However, you still get more accurate data on user trends as a whole - you no longer have the old problem of the fact that only the sort of people who fill in surveys will fill in your surveys, and they're not generally a representative sample.
Any data at all on user trends more than their competitors will help advertising companies make money.
The article makes no mention of what games they used on the Wii to test this. My experience is that some games are far more active than others - playing Wario Ware normally leaves me quite worn out after a while, but playing Super Mario Galaxy requires almost no movement. Without knowing what they used for the experiment, its results are meaningless...
How are they planning on fuelling these reactors? I somewhat doubt, with current paranoia about terrorist "dirty bombs", that they'll be willing to use uranium, which seems to me to somewhat defeat the point of a nuclear reactor...
Re:The genius that is Microsoft...
on
MSN Censors Your IM
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· Score: 4, Insightful
People always miss the point in these arguments, and say "get such and such instead" - it doesn't help, because my friends use MSN, and probably the same for most tech savvy MSN users. Sure, I'd rather use a better protocol, but I'm stuck using what my friends are on. This is the problem with "picking" an IM - the decision isn't made by you, but by the people you want to talk to who already have picked one.
If it's obviously marketing and rhetoric, noone is going to take it seriously. They need to be honest and open if they want anyone to find their blog interesting or worthwhile, and maybe make it actually interesting, rather than an obvious gimmick done to try and shift a few more PS3s. Honestly, how long will it be before major corporations realise this? Do they honestly not think, and just try to get in on new trends without considering whether they're doing WELL?
Shocking revelation: one big profit driven multinational corporation being paid by another big profit driven multinational corporation to do something they probably shouldn't be doing. Whatever next?
If children aren't taught the metric system, they'll have to learn it. As a scientist, I can attest to the massive superiority of the metric system for scientific measurements et cetera, after all, that's partly what it was DESIGNED for. (1cm^3 of pure water doesn't weight 1g at sea level for no reason, for example...).
I like in England, where we're mostly metric (although a lot of Imperial units are still used), but ALL scientists use metric for everything. It's not because of some magical superiorty science that normal people need either, it's mostly because multiplying by 10 is a lot easier than multiplying by 12 then 16 then 8, or whatever!
Now this is, admittedly, hearsay, and I've not gone to look for collaboration:
What I'd heard is that allofmp3 PAYS royalties, but the American firms refuse them, as they're "not enough". So when they accuse them of not paying a dime, it's because they won't accept the payments, more than anything else... Can anyone confirm/deny this?
RTFA: The chip contains no information not in the passport, and as the chip can't be cloned remotely, you'd have the passport in order to clone the chip.
I'm all in favour of clean energy, I think it's a laudable goal, but we shouldn't be patting eachother on our backs just yet.
Firstly, these solar cells are no doubt incredibly expensive - any high efficiency ones are. Secondly, they're probably made using rare and/or exotic materiels, making manufacturing in bulk tricky, and thirdly there's likely to be a lot of pollution created in the manufacturing process for by-products et cetera (it's a problem with less efficient cells too, but the more efficient ones are generally more pollutions).
Lastly, there's another issue. What happens when the sun goes behind a cloud? You need to be able to cover the entire slack in an instant, because you NEED a constant power output. That means you NEED enough GAS powerplants to power the whole world too, as they're the only type of power plant you can literally turn the dial and turn up the output.
Me, I'm going to be sitting here hoping that the test fusion plant they're building in France works, because from what I've learnt lately, if it doesn't, we're screwed.
While it wouldn't suprise me if Google wanted their own OS, from their past history it seems more likely they'd buy their way into the OS market somehow rather than developing it entirely in-house. I would have thought any GoogleOS would be after a string of relevant corporate takeovers and purchases, which would make it rather obvious...
Well, scientists DID measure thousands of falling objects to various degrees of accuracy to come to values for g (acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's groundlevel) and G (gravitiational constant). This experiment is showing that the General Relativity model predicts things accurately to at least 99.95% accuracy.
MMOs: Star Wars Galaxies is in there, Dark Age of Camelot, the Everquest expansion pack (it was the only part of the series released after the 2000 cut off point), WoW of course. If there was another I've forgotten it, but I seem to remember seeing a 5th, could be wrong.
The thing is, there's no comparison here of numbers sold compared to your 90s classics. So a few games are selling well by pitching themselves to impulse buyers, and hoping noone reads reviews and the like? As long as quality games are coming out too, see Half Life 2, Far Cry, Doom 3 from the list, all of which have been in their own way benchmark games for the FPS genre (although less so Doom 3), RTSs like Empire Earth and Rome Total War. Sure, they're based on ideas done before, but the more games in existance, the less totally new ideas there will be. I for one think as long as each game is better than the previous games, whether it uses unique ideas or simply combines a number of existing ones with a few neat ideas of their own to make a better game than anything preceding it, what does it matter?
I used to play a lot of the 90s games you name, and sure, while they're fun still, I still tend to more enjoy playing many of the newer releases.
I only meant it as a humerous comment, but my point was this is sales of games in shops, often big stores like Wal-Mart, so a lot of these are going to be impulse purchases et cetera, rather than buying a game you've read reviews of et cetera.
Also, Deer Hunter was apparently terrible, it got some impressively low scores, but involved shooting cute animals for no particular reason, so sold well.
Starcraft is pre-2000 ('97 if I remember right? Definately later 90s), therefore wouldn't make it on the list. If you did a list of sales all time, via online AND stores, from the whole world, and I'm not sure what would win. I rather suspect it would be something suprising though, most likely an older game that's just kept selling for a long time... I'd be interested to see the results of any study like that, although I doubt the data's there to do a decent study.
PCs are not just owned by 20something men anymore, shockingly other groups of people are buying games, and distorting the sales accordingly. If ~10 year old girls are playing games, I think they're more likely to be wanting Barbie Pet Rescue to Doom 3, don't you?
This is PC game sales in US shops. Why are you so suprised that PC owners other than hardcore gamers might pick up a game they think looks interesting, or young children might want to play a family friendly game like Bob the Builder?
Firstly, it's on half the timeframe of the 90s you cite.
More to the point, it's not a DECLINE, it's just a wider variety of people buying games, resulting in sales of games not purely based on the classic male, 20something gamer formulae. I hate the way people attribute a wider variety of people buying games to a decline..
Also, I saw at least 4 MMORPGs, and you complain about using old games, and yet you refer to the Wing Commander series and the Command and Conquer RTSes. You can't have it both ways...
It's not really suprising, universal appeal and a quick and easy to pick up game that everyone knows how to play is likely to outsell even a big name gamers only type game. Serious gamers only make a small proportion of PC owners these days...
There tend to be a lot MORE PC games than console games released, so the market is more spread. The report is also only since 2000, which means that games from '05 and '06 have had far less time to sell budget copies and the like, than big games released 5 or 6 years ago.
Good journalism is about telling the truth in an unbiased way. This law prevents people from creating bias in legal cases before the result has been reached by a jury with ALL the facts. Publishing a view on someone's guilt or innocence before it's been proven either way is NOT good journalism.
Purely legally? Well, they're a multinational corporation - I'm no lawyer but I rather suspect they could be sued in this country, even have assets in British territory seized I would imagine, if they were breaking British law (the same happens to Britains who break American law). But, as I've tried to explain in my other posts, I think it's more than just a legal requirement - it's just generally good journalism, and the right thing to do (in my view).
If your censoring yourself, it's not violating the First Amendment as far as I know: you have chosen not to say something.
This fact is, this isn't some all encompassing nazi-esque law, just a law designed to make sure we all have the right of innoccent until proven guilty. Even if they don't have to follow it, they can choose to, in the same way that respectable newspapers tend to steer clear of slander, even if they have the right to say whatever they want - it's just not good journalism.
Slashdot Mirror
However, you still get more accurate data on user trends as a whole - you no longer have the old problem of the fact that only the sort of people who fill in surveys will fill in your surveys, and they're not generally a representative sample.
Any data at all on user trends more than their competitors will help advertising companies make money.
The article makes no mention of what games they used on the Wii to test this. My experience is that some games are far more active than others - playing Wario Ware normally leaves me quite worn out after a while, but playing Super Mario Galaxy requires almost no movement. Without knowing what they used for the experiment, its results are meaningless...
How are they planning on fuelling these reactors? I somewhat doubt, with current paranoia about terrorist "dirty bombs", that they'll be willing to use uranium, which seems to me to somewhat defeat the point of a nuclear reactor...
People always miss the point in these arguments, and say "get such and such instead" - it doesn't help, because my friends use MSN, and probably the same for most tech savvy MSN users. Sure, I'd rather use a better protocol, but I'm stuck using what my friends are on. This is the problem with "picking" an IM - the decision isn't made by you, but by the people you want to talk to who already have picked one.
If it's obviously marketing and rhetoric, noone is going to take it seriously. They need to be honest and open if they want anyone to find their blog interesting or worthwhile, and maybe make it actually interesting, rather than an obvious gimmick done to try and shift a few more PS3s. Honestly, how long will it be before major corporations realise this? Do they honestly not think, and just try to get in on new trends without considering whether they're doing WELL?
Shocking revelation: one big profit driven multinational corporation being paid by another big profit driven multinational corporation to do something they probably shouldn't be doing. Whatever next?
If children aren't taught the metric system, they'll have to learn it. As a scientist, I can attest to the massive superiority of the metric system for scientific measurements et cetera, after all, that's partly what it was DESIGNED for. (1cm^3 of pure water doesn't weight 1g at sea level for no reason, for example...).
I like in England, where we're mostly metric (although a lot of Imperial units are still used), but ALL scientists use metric for everything. It's not because of some magical superiorty science that normal people need either, it's mostly because multiplying by 10 is a lot easier than multiplying by 12 then 16 then 8, or whatever!
Now this is, admittedly, hearsay, and I've not gone to look for collaboration:
What I'd heard is that allofmp3 PAYS royalties, but the American firms refuse them, as they're "not enough". So when they accuse them of not paying a dime, it's because they won't accept the payments, more than anything else... Can anyone confirm/deny this?
RTFA: The chip contains no information not in the passport, and as the chip can't be cloned remotely, you'd have the passport in order to clone the chip.
I'm all in favour of clean energy, I think it's a laudable goal, but we shouldn't be patting eachother on our backs just yet.
Firstly, these solar cells are no doubt incredibly expensive - any high efficiency ones are. Secondly, they're probably made using rare and/or exotic materiels, making manufacturing in bulk tricky, and thirdly there's likely to be a lot of pollution created in the manufacturing process for by-products et cetera (it's a problem with less efficient cells too, but the more efficient ones are generally more pollutions).
Lastly, there's another issue. What happens when the sun goes behind a cloud? You need to be able to cover the entire slack in an instant, because you NEED a constant power output. That means you NEED enough GAS powerplants to power the whole world too, as they're the only type of power plant you can literally turn the dial and turn up the output.
Me, I'm going to be sitting here hoping that the test fusion plant they're building in France works, because from what I've learnt lately, if it doesn't, we're screwed.
While it wouldn't suprise me if Google wanted their own OS, from their past history it seems more likely they'd buy their way into the OS market somehow rather than developing it entirely in-house. I would have thought any GoogleOS would be after a string of relevant corporate takeovers and purchases, which would make it rather obvious...
Well, scientists DID measure thousands of falling objects to various degrees of accuracy to come to values for g (acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's groundlevel) and G (gravitiational constant). This experiment is showing that the General Relativity model predicts things accurately to at least 99.95% accuracy.
1.21 jigawatts! Learn your basics of time travel!
MMOs: Star Wars Galaxies is in there, Dark Age of Camelot, the Everquest expansion pack (it was the only part of the series released after the 2000 cut off point), WoW of course. If there was another I've forgotten it, but I seem to remember seeing a 5th, could be wrong.
The thing is, there's no comparison here of numbers sold compared to your 90s classics. So a few games are selling well by pitching themselves to impulse buyers, and hoping noone reads reviews and the like? As long as quality games are coming out too, see Half Life 2, Far Cry, Doom 3 from the list, all of which have been in their own way benchmark games for the FPS genre (although less so Doom 3), RTSs like Empire Earth and Rome Total War. Sure, they're based on ideas done before, but the more games in existance, the less totally new ideas there will be. I for one think as long as each game is better than the previous games, whether it uses unique ideas or simply combines a number of existing ones with a few neat ideas of their own to make a better game than anything preceding it, what does it matter?
I used to play a lot of the 90s games you name, and sure, while they're fun still, I still tend to more enjoy playing many of the newer releases.
I only meant it as a humerous comment, but my point was this is sales of games in shops, often big stores like Wal-Mart, so a lot of these are going to be impulse purchases et cetera, rather than buying a game you've read reviews of et cetera.
Also, Deer Hunter was apparently terrible, it got some impressively low scores, but involved shooting cute animals for no particular reason, so sold well.
It's store sales, I rather suspect a lot of WoW sales are from online shops and the like, and the list is ONLY US sales.
Also, Starcraft is pre2000, the list is ONLY games released 2000 or later. RTFA.
Starcraft is pre-2000 ('97 if I remember right? Definately later 90s), therefore wouldn't make it on the list. If you did a list of sales all time, via online AND stores, from the whole world, and I'm not sure what would win. I rather suspect it would be something suprising though, most likely an older game that's just kept selling for a long time... I'd be interested to see the results of any study like that, although I doubt the data's there to do a decent study.
PCs are not just owned by 20something men anymore, shockingly other groups of people are buying games, and distorting the sales accordingly. If ~10 year old girls are playing games, I think they're more likely to be wanting Barbie Pet Rescue to Doom 3, don't you?
This is PC game sales in US shops. Why are you so suprised that PC owners other than hardcore gamers might pick up a game they think looks interesting, or young children might want to play a family friendly game like Bob the Builder?
Firstly, it's on half the timeframe of the 90s you cite.
More to the point, it's not a DECLINE, it's just a wider variety of people buying games, resulting in sales of games not purely based on the classic male, 20something gamer formulae. I hate the way people attribute a wider variety of people buying games to a decline..
Also, I saw at least 4 MMORPGs, and you complain about using old games, and yet you refer to the Wing Commander series and the Command and Conquer RTSes. You can't have it both ways...
The USA market as a whole has never been known for uh... informed buying habits. Say, Deer Hunter is high on the list! What a shock...
It's not really suprising, universal appeal and a quick and easy to pick up game that everyone knows how to play is likely to outsell even a big name gamers only type game. Serious gamers only make a small proportion of PC owners these days...
There tend to be a lot MORE PC games than console games released, so the market is more spread. The report is also only since 2000, which means that games from '05 and '06 have had far less time to sell budget copies and the like, than big games released 5 or 6 years ago.
Also, some people have terrible taste...
Good journalism is about telling the truth in an unbiased way. This law prevents people from creating bias in legal cases before the result has been reached by a jury with ALL the facts. Publishing a view on someone's guilt or innocence before it's been proven either way is NOT good journalism.
Purely legally? Well, they're a multinational corporation - I'm no lawyer but I rather suspect they could be sued in this country, even have assets in British territory seized I would imagine, if they were breaking British law (the same happens to Britains who break American law). But, as I've tried to explain in my other posts, I think it's more than just a legal requirement - it's just generally good journalism, and the right thing to do (in my view).
If your censoring yourself, it's not violating the First Amendment as far as I know: you have chosen not to say something.
This fact is, this isn't some all encompassing nazi-esque law, just a law designed to make sure we all have the right of innoccent until proven guilty. Even if they don't have to follow it, they can choose to, in the same way that respectable newspapers tend to steer clear of slander, even if they have the right to say whatever they want - it's just not good journalism.