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First Person Shooters (Games)

Modern Warfare 2 Surpasses $1 Billion Mark; Dedicated Servers What? 258

The Opposable Thumbs blog is running an interesting article contrasting everything Activision did "wrong" in creating and marketing Modern Warfare 2 with the game's unqualified success. Despite price hikes, somewhat shady review practices, exploit frustrations, and the dedicated server fiasco, the game has raked in over a billion dollars in sales. "There was only one way to review Modern Warfare 2: on the Xbox 360, in Santa Barbara, under the watchful eye of Activision. Accepting the paid trip, along with room and board, was the only way you were going to get a review before launch. Joystiq noted that this broke their ethics policy, but they went anyway. Who can say no to a review destined to bring in traffic? Shacknews refused to call their coverage a 'review' because of the ethical issues inherent in the situation, but that stance was unique. The vast majority of news outlets didn't disclose how the review was conducted, or added a disclaimer after the nature of the review was made public. This proved to Activision that if you're big enough, you can dictate the exact terms of any review, and no ethics policy will make news outlets turn you down."
Education

We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks? 398

Hugh Pickens writes "Using Netflix as a business model, Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra founded Chegg, shorthand for 'chicken and egg,' to gather books from sellers at the end of a semester and renting — or sometimes selling — them to other students at the start of a new one. Chegg began renting books in 2007, before it owned any, so when an order came in, its employees would surf the Web to find a cheap copy. They would buy the book using Rashid's American Express card and have it shipped to the student. Eventually, Chegg automated the system. 'People thought we were crazy,' Rashid said. Now, as Chegg prepares for its third academic year in the textbook rental business, the business is growing rapidly. Jim Safka, a former chief executive of Match.com and Ask.com who was recently recruited to run Chegg, said the company's revenue in 2008 was more than $10 million, and this year, Chegg surpassed that in January alone."

Comment Re:Very nicely written... NOT (Score 2, Insightful) 580

If the purpose of writing something is for it to be read, this piece fails miserably. If they whole article is like the first paragraph, you're in for some tiresome reading:

Throughout much of the world today, mass media is prevalent to such a degree that it has become a cultural influence as deep as our languages and ethnic histories. The multifarious mediums through which human beings extend their inner being, their very sense of personal identity, are a teeming tangle of noise in the airwaves along which this "Age of Information" extends its influence into our homes, our minds, and our lives. Since the dawn of the human ability to create media as a means to communicate or simply to visualize the poignant tide of human thought, we have suffered the criticism of our fellow inhabitants within our communities. While endeavoring to bequeath our exclusive equities unto the world, we are often chagrined by remonstrations designed to terminate what many believe to be our God-given right to pursue. Parallel to the advent of society, there have been laws and law makers, empowered by militant services and the citizenry of which they are comprised, created and enforced to impose the will of the commonality. Parallel to that have been those who questioned whether or not those in power are in fact speaking for the commonalty and to what ends.

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