
And unique. If every review were like his, I couldn't be bothered with them. But his are clever, funny, and unique. And fairly accurate.
That's the -same thing-. It's a numerical score. We already have that, just with a different number.
You see, there's no such thing as a perfect restaurant, either, but there -are- 5-star restaurants. That's 5/5 on the game scoring chart. Or 10/10. Or 100/100. It's all the same thing.
Just like a restaurant, 10/10 for a gaming score simply means 'it's as good as could possibly be expected' or 'it's better than expected, even when you expect excellence.' Nobody claims it means perfection anymore since that is humanly impossible to create.
From the summary (which seems to be a lot clearly than the actual article) it appears they are simply going to put out bad movies on DVD with some preface by actors from mst3k. -yawn-
If they were going to publish the most popular mst3k episodes (with the comedy intact) that might be quite a bit more interesting and enticing.
Don't worry, it's only some bloggers calling it 2.0. Google says it is not called that.
I was reading through the comments, and the last one of the guy who quit submitting because they delete without even informing those who have submitted... It made me think: Is there a Delete Storm coming? Where people just go to every page they can find and hit delete on everything?
Slashdot tends to draw attention to things in a massive way, and that Delete button is pretty high-profile right now.
I'm not saying people should do it, but if they did... Would it cause a policy change? A LOT of useful articles will disappear if it happens.
Personally, I think Wikipedia is only good for the non-obvious stuff... You know, the stuff you -can't- find in a 'real' encyclopedia. Anything I could find in a real one, I'd go there first, since I'd likely want to cite it.