I don't hate India. I hate the companies that route my calls there.
What's annoying about the Indians taking the calls is that they pretend to understand when you use words or phrases they don't get, and it quickly becomes apparent as they struggle to troubleshoot a problem they never comprehended in the first place. But they're taught to do this, just like they're taught to tell me their name is Steve or John or Bob. Again, it's really the fault of the company putting the almighty dollar ahead of customer satisfaction.
Not that I download music these days (I really don't) but I'd expect them to prove how many songs I distributed so that I can pay them a fair price. And I'll know if they're lying, because I know what my torrent sharing ratio is.
"Let's see...you distributed 43% of one copy of Achy Breaky Heart, and since these days we have to pay people to listen to it, we owe you...$19.47."
Problem is, angry mobs tend to "air their grievances" in ways that harm themselves or other people. I've seen grievances aired by throwing rocks at cops who are passively watching the protest, for example.
What these activist twits don't get is that attacking the police and destroying private property does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for whatever cause it is they're yelling about. I'm all for the right to assemble (as are 99% of cops on the force) but we've really got to quit pointing fingers at the police when protests so frequently turn violent without any interference by the cops.
Well what's the point in placing ads where there would be intense action? You want them where gamers have time to notice them. Put them in guarded spawn points, where a player can hesitate for a few seconds without getting blown away. Put them on loading or login screens (press A to flag this site/offer to be viewed later) et cetera.
The key thing about my idea is that it would allow advertisers to hook players. Certain high-traffic websites have advertisers that post deals only to those websites. The ad is a link to special pricing. By finding a way to do that in game, they will get a much better return on their advertising dollars.
Say you're playing a FPS. You spawn and see an ad for the latest video card. The text says "special price for players only, $329" and the cheapest you've seen it elsewhere was $349. With the click of a button you bookmark that ad and head out there door. You get a good deal, the company gets a few bucks, and the advertiser makes a sale. Win/win/win.
If you want to take it a step further, add the ability of the software to collect information, but only with permission of the user. I'd divide this up into three sections: hardware, software, and browsing history. If I allow them to collect hardware information, it would help them decide which video card I might want to buy. But I might not want them knowing what software I use or where I've been surfing. The more control the consumer has, the safer he'll feel with your product. It's a no-brainer to allow me to opt out of giving up personal data.
What concerns me is the invasiveness of advertising. I've got no problem with in-game billboards and posters featuring real ads or loading screens with corporate logos or even heavy product placement. I just don't want Command & Conquer 4 checking my browsing history and examining my cookies to determine what ads are "best" for me.
Rather having a game dig around where it most certainly doesn't belong, how about they devise a way for me to flag the ads that get my attention so that when I exit the game, I get more info on them? What's the point in a Newegg.com ad in Counter-Strike if I've completely forgotten about it when I log out two hours later? The more ads I mark as interesting, the more targetted their ads can be.
Think about how Amazon.com makes book recommendations. The first time you buy from the site, they have no clue what you like. After your first purchase, they recommend books related to the one you ordered. The more you buy, the better they get at recommending books and predicting your tastes. There's no snooping around, they just what information you willing give them.
So here's a quick thought on how to do it: if a Counter-Strike player "clicks" an ad (myabe determined by a prolonged look, maybe by shooting it in a certain place, I don't know), when he exits the game a browser window is launched with links to the ads he selected. This would allow some very targetted ads; Dell could link directly to a special deal on an XPS system rather than just having a billboard that says "DELL XPS: The best gaming PC in the world" or whatever.
Hmm...would this post serve as prior art if someone should try to patent such a system?:)
If the BBC is looking for evidence that the world isn't getting warmer, they won't find it. It is. No one is arguing that.
If the BBC is looking for legitimate scientific arguments that there are more explanations to the warming than "omg it's all our fault", then I think they'll dig up some good researh, even if they don't find the smoking gun they're looking for.
Two separate posts blaming global warming. I believe this represents a scientific consensus. Any further challenge to the claims shall be disregarded and any contrary data ignored as irrelevant, false, or mistaken....
There are two different C&C story lines: Red Alert and the Tiberian Wars (according to the wiki I read a while back). The commonality is the interface and gameplay, not the stories or units. Generals completely deviates from everything ever done in C&C. The name was just tacked on for marketing purposes.
I imagine it went something like this:
EA developer team: "We've got a new RTS we're developing." EA marketing team: "RTS? Isn't that like Command & Conquer?" Dev: "Yes, sort of, but it's not really--" Marketing: "Great! A new C&C game! We'll make millions!" Dev: "No, see, it's not made like--" Marketing: "When can you have it done?" Dev: "It's a little early to--" Marketing: "Can we shove it out the door in time for ?" Dev: "...I guess we can, but it won't really be finished. You see, we'll have to--" Marketing: "Great! See you then!" *walks out* Dev: "--just throw together a barely-working net code and rush out an interface for online play that will lack a lot of common-sense interface features."
I play it online a bit because it's one of the few games that everyone has at my LAN parties. Since they're "my" LANs, I have to keep my edge in the game so that I'm the best there. I've got hundreds of online games to my name, and dozens if not hundreds of LAN games.
But because such a short post won't explain to the uninformed: The debacle that was C&C Generals should tell you just how bad EA's influence is on a proven game series. After all the great work that Westwood did defining the C&C series, EA released C&C Generals as a wannabe StarCraft with horrible netcode and next to no support.
They lost me with the cutscenes. Hey! There's a new and scary-looking monster! I'll stand still and watch it get within striking distance before I even think about using my weapon!
I actually hit a cutscene that killed me every time. When it released the monster immediately hit me, not matter what I tried. My health was low, and I was forced to go back and replay about twenty minutes of game to get past it. HORRIBLE game design.
That, and their version of scary is forcing you to fight in the dark since the space marines apparently don't train people to use a pistol and flashlight at the same time and having concealed doors open after walk past them every hundred yards or so.
What was really disappointing about HL2 was the amount of time spent going somewhere. I think I spent 14 hours on it...I know I finished it in a weekend. I think I spent three of those hours driving those stupid vehicles from point A to point B. Far Cry made much better implementation of vehicles.
...on the game genre, the target demographic, the platform, and lots more stuff.
A deep RPG could be a hundred hours long and some gamers would clamor for more. The best FPS would become tedious after 100 hours. Strategy games (especially real-time) vary wildly depending on the skill of the player; some people can sail through missions in ten minutes while others take hours.
A few generalized "ideal" game lengths:
FPS: 20-35 hours, with sufficient variation to avoid tedium and ways to finish faster for the dedicated gamer. RTS: No more than 15-20 *missions* in a campaign. RPG: At *least* 40 hours, but not much more than 100. Adventure: 20 hours of actual gameplay, tops. Some people will spend quite a bit of time on certain puzzles.
We're planning to upgrade in mid-2008 to use it as an excuse to force us off ancient buggy software. We'll just say it doesn't work in Vista and the developer quit supporting, so it's gone. Yay for us.
$1,000 is way over the top. Businesses aren't licensing Vista Ultimate. Oh, and we're talking about upgrades, not new purchases since those won't be much different than adding new licenses today. It will cost somewhere around $300-400 to upgrade.
You should see educational pricing. It's going to cost us about $100 per PC. For BOTH.
"Great. Another thing we're going to have to figure out how to block at the school. This is just what we need: another app to help middle school students surf porn sites."
Yes, it has it's legitimate humanity-improving uses, but any kid in the US who reads/. just found a better way to circumvent their schools' filters.
And do they really think China won't figure out how to stop this?
I've lost the ability to record FM on my Creative Zen with my last firmware update... ostensibly, though I can't confirm it because of industry pressure on Creative -- it was one of the features I bought it for.
This is one of the best examples yet of why one should not upgrade firmware on a device unless there is an immediate need for an update.
I should think that removing a feature from a purchased item after the fact is grounds for a lawsuit, especially if the packaging and manual list it as a feature. I'd suggest a class action suit demanding the functionality be restored or a refund of your money. Hey, everyone else is suing someone, let's get in on the action!
Operating systems which, until very recently, couldn't be updated or modified at all. That sort of makes them resistant to infections. It also makes them obsolete very quickly.
I've wondered if anyone will every find out how to spread malware on the PS3 or XBOX 360, or perhaps the next generation of consoles. I think both work by flashing components of their OS, and it can only be done by disk...this would prevent easy spread unless the system could be tricked into doing it by other means. The static nature of their designs allows a much more signficant lock down on the OS than even *nix can provide.
We'll have a casualty-free war about the same time we get our flying cars and paperless society. They're pipe dreams of the wannabe visionaries who have lost touch with reality.
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I don't hate India. I hate the companies that route my calls there.
What's annoying about the Indians taking the calls is that they pretend to understand when you use words or phrases they don't get, and it quickly becomes apparent as they struggle to troubleshoot a problem they never comprehended in the first place. But they're taught to do this, just like they're taught to tell me their name is Steve or John or Bob. Again, it's really the fault of the company putting the almighty dollar ahead of customer satisfaction.
Not that I download music these days (I really don't) but I'd expect them to prove how many songs I distributed so that I can pay them a fair price. And I'll know if they're lying, because I know what my torrent sharing ratio is.
"Let's see...you distributed 43% of one copy of Achy Breaky Heart, and since these days we have to pay people to listen to it, we owe you...$19.47."
Problem is, angry mobs tend to "air their grievances" in ways that harm themselves or other people. I've seen grievances aired by throwing rocks at cops who are passively watching the protest, for example.
What these activist twits don't get is that attacking the police and destroying private property does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for whatever cause it is they're yelling about. I'm all for the right to assemble (as are 99% of cops on the force) but we've really got to quit pointing fingers at the police when protests so frequently turn violent without any interference by the cops.
Well what's the point in placing ads where there would be intense action? You want them where gamers have time to notice them. Put them in guarded spawn points, where a player can hesitate for a few seconds without getting blown away. Put them on loading or login screens (press A to flag this site/offer to be viewed later) et cetera.
The key thing about my idea is that it would allow advertisers to hook players. Certain high-traffic websites have advertisers that post deals only to those websites. The ad is a link to special pricing. By finding a way to do that in game, they will get a much better return on their advertising dollars.
Say you're playing a FPS. You spawn and see an ad for the latest video card. The text says "special price for players only, $329" and the cheapest you've seen it elsewhere was $349. With the click of a button you bookmark that ad and head out there door. You get a good deal, the company gets a few bucks, and the advertiser makes a sale. Win/win/win.
If you want to take it a step further, add the ability of the software to collect information, but only with permission of the user. I'd divide this up into three sections: hardware, software, and browsing history. If I allow them to collect hardware information, it would help them decide which video card I might want to buy. But I might not want them knowing what software I use or where I've been surfing. The more control the consumer has, the safer he'll feel with your product. It's a no-brainer to allow me to opt out of giving up personal data.
What concerns me is the invasiveness of advertising. I've got no problem with in-game billboards and posters featuring real ads or loading screens with corporate logos or even heavy product placement. I just don't want Command & Conquer 4 checking my browsing history and examining my cookies to determine what ads are "best" for me.
:)
Rather having a game dig around where it most certainly doesn't belong, how about they devise a way for me to flag the ads that get my attention so that when I exit the game, I get more info on them? What's the point in a Newegg.com ad in Counter-Strike if I've completely forgotten about it when I log out two hours later? The more ads I mark as interesting, the more targetted their ads can be.
Think about how Amazon.com makes book recommendations. The first time you buy from the site, they have no clue what you like. After your first purchase, they recommend books related to the one you ordered. The more you buy, the better they get at recommending books and predicting your tastes. There's no snooping around, they just what information you willing give them.
So here's a quick thought on how to do it: if a Counter-Strike player "clicks" an ad (myabe determined by a prolonged look, maybe by shooting it in a certain place, I don't know), when he exits the game a browser window is launched with links to the ads he selected. This would allow some very targetted ads; Dell could link directly to a special deal on an XPS system rather than just having a billboard that says "DELL XPS: The best gaming PC in the world" or whatever.
Hmm...would this post serve as prior art if someone should try to patent such a system?
If the BBC is looking for evidence that the world isn't getting warmer, they won't find it. It is. No one is arguing that.
If the BBC is looking for legitimate scientific arguments that there are more explanations to the warming than "omg it's all our fault", then I think they'll dig up some good researh, even if they don't find the smoking gun they're looking for.
Two separate posts blaming global warming. I believe this represents a scientific consensus. Any further challenge to the claims shall be disregarded and any contrary data ignored as irrelevant, false, or mistaken. ...
BRACE FOR MODDING INTO OBLIVION!
In related news, NASA was sued today by party supplier giant SuperDuperFunCo for trademark infringement.
There are two different C&C story lines: Red Alert and the Tiberian Wars (according to the wiki I read a while back). The commonality is the interface and gameplay, not the stories or units. Generals completely deviates from everything ever done in C&C. The name was just tacked on for marketing purposes.
I imagine it went something like this:
EA developer team: "We've got a new RTS we're developing."
EA marketing team: "RTS? Isn't that like Command & Conquer?"
Dev: "Yes, sort of, but it's not really--"
Marketing: "Great! A new C&C game! We'll make millions!"
Dev: "No, see, it's not made like--"
Marketing: "When can you have it done?"
Dev: "It's a little early to--"
Marketing: "Can we shove it out the door in time for ?"
Dev: "...I guess we can, but it won't really be finished. You see, we'll have to--"
Marketing: "Great! See you then!" *walks out*
Dev: "--just throw together a barely-working net code and rush out an interface for online play that will lack a lot of common-sense interface features."
I thought that was assumed. You can't even begin to define the length of a competitive multiplayer game.
I play it online a bit because it's one of the few games that everyone has at my LAN parties. Since they're "my" LANs, I have to keep my edge in the game so that I'm the best there. I've got hundreds of online games to my name, and dozens if not hundreds of LAN games.
How is one of the first posts to the article redundant?
Lovely moderation.
You freeze them and throw them at your enemies.
'nuff said.
But because such a short post won't explain to the uninformed: The debacle that was C&C Generals should tell you just how bad EA's influence is on a proven game series. After all the great work that Westwood did defining the C&C series, EA released C&C Generals as a wannabe StarCraft with horrible netcode and next to no support.
Doom 3 bored me after about 3 hours.
They lost me with the cutscenes. Hey! There's a new and scary-looking monster! I'll stand still and watch it get within striking distance before I even think about using my weapon!
I actually hit a cutscene that killed me every time. When it released the monster immediately hit me, not matter what I tried. My health was low, and I was forced to go back and replay about twenty minutes of game to get past it. HORRIBLE game design.
That, and their version of scary is forcing you to fight in the dark since the space marines apparently don't train people to use a pistol and flashlight at the same time and having concealed doors open after walk past them every hundred yards or so.
Because the developers of the apps aren't willing to do that?
What, you think everyone develops their own apps and/or uses open source exculsively?
What was really disappointing about HL2 was the amount of time spent going somewhere. I think I spent 14 hours on it...I know I finished it in a weekend. I think I spent three of those hours driving those stupid vehicles from point A to point B. Far Cry made much better implementation of vehicles.
...on the game genre, the target demographic, the platform, and lots more stuff.
A deep RPG could be a hundred hours long and some gamers would clamor for more. The best FPS would become tedious after 100 hours. Strategy games (especially real-time) vary wildly depending on the skill of the player; some people can sail through missions in ten minutes while others take hours.
A few generalized "ideal" game lengths:
FPS: 20-35 hours, with sufficient variation to avoid tedium and ways to finish faster for the dedicated gamer.
RTS: No more than 15-20 *missions* in a campaign.
RPG: At *least* 40 hours, but not much more than 100.
Adventure: 20 hours of actual gameplay, tops. Some people will spend quite a bit of time on certain puzzles.
We're planning to upgrade in mid-2008 to use it as an excuse to force us off ancient buggy software. We'll just say it doesn't work in Vista and the developer quit supporting, so it's gone. Yay for us.
$1,000 is way over the top. Businesses aren't licensing Vista Ultimate. Oh, and we're talking about upgrades, not new purchases since those won't be much different than adding new licenses today. It will cost somewhere around $300-400 to upgrade.
You should see educational pricing. It's going to cost us about $100 per PC. For BOTH.
I can't seem to come up with a way to apply "It's a trap!", the borg, or a chair reference to this story.
I know...ITSAHOAX!
It must be...
My first thought:
/. just found a better way to circumvent their schools' filters.
"Great. Another thing we're going to have to figure out how to block at the school. This is just what we need: another app to help middle school students surf porn sites."
Yes, it has it's legitimate humanity-improving uses, but any kid in the US who reads
And do they really think China won't figure out how to stop this?
I've lost the ability to record FM on my Creative Zen with my last firmware update... ostensibly, though I can't confirm it because of industry pressure on Creative -- it was one of the features I bought it for.
This is one of the best examples yet of why one should not upgrade firmware on a device unless there is an immediate need for an update.
I should think that removing a feature from a purchased item after the fact is grounds for a lawsuit, especially if the packaging and manual list it as a feature. I'd suggest a class action suit demanding the functionality be restored or a refund of your money. Hey, everyone else is suing someone, let's get in on the action!
Operating systems which, until very recently, couldn't be updated or modified at all. That sort of makes them resistant to infections. It also makes them obsolete very quickly.
I've wondered if anyone will every find out how to spread malware on the PS3 or XBOX 360, or perhaps the next generation of consoles. I think both work by flashing components of their OS, and it can only be done by disk...this would prevent easy spread unless the system could be tricked into doing it by other means. The static nature of their designs allows a much more signficant lock down on the OS than even *nix can provide.
We'll have a casualty-free war about the same time we get our flying cars and paperless society. They're pipe dreams of the wannabe visionaries who have lost touch with reality.