I thought the chemicals involved in the terror plot (including 'pirahna') were entirely too volatile to be mixed on the plane in the first place, and too stinky to even make it past a sniff test (even in precursor form)? Or at least something inane like you'd blow yourself up before you made enough of it to get anywhere...
Mmkay, I have anywhere from 500-700 emails sitting in my inbox by the time I go 'yup, needs cleaning'.
I re-route four main 'form' emails to a local frat's folder, ff.net, LiveJournal, and Slashdot (natch). I either find these important enough to take note of, or 'just' distinguishable enough that I jump upon seeing them.
Likewise, I have over 150 messages in my inbox from my ex, who I could shunt into a folder as well, but I figured out that I'd just rather delete the lot of them after a while, but because most of the messages are filled with piss and vitriol, I don't want to be reminded of them in such an obvious manner.
The remainder are school-related (because hey, you should hold onto those like you would old graded tests), and they'll be dropped into a folder to clean out the year once school starts up again, leaving me with a blank inbox.
So... I likely hang onto the past too much, have a hard time remembering things, show a keen interest in knowing when people actually notice me online, and have one fucked up relationship history. Yeah, that about covers it.
1) Market IS growing (We went from a house with no portables to a DS Phat (Sis) PSP (Bro) and DS Lite (myself)), but it's growing in Ninty's favor.
2) Nintendo is burning into the DS Lite with a vengeance because it knows it's weaker in the main console crunch, and hence is burying itself into its library in hopes that having the largest library will keep it in control AND to make itself the name in portables, the way Apple is the name of the Mp3 business these days.
I would consider several of the Final Fantasy games as Highbrow, or as close as you're likely to get.
Unfortunately, 'highbrow' takes a few years to age before it becomes highbrow. You can't just make that. You can get artsy and transcendental, but you're never going to just 'make' highbrow art.
A lot of the problem is that the kids are often just plain smarter than the school's sys admins. Back in my high school, there was a really popular rom collection that the admins couldn't get out of the system because when they tried to (via wiping the system or otherwise), someone would just restore it from their copy of the roms. Eventually it got to the point where if it was a certain amount of time before class, the admins just looked the other way while kids played Super Mario 3 and Adventure Island.
Truth is, if they'd bothered writing some protections to the 'shared' drives (even in the form of a password) where people kept replacing the roms so all the computers in a lab could use that rom, they could've probably stopped it cold. But hey, that would require understanding HOW we did it in the first place.
That the xBox or some other console doesn't have an installable cabinet model the way car stereos come with after-market versions?
1) The closest the modern console comes to this in any way shape or form is the Skinny PS2 by virtue of tinyness alone.
2) There is no 'Cool' factor available with doing this, and so the console manufacturers just aren't interested in something that cn barely be seen (unlike, say, nVidia which is cool with the idea).
3) The 'Modern cabinet' is seen as whatever fits under or over the TV. There IS no standard cabinet anymore, except as a straight arcade model (and the cost on that is hideous), in which case you don't want a console-style play anyhow.
Not to mention that the DS encourages its portability more than the PSP does: take note of the big-box stores having "DS Download Stations" that allow a travelling DS user to crack open their device and play a slew of demos and videos right in the store for free, as well as the friend-code system. A bevy of DS players all in range of each other showing off their nifty devices to passersby has to do SOMETHING for the medium.
In contrast, the "Playstation Spots", which are the PSP's approximate equals, are only seen in Europe and Australia. I'm much more likely to see a DS on the move, whereas my brother just stays constantly plugged in to one socket on the PSP.
... if only because that's how long it takes them to graduate and get lives.
Seriously, though, College is where the main 'adoption' of new systems takes place, so it makes sense that colleges would get it first. Mac and Linux are used there much more than in the 'mainstream' world.
And until recently, Gaia Online was also considered eBay-proof too.
I'm not sure how hard it would be to design a decompiler that could, say, play navy puzzles all day long and just harvest gold from duty puzzling, but I can't imagine it being fiendishly difficult, or would prevent a farmer from just playing the tournaments to sell off trinkets and other items in that manner.
The main abuse of the game is the use of 'able' alternative accounts to disguise the actual skill level of a player, which I doubt has ever been fully rectified.
Let's go back to your assumption of having 12 'good' songs (averaging 8 downloads a week), 24 okay songs (averaging maybe 4 hits a week), and add on another 12 crap songs (maybe 1 download a week). (12 * 8) + (24 * 4) + (12 * 1) = A little over 200 downloads a week.
That's $200 a week that the band can count on, if they sit on their ass. Now let's assume that they're not.
Let's toss in that every concert they play, they manage to spike iTunes downloads enough to make an extra $100 each time, with a residual of $10 a week to add onto their sitting-on-ass total thanks to continued interest. Let's also say that the band gets slashdotted/Digged every now and then and this gives another $100 spike with $40 residual when this occurs, while the average user's blog drums up maybe only $5 in extra revenue for a day with no noticable residual.
So...
Week 1: $200 normal revenue $100 concert spike (and one guy blogs about it next week on MySpace)
Weeks 2-5: $200 normal revenue + $10 concert residual (+ $5 from the MySpace post for one week)
Week 6: (Slashdotted about an upcoming concert at the end of the week): $210 normal revenue $100 concert spike (with $10 added residual + ten people blogging about the concert) $100 Slashdot spike (with $40 added resiual + added concert interest + five fans coming out of the woodwork to blog again)
Week 7: $260 normal revenue + $75 in blogging revenue
And the cycle continues ad nauseum. Yes, Not even making $500 a week on iTunes sucks, but we're not even including how many of those users bought actual CDs, posters, apparel . . . it may be that $500 is a perfectly good showing if they can count on that without even having to do anything, and my model suggests that every time they actually DO something, it only gets higher. It's easy to see how if the cycle continues at this rate, our hypothetical band could easily hit $1000 every few weeks or so with the right amount of activity and press. (And I didn't even include the impact making new songs has on their income!)
Quite simply, if there wasn't money to be made in the Deep Long Tail, there wouldn't be content providers there.
Personally? I think the 'long tail' effect is going to be highlighted more in the blogosphere.
Case In Point:
Person A likes something really popular at the moment(Say, Pirates of the Caribbean), but also likes some less popular things at a constant rate for a longer period of time (the DS Lite, Gaia Online, Crocs) and some niche things that have a burst of interest for a short time period (Sonata Arctica, Super Princess Peach, Jibbitz)
Person A blogs about all seven items in a single entry, and most likely spends more time talking about the niche things in total than on the really big popular item. Likewise, while information about PotC is probably easily accessible on Wikipedia or elsewhere, the user may have to seek out (and link to) niche sites for the less popular items, and thus lead her readers to these niche sites as well. The niche sites generate interest for the niche item, and boom, we now have more people wanting the niche.
It's the rough equivalent about how Shopping Centers usually have an 'anchor' in the form of Wal-Mart or a Bookstore, and then have the specialty shops around it to fill out the real estate. As more people notice themselves doing this with their blogs/LJs/MySpace/whatever, the niche items gain swing and soon gain a sizable portion of the market in this way.
The internet's main impact on the Long Tail is its ability to piece together far-flung bits of interest in an item, allowing them to congeal into a sizable force. Saleswise, however, the impact is only noticable to internet sellers (or big volume concrete sellers, like department stores), since smaller concrete retailers still find the costs of marketing to a niche prohibitive unless they dive into specialties. However, with the Long Tail, the consumers of these niche items become far more entrenched than before.
The FP Lottery is a 'house rule'. You know, like how D&D & most LARPs have house rules. Either you get it or you don't, and when you're not playing on a nationwide scale, I don't see why you can't have variants like that.
... which I doubt will happen, as even with the insane price tag, Sony 'Losing' means that it'll probably only sell 10 million of the things compared to the PS2's 100 million, and those numbers still beat the 360 either way...
If it happens, Nintendo wins by default because we know the 360's Japan support is weak. Like it or not, Japan is the driving force of the consoles, Which means in the end it's either Sony or Nintendo. Without a strong Japanese base, the 360 is irrelevant.
And two... it's caltrOps! And what would a bunch of tacks do to improve security anyway? I mean, sure, in a dungeon it'd work, but still...
You want to reinvent HotWheels? SIMULATOR!
on
Re-Inventing Hotwheels
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I want to see the insane tracks that make huge loops under and through your Mom's coffee table again! Bring me a way to do that, even if only with a computer, and you have your scheme right there.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the chemicals involved in the terror plot (including 'pirahna') were entirely too volatile to be mixed on the plane in the first place, and too stinky to even make it past a sniff test (even in precursor form)? Or at least something inane like you'd blow yourself up before you made enough of it to get anywhere...
Is there any point left in spam but to keep spam-blocking companies in business? After all, Internet Security is quite the nice racket...
I've got to remember that line more often.
If the PS3 won't play Blu-Ray, then it's useless as a Media console, hence it's ceding ground to the 360 that it really can't afford to cede.
I think it's actually trying to entice MORE users to the PS3 because Sony is trying to claim that by then the problems will be fixed.
My Mom got carded for buying me BLACK & WHITE! ... so I don't see where you're under the impression that there's a problem here.
Mmkay, I have anywhere from 500-700 emails sitting in my inbox by the time I go 'yup, needs cleaning'.
I re-route four main 'form' emails to a local frat's folder, ff.net, LiveJournal, and Slashdot (natch). I either find these important enough to take note of, or 'just' distinguishable enough that I jump upon seeing them.
Likewise, I have over 150 messages in my inbox from my ex, who I could shunt into a folder as well, but I figured out that I'd just rather delete the lot of them after a while, but because most of the messages are filled with piss and vitriol, I don't want to be reminded of them in such an obvious manner.
The remainder are school-related (because hey, you should hold onto those like you would old graded tests), and they'll be dropped into a folder to clean out the year once school starts up again, leaving me with a blank inbox.
So... I likely hang onto the past too much, have a hard time remembering things, show a keen interest in knowing when people actually notice me online, and have one fucked up relationship history. Yeah, that about covers it.
Two things:
1) Market IS growing (We went from a house with no portables to a DS Phat (Sis) PSP (Bro) and DS Lite (myself)), but it's growing in Ninty's favor.
2) Nintendo is burning into the DS Lite with a vengeance because it knows it's weaker in the main console crunch, and hence is burying itself into its library in hopes that having the largest library will keep it in control AND to make itself the name in portables, the way Apple is the name of the Mp3 business these days.
Compared to the $130 'controllers' that'll work with the Wii, I can see why they want to try and push it as an option.
;)
Of course, I love my DS Lite for all other sorts of reasons.
My Dad goes to these things, and I assure you:
There is no age limit on having a good time, particuarly if part of that good time is laughing at all the half-naked girls in fairy outfits.
Of course, I just stick to DragonCon, so maybe you guys don't get the half-nekkids as much...
I would consider several of the Final Fantasy games as Highbrow, or as close as you're likely to get.
Unfortunately, 'highbrow' takes a few years to age before it becomes highbrow. You can't just make that. You can get artsy and transcendental, but you're never going to just 'make' highbrow art.
A lot of the problem is that the kids are often just plain smarter than the school's sys admins. Back in my high school, there was a really popular rom collection that the admins couldn't get out of the system because when they tried to (via wiping the system or otherwise), someone would just restore it from their copy of the roms. Eventually it got to the point where if it was a certain amount of time before class, the admins just looked the other way while kids played Super Mario 3 and Adventure Island.
Truth is, if they'd bothered writing some protections to the 'shared' drives (even in the form of a password) where people kept replacing the roms so all the computers in a lab could use that rom, they could've probably stopped it cold. But hey, that would require understanding HOW we did it in the first place.
It's like breakfast in the cafeteria; it's meant to be a proxy for a good upbringing at home.
Myself, I probably used the internet to a lot of its potential at school, but only because I blogged from it...
That the xBox or some other console doesn't have an installable cabinet model the way car stereos come with after-market versions?
1) The closest the modern console comes to this in any way shape or form is the Skinny PS2 by virtue of tinyness alone.
2) There is no 'Cool' factor available with doing this, and so the console manufacturers just aren't interested in something that cn barely be seen (unlike, say, nVidia which is cool with the idea).
3) The 'Modern cabinet' is seen as whatever fits under or over the TV. There IS no standard cabinet anymore, except as a straight arcade model (and the cost on that is hideous), in which case you don't want a console-style play anyhow.
You can't make an obscure NiGHTS reference in here without offering a handle in the right direction! I mean, jeez!
And it actually works, unless you're a real stick about being able to see the board...
Not to mention that the DS encourages its portability more than the PSP does: take note of the big-box stores having "DS Download Stations" that allow a travelling DS user to crack open their device and play a slew of demos and videos right in the store for free, as well as the friend-code system. A bevy of DS players all in range of each other showing off their nifty devices to passersby has to do SOMETHING for the medium.
In contrast, the "Playstation Spots", which are the PSP's approximate equals, are only seen in Europe and Australia. I'm much more likely to see a DS on the move, whereas my brother just stays constantly plugged in to one socket on the PSP.
You mean the point WASN'T to be a media orgy?
... if only because that's how long it takes them to graduate and get lives.
Seriously, though, College is where the main 'adoption' of new systems takes place, so it makes sense that colleges would get it first. Mac and Linux are used there much more than in the 'mainstream' world.
And until recently, Gaia Online was also considered eBay-proof too.
I'm not sure how hard it would be to design a decompiler that could, say, play navy puzzles all day long and just harvest gold from duty puzzling, but I can't imagine it being fiendishly difficult, or would prevent a farmer from just playing the tournaments to sell off trinkets and other items in that manner.
The main abuse of the game is the use of 'able' alternative accounts to disguise the actual skill level of a player, which I doubt has ever been fully rectified.
Let's go back to your assumption of having 12 'good' songs (averaging 8 downloads a week), 24 okay songs (averaging maybe 4 hits a week), and add on another 12 crap songs (maybe 1 download a week). (12 * 8) + (24 * 4) + (12 * 1) = A little over 200 downloads a week.
That's $200 a week that the band can count on, if they sit on their ass. Now let's assume that they're not.
Let's toss in that every concert they play, they manage to spike iTunes downloads enough to make an extra $100 each time, with a residual of $10 a week to add onto their sitting-on-ass total thanks to continued interest. Let's also say that the band gets slashdotted/Digged every now and then and this gives another $100 spike with $40 residual when this occurs, while the average user's blog drums up maybe only $5 in extra revenue for a day with no noticable residual.
So...
Week 1:
$200 normal revenue
$100 concert spike (and one guy blogs about it next week on MySpace)
Weeks 2-5:
$200 normal revenue + $10 concert residual (+ $5 from the MySpace post for one week)
Week 6: (Slashdotted about an upcoming concert at the end of the week):
$210 normal revenue
$100 concert spike (with $10 added residual + ten people blogging about the concert)
$100 Slashdot spike (with $40 added resiual + added concert interest + five fans coming out of the woodwork to blog again)
Week 7:
$260 normal revenue + $75 in blogging revenue
And the cycle continues ad nauseum. Yes, Not even making $500 a week on iTunes sucks, but we're not even including how many of those users bought actual CDs, posters, apparel . . . it may be that $500 is a perfectly good showing if they can count on that without even having to do anything, and my model suggests that every time they actually DO something, it only gets higher. It's easy to see how if the cycle continues at this rate, our hypothetical band could easily hit $1000 every few weeks or so with the right amount of activity and press. (And I didn't even include the impact making new songs has on their income!)
Quite simply, if there wasn't money to be made in the Deep Long Tail, there wouldn't be content providers there.
Personally? I think the 'long tail' effect is going to be highlighted more in the blogosphere.
Case In Point:
Person A likes something really popular at the moment(Say, Pirates of the Caribbean), but also likes some less popular things at a constant rate for a longer period of time (the DS Lite, Gaia Online, Crocs) and some niche things that have a burst of interest for a short time period (Sonata Arctica, Super Princess Peach, Jibbitz)
Person A blogs about all seven items in a single entry, and most likely spends more time talking about the niche things in total than on the really big popular item. Likewise, while information about PotC is probably easily accessible on Wikipedia or elsewhere, the user may have to seek out (and link to) niche sites for the less popular items, and thus lead her readers to these niche sites as well. The niche sites generate interest for the niche item, and boom, we now have more people wanting the niche.
It's the rough equivalent about how Shopping Centers usually have an 'anchor' in the form of Wal-Mart or a Bookstore, and then have the specialty shops around it to fill out the real estate. As more people notice themselves doing this with their blogs/LJs/MySpace/whatever, the niche items gain swing and soon gain a sizable portion of the market in this way.
The internet's main impact on the Long Tail is its ability to piece together far-flung bits of interest in an item, allowing them to congeal into a sizable force. Saleswise, however, the impact is only noticable to internet sellers (or big volume concrete sellers, like department stores), since smaller concrete retailers still find the costs of marketing to a niche prohibitive unless they dive into specialties. However, with the Long Tail, the consumers of these niche items become far more entrenched than before.
The FP Lottery is a 'house rule'. You know, like how D&D & most LARPs have house rules. Either you get it or you don't, and when you're not playing on a nationwide scale, I don't see why you can't have variants like that.
... which I doubt will happen, as even with the insane price tag, Sony 'Losing' means that it'll probably only sell 10 million of the things compared to the PS2's 100 million, and those numbers still beat the 360 either way...
If it happens, Nintendo wins by default because we know the 360's Japan support is weak. Like it or not, Japan is the driving force of the consoles, Which means in the end it's either Sony or Nintendo. Without a strong Japanese base, the 360 is irrelevant.
One, this is completely inane.
And two... it's caltrOps! And what would a bunch of tacks do to improve security anyway? I mean, sure, in a dungeon it'd work, but still...
I want to see the insane tracks that make huge loops under and through your Mom's coffee table again! Bring me a way to do that, even if only with a computer, and you have your scheme right there.