Computer Things that Don’t Make Sense
Today we upgraded our modem, and this new one happens to be a modem/router, so I’ve had to get around the router part that I don’t want (nor are you provided a password for).
Part of this was moving my old router to 192.168.4 from 192.168.1, to make sure there wasn’t a conflict.
This was bound to have a few other hiccups, and I had to reset the new modem 4 times (and it has the longest boot time I’ve ever seen for a device like that) just to be able to play a game. It was lagging horrendously and terribly unplayable. But eventually I made it into the last 15 minutes of the match to watch my team get creamed.
The next problem that arose was my dad not being able to print. His computer is hooked up to the same switch as the printer on a router upstairs. My sister is on this same router and she could print fine to the same printer.
How is it that someone farther from the printer (in terms of network devices) can print when he can’t? The problem must be with his computer!
After rebooting things a few times I remembered that we set a static IP for the printer a while back so we could print even though it was behind another router. I switched that to the new 192.168.4 address space and voila, he could print.
And my sister got her internet back.
Somehow that is connected.
WTF.
The Music Industry is Doing It Wrong
So they’re online. They’re finally (mostly?) online. But they still whine and complain about sales. The problem is they aren’t taking advantage of the great differences in selling online.
What do I mean? Sales and bundles. Look at what Valve has done with Steam. Valve does basically 4 things with products to make them sell better.
- 10% off on pre-orders or new products. Little bit of a discount for new items let’s them stand apart from older products and gives a little incentive to buy them.
- 4 for 3 package deals or buy 4, get 25% off. Link people together, get more sales from people who sometimes wouldn’t have bought it otherwise.
- Multiple product bundles. Things like a discography or similar artists for a larger discount.
- HUGE HOLIDAY SALES! Steam has holiday sales so popular people complain about buying things just because they are so cheap, even if they have no intention of playing it.
The point of all these sales? To sell people things they might not want, but in such a convincing way that they can’t help but do it. Another part of all these sales is to only do them on whole albums, selling all the filler songs that are generally lackluster.
The differences between music and games is actually better for music sales as well. People become bored of music much sooner than they become bored of games. People don’t (usually, minus one old roommate) become obsessed with music and not listen to anything else like they do with games.
Many people have vast libraries of music. Thousands of songs. You can’t expect people to pay $0.99 at a time to spend a thousands of dollars on a library of that size.
So that’s it. You now have direct control over the price of items. The cost of selling an item has gone significantly down. (transport, packaging, materials? hah!)
Use it.
Apparently choice is bad
Earlier this week there was an update to TF2, probably the biggest single update it has had to far. They added 20+ items, some of which I don’t like and some of which I love. And everyone is fine with more choice of items.
What people apparently don’t like is the choice to buy items. The choice to buy non-tradable, non-craftable items. Items that are otherwise functionally the same as items you get randomly over time. For a game that is 3 years old and still patched frequently and paid $20 or less for.
I can see not wanting to buy items.
I’m not going to buy any new sets of items myself.
But how can you be angry at Valve for giving people the option to purchase things?
The drop system can be very frustrating and trading can alleviate that but if you don’t have the time or are just getting into TF2 then purchasing items is a very viable alternative.
What I fail to see is the downside to person A because person B has purchased items.
I guess I’ll keep whacking people with fish in a newspaper until I get an answer.
A Movie Review: The Gamers: Dorkness Rising
I was browsing around Netflix (finally in Canada!) and because some newer movies I wanted to watch weren’t available I went looking for something on the other on the other side of funny, something I would laugh at.
I went into this movie with the worst intentions. I wanted a B movie to laugh at for crappy effects, terrible acting and an even worse plot. I’ve seen many bad movies from MST3K and that’s what I wanted to experience again here, something so bad it was laughable.
But I didn’t get that. I did get a B movie. And it did have some crappy effects. And it did have some poor acting. And the plot wasn’t always the best. But I laughed with it.
Why? Because I liked it. It was a B movie for sure, but I liked the humour, I liked the characters and I liked the plot. The effects weren’t the best but they were surprisingly good at times. The plot wasn’t amazingly fantastic, but it didn’t seem in the least bit contrived in the least. Hell, everything in this movie I can related to fairly well.
So now instead of laughing at the movie and telling people how bad it is I want to find a place to buy it online (for less than $30 >.>) and show it to as many people as I can. It’s not amazing but it’s pretty damn good.
If you want to see some stuff like it check out Journey Quest.