I wouldn't have an issue with micro-transactions if they were, well, micro. Back when these ideas were first being touted it seemed like we'd be talking pennies to buy, and that the profit would come from the cheap distribution model coupled with high volumes of sales (partly driven by the incredibly low price). Instead what we usually see is a few pounds per transaction which, while still hardly wallet-busting, very quickly adds up to the point where, if you buy the game and all the extras, you can easily double the purchase price of the game alone. I can see where this is a great deal for the seller, but as usual it seems the buyer is getting the raw end.
A total of twelve people have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month time span starting over four decades ago on July 21, 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 (with Armstrong being first to step foot on the surface), and ending on December 14, 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17 (with Cernan being the last to step off the lunar surface). All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained onboard the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover to drive around for increased mobility [Wikipedia]
Agreed - if they needed cash so much, surely they could have sold the originals for many, many times their worth as digital recording media to any number of national museums who would have lovingly preserved them.
Initially mice were tested with a variety of 'delivery systems' until researchers with the National Wildlife Researcher Center in Fort Collins, Colorado settled on a streamer attached to cardboard on which the mouse is affixed via glue. This contraption is meant to catch in the tree tops: perfectly positioning itself for hungry brown tree snakes.
Seems like they already figured out the parachute idea.
Maybe they're not expecting people to see the instant benefit and instead are hoping for a gathering of momentum behind the device leading up to the next Christmas. Given the coverage Kinect and Move have had, it's not a bad idea if they think it will be a hard sell at launch to soft launch early for the following year.
I don't think his moral stand is related to IMDB not listing this movie, but more to do with Amazon's general business practices, which is certainly not something that will be forgotten by tomorrow morning. Indeed, Amazon have been on the receiving end of criticism for some years now for all kinds of unscrupulous business practices.
Flawed as it may be, the community aspects of IMDB do still make it useful to a lot of people - you might not get a bulletproof review, but you get at least a ball park feel for the quality of a release from how the community react to it that is not generally present on Wikipedia. You also find IMDB are more careful about revealing spoilers, whereas Wikipedia famously present the bare information regardless, so IMDB does still have it's place (it's also great for looking up which obscure movie you remember seeing the obscure actor in when all you have to work with is the name of the movie you're currently watching - a much underrated tool for resolving drunken wagers or preventing the insomnia-inducing mental gymnastics otherwise required).
Their vetting process guidelines suggest they will make exceptions to the other rules where a film has a sufficiently large audience or is otherwise widely referenced in popular culture or the media. My guess is this guy is complaining about his movie not being listed specifically to generate the kind of attention that will get it listed (since it doesn't seem like they've officially said no yet, his anticipating their saying no seems to be all about generating interest, which ironically reduces the chances of them saying no). Pretty shrewd but nothing for anyone to get worked up about.
Personally I feel you can't beat a demo, but failing that find a few reviewers who seem to share your likes and dislikes (an easy way to do this is to read some of their past reviews for games you loved/hated and see if they gave the same reasoning) and follow them. They won't always agree with each other or with you, but if you find four or five you can average out the reviews. The metacritic method is also good as a last resort, but even if you read in reverse order you're not guaranteeing that the reviewer is picking up on real flaws as opposed to venting because he doesn't like the company, or doesn't like that particular genre, etc.
Yes, they even say in the summary that the reasoning behind these gifts is not so much bribery to ensure a good score but merely to get the gifts themselves (and therefore, by extension, the games) talked about a little bit more in the media. I guess "bribery" was used in the title because it sounds more salacious than "gifts", although if someone sent me a crate of rotting meat I think I'd be more inclined to call the police.
I always wondered why there was so much gambling and why the Ferengi were so obsessed with making money in a universe with replicators. Surely replicators would pretty much eliminate most of the commercial sector, and gambling is all about the risk - take that away by allowing players to go replicate some more cash and where's the fun? Having said that, the last 15 years has gradually taught me that even where there is no scarcity to create value, governments will bend over backwards to artificially create it at the behest of big corporations, so perhaps there is an artificial limit imposed on replicators, too.
I don't mind so long as it's possible to earn the awards through play. There are times when I have more free time to play, other times my free time is non-existent. If I'm enjoying a game, I don't want to fall behind just because we have a few busy weeks at work, if I can offset that by laying out some cash then I see that as a reasonable alternative to grinding. I agree that the ones where cash buys equipment that's not otherwise available are evil, simply because I'd rather buy a game outright and know what I'm paying than be sucked into some complex confusopoly of micro-payments.
It does if they're at school when they bring up a page full of pornographic results just as the teacher looks over. Similarly if I'm at work there are certain results I would rather live didn't return by default.
Now that would be censorship, considering people generally don't want to be logged in and tracked while searching certain terms, requiring a login to search those terms would effectively prevent them conducting said searches. How is that better than just requiring that people hit enter?
But the point GP was making is, if you want the full list you just have to hit enter. Effectively you just have to do what you would have had to do a couple of weeks ago before the new service launched. If we're already so accustomed to using live search that the gargantuan effort of having to hit enter to see results which some people might find offensive (and let's face it, the whole reasoning behind this is to prevent the even bigger public outcry we would see when little Jimmy starts typing his search for "cuneiform" for his school history project and risks going blind three letters in) is considered "censorship", then we probably have bigger things to worry about. Either that or someone with an agenda - a competitor or someone trying to sell clicks with censorship horror stories - is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
My GF is an iPhone user and very much non-technical and even she finds the device limiting and even sometimes frustrating, particularly when it comes to synchronising the device or managing her media content. I wouldn't for one minute doubt that a lot of people find the device does everything they need, but even amongst the otherwise generally happy userbase there are a not inconsiderable number of people who wish it could do more, or offered a little more flexibility. You're right that user experience is not about offering every feature ever available, but it should be about ensuring that the ones that are offered are of a good quality - having seen the issues my other half frequently has with her device, I'd say there are at least a few areas where the user experience is sub-optimal (and it's not like we're talking about anything incredibly complex that's difficult to streamline, these are some basic features that can be a pain for users). It is possible to like something but still see room for improvement.
Well jail time is theoretically about rehabilitation, but in practice it's about deterrence. It wouldn't deter anyone from following in his footsteps if he was sent home without serving jail time (I think the $1m repayment part is just wishful thinking). Mind you, how do you rehabilitate someone whose crime is purely financial in a society that's largely focused on the pursuit of money, or prevent others copying him? In that case his "crime" was merely being caught, and every criminal assumes he's smarter than the last guy and won't get caught, so the effectiveness of such a sentence even as a deterent is doubtful.
And if you actually read up on the success rate for those two well known companies, you'll see that the courts have largely thrown out their frivolous claims and have mostly only upheld claims where either the defendant was not acting with clean hands (i.e. it was clear they were trying to piggy-back on the well known brand for their own benefit) or where there was otherwise genuine opportunity for customer confusion. Any company can be trigger happy with trademarks, it doesn't mean they're guaranteed to win.
Because everyone loves to buy technical products from a company that's likely to be sued into oblivion, leaving said customers without recourse if the product breaks... I think perhaps your logic is flawed.
The difference there was that Facebook were specifically going after a social networking website (i.e. the same product they offer) that also used the same naming convention of book. In this case, the product is not even similar to the product that is trademarked (a video projector versus a portable digital music device), nor does the product borrow the naming convention of a single word starting with a lower case letter followed by an upper case letter (i.e. they've not used "vPod" or even "videoPod" but "Video Pod"). Add to that the fact that "pod" was a common word relating to digital music (and perhaps video - I can't remember if the iPod predates the first video podcasts or not) before Apple ever registered it, while -book was not common to social networking websites prior to Facebook and hopefully you'll see that comparing the two is like comparing appl... I mean... bananas and oranges (better safe than sorry).
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't have an issue with micro-transactions if they were, well, micro. Back when these ideas were first being touted it seemed like we'd be talking pennies to buy, and that the profit would come from the cheap distribution model coupled with high volumes of sales (partly driven by the incredibly low price). Instead what we usually see is a few pounds per transaction which, while still hardly wallet-busting, very quickly adds up to the point where, if you buy the game and all the extras, you can easily double the purchase price of the game alone. I can see where this is a great deal for the seller, but as usual it seems the buyer is getting the raw end.
They did go back:
A total of twelve people have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month time span starting over four decades ago on July 21, 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 (with Armstrong being first to step foot on the surface), and ending on December 14, 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17 (with Cernan being the last to step off the lunar surface). All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained onboard the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover to drive around for increased mobility [Wikipedia]
Agreed - if they needed cash so much, surely they could have sold the originals for many, many times their worth as digital recording media to any number of national museums who would have lovingly preserved them.
FTFA:
Initially mice were tested with a variety of 'delivery systems' until researchers with the National Wildlife Researcher Center in Fort Collins, Colorado settled on a streamer attached to cardboard on which the mouse is affixed via glue. This contraption is meant to catch in the tree tops: perfectly positioning itself for hungry brown tree snakes.
Seems like they already figured out the parachute idea.
Plus I'm guessing there's not a lot of whatever eats snakes on the island, or there'd not be such a big issue in the first place.
It's ideal for chill-blains.
Maybe they're not expecting people to see the instant benefit and instead are hoping for a gathering of momentum behind the device leading up to the next Christmas. Given the coverage Kinect and Move have had, it's not a bad idea if they think it will be a hard sell at launch to soft launch early for the following year.
I don't think his moral stand is related to IMDB not listing this movie, but more to do with Amazon's general business practices, which is certainly not something that will be forgotten by tomorrow morning. Indeed, Amazon have been on the receiving end of criticism for some years now for all kinds of unscrupulous business practices.
Flawed as it may be, the community aspects of IMDB do still make it useful to a lot of people - you might not get a bulletproof review, but you get at least a ball park feel for the quality of a release from how the community react to it that is not generally present on Wikipedia. You also find IMDB are more careful about revealing spoilers, whereas Wikipedia famously present the bare information regardless, so IMDB does still have it's place (it's also great for looking up which obscure movie you remember seeing the obscure actor in when all you have to work with is the name of the movie you're currently watching - a much underrated tool for resolving drunken wagers or preventing the insomnia-inducing mental gymnastics otherwise required).
Their vetting process guidelines suggest they will make exceptions to the other rules where a film has a sufficiently large audience or is otherwise widely referenced in popular culture or the media. My guess is this guy is complaining about his movie not being listed specifically to generate the kind of attention that will get it listed (since it doesn't seem like they've officially said no yet, his anticipating their saying no seems to be all about generating interest, which ironically reduces the chances of them saying no). Pretty shrewd but nothing for anyone to get worked up about.
He didn't say he wouldn't if the opportunity presented itself, just that she's not about to make it into the spank bank.
Personally I feel you can't beat a demo, but failing that find a few reviewers who seem to share your likes and dislikes (an easy way to do this is to read some of their past reviews for games you loved/hated and see if they gave the same reasoning) and follow them. They won't always agree with each other or with you, but if you find four or five you can average out the reviews. The metacritic method is also good as a last resort, but even if you read in reverse order you're not guaranteeing that the reviewer is picking up on real flaws as opposed to venting because he doesn't like the company, or doesn't like that particular genre, etc.
Slightly pedantic, but decades plural would suggest the site has existed with said flaws since at least 1990.
Yes, they even say in the summary that the reasoning behind these gifts is not so much bribery to ensure a good score but merely to get the gifts themselves (and therefore, by extension, the games) talked about a little bit more in the media. I guess "bribery" was used in the title because it sounds more salacious than "gifts", although if someone sent me a crate of rotting meat I think I'd be more inclined to call the police.
I always wondered why there was so much gambling and why the Ferengi were so obsessed with making money in a universe with replicators. Surely replicators would pretty much eliminate most of the commercial sector, and gambling is all about the risk - take that away by allowing players to go replicate some more cash and where's the fun? Having said that, the last 15 years has gradually taught me that even where there is no scarcity to create value, governments will bend over backwards to artificially create it at the behest of big corporations, so perhaps there is an artificial limit imposed on replicators, too.
I don't mind so long as it's possible to earn the awards through play. There are times when I have more free time to play, other times my free time is non-existent. If I'm enjoying a game, I don't want to fall behind just because we have a few busy weeks at work, if I can offset that by laying out some cash then I see that as a reasonable alternative to grinding. I agree that the ones where cash buys equipment that's not otherwise available are evil, simply because I'd rather buy a game outright and know what I'm paying than be sucked into some complex confusopoly of micro-payments.
It does if they're at school when they bring up a page full of pornographic results just as the teacher looks over. Similarly if I'm at work there are certain results I would rather live didn't return by default.
Now that would be censorship, considering people generally don't want to be logged in and tracked while searching certain terms, requiring a login to search those terms would effectively prevent them conducting said searches. How is that better than just requiring that people hit enter?
But the point GP was making is, if you want the full list you just have to hit enter. Effectively you just have to do what you would have had to do a couple of weeks ago before the new service launched. If we're already so accustomed to using live search that the gargantuan effort of having to hit enter to see results which some people might find offensive (and let's face it, the whole reasoning behind this is to prevent the even bigger public outcry we would see when little Jimmy starts typing his search for "cuneiform" for his school history project and risks going blind three letters in) is considered "censorship", then we probably have bigger things to worry about. Either that or someone with an agenda - a competitor or someone trying to sell clicks with censorship horror stories - is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
My GF is an iPhone user and very much non-technical and even she finds the device limiting and even sometimes frustrating, particularly when it comes to synchronising the device or managing her media content. I wouldn't for one minute doubt that a lot of people find the device does everything they need, but even amongst the otherwise generally happy userbase there are a not inconsiderable number of people who wish it could do more, or offered a little more flexibility. You're right that user experience is not about offering every feature ever available, but it should be about ensuring that the ones that are offered are of a good quality - having seen the issues my other half frequently has with her device, I'd say there are at least a few areas where the user experience is sub-optimal (and it's not like we're talking about anything incredibly complex that's difficult to streamline, these are some basic features that can be a pain for users). It is possible to like something but still see room for improvement.
Well jail time is theoretically about rehabilitation, but in practice it's about deterrence. It wouldn't deter anyone from following in his footsteps if he was sent home without serving jail time (I think the $1m repayment part is just wishful thinking). Mind you, how do you rehabilitate someone whose crime is purely financial in a society that's largely focused on the pursuit of money, or prevent others copying him? In that case his "crime" was merely being caught, and every criminal assumes he's smarter than the last guy and won't get caught, so the effectiveness of such a sentence even as a deterent is doubtful.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. NEVER, EVER let your girlfriend know what is going on. It gets you in trouble every time.
FTFY
And if you actually read up on the success rate for those two well known companies, you'll see that the courts have largely thrown out their frivolous claims and have mostly only upheld claims where either the defendant was not acting with clean hands (i.e. it was clear they were trying to piggy-back on the well known brand for their own benefit) or where there was otherwise genuine opportunity for customer confusion. Any company can be trigger happy with trademarks, it doesn't mean they're guaranteed to win.
Because everyone loves to buy technical products from a company that's likely to be sued into oblivion, leaving said customers without recourse if the product breaks... I think perhaps your logic is flawed.
The difference there was that Facebook were specifically going after a social networking website (i.e. the same product they offer) that also used the same naming convention of book. In this case, the product is not even similar to the product that is trademarked (a video projector versus a portable digital music device), nor does the product borrow the naming convention of a single word starting with a lower case letter followed by an upper case letter (i.e. they've not used "vPod" or even "videoPod" but "Video Pod"). Add to that the fact that "pod" was a common word relating to digital music (and perhaps video - I can't remember if the iPod predates the first video podcasts or not) before Apple ever registered it, while -book was not common to social networking websites prior to Facebook and hopefully you'll see that comparing the two is like comparing appl... I mean... bananas and oranges (better safe than sorry).