Because, as someone else noted earlier in the discussion, performance-enhancing drugs and technologies aren't 100% conducive to the athlete's continued health. The side-effects of bog-standard steroids in the short run are well known, with even more entertaining degeneration occurring with long-term abuse, for example. The human body is fairly elastic, but if you're seriously trying to develop and encourage the use of devices, drugs and methods that augment its capabilities, you're best off looking to ones that promote what's already there. Otherwise you end up tobogganing down a slope toward over-specialization and 'improvement' regimes that require further courses of drugs or whatnot to offset its deleterious effects.
Nu-metal soundtracks, godawful storylines and tonnes of eye candy to distract the viewer from the piece's ultimate vapidity? Sounds like Bruckheimer's already a game developer.
You should see our current run of workplace safety ads. They're like yours, only they go through the disfiguring parts, and have the mutilated character get back up, bleeding and spurting, and give a brief lecture to his horrified co-workers about how the accident could have been prevented.
I added Beacon to AdblockPlus when this shit first came to light, but I'm going to officially deactivate it too. Why? The same reason why my Gmail bookmark goes directly to the 'old version' page: These fuckers are keeping track of who goes where and who does what on their sites, and the more people who make a gesture (be it one click or one finger) against this 'feature' creep, the more it'll show in the metrics.
So like what I go through after reinstalling XP once too often, too quickly, then. That's good to know-- with all of the breast-beating and moaning I've heard about Vista since before it launched, I half expected them to have gone with something totally obnoxious and obtuse.
Nifty. Instead of crippling itself, Windows will keep popping windows up like the delightful direct message spam of yesteryear. I wonder how difficult it will be to get a legit install with a bug up its ass properly validated.
So, um. What kind of a corporate culture are these guys bringing in? Given the readiness with which the Putin government has been putting the boots to dissension (particularly in terms of media), I have to worry (because I don't have all the information) that increasingly Draconian laws over there might spill over into how the LJ TOS is adjudicated in general.
No, that's the problem. The Beacon system lets retailers interact with your Facebook cookies. They get your Facebook ID, insert what you've bought into a new cookie, and Beacon happily makes your purchase into an ad. Worse, the opt-out functionality is on a case-by-case basis, and you have to opt out after the fact because there's no way to turn it off before-hand (beyond proxying Beacon out).
This isn't a matter of simply not clicking on banner ads or affiliate links. This is collaboration to track your on-line movements and make banner ads out of them.
People are running Acrobat Reader because virtually every page on the Internet that has PDF content also has a handy-dandy link to the (free) Acrobat download site. They don't know about Foxit or whatever, and until the ads start popping up, they probably won't care either.
This reminds me of when PBS was tightening its belt, and making noises about cutting back on Sesame Street's budget. One of the people in charge looked the bigwigs straight in the eye and said:
"Okay. Tell me which letter of the alphabet you want me to fire."
They got the message, and everyone's favorite slum got a reprieve.
Frankly, I'm glad (and a little surprised) that they just didn't get rid of those old skits. A lot has changed since they were first filmed.
Given that you have to select 'older version' every time you log in to get rid of that stupid Jabber interface and the equally obnoxious 'informational' popup that shows whenever you mouse over an e-mail address on Gmail these days, it looks like we're going to get these 'features' shoved on us, whether we want them or not.
This is what frustrates me the most about all of this '2.0' garbage-- it's velcro for cruft. I just want my e-mail sorted by date. That's all. I don't even fucking use threading, let alone want messages from getbigc0ckn0w showing up in twelve point script-- you know that the spammers will figure out how to spoof 'urgent' flags or popularity ratings.
This sounds like a purely psychological activity to me, assuming that it isn't 100% BS.
If you're moving to another company, you've got two weeks to say your goodbyes, make sure you can keep in touch with old co-workers that you may not have exchanged Facebook invites or phone numbers with, and maybe get a tearful bon voyage on your last day.
Leaving for Google? Boom. You are a non-person. You have broken sacred ape law. You've shattered the trust that the Company and your fellows had in you, and you can never come back. Well, sure you might be able to, but you're still dirtied by the subconscious assumption that you've done something heinous enough to be escorted and exiled from the communal hearth. That sets up a much different atmosphere, and adds a social layer to the whole thing: You're not just moving to a new school district, you're defecting to an enemy state. There are a lot of people who are affected by that sort of sentiment, whether they'll admit it, realize it, or not. The threat of disrupting ties with an existing social group is a powerful one, even if it is only implied.
When I was more obsessive about not out-leveling story arcs and hidden contacts, I would regularly run a character into groups of tough mobs and politely wait for them to hand my ass to me. Fortunately, that particular stunt is going to become unnecessary when the Flashback system goes live.
I can see some people running up debt on their idle 50's, in order to get a sliver further into the various XP debt badges, but overall this seems to be nothing more than a nice (if kind of empty) gesture.
I'm definitely turning 'ignore Supergroup invites' on for my unaffiliated characters, though. Random pubbie invites were common enough before; the prospect of signing bonuses is going to whip them into a frenzy.
This is why I'm not terribly concerned about NCSoft buying CoX outright. With almost the same dev team there, it's probably going to stick with the same general vision that it's been operating under so far, and NCSoft hopefully won't be inclined to mess around with it too much. If only one of them were sticking around (even if it was Prime Mover Positron), I'd be much more worried about the future of a game I've been playing on and off since launch.
Minigames can be fun, a good distraction, and a way of breaking up the 'monotony' of the parent game's primary thrust... but god damn, they really, really have to be skippable. Something like Bioshock's system is good: Play the game if you want to, or sacrifice some in-game money to just skip the whole thing and keep moving. Something like the Tetra Master tournament from Final Fantasy 9, or the (timed!) pipes minigame in Star Trek: Elite Force II, which you have to play through and beat in order to progress, are just the opposite. It's not like skippable minigames are a new idea, either. Dynamix' Rise of the Dragon had two arcade sequences in a point and click adventure game; neither sequence was particularly difficult, but if you did manage to foul one or the other up a few times, it would pop up a dialogue that offered to warp you back to the main game.
People buy shooters to blast the Hell out of things. People buy puzzle games because they might not like the violence of shooters. Putting one game in the other and forcing someone to shift gears and engage in play that they may not enjoy (or may simply not be coded very well) simply isn't fun.
I don't know about anyone else, but even my signature tends to shift a bit every time I jot it down to take a delivery or acknowledge a credit card payment. Even something as simple as a circle is going to throw no-match errors, unless the system's got a lot of built-in leeway for curves and squiggles that aren't in precisely the right spot.
It's probably more likely a hipster version of Morrison's The Filth. Only with more pretty young people and banter, and less giant attack sperms and nazi dolphins.
Beyond not being skippable, which is a good thing the first time through a mission at least, my only issue is that the transition is usually rather jarring. One second, you're all "HULK SMASH!" and the next your UI's missing and you're "Fine. Hulk wait for station identification."
Slashdot Mirror
Because, as someone else noted earlier in the discussion, performance-enhancing drugs and technologies aren't 100% conducive to the athlete's continued health. The side-effects of bog-standard steroids in the short run are well known, with even more entertaining degeneration occurring with long-term abuse, for example. The human body is fairly elastic, but if you're seriously trying to develop and encourage the use of devices, drugs and methods that augment its capabilities, you're best off looking to ones that promote what's already there. Otherwise you end up tobogganing down a slope toward over-specialization and 'improvement' regimes that require further courses of drugs or whatnot to offset its deleterious effects.
Nu-metal soundtracks, godawful storylines and tonnes of eye candy to distract the viewer from the piece's ultimate vapidity? Sounds like Bruckheimer's already a game developer.
You should see our current run of workplace safety ads. They're like yours, only they go through the disfiguring parts, and have the mutilated character get back up, bleeding and spurting, and give a brief lecture to his horrified co-workers about how the accident could have been prevented.
I added Beacon to AdblockPlus when this shit first came to light, but I'm going to officially deactivate it too. Why? The same reason why my Gmail bookmark goes directly to the 'old version' page: These fuckers are keeping track of who goes where and who does what on their sites, and the more people who make a gesture (be it one click or one finger) against this 'feature' creep, the more it'll show in the metrics.
There's a lesson here about perceived value versus real value, before even getting into technical things like battery life.
It's better to think of SL as a user-editable chatroom than a game, honestly.
So like what I go through after reinstalling XP once too often, too quickly, then. That's good to know-- with all of the breast-beating and moaning I've heard about Vista since before it launched, I half expected them to have gone with something totally obnoxious and obtuse.
Nifty. Instead of crippling itself, Windows will keep popping windows up like the delightful direct message spam of yesteryear. I wonder how difficult it will be to get a legit install with a bug up its ass properly validated.
Oh god. Not our cats. Someone, please, think of the kittens!
So, um. What kind of a corporate culture are these guys bringing in? Given the readiness with which the Putin government has been putting the boots to dissension (particularly in terms of media), I have to worry (because I don't have all the information) that increasingly Draconian laws over there might spill over into how the LJ TOS is adjudicated in general.
This isn't a matter of simply not clicking on banner ads or affiliate links. This is collaboration to track your on-line movements and make banner ads out of them.
People are running Acrobat Reader because virtually every page on the Internet that has PDF content also has a handy-dandy link to the (free) Acrobat download site. They don't know about Foxit or whatever, and until the ads start popping up, they probably won't care either.
I like to think that they're trying to get the fuckers shut down completely. It may be naive of me, but oh well.
Alton Brown wants his kitchen chemistry gimmick back.
That was my first thought at the suggestion of the DS as a phone. "Side-Talking 2.0!"
"Okay. Tell me which letter of the alphabet you want me to fire."
They got the message, and everyone's favorite slum got a reprieve.
Frankly, I'm glad (and a little surprised) that they just didn't get rid of those old skits. A lot has changed since they were first filmed.
Exchanging keys the old-fashioned way, maybe? This seems to be the perfect example of why convenience and security are ultimately mutually exclusive.
This is what frustrates me the most about all of this '2.0' garbage-- it's velcro for cruft. I just want my e-mail sorted by date. That's all. I don't even fucking use threading, let alone want messages from getbigc0ckn0w showing up in twelve point script-- you know that the spammers will figure out how to spoof 'urgent' flags or popularity ratings.
If you're moving to another company, you've got two weeks to say your goodbyes, make sure you can keep in touch with old co-workers that you may not have exchanged Facebook invites or phone numbers with, and maybe get a tearful bon voyage on your last day.
Leaving for Google? Boom. You are a non-person. You have broken sacred ape law. You've shattered the trust that the Company and your fellows had in you, and you can never come back. Well, sure you might be able to, but you're still dirtied by the subconscious assumption that you've done something heinous enough to be escorted and exiled from the communal hearth. That sets up a much different atmosphere, and adds a social layer to the whole thing: You're not just moving to a new school district, you're defecting to an enemy state. There are a lot of people who are affected by that sort of sentiment, whether they'll admit it, realize it, or not. The threat of disrupting ties with an existing social group is a powerful one, even if it is only implied.
I can see some people running up debt on their idle 50's, in order to get a sliver further into the various XP debt badges, but overall this seems to be nothing more than a nice (if kind of empty) gesture.
I'm definitely turning 'ignore Supergroup invites' on for my unaffiliated characters, though. Random pubbie invites were common enough before; the prospect of signing bonuses is going to whip them into a frenzy.
This is why I'm not terribly concerned about NCSoft buying CoX outright. With almost the same dev team there, it's probably going to stick with the same general vision that it's been operating under so far, and NCSoft hopefully won't be inclined to mess around with it too much. If only one of them were sticking around (even if it was Prime Mover Positron), I'd be much more worried about the future of a game I've been playing on and off since launch.
People buy shooters to blast the Hell out of things. People buy puzzle games because they might not like the violence of shooters. Putting one game in the other and forcing someone to shift gears and engage in play that they may not enjoy (or may simply not be coded very well) simply isn't fun.
I don't know about anyone else, but even my signature tends to shift a bit every time I jot it down to take a delivery or acknowledge a credit card payment. Even something as simple as a circle is going to throw no-match errors, unless the system's got a lot of built-in leeway for curves and squiggles that aren't in precisely the right spot.
It's probably more likely a hipster version of Morrison's The Filth. Only with more pretty young people and banter, and less giant attack sperms and nazi dolphins.
Beyond not being skippable, which is a good thing the first time through a mission at least, my only issue is that the transition is usually rather jarring. One second, you're all "HULK SMASH!" and the next your UI's missing and you're "Fine. Hulk wait for station identification."