Supposedly democratic is probably the best way to describe just about any country that claims to have a democracy. I've never seen a single one that's fully democratic.
I don't doubt GP is being paranoid, but remember, government != police. At a time when the police are facing huge budget cuts and potential job losses, it's not going to hurt their cause when they can point to massive civil unrest as a reason why they need the extra money. I don't think they'd go so far as to incite riots, but they certainly have more to gain from them than the government.
Hardly any of the staff at my school were practising lawyers, they almost all had an academic focus. One or two did some work in the real world, but hardly enough that you'd want to stake the reputation of your whole school on them in a court. Academic law staff tend to be great on the theory, but pretty lousy on the practice (well, here in the UK anyway, that's why we have the bar/LPC course follow on where you actually learn the practical side of taking a case to court).
Indeed, although I wonder why that's so. If Nike or Adidas create a new sports shoe that gives a competitive advantage, and only certain athletes have access to it, do the sports bodies get their panties in a twist? The whole idea of the Olympics in particular (where he was prevented from running) is that it's meant to bring people together - here's someone who is trying to take a pretty crappy hand life's dealt them and turn it into a positive.
Zynga will attach themselves to any platform that has sufficient users. I suspect they are more likely to find alternative methods of getting users to spam their contact list (maybe something that involves using a mail form to spam your gmail account directly and earn you credits in the process or whatever) than they are to just walk away from the system (if it's in any way successful).
How about some system similar to community service. Make the company donate two months' profit annually for the next X years into community projects or something. That way you don't kill off a profitable company but you make them think long and hard about stepping out of line again AND the "little people" get some benefit for a change.
Well we only replaced the ground with moving walkways in a few places, but we do have the Segway, which is a more personalised version of the same concept.
Rockstar already did something similar with the Rockstar pass for LA Noire - buy the pass and you get all the DLC updates. EA could use a very similar model - buy a pass valid for one year and get all the content releases throughout the year, renew it next year, don't buy the pass and you can still pick and choose the DLC you want. This will succeed or fail on how well supported the titles are with updates and bonus content throughout the year - if it amounts to "pay X just to play for a year" it just won't work - a good percentage of console owners (on 360 or PSN's premium service) are already paying X per year for that.
I never understood that - Google made such a big deal about not showing different content to the bot than you do to users (to the extent that they banned high profile sites like BMW's.de site) and yet ExpertSexchange (which is how I always read it, anyhoo) are still around when their entire business model seems to be gaming the system.
It's not technically "exactly what this is", because this is far less flexible than GP's solution. You can't leave one monitor behind when you know you won't need the two, you could with his solution. Also, have you seen the thing? I want my main laptop screen directly in front of the keyboard with the second monitor off to the side so I can glance at it when required and so I can sit with my body and head straight on, I don't want to be sat typing with my head pointing sideways because of the weird split. This solution does away with the cables but introduces some additional constraints, so they're not an exact equivalent.
Seriously? Does that $100 monitor fit into the not especially huge laptop case?
Speak for yourself - I'm rocking an Alienware Orion that can comfortably carry TWO bulky 17" laptops and all the relevant accessories, so one laptop and a monitor (not 20" admittedly) would leave room for a couple of books. Of course, the backpack alone weighs probably as much as than my other (ultraportable) laptop AND bag together...
It's also much more comfortable over prolonged periods to adjust your head left and right to view the two screens rather than looking up and down. Sitting in front of a laptop and having to look up instead of straight ahead for any reasonable period of time would be painful.
That's where technology like this starts to be scary. Mobile data packages stand a chance of tipping the balance of power back in favour of the people, how long is it until police cars/uniforms incorporate technology that disables the mobile devices?
I've played through Portal and its challenge modes many times even though the game only racks in around the 3-4 hour mark (and much shorter when you know what you're doing). Duke Nukem Forever was 12 excrutiating hours and I can happily say I will never play it again. They should care more about replay value than length, especially if the length is basically mind-numbing filler and ridiculous load times.
They just really, really want it to be true because it means, if they hit upon the magical formula, they will make a fortune selling the same game experience to everyone. It's the game developer equivalent of alchemy's belief of turning lead into gold - it would be nice if it's true but you're far better turning your focus to the real world.
Agreed - the big problem is not the type of games that get made, it's how they're marketed. Heavy Rain is a prime example - it was so heavily hyped by the media before its launch that everyone ran out to buy it. Not everyone enjoyed it, some people want different things from games. What games companies need to do is get better at marketing to the people who will enjoy their game and stop trying to sell it to the whole market. We all know it's nice to make a blockbuster and get rich off the back of it, but that's a much riskier strategy than sticking to your niche and being known amongst fans of said niche for being good at it.
It's precisely this bizarre sense of entitlement, of him needing to cater to your view of what he should produce or what you believe would give the industry "artistic legitimacy", that he's saddened by. Each time a new ID game is released, millions of people show they appreciate the creative direction his company is taking whether it fits your own narrow minded notion of creativity or not.
It seems like Carmack is the one being a little whiny here. McDonalds satisfies a need for millions of people every day, but in no way would anyone claim they were producing fabulous cuisine. There's nothing wrong with meeting the demands of the masses, and it's certainly very profitable, but don't then complain because you're not getting the artistic kudos you believe you deserve. Ferraris get artistic kudos, Fords not so much, which sells more? Do you think the CEO of Ford gets upset that their cars are seen as functional and affordable rather than autoerotica? I'm with you on the id game front, I've enjoyed all their games in the past, I'd just rather he focused on giving us the next game and less on complaining about his lack of respect in the indie crowd.
The staff should be one of the big advantages over the internet, but so few stores take advantage of them. Occasionally at my local Waterstones the staff will put up little cards with brief reviews of books they've read or enjoyed and I always find I buy more books at that time because it's less of a risk. When the cards aren't there I'll only buy from a small group of authors, otherwise I'd rather hit up Amazon and read some reviews. If bricks and mortar stores have one unique selling point the internet doesn't have, they should be falling over themselves to make the most of it, but in most stores you get surly staff who don't care enough to help, or they watch you like a shoplifter or talk over you to their colleague while taking your money and pretty much ignoring you.
Considering the police are meant to have siezed all the evidence already, the fact that this stuff was lying around where LulzSec could access it shows either that it wasn't important or that the police had "missed" it and there was little chance of it ever showing up in court. Maybe this way at least if there is anything pertinent it will have a chance to see the light of day.
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Supposedly democratic is probably the best way to describe just about any country that claims to have a democracy. I've never seen a single one that's fully democratic.
I don't doubt GP is being paranoid, but remember, government != police. At a time when the police are facing huge budget cuts and potential job losses, it's not going to hurt their cause when they can point to massive civil unrest as a reason why they need the extra money. I don't think they'd go so far as to incite riots, but they certainly have more to gain from them than the government.
Hardly any of the staff at my school were practising lawyers, they almost all had an academic focus. One or two did some work in the real world, but hardly enough that you'd want to stake the reputation of your whole school on them in a court. Academic law staff tend to be great on the theory, but pretty lousy on the practice (well, here in the UK anyway, that's why we have the bar/LPC course follow on where you actually learn the practical side of taking a case to court).
Indeed, although I wonder why that's so. If Nike or Adidas create a new sports shoe that gives a competitive advantage, and only certain athletes have access to it, do the sports bodies get their panties in a twist? The whole idea of the Olympics in particular (where he was prevented from running) is that it's meant to bring people together - here's someone who is trying to take a pretty crappy hand life's dealt them and turn it into a positive.
Zynga will attach themselves to any platform that has sufficient users. I suspect they are more likely to find alternative methods of getting users to spam their contact list (maybe something that involves using a mail form to spam your gmail account directly and earn you credits in the process or whatever) than they are to just walk away from the system (if it's in any way successful).
How about some system similar to community service. Make the company donate two months' profit annually for the next X years into community projects or something. That way you don't kill off a profitable company but you make them think long and hard about stepping out of line again AND the "little people" get some benefit for a change.
pokemon style? "My government evolved into a charizard!"
"It's not very effective."
Maybe it was no better or worse for you. For me, I paid a 50% premium just so I could leave with a headache.
Well we only replaced the ground with moving walkways in a few places, but we do have the Segway, which is a more personalised version of the same concept.
Rockstar already did something similar with the Rockstar pass for LA Noire - buy the pass and you get all the DLC updates. EA could use a very similar model - buy a pass valid for one year and get all the content releases throughout the year, renew it next year, don't buy the pass and you can still pick and choose the DLC you want. This will succeed or fail on how well supported the titles are with updates and bonus content throughout the year - if it amounts to "pay X just to play for a year" it just won't work - a good percentage of console owners (on 360 or PSN's premium service) are already paying X per year for that.
I never understood that - Google made such a big deal about not showing different content to the bot than you do to users (to the extent that they banned high profile sites like BMW's .de site) and yet ExpertSexchange (which is how I always read it, anyhoo) are still around when their entire business model seems to be gaming the system.
They retain the ability but they pinky swear never, ever to use it.
Far better to plant a camera in the home of the company's CEO and route the feed back through your laptop.
It's not technically "exactly what this is", because this is far less flexible than GP's solution. You can't leave one monitor behind when you know you won't need the two, you could with his solution. Also, have you seen the thing? I want my main laptop screen directly in front of the keyboard with the second monitor off to the side so I can glance at it when required and so I can sit with my body and head straight on, I don't want to be sat typing with my head pointing sideways because of the weird split. This solution does away with the cables but introduces some additional constraints, so they're not an exact equivalent.
Seriously? Does that $100 monitor fit into the not especially huge laptop case?
Speak for yourself - I'm rocking an Alienware Orion that can comfortably carry TWO bulky 17" laptops and all the relevant accessories, so one laptop and a monitor (not 20" admittedly) would leave room for a couple of books. Of course, the backpack alone weighs probably as much as than my other (ultraportable) laptop AND bag together...
It's also much more comfortable over prolonged periods to adjust your head left and right to view the two screens rather than looking up and down. Sitting in front of a laptop and having to look up instead of straight ahead for any reasonable period of time would be painful.
That's where technology like this starts to be scary. Mobile data packages stand a chance of tipping the balance of power back in favour of the people, how long is it until police cars/uniforms incorporate technology that disables the mobile devices?
Latin wouldn't help you - the latin would be "verum dicere" - I think "voir dire" is French origin.
I've played through Portal and its challenge modes many times even though the game only racks in around the 3-4 hour mark (and much shorter when you know what you're doing). Duke Nukem Forever was 12 excrutiating hours and I can happily say I will never play it again. They should care more about replay value than length, especially if the length is basically mind-numbing filler and ridiculous load times.
They just really, really want it to be true because it means, if they hit upon the magical formula, they will make a fortune selling the same game experience to everyone. It's the game developer equivalent of alchemy's belief of turning lead into gold - it would be nice if it's true but you're far better turning your focus to the real world.
Agreed - the big problem is not the type of games that get made, it's how they're marketed. Heavy Rain is a prime example - it was so heavily hyped by the media before its launch that everyone ran out to buy it. Not everyone enjoyed it, some people want different things from games. What games companies need to do is get better at marketing to the people who will enjoy their game and stop trying to sell it to the whole market. We all know it's nice to make a blockbuster and get rich off the back of it, but that's a much riskier strategy than sticking to your niche and being known amongst fans of said niche for being good at it.
It's precisely this bizarre sense of entitlement, of him needing to cater to your view of what he should produce or what you believe would give the industry "artistic legitimacy", that he's saddened by. Each time a new ID game is released, millions of people show they appreciate the creative direction his company is taking whether it fits your own narrow minded notion of creativity or not.
It seems like Carmack is the one being a little whiny here. McDonalds satisfies a need for millions of people every day, but in no way would anyone claim they were producing fabulous cuisine. There's nothing wrong with meeting the demands of the masses, and it's certainly very profitable, but don't then complain because you're not getting the artistic kudos you believe you deserve. Ferraris get artistic kudos, Fords not so much, which sells more? Do you think the CEO of Ford gets upset that their cars are seen as functional and affordable rather than autoerotica? I'm with you on the id game front, I've enjoyed all their games in the past, I'd just rather he focused on giving us the next game and less on complaining about his lack of respect in the indie crowd.
The staff should be one of the big advantages over the internet, but so few stores take advantage of them. Occasionally at my local Waterstones the staff will put up little cards with brief reviews of books they've read or enjoyed and I always find I buy more books at that time because it's less of a risk. When the cards aren't there I'll only buy from a small group of authors, otherwise I'd rather hit up Amazon and read some reviews. If bricks and mortar stores have one unique selling point the internet doesn't have, they should be falling over themselves to make the most of it, but in most stores you get surly staff who don't care enough to help, or they watch you like a shoplifter or talk over you to their colleague while taking your money and pretty much ignoring you.
Considering the police are meant to have siezed all the evidence already, the fact that this stuff was lying around where LulzSec could access it shows either that it wasn't important or that the police had "missed" it and there was little chance of it ever showing up in court. Maybe this way at least if there is anything pertinent it will have a chance to see the light of day.
Their usual level of "reporting" is so not much objective as objectionable.