"I'm not sure about what changed but the first time i read the "article" on this game many months ago it said you wereon't going to be the bully."
Tonight I watched a vid from a show on G4 that featured Jack Thompson debating with a man who's name I cannot remember. (I think he was frame GamesDaily.com or something like that...) He claimed that Bully was as you described it until he got enough bitching together to have the game changed. I found this amusing. I remember reading about Bully's debut... sometime before October 05, if I recall. I got the point back then that you weren't actually playing as a bully.
Not that facts matter much, anyway. All this hooplah over the GTA series and I've yet to hear one of these loudmouthed yahoos get on their soap box and actually demonstrate that they know anything about the games. "I can run around and club people, EVIL!!" I fully expect when Bully is relased, the "you play as a bully" myth will go on strong. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise. Maybe Jack Thompson will shout misgivings about the game and everybody will just say "But you don't play as the bully!", thus sucking away his credibility. I can dream, right?
"Not believing that we went to the moon doesn't give me a membership in a tinfoil-hat brigade."
Back up a sec, this dude may have a point. The reason that the negative attitude exists for people who believe the moon landing is faked is because the rationale that has been publicized for this is... ignorant... at best. A few years ago, Fox showed some 'documentary' that claimed that there might be evidence the moon landing was a hoax. Every single point of the 'evidence' was EASILY refutable. For example: They claimed that the astronauts were too brightly lit and that the extra light must have come from studio lighting. They even had a 'professional photographer' come on the show and say that it was impossible for that sort of lighting to occur. This 'professional photographer' was completely ignoring the fact that light bounces, even on the moon.
You'd have to be pretty ignorant to buy in to their logic. That's why, if you just announce that you don't believe it happened, it is generally assumed (whether it is right or wrong, sorry.) that you are part of this little group. If you are simply saying "I wasn't there, so I cannot say for certain", then I think that's a different story. I can sympathize with that. I wasn't even alive when the moon landing happened. In that respect, I cannot actually say it did. Fair enough.
I think the mods were a little too quick on the trigger with modding down your post. You are right that simply not being 100% certain that the moon landing happened doesn't mean you're a... pardon the expression... looney. But in the future, I'd recommend that you clarify your views. Too much attention has already been paid to people who have bastardized science to prove their over-zealous point.
"You can put HD content on ordinary DVDROMs but not on video DVDs. If you're playing a game there's no reason why they can't put HD video playback data on the DVD. It'll be a big file but how much video does there really need to be in a game?"
This has already been done. You can buy a version of Terminator 2 that comes with an HD.WMF file.
"I agree - All we hear these days is "OMG Microsoft is gonna kill apple" "Did you hear [Industry player] is gonna destroy the Ipod!". With Apple having Dominated the Market for a while now, I don't think we will see an "iPod Killer". Instead, steady education of consumers, combined with new and innovative products being brought to market, will slowly erode "
Well, there's that, and there's the re-occuring theme that these companies focus on doing what the market leader did and trying to improve it. The result? They lose touch with what made the product successful in the first place. What amazes me about iPod killers in the first place is the assumption that they've come up with ideas that Apple hasn't. "We'll just add video to this player and the iPod will go down in flames!" As if Apple didn't consider video early on. It is easy for me to believe that Apple looked into it and thought "Who'd want to pay extra, have a bigger player> What if we don't hit a home run in that department?"
I see this happen all the time. Remember Quake killers? Street Fighter killers? Just piling more onto the heap isn't typically effective.
"Open the thing up (except the UMD format -- I'll give them that much to keep), let us make our own games without implementing roadblocks to homebrew, and the thing will sell more."
They'd sell more hardware at a loss anyway. Hehe. Seriously, though, Sony needs more sales of games. I'd recommend better games that don't cost $50. The one time Sony doesn't copy Nintendo...
"Seems to me that if you really like these games, you'd rather be playing the real thing than the card game. And if you don't, these wouldn't appeal at all."
Well... it's something to show off to your buddies when you're in high school.
Well... that and people pay for it. Greed or not, it'd be silly of them to charge the fraction of a cent for the data usage when people are already happy to pay $.10 for the privilege. Besides, as I understand it, SMS doesn't go through the internet. (or at least not the same way data usage does. SMS existed long before wireless internet.)
"If it was a parody of Linux, it would be considered fair use. It's not a parody of Linux. Therefore, it's trademark and copyright infringement."
I'm scratching my head about this. When I saw the vid, I thought the Linux penguins represented Slashdotters. That may or may not make a huge difference when it comes to trademark infringement, but I thought use of that image was, at least, on-topic. I don't know if that's enough to push through the parody legal barrier (probably not...), but I don't think it's as clear cut as
I worked on a plugin that's being sold today. One of the things I pushed for early on is that we can offer refunds for people that cannot get it working, even if the fault's on their end instead of ours. As a result, we're pretty quick to say "If we cannot get this working, don't worry, we'll give you your money back." It has been my experience that most customers that hear this early on are happier to work with us troubleshooting the problem. It puts them into a position of feeling like we're truely trying to help them, plus it relieves them of the burden of trying to prove it's our fault. We've had a few hundred sales, and we've only issued a couple of refunds. To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any unhappy customers, and that includes the two we gave refunds to. (Heck, they may even come back when they have some time to put into troubleshooting.)
I don't know if you can offer a refund or not, but I thought I'd suggest it. I can tell you from personal experience that inability to get your money back is one of the biggest frustrations with support problems. If you can get the money element off the table, you may enjoy a better support experience.
"If you can get it for free without ads people will go for it."
Again, that's not conclusive. FireFox got a lot more coverage than Opera did. You cannot prove that ads did or didn't make the definitive difference in FireFox's success. If it were as black and white as you suggest, Google'd be a long forgotten memory.
"What's with this whole "one piece stop shop" MP3 phone obsession anyway?"
Pocket space.
"Throwing all of your eggs into one basket will only leave you eggless and unhappy if that one basket asplodes, or gets stolen."
You'd have fewer 'stealable' items to keep track of.
"I can also go camping with my MP3 player without having to be tethered to a cellphone..."
Do you go camping a lot? The reason I'd want my phone to play MP3s is because I'm often at places where I have my phone but not my player. 90% of the time I only have my phone, my keys, and my wallet in my pocket. If I start carrying more than that, I quickly find myself uncomfortable. I also haven't had a phone theft or 'asplosion' to deal with in nearly 10 years. Even if I did, phone insurance is $6 a month. Renter's insurance may cover a stolen iPod, but I doubt it'll cover one destroyed by a fall. (Of course, I'd like to be corrected on that if I'm wrong.) There's plenty of reasons to want a phone to do more. I've actually taken more photos with my phone than with my camera this year. Convenience.
Opera didn't have Slashdot's constant exposure. The problem with having this debate is that there are several ad-supported services that are quite successful.
"Ads in place of a subscription make sense, but how do you justify ads for something with an exact value? When you see enough ads to have payed the price of the OS do they go away? I don't understand."
I'm not sure why you don't understand, it's not like there are plenty of other services out there that stop showing ads when they hit a certain point. The 'exact value' thing is bunk, anyway. If there were an ad-supported OS, part of the income would be re-invested into improving the OS. You see ads in perpetuity, they update the OS in perpetuity. I'm a little surprised that somebody with a GMail account doesn't get this.
"...would I consider an ad-supported OS. Linux is free, and ad-free. Why bother?"
That would depend on the features of the OS. Linux is free, but I paid for Windows. Why? Several apps I use are available on Windows but not Linux. Therefore, Windows (sadly) has value to me.
This isn't a rebuttal, though. You're right. They've got to answer the 'why bother' question. I probably wouldn't ahve bothered replying except for the "never in a million years" bit in your post.
"at least if you are like me and get away from the red thing 30 seconds after trying Mario Tennis (and getting a headache)"
Fair enough. I was one of the few people on this planet that had a VB and enjoyed it. Even though it was red and the games weren't all that great, it was the first time I used a stereo display that worked. Before the VB, I visted a short-lived "VR" arcade at a mall near where I lived. They had a color stereo LCD setup. It was awful trying to percieve depth in that game. Part of me thinks it was the low resolution of the screens. Maybe they were just cheap, I don't know. But the VB had it nailed. As the article mentioned, Red Alarm was pretty cool.
I had my fun with it. But I do agree with you. Other than a few neat graphical tricks, nothing really stood out for me as something I'd want to dust off and play again every so often. Forget the monocrhome problems, nobody had stepped up and made a really cool game yet.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm not sure about what changed but the first time i read the "article" on this game many months ago it said you wereon't going to be the bully."
... sometime before October 05, if I recall. I got the point back then that you weren't actually playing as a bully.
Tonight I watched a vid from a show on G4 that featured Jack Thompson debating with a man who's name I cannot remember. (I think he was frame GamesDaily.com or something like that...) He claimed that Bully was as you described it until he got enough bitching together to have the game changed. I found this amusing. I remember reading about Bully's debut
Not that facts matter much, anyway. All this hooplah over the GTA series and I've yet to hear one of these loudmouthed yahoos get on their soap box and actually demonstrate that they know anything about the games. "I can run around and club people, EVIL!!" I fully expect when Bully is relased, the "you play as a bully" myth will go on strong. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise. Maybe Jack Thompson will shout misgivings about the game and everybody will just say "But you don't play as the bully!", thus sucking away his credibility. I can dream, right?
"If these rules were in place I would be the stinkiest engineer in Port-Au-Prince."
I had the same thing happen on a trip to France. The result was anti-climactic, tho.
"If the bad guys are supposed to be hand-carrying liquid explosives, what's to prevent them from putting the stuff in their checked luggage?"
The same thing that's stopped this from working for the last 50 years. Plots to blow up planes weren't invented in the 21st century.
"Not believing that we went to the moon doesn't give me a membership in a tinfoil-hat brigade."
... ignorant ... at best. A few years ago, Fox showed some 'documentary' that claimed that there might be evidence the moon landing was a hoax. Every single point of the 'evidence' was EASILY refutable. For example: They claimed that the astronauts were too brightly lit and that the extra light must have come from studio lighting. They even had a 'professional photographer' come on the show and say that it was impossible for that sort of lighting to occur. This 'professional photographer' was completely ignoring the fact that light bounces, even on the moon.
... pardon the expression ... looney. But in the future, I'd recommend that you clarify your views. Too much attention has already been paid to people who have bastardized science to prove their over-zealous point.
Back up a sec, this dude may have a point. The reason that the negative attitude exists for people who believe the moon landing is faked is because the rationale that has been publicized for this is
You'd have to be pretty ignorant to buy in to their logic. That's why, if you just announce that you don't believe it happened, it is generally assumed (whether it is right or wrong, sorry.) that you are part of this little group. If you are simply saying "I wasn't there, so I cannot say for certain", then I think that's a different story. I can sympathize with that. I wasn't even alive when the moon landing happened. In that respect, I cannot actually say it did. Fair enough.
I think the mods were a little too quick on the trigger with modding down your post. You are right that simply not being 100% certain that the moon landing happened doesn't mean you're a
"Funny, when Sony does that exact thing people say no-one will want to buy it.'
Sony has a $299 model that doesn't come with Blu-Ray?
"You can put HD content on ordinary DVDROMs but not on video DVDs. If you're playing a game there's no reason why they can't put HD video playback data on the DVD. It'll be a big file but how much video does there really need to be in a game?"
.WMF file.
This has already been done. You can buy a version of Terminator 2 that comes with an HD
"I agree - All we hear these days is "OMG Microsoft is gonna kill apple" "Did you hear [Industry player] is gonna destroy the Ipod!". With Apple having Dominated the Market for a while now, I don't think we will see an "iPod Killer". Instead, steady education of consumers, combined with new and innovative products being brought to market, will slowly erode "
Well, there's that, and there's the re-occuring theme that these companies focus on doing what the market leader did and trying to improve it. The result? They lose touch with what made the product successful in the first place. What amazes me about iPod killers in the first place is the assumption that they've come up with ideas that Apple hasn't. "We'll just add video to this player and the iPod will go down in flames!" As if Apple didn't consider video early on. It is easy for me to believe that Apple looked into it and thought "Who'd want to pay extra, have a bigger player> What if we don't hit a home run in that department?"
I see this happen all the time. Remember Quake killers? Street Fighter killers? Just piling more onto the heap isn't typically effective.
OMG NINTEDO IS tEH SUXXOR!!!! SoNy 4 LIFE!! I CANt WAiT To SpEnD $600 4 GAME SeQUELS WiF PURDIER GRAFIX!!
"Open the thing up (except the UMD format -- I'll give them that much to keep), let us make our own games without implementing roadblocks to homebrew, and the thing will sell more."
They'd sell more hardware at a loss anyway. Hehe. Seriously, though, Sony needs more sales of games. I'd recommend better games that don't cost $50. The one time Sony doesn't copy Nintendo...
"No, Apple own't Open source OSX, but they will eventually put it on shelves."
Wait.. are you saying Apple won't Open Source OSX, or that they pwnd OSS?
"Seems to me that if you really like these games, you'd rather be playing the real thing than the card game. And if you don't, these wouldn't appeal at all."
Well... it's something to show off to your buddies when you're in high school.
"Does it use the "3 Nipples" interface metaphor?"
Hey, that monkey has a Ross on its ass!
Erm... I still can't find a place to use that quote, here.
"It's just plain old greed."
Well... that and people pay for it. Greed or not, it'd be silly of them to charge the fraction of a cent for the data usage when people are already happy to pay $.10 for the privilege. Besides, as I understand it, SMS doesn't go through the internet. (or at least not the same way data usage does. SMS existed long before wireless internet.)
"this is not a parody of linux. it's a parody of an al gore flick."
Unless it's a parody of Linux users.
"If it was a parody of Linux, it would be considered fair use. It's not a parody of Linux. Therefore, it's trademark and copyright infringement."
I'm scratching my head about this. When I saw the vid, I thought the Linux penguins represented Slashdotters. That may or may not make a huge difference when it comes to trademark infringement, but I thought use of that image was, at least, on-topic. I don't know if that's enough to push through the parody legal barrier (probably not...), but I don't think it's as clear cut as
"Isn't it amusing I found this article by using /.'s own RSS fee!"$%&() ****NO CARRIER****"
Yeah, Slashdot's RSS feature banned me a few times, too.
I worked on a plugin that's being sold today. One of the things I pushed for early on is that we can offer refunds for people that cannot get it working, even if the fault's on their end instead of ours. As a result, we're pretty quick to say "If we cannot get this working, don't worry, we'll give you your money back." It has been my experience that most customers that hear this early on are happier to work with us troubleshooting the problem. It puts them into a position of feeling like we're truely trying to help them, plus it relieves them of the burden of trying to prove it's our fault. We've had a few hundred sales, and we've only issued a couple of refunds. To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any unhappy customers, and that includes the two we gave refunds to. (Heck, they may even come back when they have some time to put into troubleshooting.)
I don't know if you can offer a refund or not, but I thought I'd suggest it. I can tell you from personal experience that inability to get your money back is one of the biggest frustrations with support problems. If you can get the money element off the table, you may enjoy a better support experience.
"Make a controller which is wireless AND has an analog button: PATENT VIOLATION, YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THAT!"
There is no mention of wireless controllers in this article. You misunderstand what 'remote' means in this context.
"My PS2 controller has analog pressure-sensitive buttons. Why were they excluded from the lawsuit?"
Which buttons are those? Sorry if that's a dumb question, but they've always felt digital to me.
"If you can get it for free without ads people will go for it."
Again, that's not conclusive. FireFox got a lot more coverage than Opera did. You cannot prove that ads did or didn't make the definitive difference in FireFox's success. If it were as black and white as you suggest, Google'd be a long forgotten memory.
"What's with this whole "one piece stop shop" MP3 phone obsession anyway?"
Pocket space.
"Throwing all of your eggs into one basket will only leave you eggless and unhappy if that one basket asplodes, or gets stolen."
You'd have fewer 'stealable' items to keep track of.
"I can also go camping with my MP3 player without having to be tethered to a cellphone..."
Do you go camping a lot? The reason I'd want my phone to play MP3s is because I'm often at places where I have my phone but not my player. 90% of the time I only have my phone, my keys, and my wallet in my pocket. If I start carrying more than that, I quickly find myself uncomfortable. I also haven't had a phone theft or 'asplosion' to deal with in nearly 10 years. Even if I did, phone insurance is $6 a month. Renter's insurance may cover a stolen iPod, but I doubt it'll cover one destroyed by a fall. (Of course, I'd like to be corrected on that if I'm wrong.) There's plenty of reasons to want a phone to do more. I've actually taken more photos with my phone than with my camera this year. Convenience.
"Cough, opera vs Firefox."
Opera didn't have Slashdot's constant exposure. The problem with having this debate is that there are several ad-supported services that are quite successful.
"Ads in place of a subscription make sense, but how do you justify ads for something with an exact value? When you see enough ads to have payed the price of the OS do they go away? I don't understand."
I'm not sure why you don't understand, it's not like there are plenty of other services out there that stop showing ads when they hit a certain point. The 'exact value' thing is bunk, anyway. If there were an ad-supported OS, part of the income would be re-invested into improving the OS. You see ads in perpetuity, they update the OS in perpetuity. I'm a little surprised that somebody with a GMail account doesn't get this.
"...would I consider an ad-supported OS. Linux is free, and ad-free. Why bother?"
That would depend on the features of the OS. Linux is free, but I paid for Windows. Why? Several apps I use are available on Windows but not Linux. Therefore, Windows (sadly) has value to me.
This isn't a rebuttal, though. You're right. They've got to answer the 'why bother' question. I probably wouldn't ahve bothered replying except for the "never in a million years" bit in your post.
"at least if you are like me and get away from the red thing 30 seconds after trying Mario Tennis (and getting a headache)"
Fair enough. I was one of the few people on this planet that had a VB and enjoyed it. Even though it was red and the games weren't all that great, it was the first time I used a stereo display that worked. Before the VB, I visted a short-lived "VR" arcade at a mall near where I lived. They had a color stereo LCD setup. It was awful trying to percieve depth in that game. Part of me thinks it was the low resolution of the screens. Maybe they were just cheap, I don't know. But the VB had it nailed. As the article mentioned, Red Alarm was pretty cool.
I had my fun with it. But I do agree with you. Other than a few neat graphical tricks, nothing really stood out for me as something I'd want to dust off and play again every so often. Forget the monocrhome problems, nobody had stepped up and made a really cool game yet.