Does being retarded run in your family, or are you the only one who suffers from the malady. Once again, I will state that there are many good games for the Xbox.
I read your post, and I didn't even have to look for any subtest. With this latest post, you've expanded your dismissive (and uneducated) tone by saying that there are "about" three good games of the Xbox and you continue to flog that ridiculous "M$" affectation, thus confirming your bias.
You're right. Cash can't carry a console forever (though, again, your comparison with Dreamcast is ridiculous because Sega was actually running out of cash while Microsoft has no such problem). Fortunately, there is more to the Xbox than cash. It hsa the best graphic and audio capabilities, it has good games and it has a good online service (Gamecube, for example, has ONE game on their release list this year with online capability and their plans for next year are nebulous at best) that is going to help attract customers.
Oh yes, and whilst your "old school" credentials SEEM to be in order, I can hardly be impressed by anyone who claims to be a gamer and yet is so blindly dismissive of so many good games (namely, Xbox games).
Will the Xbox be "loved" 25 years from now? Probably not. But it will certainly be more than a footnote in video game history. I don't necessarily expect to be playing games on an Xbox6 at that point, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had an "Xbox3" sitting alongside a "PS4" in the attic.
No Japanese developers? You mean like Sega, Capcom and Tecmo, all of which have developed - and are developing - Xbox games? PC ports? You mean like Morrowind (virtually an Xbox port in terms of timing and development) and Splinter Cell (see Morrowind)? Finally, Xbox Live is going to be $10/month after the first year? I didn't know that Microsoft had announced that (because they haven't).
You really shouldn't use other people's Slashdot accounts to get their +1 bonus (I find it hard to believe that a troll could have whored that much karma).
MS recently started a new bundle of an XBox, JSRF , Controller S and the DVD remote for US $250.00 (or very close to that) and sales have already jumped.
Not to nitpick, but it's actually [a penny or nickel under] $200. Like here for example.:)
If I had mod points right now, I would have given them to anonymous cowards here. If you're glad you passed on the Dreamcast because after two years Dreamcast owners were "left out in the cold," then you're just not very bright since you missed out on a lot of great games. Soulcaliber alone provided me with a good hundred hours of play time (I'm probably being conservative) and Crazy Taxi did the same. The latter is now available on other consoles, but the former isn't. These two together justified purchase of a Dreamcast, and I played many more a great deal as well (Tennis 2k2, NFL 2k and 2k1, NBA 2k, Sonic Adventure, Jet Set Radio, etc.).
Then again, maybe I'm the fool. I wouldn't buy a console today thinking "What am I going to play in 2004?" I buy a console for what I want to play TODAY. The fact that great games will come out for my PS2, Gamecube and Xbox next year and the year after that is just gravy.
I can't help but think that every month the PS2 keeps outselling the GC and Xbox is another month Sony can refine the PS3.
And I can't help but think that unless time passes differently for Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Nintendo which has already announced that they are intending a longer life for the GC than PS2 and Xbox), they will have that same number of months to work on Xbox2 (or Ybox or whatever).
Your argument only works if Microsoft is at some sort of a drop-dead point where they have to, to use your word, win the console war. Since they aren't at that point, your logic is fundamentally flawed.
If the implication of your post is that there is no reason for a gamer to buy an Xbox, then you're either uneducated or just an anti-MS (get over the dollar sign) zealot. There are plenty of excellent games available for the Xbox.
I would also note that your examples of dead consoles all failed for different reasons. For example, the Dreamcast was not lacking in the amount of games available - it was killed by the specs of the PS2 (DVD being the main draw) and the promise of PS backward compatibility. NeoGeo died because most people did not want to pay $200 or more for each puzzle game or 2D fighter/shooter. 3DO hardware was too expensive and didn't have compelling software.
The Xbox, on the other hand, suffers from none of these drawbacks. As specifications go, it has the edge on both the PS2 and Gamecube performance-wise. It offers the same price for hardware as the PS2, and the same price for software as both PS2 and Gamecube. Finally - especially in just the last week and the next month - it has plenty of excellent games available (including several interesting exclusives).
I can understand people who don't want an Xbox, and many of the reasons for that. Preference for Sony or Gamecube exclusives combined with money for only one or two consoles, philosophical problems with giving Microsoft money for anything, etc. But implying that Xbox has no games, or will have no games in the future, despite evidence to the contrary, is just plain stupid.
Oh yes, and I would mention finally that there is no evidence of Japanese developers jumping off the Xbox bandwagon. To the contrary, Sega, Tecmo, Capcom and others are developing for the Xbox and announcements of new games by those companies for the Xbox don't show any sign of slowing.
Lots of people with XBoxes already have broadband...attached to their PC. You think they will all start setting up home networks?
Actually, while it's true that setting up a home network is the best way to handle hooking up the Xbox to an existing broadband connection, it isn't the only [or simplest] way. Many are actually just unplugging the Ethernet cable from their PC and plugging it into their Xbox when they want to use Xbox Live. The most these people have to do is buy a long Ethernet cable if there's no way to connect to broadband where the Xbox is (there, of course, almost always is a way - phone jacks and cable jacks are usually right there in the room with the Xbox and moving a cable modem or DSL router is a trivial exercise).
While YOU (to be honest, me too, along with most other nerds) might see the only alternative as setting up a home network, nobody has to do so in order to get hooked up to Xbox Live.
This has already gone beyond quibbling, but I'll continue because I can't help myself. If a display is capable of displaying 720p it is indeed HDTV. According to the standard, 720p is HDTV just as much as 1080i.
I suppose what might tick John off more than anything is the fact other devs can get a peek at his brilliance ahead of schedule and figure out what he's doing that they're missing in their own games.
That would be more than enough to make me, were I the esteemed Mr. Carmack, go to every place that I knew I had given that alpha to and take a huge magnet to every hard drive in the place.
Id has made a ton of money licensing their engines out to other developers. While that opportunity is obviously still there, getting a look at the internals of Id's latest engine before release gives competitors the chance to refine their own engines. One could reasonably assume that such refinements would give other engines (Lithtech, Unreal, et. al.) better odds of attracting more customers and thus cut into Id's bottom line - more than they would have if they never had the chance to get a sneak preview of the Doom III engine.
Out of all the arguments - the pride factor reduced by people seeing an unfinished product and disliking it, the art factor in terms of wanting to carefully control what people see before release of the game, and the money factor - the money factor would seem to be the scariest to any company or company employee, president, founder, visionary, stockholder.
Most people can't allocate 2GB of RAM for use as cache or RAM disk because their computer can only *take* 2GB or less of RAM. Most PCs max out at between 512MB and 2GB RAM, most Macs max out at 1GB to 2GB of RAM.
"Tru' dat" as the kids are reported to say. BUT, for $3,000 you can pretty quickly get a motherboard/processor/RAM that will accommodate more than 2GB of RAM and probably experience more performance improvement - not to mention flexibility - than by purchasing the fancy Rocketdrive. Throw in a UPS and your RAM drive will probably last as long as you need it to (given a decent OS, of course).
The fundamental problem of "power is lost" can be solved easily by adding a battery on the drive.
Isn't that "fundamental problem" already solved by plugging any important computer into a UPS? I think we can safely assume that anyone spending $3,000 on a RAM drive would consider their computer important enough to be on a UPS into which, presumably, this device would also be plugged.
A UPS is a good idea for servers, and perhaps in some other special incidences too, but I wouldn't want to be tied down to having one. The electricity to my house is rarely constant, and lights flicker all the time due to lackluster electrical jobs.
Actually, you're exactly the person who needs around five minutes of UPS backup. The damage that can be done to a computer from short power interruptions isn't limited to just losing data currently in RAM but can extend to problems with the hardware itself. You can get five minutes of UPS backup for around $50 (or even a bit less) which would be perfect for the problems you describe - a problem which I share, and which I was happy to have solved by my company sending me a baby UPS.:)
Of those I'd say about 99% weren't worth the time it took to load them.
Add a decimal and three or four 9's to that 99% and you'd be in the ballpark. I was an avid C64 pirate as a lad, and I can recall many pirates who would get very irritated with me when I told them that "I gave those discs away" or "I formatted that disc" because the games stunk. The funny part was that even with the few dozen pirated games that I actually kept and kind of liked, I always came back to the games I actually bought - namely, everything from Microprose...sometimes twice...and three times when I finally got a PC with a VGA card.:)
You're absolutely right to want customer service, and certainly that part of your complaint is well justified.
As far as interest rates go, I guess in retrospect it's a question of risk versus reward. Certainly anyone else who would consider leaving money in any Paypal account should be extra wary, and it's good (though unsatisfying for you) that your situation may increase awareness of the problems there.
I hope that at the least somebody tracks down the jerk who stole the money and prosecutes him or her for that theft. Good luck to you in the meantime.
I would also apologize for being overly judgmental in my assessment. I have a terrible tendency to respond to kneejerk reactions [of other Slashdotters] in kind.:)
The victim HAS to share some blame, if only for the AMOUNT of money that was lost. Obviously, if the thief can be tracked down they should suffer the brunt end of the criminal justice system, and there the blame would most properly be placed. However, if someone is stupid, then they're going to be penalized for it.
Example: I start a bank account with online banking options. I then make the password "babbster" (or my real first name). If someone comes along and steals money from me, I *am* to blame. I may have some recourse (assuming that FDIC covers it) and someone else may go to jail for stealing the money BUT I am STILL to blame for being stupid.
As to your example of Enron: Yes, we should blame everyone who [stupidly] invested in a company whose true assets consisted almost entirely of their stock certificates. We can just as easily blame people for investing in Internet companies because they had some ephemeral idea and little else. It's less a question of government intervention than of consumer/investor responsibility:
If you throw money at a company by buying their stock, you are supposed to be doing so because you believe in their product and want them to be successful (which is why you are capitalizing the company). Unfortunately, people more likely buy a particular stock because they think that the value of the stock might go up. While this can be a benefit to the stockholder, investing in the stock market is SUPPOSED to be different than playing the lottery.
It's also way off-topic, but that'll happen sometimes.:)
They're dumb questions only in the sense that they've all been answered above (though in far more inflammatory fashion than I'm about to).:)
1. No, you shouldn't be worried about it, BUT you shouldn't be giving Paypal your bank account information. You should only be dealing with Paypal on the basis of a bank-issued credit (not debit) card.
2. If you have more than $50 in Paypal, you should take it out immediately. You shouldn't keep a balance with Paypal. If someone buys something from you and the money goes to Paypal, just take it out ASAP (though if they are small transactions, for convenience you might want to wait until you are up to $50 or so).
3. There are indeed viable alternatives to Paypal. One example is Bidpay from Western Union. There's no account balance, you simply buy a Western Union money order (online, of course) and they send confirmation to the seller who can then be assured that their money is on the way. Each transaction is its own beast and nobody leaves any money hanging with them. Some of the above messages contain other alternatives.
4. I don't know if Paypal has to change. I think the consumer perception of them is the problem. Too many people think of them as a bank when they clearly are not. They can't even be confused with a bank if people would simply maintain ZERO balances with them and use them purely as the money middleperson as they were originally intended.
Of course, Paypal has a tendency to foster the impression that they're a bank, so their marketing can take some blame as well.
It's all about education. If somebody isn't giving you interest on money they're holding for you or isn't federally insured - i.e. credit unions, banks, savings and loans - you really need to either move your money elsewhere or, as in my case, SPEND IT.
I'm not going to write a long screed about Paypal since I haven't done business with them (frankly, I'm wary of anybody who gives away money like I saw Paypal advertising at one point). However, I am wondering something:
How much money should someone be allowing to accumulate in a Paypal "donation" account? I ask because I think that anyone who lets the account grow too much (like beyond $100 or one transaction, whichever is greater) is begging for trouble. I know that there are transaction fees when you take money out of the account, so were the Abiword people being cheap by not withdrawing earlier?
For example, if there is a 2.9%+$0.30 charge to receive $100 from the account (see Paypal for details), that would be a charge of $3.20 leaving $96.80 in the check I assume they would send out. Even at $50, you're looking at $2.25 with $47.75 of actual money coming at you.
Clearly, were I running the deal I wouldn't be leaving money in this "fund" and I think that Mr. Lachowicz was a damned fool to do so, whether Paypal is generally believed to be a security risk or not.
Frankly, I have more sympathy for someone who loses $30 or $40 from their Paypal account because of this kind of fraud than I do in this case. Someone who loses such a small amount of money could have had some valid reason to have the money in their. Someone who leaves $800 sitting around, doing nothing (savings account interest rates are small, but Paypal interest rates, well, are nonexistant), probably needs a lesson taught to them.
This would be a good point if gamers who prefer Linus weren't already either dual-booting or possessed of an extra machine with Windows on it for gaming. As things are right now, Linux gamers are so likely to come to Windows for a game they want to play that it doesn't make sense for companies to go to the trouble of making their games compatible with other operating systems (though admittedly this is far more true for actual Linux ports than for Windows emulators).
I think the concentration of effort - if people are really interested - should be to make WINE more compatible with games rather than asking [or wishing] for games to be more compatible with WINE.
Moms beating their gamer kids at Tetris is no surprise (I'm in the same boat). I've played hundreds [upon hundreds] of different games over the years, while my mom has spent months at a time just playing Tetris. I do wonder if there was ever a Gameboy-like device that ONLY played Tetris. It would have saved me quite a few bucks over the years replacing her Gameboy over and over again when she would wear it out.:)
My apologies for mistunderstanding your post (and your origin), as I tend to be a typical self(US)-centered citizen of these United States. Of course, for all the Americans who say the same thing about the various consoles, my original post stands.:)
Ha ha. For the record, I have 10 XBox games, 10 Gamecube games and 12 PS2 games - none of the XBox games I have are bad and several of them are excellent. I'm happy to say that Microsoft has made a nice profit off my XBox purchase and they're going to make quite a bit more off me, particularly in the next three months.
Fair enough. I should point out that I don't doubt individuals in the mod chip thing. Rather I doubt the masses. The problem as I see it is that for every one person like yourself with legitimate hacking/fun/mostly legal reasons to install mod chip, there are at least a thousand who are doing it to pirate games. To each their own - it's not like I've never pirated a video game - but I will say again that I understand when Microsoft, Sony and/or Nintendo want to shut mod chips down.
It took me this far down on the page to find a post flaming the GC for having no "actual games"...Impressive, even for Slashdot.
Everyone who makes this argument right now is a flaming idiot. Unless you plan on buying every single game for a particular console, and judge each console totally on quantity, then there is no longer any cause to complain - ALL THREE CONSOLES HAVE GOOD GAMES ON THEM...THEY EVEN HAVE MORE THAN A FEW.
Here are some highlights from my current collection.
PS2: Final Fantasy X, GTA3, Gran Turismo 3 and several more that *I* like but may not be big-time favorites.
Gamecube: Rogue Leader, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Beach Spikers, Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee, Super Smash Bros. Melee and more.
XBox: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dead to Rights, Morrowind (yes, it's PC too, so the hell what?), Jet Set Radio Future, Sega Soccer Slam, Project Gotham Racing and more -- not to mention that cross-platform games are generally nicer on the X than the others (in addition to being generally nicer on the GC than the PS2).
In short, all of you schmucks who keep yakking about how there are no good games for console need to help yourselves to a hot cup of shut the fuck up. While YOUR favorite game (GTA3 fans, Mario fans, Halo fans) might not be on a particular console that doesn't mean that there isn't anything else on it.
Slashdot Mirror
I read your post, and I didn't even have to look for any subtest. With this latest post, you've expanded your dismissive (and uneducated) tone by saying that there are "about" three good games of the Xbox and you continue to flog that ridiculous "M$" affectation, thus confirming your bias.
You're right. Cash can't carry a console forever (though, again, your comparison with Dreamcast is ridiculous because Sega was actually running out of cash while Microsoft has no such problem). Fortunately, there is more to the Xbox than cash. It hsa the best graphic and audio capabilities, it has good games and it has a good online service (Gamecube, for example, has ONE game on their release list this year with online capability and their plans for next year are nebulous at best) that is going to help attract customers.
Oh yes, and whilst your "old school" credentials SEEM to be in order, I can hardly be impressed by anyone who claims to be a gamer and yet is so blindly dismissive of so many good games (namely, Xbox games).
Will the Xbox be "loved" 25 years from now? Probably not. But it will certainly be more than a footnote in video game history. I don't necessarily expect to be playing games on an Xbox6 at that point, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had an "Xbox3" sitting alongside a "PS4" in the attic.
No Japanese developers? You mean like Sega, Capcom and Tecmo, all of which have developed - and are developing - Xbox games? PC ports? You mean like Morrowind (virtually an Xbox port in terms of timing and development) and Splinter Cell (see Morrowind)? Finally, Xbox Live is going to be $10/month after the first year? I didn't know that Microsoft had announced that (because they haven't).
You really shouldn't use other people's Slashdot accounts to get their +1 bonus (I find it hard to believe that a troll could have whored that much karma).
Not to nitpick, but it's actually [a penny or nickel under] $200. Like here for example. :)
Then again, maybe I'm the fool. I wouldn't buy a console today thinking "What am I going to play in 2004?" I buy a console for what I want to play TODAY. The fact that great games will come out for my PS2, Gamecube and Xbox next year and the year after that is just gravy.
And I can't help but think that unless time passes differently for Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Nintendo which has already announced that they are intending a longer life for the GC than PS2 and Xbox), they will have that same number of months to work on Xbox2 (or Ybox or whatever).
Your argument only works if Microsoft is at some sort of a drop-dead point where they have to, to use your word, win the console war. Since they aren't at that point, your logic is fundamentally flawed.
I would also note that your examples of dead consoles all failed for different reasons. For example, the Dreamcast was not lacking in the amount of games available - it was killed by the specs of the PS2 (DVD being the main draw) and the promise of PS backward compatibility. NeoGeo died because most people did not want to pay $200 or more for each puzzle game or 2D fighter/shooter. 3DO hardware was too expensive and didn't have compelling software.
The Xbox, on the other hand, suffers from none of these drawbacks. As specifications go, it has the edge on both the PS2 and Gamecube performance-wise. It offers the same price for hardware as the PS2, and the same price for software as both PS2 and Gamecube. Finally - especially in just the last week and the next month - it has plenty of excellent games available (including several interesting exclusives).
I can understand people who don't want an Xbox, and many of the reasons for that. Preference for Sony or Gamecube exclusives combined with money for only one or two consoles, philosophical problems with giving Microsoft money for anything, etc. But implying that Xbox has no games, or will have no games in the future, despite evidence to the contrary, is just plain stupid.
Oh yes, and I would mention finally that there is no evidence of Japanese developers jumping off the Xbox bandwagon. To the contrary, Sega, Tecmo, Capcom and others are developing for the Xbox and announcements of new games by those companies for the Xbox don't show any sign of slowing.
Actually, while it's true that setting up a home network is the best way to handle hooking up the Xbox to an existing broadband connection, it isn't the only [or simplest] way. Many are actually just unplugging the Ethernet cable from their PC and plugging it into their Xbox when they want to use Xbox Live. The most these people have to do is buy a long Ethernet cable if there's no way to connect to broadband where the Xbox is (there, of course, almost always is a way - phone jacks and cable jacks are usually right there in the room with the Xbox and moving a cable modem or DSL router is a trivial exercise).
While YOU (to be honest, me too, along with most other nerds) might see the only alternative as setting up a home network, nobody has to do so in order to get hooked up to Xbox Live.
This has already gone beyond quibbling, but I'll continue because I can't help myself. If a display is capable of displaying 720p it is indeed HDTV. According to the standard, 720p is HDTV just as much as 1080i.
That would be more than enough to make me, were I the esteemed Mr. Carmack, go to every place that I knew I had given that alpha to and take a huge magnet to every hard drive in the place.
Id has made a ton of money licensing their engines out to other developers. While that opportunity is obviously still there, getting a look at the internals of Id's latest engine before release gives competitors the chance to refine their own engines. One could reasonably assume that such refinements would give other engines (Lithtech, Unreal, et. al.) better odds of attracting more customers and thus cut into Id's bottom line - more than they would have if they never had the chance to get a sneak preview of the Doom III engine.
Out of all the arguments - the pride factor reduced by people seeing an unfinished product and disliking it, the art factor in terms of wanting to carefully control what people see before release of the game, and the money factor - the money factor would seem to be the scariest to any company or company employee, president, founder, visionary, stockholder.
"Tru' dat" as the kids are reported to say. BUT, for $3,000 you can pretty quickly get a motherboard/processor/RAM that will accommodate more than 2GB of RAM and probably experience more performance improvement - not to mention flexibility - than by purchasing the fancy Rocketdrive. Throw in a UPS and your RAM drive will probably last as long as you need it to (given a decent OS, of course).
Isn't that "fundamental problem" already solved by plugging any important computer into a UPS? I think we can safely assume that anyone spending $3,000 on a RAM drive would consider their computer important enough to be on a UPS into which, presumably, this device would also be plugged.
Actually, you're exactly the person who needs around five minutes of UPS backup. The damage that can be done to a computer from short power interruptions isn't limited to just losing data currently in RAM but can extend to problems with the hardware itself. You can get five minutes of UPS backup for around $50 (or even a bit less) which would be perfect for the problems you describe - a problem which I share, and which I was happy to have solved by my company sending me a baby UPS. :)
Of those I'd say about 99% weren't worth the time it took to load them. Add a decimal and three or four 9's to that 99% and you'd be in the ballpark. I was an avid C64 pirate as a lad, and I can recall many pirates who would get very irritated with me when I told them that "I gave those discs away" or "I formatted that disc" because the games stunk. The funny part was that even with the few dozen pirated games that I actually kept and kind of liked, I always came back to the games I actually bought - namely, everything from Microprose...sometimes twice...and three times when I finally got a PC with a VGA card. :)
As far as interest rates go, I guess in retrospect it's a question of risk versus reward. Certainly anyone else who would consider leaving money in any Paypal account should be extra wary, and it's good (though unsatisfying for you) that your situation may increase awareness of the problems there.
I hope that at the least somebody tracks down the jerk who stole the money and prosecutes him or her for that theft. Good luck to you in the meantime.
I would also apologize for being overly judgmental in my assessment. I have a terrible tendency to respond to kneejerk reactions [of other Slashdotters] in kind. :)
Example: I start a bank account with online banking options. I then make the password "babbster" (or my real first name). If someone comes along and steals money from me, I *am* to blame. I may have some recourse (assuming that FDIC covers it) and someone else may go to jail for stealing the money BUT I am STILL to blame for being stupid.
As to your example of Enron: Yes, we should blame everyone who [stupidly] invested in a company whose true assets consisted almost entirely of their stock certificates. We can just as easily blame people for investing in Internet companies because they had some ephemeral idea and little else. It's less a question of government intervention than of consumer/investor responsibility:
If you throw money at a company by buying their stock, you are supposed to be doing so because you believe in their product and want them to be successful (which is why you are capitalizing the company). Unfortunately, people more likely buy a particular stock because they think that the value of the stock might go up. While this can be a benefit to the stockholder, investing in the stock market is SUPPOSED to be different than playing the lottery.
It's also way off-topic, but that'll happen sometimes. :)
1. No, you shouldn't be worried about it, BUT you shouldn't be giving Paypal your bank account information. You should only be dealing with Paypal on the basis of a bank-issued credit (not debit) card.
2. If you have more than $50 in Paypal, you should take it out immediately. You shouldn't keep a balance with Paypal. If someone buys something from you and the money goes to Paypal, just take it out ASAP (though if they are small transactions, for convenience you might want to wait until you are up to $50 or so).
3. There are indeed viable alternatives to Paypal. One example is Bidpay from Western Union. There's no account balance, you simply buy a Western Union money order (online, of course) and they send confirmation to the seller who can then be assured that their money is on the way. Each transaction is its own beast and nobody leaves any money hanging with them. Some of the above messages contain other alternatives.
4. I don't know if Paypal has to change. I think the consumer perception of them is the problem. Too many people think of them as a bank when they clearly are not. They can't even be confused with a bank if people would simply maintain ZERO balances with them and use them purely as the money middleperson as they were originally intended.
Of course, Paypal has a tendency to foster the impression that they're a bank, so their marketing can take some blame as well.
It's all about education. If somebody isn't giving you interest on money they're holding for you or isn't federally insured - i.e. credit unions, banks, savings and loans - you really need to either move your money elsewhere or, as in my case, SPEND IT.
How much money should someone be allowing to accumulate in a Paypal "donation" account? I ask because I think that anyone who lets the account grow too much (like beyond $100 or one transaction, whichever is greater) is begging for trouble. I know that there are transaction fees when you take money out of the account, so were the Abiword people being cheap by not withdrawing earlier?
For example, if there is a 2.9%+$0.30 charge to receive $100 from the account (see Paypal for details), that would be a charge of $3.20 leaving $96.80 in the check I assume they would send out. Even at $50, you're looking at $2.25 with $47.75 of actual money coming at you.
Clearly, were I running the deal I wouldn't be leaving money in this "fund" and I think that Mr. Lachowicz was a damned fool to do so, whether Paypal is generally believed to be a security risk or not.
Frankly, I have more sympathy for someone who loses $30 or $40 from their Paypal account because of this kind of fraud than I do in this case. Someone who loses such a small amount of money could have had some valid reason to have the money in their. Someone who leaves $800 sitting around, doing nothing (savings account interest rates are small, but Paypal interest rates, well, are nonexistant), probably needs a lesson taught to them.
Blaming Paypal alone would be a mistake.
It certainly is the promised land if you're a developer who wants to make money on a PC game. :)
I think the concentration of effort - if people are really interested - should be to make WINE more compatible with games rather than asking [or wishing] for games to be more compatible with WINE.
Moms beating their gamer kids at Tetris is no surprise (I'm in the same boat). I've played hundreds [upon hundreds] of different games over the years, while my mom has spent months at a time just playing Tetris. I do wonder if there was ever a Gameboy-like device that ONLY played Tetris. It would have saved me quite a few bucks over the years replacing her Gameboy over and over again when she would wear it out. :)
My apologies for mistunderstanding your post (and your origin), as I tend to be a typical self(US)-centered citizen of these United States. Of course, for all the Americans who say the same thing about the various consoles, my original post stands. :)
But likely he still has a ton of money. Maybe he just likes his parents. Some of us do, ya know. :)
Ha ha. For the record, I have 10 XBox games, 10 Gamecube games and 12 PS2 games - none of the XBox games I have are bad and several of them are excellent. I'm happy to say that Microsoft has made a nice profit off my XBox purchase and they're going to make quite a bit more off me, particularly in the next three months.
Fair enough. I should point out that I don't doubt individuals in the mod chip thing. Rather I doubt the masses. The problem as I see it is that for every one person like yourself with legitimate hacking/fun/mostly legal reasons to install mod chip, there are at least a thousand who are doing it to pirate games. To each their own - it's not like I've never pirated a video game - but I will say again that I understand when Microsoft, Sony and/or Nintendo want to shut mod chips down.
Everyone who makes this argument right now is a flaming idiot. Unless you plan on buying every single game for a particular console, and judge each console totally on quantity, then there is no longer any cause to complain - ALL THREE CONSOLES HAVE GOOD GAMES ON THEM...THEY EVEN HAVE MORE THAN A FEW.
Here are some highlights from my current collection.
PS2: Final Fantasy X, GTA3, Gran Turismo 3 and several more that *I* like but may not be big-time favorites.
Gamecube: Rogue Leader, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Beach Spikers, Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee, Super Smash Bros. Melee and more.
XBox: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dead to Rights, Morrowind (yes, it's PC too, so the hell what?), Jet Set Radio Future, Sega Soccer Slam, Project Gotham Racing and more -- not to mention that cross-platform games are generally nicer on the X than the others (in addition to being generally nicer on the GC than the PS2).
In short, all of you schmucks who keep yakking about how there are no good games for console need to help yourselves to a hot cup of shut the fuck up. While YOUR favorite game (GTA3 fans, Mario fans, Halo fans) might not be on a particular console that doesn't mean that there isn't anything else on it.