Ebola looks like a turd to me

:headbang:

I see once again I'll have to beg to differ on this topic. Skip reading this post if you hate harsh things like reality and business, and like to dream of a place and time where LFS is some kind of luxury product only a select number of refined gentlemen can taste or feel. This is a long post, don't read it unless your attention span exceeds 1 minute. Please don't reply unless you want to read this post and really think about it. PM me rotten eggs and vegetables, they will be routed to /dev/null

Quote from Juls :

They do not seem to consider it like a software company, but rather like a traditional craft company. (...)
In such craft company, the main objective is to create the best atmosphere for working.

Yep, in your dreams. Basically guys, if you're thinking this is true, you're fooling yourself. Only yourself.

Today even NPO are managed as firms, non-profit is just a constraint meaning the firm cannot retain profit inside itself. Example? Bosch was sort of a NPO last time I checked. Yep you still find their products in every mall around the world like it was Nestlé or whatever.

The example Juls brings to the table is clearly that of a business where the main objective is stay widely in black: the more they can, the better it is because they never know whatever threats may come from the market (think of Lancia, eventually the family was lucky enough to sell to Agnelli otherwise they would have been in a lot of trouble).

The actions a small manufacturing enterprise working in a luxury niche are bound to be different to a degree from those undertaken by a big corporations, but if you have ever been e.g. in a Lexus dealership, you should know already that mood, brand association, imagery, emotion manipulation and all the paraphernalia are all tools of the trade even for Toyota, of anybody!

Now consider Ferrari for a minute. They once were very small, until one day Enzo Ferrari had to recognize the business has outgrown his own skills and ability to manage it.

If that decision was skipped, delayed, handled in a different way, Ferrari might have joined the ranks of all those illustrious brands which now are just trading material for those once-not-very-illustrious german brands we all know (think Lamborghini or Bugatti)

If you followed all through this premise, it should be clear that Scavier has something in common with Ferrari, something not, something maybe.

What they do NOT share?

Scavier is not a small enterprise. It's not a manufacturing business. It's not even in the luxury segment of their chosen market, that having been taken hold of by iRacing.

They also relinquished control on the servers thus largely demanded to others the task of setting the atmosphere for their product.

Now what they DO share?

Their main target still is to make as much profit as possible.

So what is your damend point?!

The point up for debate is whether they have already reached a stage where their business has outgrown their own abilities to manage it. If not, one day they will and face that bottleneck that every other growing small business has bumped into, then make a choice:

• either they'll quit
  
• turn their business in a more organized form (think of Google, it's big, powerful, but certainly not managed in a traditional way)
  
• invent a new business model which will be known by MBA students as the Roberts-Bailey-Van Vlaardingen model or god knows what else
  

Quote from Neilser :

I've given up on demo servers - too many wreckers and idiots.

There are good ones (e.g. I have a good memory of Zion) but only if you're willing to race the well known combos. As many others I've raced em more than enough before I got my license... not really keen on going back to demo unless there's some good reason

Quote from sil3ntwar :

Nothing wrong with steam its a good way to collect games IMO!

I don't like intermediators, the LFS way is better, I pay they got the money the only intermediate step are the banks (they're nasty enough already) - and I don't have to install another useless program on my PC.

Quote from Woz :

I have come round to thinking of piracy as free advertising now. Not a popular theory though

Not among rich people who want money for nothing and chicks for free, indeed

Yep that was the reply I got on the other board

Too bad I hate Steam! But I could install it just for that

Quote from felplacerad :

Here's a recent snapshot of the_angry_angel's Stats Thingy ("a simple stats page that fetches data from LFSWorld and makes 'useful' graphs for those who run servers") which I edited to add "categories":

I recognize I was off put for a good 5 seconds with your categories showing so many racing servers. Then I realized the list includes demo servers!! :rolleyes: that skews the picture considerably: let's recount.

Bangers 1
Cruise 3
Drag 3
Drift 1
Race 2
Race (Demo) 10

If we exclude demo.

Bangers 10%
Cruise 30%
Drag 30%
Drift 10%
Race 20%

It would be far more reliable and meaningful to only consider the top 20 licensed servers.

Shift-P? at least I would be able to finish the race.

Quote from zeugnimod :

The UTC times are below your quoted times. The times you quoted are CET.

LOL I just assumed the bit in english would be the same as the swedish part

Quote from zeugnimod :

I can't say since I'm not an admin but I guess you have to spectate when you are stuck against a wall.

That would suck big time, especially if it's someone else making me crash

Quote from Citywidemicke :

Schema
19:00: Uppvärmning
21.00: Kval
21:45: Race

UTC? UTC+1? Can we skip warm up?

What in case of crappy drivers that spin their MRT and get stuck for the lack of reverse? (=me)

Quote from FSoft :

To manage the server quickly, I want to drive a FBM.

So basically you need a faster car to use it as a safety car or something?

I think you'll need InSim for that.

Quote from DarkTimes :

When people like Kubrick were making movies, the medium was like putty, ready to be bent and moulded.

OMG you're making it sound like he was one of the brothers Lumiere

The guy was very manipulative, he also stood on the shoulders of great moviemakers that came before him, but he had an unparallaled skill to make great movies that also enjoyed a wide success of public (though this was not always automatically true).

This is also true of The Beatles, whose tunes are still happily hummed along by many younger people that weren't around at the time.

Quote from DarkTimes :

Instead of judging young artists by such an unjust comparison, we should be judging them on how they take that influence and make it their own. We are no longer forging the artform, we are perfecting it.

While he's not much of a 'young artist' anymore Tarantino is an example IMO of another director that in recent times was able to redefine genres to his likings, though I have the feeling his works' appeal is not quite as wide as Kubrick's.

On topic: JJ Abrams hardly enters the rank of art anyway, people like him have a product, they want to sell it, to do that they use a massive amounts of money and marketing, they're just like the majors' executives, since they don't have the skills to do something that has worth for its own sake, they create a need for it.

It may be interesting as an example of success story in a business strategy course, maybe it will have a value for etnographic reasons in the future, well that pretty much sums it up.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

That's what Hollywood does best. That's why they regularily give all their awards to foreign filmmakers like Danny Boyle.

Yep you're right, as many others before and after him, Kubrick quitted Hollywood at some point of his career, but he had to use it to gain a status where he could go on doing whatever he wanted without incurring in too much financing troubles.

Since you mention Danny Boyle... meh. I've yet to see Slumdog, so far his only movies that I like are Trainspotting (the source material was damn good anyway), and Millions: its translation of magic realism to an english suburban environment is quite nicely done 28 days is a dog though.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Have you not seen any Cohen Brothers films?

Of course! Their best works are great, I really liked No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There and of course many of the lighter ones like Fargo or The Big Lebowski.

As I said it would be certainly crazy to say there are no good directors. They're just not able to turn conventions upside down.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Terry Gilliam is another big favourite of mine, American Director-wise.

Not long ago I've heard they're in talks for a sequel to Fear and Loathing, let's keep our fingers crossed (can't find the emoticon for it!)

You either buy one or using some software tools, some power tools and a FFB joystick, you build one

http://www.sim-gear.com/794354.html
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=4195

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

If you're expecting Kubrick out of a Star Trek film, you're looking in the wrong place.

When did I say that?

Star Trek has always been more on the fantasy side of things (though not as much as Star Wars), but this looks like badge engineering. Or how do they call when the studios take an old household name and glue it on something that has little or nothing to do with what the name used to represent?

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

And there are plenty of directors as good as if not better than Kubrick working today, but you're right in that there are very few who are working on "big" movies.

The very fact there is little or nobody who is able to affect the tastes or redefine genres in the way he did, means none of them is as an important director as Kubrick was. That doesn't mean there aren't good directors, mind you. It's just about as the same as to say that after the Beatles there were very few groups (some would say none) that were able to change the history of music in a such significant and all so evident way.

They are niche. Kubrick was universal.

We are talking about a person who, with little interest whatsoever in SF, took a genre that on screen was made of giant ants that kidnapped beautiful women, and turned into thought-provoking art.

Star Trek maybe didn't ascend to the dizzy heights of art, but nonetheless it started out as a pulp-y TV series and turned into something that was more significant than that. Should I point out that in TOS we see for the first time on the TV screen a crew whose members are not strictly white americans?

Anyone who would make the mistake to think that the name Kubrick has nothing to do with Star Trek, is clearly lacking an historical perspective of the genre. Or, in the case of AlienT, is vainly trying to pass for a youngster

I happen to like those interiors, not only the textures are more detailed but the underlying model is more of a 3D surface, it adds a lot to immersion.

Even those nice modded interiors look unrealistic because the model is too flat and the texture get stretched. But without those, the standard FXO and RB4 are guaranteed to make you cringe!

Quote from Rudy van Buren :

to explane them even more, lfs doenst realy have a proper chicane, cuss most of the time you can fly over the curbs

TBH that's not entirely the chicanes' fault, if we had more realistic suspension damage, some of those mistreated chicanes would instantly become very respected

PS: as for the OP's suggestion, it's all good to me. More layouts, slower, faster, whatever! as long as we get it within the decade

Quote from Kegetys :

Doesn't look like Star Trek at all

Yep it looks like yet another crap action-adventure blockbuster with a famous brand name stamped on it. Next one will be Space balls I suppose.

If someone really has to reboot something, let's do it to Kubrick's mind, so we can see a serious filmmaker kick some executives' asses around once more.

He would just change the tastes of everybody again. I sincerely hope a new Kubrick shows up within my lifetime or I'll be forced to pass for one of those oldies who only seem to like old things and dislike new ones for the sake of it.

</rant>

Quote from Neilser :

I'm totally amazed anyone who does use it cares about how the cockpit looks....

We've been spoiled by the quality of the latest XF/XR interiors

Quote from arc team :

Please, remember that a professional wheel as FREX-BRD-VPP have a cost over 1000€ (1500/2000).

A professional wheel also comes with a warranty, which I suppose is lost when in the case of a modded G25, unless you plan to offer a warranty extension along with the mod ?

Quote from MAGGOT :

It's a technique best employed in low-downforce cars, which suits much of iRacing and GPL's vehicle base.

Well this definition encompasses most of the vehicles out there, I would say more than half the cars in LFS and maybe all of them if high downforce = ground effect, since it's not in LFS yet.

Quote from RedCoupe :

Whats probably happened is that while the number of racers has gone up, the number of servers have gone up more, spreading players out and making it look less active.

Right! At all times there are exactly 0.73 LFS players (not a cent less) in every racing server, IRL they are of course busy eating 1.82159 chickens a day (isn't statistics the greatest thing ever inventend by mankind?:tilt

Cruise servers, OTOH, are never used under 85% capacity, and there are at least 4 of them in the ten top spots of the most crowded servers after 10pm UTC.

The Canon PowerShot A590 is basically the only half-decent cheap PnS camera you can buy ATM if you're not too much concerned about slow flash recycle time, AA batteries (some love em others hate em) and the fact it's hardly the smallest camera on the market.

Well actually the A470 is a little cheaper but IMO it's not worth the savings.

The A590 is around 100€ new, the '470 70-75€ hope that fits in your price bracket.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q408budgetgroup/

PS: both should have an 'easy' mode where the only thing you can tamper with is flash. A590 is also PASM just in case.

Viscount de Valmont, it guessed it.
Tried Dave Bowman and it said 'Hudson from Aliens'
Then tried the main character from Stranger than Fiction and said Heath Ledger

PS: tried Dave Kaemmer got Sid Meier
PPS: tried Scawen and got Jenson Button

Last edited by NightShift, Thu 5 Mar 2009, 22:53.

Quote from kaynd :

In the LFS video we can see unnaturally fast wheel movements that really can’t be replicated in real life.

That's what I thought too... I don't think it can even be replicated on a FFB wheel unless the lock is set to unrealistically low values (at least for the road legal cars).