I suspect this is another attempt at tying social networking into their data mining, rather than anything elaborate like a Steam-alike or diving into AAA title development. Rather, something that can easily plug into iGoogle (does anyone actually use that?) and very likely designed to play nicely with typical Android phone form factors, with an eye toward collaborative gaming. They tried the stick approach with Buzz, and got swatted for it. This time they'd be offering to trade pretty Farmville sprites for your social network data.
I looked at the honestly very poorly written release that described the new payment model, and this really looks more like a line being cast to snag fence-sitters than any part of a 'march' toward free-to-play. The devs themselves have stated that the traditional subscription model is still their main focus (though soon to be complicated with microtransactions), and there are major limitations to accessible content for free-players-- including being restricted to team-only and short-range-local chat (which makes getting a team difficult) and being unable to join 'supergroup' guilds (often a major social element of the game).
Sure you can get two characters to level cap, but there are over ten classes and you can't participate in the actual end game, and the majority of players discover that rolling new characters is a huge part of the draw. Unless a player is laser-focused on one aspect of the game, it's probably going to be cheaper and more convenient to keep a sub running.
NFC requires specialized chips. This audio-based solution does too, but the summary handwaves it because a tiny handful of phones already has it. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I smell a false premise.
...like the one that said we'd have jet packs, flying cars, and Linux on the desktop in the year 2000.
Sorry, dude. Keep your prognostication within five, ten years, and you have a discussion on your hands. Stretch it out to the point where most people reading right now will be dead, and you're writing a bit of fluff that, by design, can't be refuted or argued with.
Let's not forget that Gen Con, the only real draw to the area for geeks for many years, moved out of state back in 2002. It's not like the site is going to be a draw for people to come to the city, or that he's had any economic or social impact on it in decades.
I have to admit though, if I were passing through I would totally visit the memorial and scream 'Black Leaf is dead! Get out of here, you don't exist any more!'
I was in the same position in the first bitcoin thread, only it was actually moderated by sane people. That, or the people with mod points who bought into the scheme were too busy posting in defense of it-- but anyway.
Don't blame Slashdot. Blame tribalism. No, not tribadism, tribalism. It's the reason why we have thriving groups of Linux, Apple and Microsoft fans, and why one or another tends to populate a thread based on its bias.
A thread like this? It isn't going to attract many Bitcoin boys because the last week has been an embarrassment for the scheme and there's no good way to try and spin it otherwise in here. That's not Slashdot, that's people choosing their fights.
No, you're not the only one. I was thinking the same thing, because I did the same damn thing. Using achievements as a metric like that is silly, because it's self-skewing. How many players would go out of their way to perform literally thousands of quests if there weren't a shiny badge (well, tabard) waiting for them at the end?
Someone else in the thread pointed out that user experience questionnaires are seldom written by professional pollsters and usually loaded with leading questions. Achievements are themselves the equivalent of such questions-- nobody seriously thinks 'Hey, it'd be cool to grind this useless combat skill by punching fruitlessly at things for a couple of hours' or 'It would be totally cool to go to Wowhead and look up all of the Outland cooking recipes, pray that they drop during the daily quest that I've long since outleveled, and cook each one of them just to say that I did'.
"We're also hard at work bugging the Hell out of the ADK, so that your Android device phones us to deliver vitally handy information that we can use to make educated guesses about your lifestyle habits. Thermostats, duration and frequency of lights going on, and all of the other things that worry people about so-called smart utility meters add up to tons of demographic data that nobody will ever dream that they're divulging!"
Netflix doesn't just buy a thousand copies of a movie, rip it to a streamable format, and send it to the end-user. They license titles for streaming, and that means keeping a positive relationship with their suppliers, the movie companies. They've consistently said 'no' to a 'buy this movie' button, but that doesn't mean that they really can or should resist every other offer that their suppliers make.
This article indicates that Netflix is happy to play with media companies in order to smooth ruffled feathers. A primary UI redesign that basically turns it into a marquee of movie posters, that probably feeds interaction metrics back, and definitely showcases individual titles more effectively, seems a logical decision from that standpoint. Whether or not the users are going to stand for a radical redesign like that is another question entirely.
No kidding, Jesus. Even if you're tethered to a phone for some reason, there's no reason you shouldn't be prepared to inobtrusively slip out to the lobby. It's not exactly difficult, either.
For example, a friend of mine once worked as an emergency responder for the Red Cross. Part of that was to carry the emergency contact phone wherever she went while she was on call. If she was going to be somewhere that respectful quiet was expected, like a church, or the theatre, or a classroom, she made damned certain that the thing was set to vibrate. She also made sure to arrive at the venue early, so that she could get an aisle seat and, if she felt the phone vibrate, she could slip out to the lobby without shoving her ass in a row-full of faces. As far as anyone who wasn't in her group was concerned, she would just be politely nipping out to the bathroom. No ringtones, no sudden glare, no conversations, not difficult.
This is really the fucking worst. It's bad enough when I get shit e-mails asking me to confirm it's okay for little Jimmy to join the Furry Animal Fuckbarrel Jamboree site, where he can play flash games and send messages to pedophiles and spend hundreds of dollars on microtransactions. It is just that much more fucking annoying when they just take your address 'on good faith' and make you have to jump hoops to contact tech support and deactivate the account.
While I agree with Stallman that eBook and eBook DRM have really destroyed our freedoms with respect to books, I am having a lot of trouble understanding his tax fund proposal.
That's because you're presumably sane, and understand that there's a much lower limit on taxes that can be earmarked for the arts (which are a perennial political target to begin with) than there is disposable income. Stallman... hasn't shown the same tendency toward reality.
People being overcharged because the accounting software fucked up happens all the time. What would a hacker get out of making someone pay a few extra bucks to Sega, via Apple, compared to both dodging an accusation of faulty billing software that could sour people on microtransactions?
I've developed a Pavlovian response to sites that demand case-insensitive passwords between merely six and eight characters long. Namely, I suffer the nigh-uncontrollable urge to bring my forehead into violent contact with my desk.
The 'article' is a blog with the phrase 'food freedom' in the URL. If it was longer, would it have seriously been worth considering as a credible source?
People magazine? I thought this was someone trying to expand Literally Unbelievable into exploring the credulity of Slashdot readers as well as Facebookers.
That bubble map is a fairly accurate representation of Canadian population densities. Those two blots in the left-middle are probably Calgary and Edmonton, and the rest are crammed mostly into Vancouver-and-area and southwestern Ontario.
Don't toss that 'cat, those things are useful if you want to catalogue your library or otherwise mess around with barcodes. For its original purpose though, it was bafflingly stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect this is another attempt at tying social networking into their data mining, rather than anything elaborate like a Steam-alike or diving into AAA title development. Rather, something that can easily plug into iGoogle (does anyone actually use that?) and very likely designed to play nicely with typical Android phone form factors, with an eye toward collaborative gaming. They tried the stick approach with Buzz, and got swatted for it. This time they'd be offering to trade pretty Farmville sprites for your social network data.
On the other hand, having a guilty plea for a felony related to his industry on his record is going to leave a lasting mark.
Sure you can get two characters to level cap, but there are over ten classes and you can't participate in the actual end game, and the majority of players discover that rolling new characters is a huge part of the draw. Unless a player is laser-focused on one aspect of the game, it's probably going to be cheaper and more convenient to keep a sub running.
NFC requires specialized chips. This audio-based solution does too, but the summary handwaves it because a tiny handful of phones already has it. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I smell a false premise.
Sorry, dude. Keep your prognostication within five, ten years, and you have a discussion on your hands. Stretch it out to the point where most people reading right now will be dead, and you're writing a bit of fluff that, by design, can't be refuted or argued with.
I have to admit though, if I were passing through I would totally visit the memorial and scream 'Black Leaf is dead! Get out of here, you don't exist any more!'
Don't blame Slashdot. Blame tribalism. No, not tribadism, tribalism. It's the reason why we have thriving groups of Linux, Apple and Microsoft fans, and why one or another tends to populate a thread based on its bias.
A thread like this? It isn't going to attract many Bitcoin boys because the last week has been an embarrassment for the scheme and there's no good way to try and spin it otherwise in here. That's not Slashdot, that's people choosing their fights.
Someone else in the thread pointed out that user experience questionnaires are seldom written by professional pollsters and usually loaded with leading questions. Achievements are themselves the equivalent of such questions-- nobody seriously thinks 'Hey, it'd be cool to grind this useless combat skill by punching fruitlessly at things for a couple of hours' or 'It would be totally cool to go to Wowhead and look up all of the Outland cooking recipes, pray that they drop during the daily quest that I've long since outleveled, and cook each one of them just to say that I did'.
"We're also hard at work bugging the Hell out of the ADK, so that your Android device phones us to deliver vitally handy information that we can use to make educated guesses about your lifestyle habits. Thermostats, duration and frequency of lights going on, and all of the other things that worry people about so-called smart utility meters add up to tons of demographic data that nobody will ever dream that they're divulging!"
This article indicates that Netflix is happy to play with media companies in order to smooth ruffled feathers. A primary UI redesign that basically turns it into a marquee of movie posters, that probably feeds interaction metrics back, and definitely showcases individual titles more effectively, seems a logical decision from that standpoint. Whether or not the users are going to stand for a radical redesign like that is another question entirely.
For example, a friend of mine once worked as an emergency responder for the Red Cross. Part of that was to carry the emergency contact phone wherever she went while she was on call. If she was going to be somewhere that respectful quiet was expected, like a church, or the theatre, or a classroom, she made damned certain that the thing was set to vibrate. She also made sure to arrive at the venue early, so that she could get an aisle seat and, if she felt the phone vibrate, she could slip out to the lobby without shoving her ass in a row-full of faces. As far as anyone who wasn't in her group was concerned, she would just be politely nipping out to the bathroom. No ringtones, no sudden glare, no conversations, not difficult.
Actually, I take that back. It was fucking hilarious when the loonie was worth $1.10 USD.
and they don't send a fucking confirmation link
This is really the fucking worst. It's bad enough when I get shit e-mails asking me to confirm it's okay for little Jimmy to join the Furry Animal Fuckbarrel Jamboree site, where he can play flash games and send messages to pedophiles and spend hundreds of dollars on microtransactions. It is just that much more fucking annoying when they just take your address 'on good faith' and make you have to jump hoops to contact tech support and deactivate the account.
While I agree with Stallman that eBook and eBook DRM have really destroyed our freedoms with respect to books, I am having a lot of trouble understanding his tax fund proposal.
That's because you're presumably sane, and understand that there's a much lower limit on taxes that can be earmarked for the arts (which are a perennial political target to begin with) than there is disposable income. Stallman... hasn't shown the same tendency toward reality.
People being overcharged because the accounting software fucked up happens all the time. What would a hacker get out of making someone pay a few extra bucks to Sega, via Apple, compared to both dodging an accusation of faulty billing software that could sour people on microtransactions?
I've developed a Pavlovian response to sites that demand case-insensitive passwords between merely six and eight characters long. Namely, I suffer the nigh-uncontrollable urge to bring my forehead into violent contact with my desk.
I keep telling them, Tolkien Ring will be the death of the network as we know it!
The suggestion of anything less might upset Google's shareholders.
The 'article' is a blog with the phrase 'food freedom' in the URL. If it was longer, would it have seriously been worth considering as a credible source?
People magazine? I thought this was someone trying to expand Literally Unbelievable into exploring the credulity of Slashdot readers as well as Facebookers.
By that logic, Bennet Haselton's regular forays into circular logic should be on the front cover of the NYT.
They spent more on those machines, and on the electricity to run them, than they ever will 'mining' bitcoins.
That bubble map is a fairly accurate representation of Canadian population densities. Those two blots in the left-middle are probably Calgary and Edmonton, and the rest are crammed mostly into Vancouver-and-area and southwestern Ontario.
But seriously, why a plus sign inside a square? Why not an oblong marked ALARM?
Don't toss that 'cat, those things are useful if you want to catalogue your library or otherwise mess around with barcodes. For its original purpose though, it was bafflingly stupid.