If anyone wants to test their ping to the Azure servers

http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/

Post your results...

SNAP from AKL.

Data Center   Average Latency
Content Delivery Network *   74ms
East Asia   208ms
West US   214ms
Southeast Asia   228ms
South Central US   253ms
East US   267ms
North Central US   289ms
West Europe   331ms
North Europe   350ms

http://evilasahobby.com/2014/01/18/kickstander-only-around-a-third-of-kickstarted-video-game-projects-fully-deliver-to-their-backers/

Pretty good reason to consider Kickstarter projects as a lottery. Don't expect to see a return, and if you do, be happy.

You are looking at it slightly wrong. This is not a lottery, and not really pre-ordering a product. It is small scale venture capital investment to fund a business. The whole point of kickstarter is to enable small firms to obtain funding at an early stage from fans, rather than having to convince VC firms, banks or large game developers.  They will almost certainly need further injections of funding from those sources, but once they have the product underway then its much easier.

But overall most new business ventures fail.  In something as speculative as media, I think 1/3 getting made would be a pretty good strike rate. Peter Theil made a shitload of money investing VC money in Facebook at an early stage.  But for every startup that made money, I bet he funded 10 that didn't.  (Wikipedia gives a list of 23, not counting his investment in Xero...)

So, view your money as a speculative investment with a 1/3 chance of paying off.

GG NZ. GG.

Great game to watch. Great series. Now for 4:0.

BF4 meets Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon?

Edit: Grr, Clin hacks my computer and steals mah postz.

I wouldn't be holding my breath for Mantle.

Another minor part I failed to mention. Before giving the girl grief at the counter,  I did explicitly ask her if the yellow stickers meant the item was on sale. To which she said yes. So their intention from her perspective at least was that yellow sticker equal sale.  I then replied that half the shit is the same price as it was last week. Poor girl didn't know what to do.

Was she surprised?

BTW, looking like another good game today.

I'll be interested to read BenZene's commentary on this one.

(Disclosure:  I play a piano in a whore house, and sometimes I play this type of tune)

To me this looks like a clear breach of the Fair Trading Act.   The Act prohibits (amoung other things) (a) conduct, in trade, that is likely to mislead or deceive (or actually is); (b) conduct that is liable to mislead the public in relation to goods; (c) making false or misleading representations about the price of goods.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0121/latest/DLM96439.html
(See sections 9, 10 and 13 respectively)

I don't think its misleading per se to have a sale and then not discount your product (although you have to be careful about headlines like "50% off").  But they have gone further and attached a big yellow sale price tag.  This will probably give a significant number of consumers the impression that the price has been reduced. For me the missing bit of information (EDIT: I see you mention it later) is what labels did they have on the items that were actually on sale?  If they were the same, its a slam dunk.  But even if they didn't, a lot of people would look at the big yellow tag and understand that to mean the product is on sale because its Auckland Anniversary, as in its price has been reduced.

The Commission has taken action around this kind of this before.  For example:
* Kathmandu were fined 28,000 in 2006 for claiming things were on sale when they were available at the same price immediate before the sale:
http://www.comcom.govt.nz/the-commission/media-centre/media-releases/detail/2006/kathmandufindsoutthetruecostofsale
* Progressives were warned in 2012 about their "20% off" beer and wine sale, where they were selling things at 25% off RRP, notwithstanding that Progressives almost always charges below the RRP:
http://www.comcom.govt.nz/the-commission/media-centre/media-releases/detail/2012/commerce-commission-warns-progressive-enterprises-over-misleading-sales-claims

You could get in touch with their contact centre on Monday (in Wellington, so will be open!) or submit a complain online via here:
http://www.comcom.govt.nz/the-commission/making-a-complaint/online-complaint-form/

However the Commission receives thousands of complaints a year, and is funded to investigate maybe a hundred at most,  and to prosecute 10-20 a year max (sometimes less). So they prioritise, and this would only end up getting prosecuted if this was an area of priority for them, or if they had received a lot of complaints about this store (ie if they are a repeat offender, or if this particular incident affected a lot of people).

Incidentally, while I'm on my soap box:

(a) a lot of businesses go wrong because they think that as long as its true, its not a breach of the law.  But you can mislead people without lying, and its still misleading.  Which means its still illegal.

(b) the law has been tightened up, starting in about 6 months, and soon it will also be prohibited to make claims about your products without reasonable grounds to do so.  That is going to kill some snake oil merchants.  Good luck with selling homeopathy or magnetic blankets for example.   

Would VDSL2 smooth over that problem?

I am assuming there would be AUS based cloud servers....

VDSL should improve latency and upload speed, but I'm not sure thats going to help with the problem upstream, eg getting the data back and foward from an Australian data centre. 

We will just have to wait and see I guess.

Great that they (and EA subsidiary) have used source, given that can be ported to Mac and ValveOS.

However not sure about the cloud stuff at all. The more you rely on the server side to do the work, the more you will need low latency and good speeds in both directions. Not much point in rendering a smooth 60fps (one frame every 16ms) if NZ internet conditions can't provide and receive data in a timely fashion, making the game jerky that way.

I also thought it was broken and spent ages till I realised how it worked.

You know I have given we platooned, should specify we play on NA west

That's true, although I would accept the extra 30ms to NA east if it meant having 2 less morons on my team.

Also, bought a Hellcat for giggles, what a great little TD.

Anyone else from Get Some still playing this? Getting back into it after a 3 month BF4 break, and getting spanked.  Platoon offers appreciated

You'll need chloroform not benzene if that is what you are after.