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Comment Re:Well shit (Score 1) 401

by simtel (#33870216) Attached to: Final Fantasy XIV Launches To Scathing Reviews
It is entirely psychology - but the psychological differences between positive feedback (do something right, get reward) and negative feedback (do something wrong, get punished) are coming onto play here.

FFXIV "punishes" players for playing too much by giving them less XP. This results in the perception that it is bad to play for long periods of time. WoW "rewards" players for playing less by giving them more XP. This results in the perception that it is good to play for shorter periods of time. Yes, the end XP result is the same, however the perception differences between reward and punishment give the events a emotive response that is _not_ the same.

That's one of the things S-E needs to learn - the psychology of gamers. There IS a market for people who enjoy being punished. The masses with their wads of cash? Not so much; they tend to prefer being rewarded.

Comment Re:escalators too (Score 5, Informative) 698

by simtel (#32832744) Attached to: Should Cities Install Moving Sidewalks?

Technological solutions like this work well in Japan because people there have a society that values politeness and not being a flaming asshole. I've read they're so polite there that they even switch off their headlights at red lights, so they don't bother the people waiting on the opposite side. Over here, people happily leave their mis-aimed high beams on and blind people who are waiting for the light to change.

Funny enough, the last time I was in Japan I asked my host why she kept turning her headlights off at red lights - it turns out it wasn't to be polite. It was because she wanted to make the lamps in her headlights last longer.

Google in Talks to Buy YouTube 157

Posted by Zonk from the dogs-and-cats-living-together-mass-hysteria dept.
tessaiga writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for about $1.6 billion. YouTube users watch more that 100 million videos daily, and the site's market share tops that of similar services offered by Google and other popular Web sites. This comes after a story earlier this morning that co-founder Sergey Brin is pushing for Google to cut back on the volume of products being offered, complaining that 'I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products we were releasing'. Guess Google Video is one of the products making the approved shortlist."

Merrill Lynch Predicts $200 Wii 341

Posted by Zonk from the not-a-bad-price dept.
Burlap writes "In a story at Forbes, Merrill Lynch predicts that Nintendo will severely undercut the competition with a $200 price point on the Wii." From the article: "An executive from SEGA, one of Nintendo's largest publishers, told Forbes.com on Tuesday that he expects the Wii to sell for less than $200. Post said the Nintendo machine, which features a wireless controller that responds to players' body movements, 'will appeal to a broad demographic of both hard-core and casual gamers.'"

Cloak of Invisibility Coming Soon 296

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i've-heard-that-before dept.
davaguco writes "It seems that we will finally be able to make ourselves invisible" It seems like this story resurfaces every few months and then gets submitted a zillion times so here it is. Personally I'm still waiting for my cloak of evasion. 20% miss chance is awesome.

Microsoft's IE7 Search Box Bugs Google 803

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-wait-a-minute dept.
tessaiga writes "The New York Times reports that Google is crying foul over a new IE7 search box feature that defaults to MSN Search. Although the feature can be modified to use Google or other search engines, Google asserts that "The best way to handle the search box [...] would be to give users a choice when they first start up Internet Explorer 7." Google goes on to assert that the move "limits consumer choice and is reminiscent of the tactics that got Microsoft into antitrust trouble in the late 1990s". I notice that in my version of Firefox the search box defaults to Google, and that the pulldown menu of pre-entered options doesn't even include MSN Search, but Google seems to have been oddly quiet on that front for the many years prior to IE7 that Firefox has made this feature available."

Torvalds Has Harsh Words For FreeBSD Devs 571

Posted by Zonk from the end-of-the-week-frustrations dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a relatively technical discussion about the merits of Copy On Write (COW) versus a very new Linux kernel system call named vmsplice(), Linux creator Linus Torvalds had some harsh words for Mach and FreeBSD developers that utilize COW: 'I claim that Mach people (and apparently FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots. Playing games with VM is bad. memory copies are _also_ bad, but quite frankly, memory copies often have _less_ downside than VM games, and bigger caches will only continue to drive that point home.' The discussion goes on to explain how the new vmsplice() avoids this extra overhead."

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