Comment Implicit whitelisting? (Score 1) 115
That is so last decade ;P
Comment My Opinion (Score 1) 17
I have been playing Entropia actively from early 2005 till mid 2008 and I have an intense love/hate relationship with them. Let me list my personal pros/cons:
Pros:
Videogame with real money.
CryEngine powered.
No shards, one world.
Mature playerbase, mostly US/EU.
Stable financials, the company is shareholder-friendly.
They are a registered Swedish banking company.
They have a deal with Chinese Cyber Recreation Development Bureau.
Cons:
Addictive as hell.
Quite random, i would say quite close to poker in variance terms.
You will never catch up with the oldskool players, you would have to deposit million $ to get the same items and skills as top people.
Slow innovation, no new core systems for a long time.
Long term tendency to overpromise and underdeliver.
Low new account growth.
They seem to be content with having low amount of heavily hooked players. This is a conservative strategy unusual for a revolutionary company. However, this may be just the right type of approach to make it work. They will probably end up being bought by Microsoft or someone like that if they play their cards right.
Pros:
Videogame with real money.
CryEngine powered.
No shards, one world.
Mature playerbase, mostly US/EU.
Stable financials, the company is shareholder-friendly.
They are a registered Swedish banking company.
They have a deal with Chinese Cyber Recreation Development Bureau.
Cons:
Addictive as hell.
Quite random, i would say quite close to poker in variance terms.
You will never catch up with the oldskool players, you would have to deposit million $ to get the same items and skills as top people.
Slow innovation, no new core systems for a long time.
Long term tendency to overpromise and underdeliver.
Low new account growth.
They seem to be content with having low amount of heavily hooked players. This is a conservative strategy unusual for a revolutionary company. However, this may be just the right type of approach to make it work. They will probably end up being bought by Microsoft or someone like that if they play their cards right.
Comment Re:No Cash (Score 1) 17
I was a member of his society ingame and I can attest he definitely deposited quite a bit over the time. Entropia started back in 2000 and he was one of the top crafters right off the bat. That cost him money MindArk really needed at the time when they were just starting out. Look at it as inflation and opportunity cost adjusted money, 30k back then could well be 300k now.
Comment Re:PE Marketing Guy? (Score 1) 17
No, that guy was Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs. Some sorta extroverted DJ from Florida and former MindArk PR guy for the US. He set the previous record by buying an asteroid for 100k $ couple of years back.
Virtual Space Station Sold For $330,000 17
Pirx Danford writes "The world record sale for a virtual item was surpassed yesterday by the avatar known as Buzz Erik Lightyear, when he acquired a very special piece of property. For the incredible amount of $330,000, the space station Crystal Palace has been won by Buzz in the in-game auction system of Entropia Universe. The player who won the auction is known as one of the best crafters within the game, and like with Chuck Norris jokes, there are a bunch of sayings about what Buzz Erik Lightyear can achieve."
Submission + - Fifth anniversary of a cosmic onslaught (discovermagazine.com)
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Five years ago today (December 27, 2004), a vast wave of high-energy gamma and X-rays washed over the Earth, blinding satellites and partially ionizing the Earth's atmosphere. The culprit was a superflare from the magnetar SGR 1806-20, located 50,000 light years away. The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"
Comment christmasy story (Score 1) 249
is chistmasy
Comment Way too smart for EA (Score 1) 214
They will reverse that policy as soon as they miss the next quarterly results or something.
Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21
davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."
Comment story for you ma'am (Score 1) 1255
Comment I dont care (Score 1) 371
As long as my robot has the same right!
Comment 2020 (Score 1) 557
In 2020, you will not be using a printer. You will be using a scanner. Possibly a brain scanner.
Comment This will work (Score 1) 46
They are currently recruiting only flash game developers but I can imagine this getting as big as advertising is right now. It could even keep newspapers alive. "Do you want to access my free content? Sure, but gimme 10% of your processing power." As long as there is demand for this computing power, we are quite able to harness it.
Comment Re:Screw Up. A lot. (Score 1) 1354
we got a winner folks
Comment Re:America is full of itself (Score 2, Interesting) 236
Yeah, ditching your SUV is like the most masochistic thing possible. Not.
