We're the world's 6th largest economy. If we tank, they tank. Demand plummets because California's out of the equation. Oil prices fall, and their stock falls.
Plus, we get to pursue alternative energy a lot faster. California will be bruised but we'll come out of it even better off than Brazil.
Then the rest of the world will follow our example, and the oil companies will get bent over like a cocktail waitress wandering into the NFL post game locker room.
First of all, if this micropayment system is allowed to take off, gamers will pay far more than the price of their console in micropayments as all game studios will harness this. You'll pay $60 for Final Fantasy XV, and then $1 for every level. It'll be a micropayment bloodbath. So no, this strategy is not affordable.
Then on top of this, when you re-sell the game, everyone has to buy the levels all over again since it is tied to your console. This is Sony with a sniper rifle zeroing in on the reseller market.
Moreover, why do I need to hand over my credit card and personal info and register my single player game to Sony, or anyone else? Sony wants everyone who buys a game to have to register with Sony and that's b.s.
This is one hard core PS3 fan boy who just suddenly decided not to buy a PS3. And I love the Playstation series.
In our case, the guy who "plagiarized" my work knew his stuff backwards and forwards and could defend it to the professor without even looking at it. This is a far more true example of an act that straddles the collaboration/cheating line with 9 toes on the side of collaboration.
Modern day cheaters? They don't know diddly squat about what they're lifting.
Also, I give props to our prof for grilling each and every one of us. That took obsess^H^H^H^H^H^Hdedication.
I meant, "MS will require all PC software & games be VISTA compatible whether the consumers want it or not, and people will just obey."
Addendum: I sure hope that MS doesn't so completely lock down the market that the pathway out of their grip leads us into mass adoption of remote server services (like hosting the OS and major apps remotely; that rough beast has almost made its way to Bethlehem already).
During our final programming assignment, our instructor monitored all data coming through the lpr, recorded all our unix command.history files, and wouldn't allow printouts to leave the lab. The jerk didn't think about something as simple as me just letting someone look at my printout.
The guy who copied my code was an old school cheater; he needed five lines of code to crack a problem that he was beating himself over the head with, and once he had the answer, it was nothing at all to write it in his own way.
He also explained every line of his code to our instructor. He never knew anything. Not even who ypsnarf'd his sun box and deleted all his log.tar files!:D
Huh? Companies were moving production overseas decades before Wal-Mart became popular. They would keep doing that even if Wal-Mart died overnight. Blaming off-shoring of manufacturing on Wal-Mart is like blaming off-shoring of technical jobs on Fry's. It's quite possibly the silliest logic I've ever heard.
-1, reading comprehension problem.
No one was blaming the off-shoring of manufacturing on Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is blamed for grossly accelerating it. There's a major difference there.
It's a terrible idea. Most of those local stores are already thoroughly screwed by availability of products on the internet. So now in ten years when they find themselves unable to survive (Ace Hardware and K-Mart in Santa Cruz, anyone?) even without Wal-Mart, those towns will find themselves without any way to buy the things they need to survive and will have to drive large distances to buy basic products.
-1, worst example EVER
Wait, people are going to pay shipping and wait x days to purchase a drill & batteries online (which they may need today) instead of going to Ace Hardware/Home Depot/Lowe's? Exactly what planet is this version of Santa Cruz located on?
Further, lower prices are better for everyone in the long term. All the knee-jerkers say "Oh, look at all the stores that will close" and forget that Wal-Mart brings consolidated shopping, which causes stores to be able to survive that otherwise could not. It brings down prices of groceries and gasoline dramatically. It brings down the overall cost of living dramatically.
-1, tunnel vision
It also brings down the wages, too. And cheaper gasoline & groceries mean nothing when you're out of a job because your store closed down. Also, Mom & Pop music stores had employees who knew their product; ever asked a Wal Mart employee where the industrial rock/pop/hip hop/country/etc. section is, or who's the new up&coming artist in that genre? Try it sometime.
Also, consolidated shopping is even more fun for superior products that Wal Mart decides they don't want to carry. So instead of you getting your favorite brand that you want, now you're railroaded into buying whatever Wal Mart dictates is okay to sell, because no one else is around to compete and sell other brands. So much for consumer choice there.
Also, so much for employee choice. The old adage, "if you don't like the working conditions here, QUIT!!! and find another job" doesn't work as well in a city with a Wal Mart store. By the time they're done, there's not many other places to work, except Burger King.
Oh, and Wal Mart stores are also known to close down from time to time; leaving an entire town without a department store at all. You want to talk about driving times?
And another thing: Wal Mart is also known for refusing to sell some artists' music because it's "objectionable". Where do you go to get those artists, then? Cue this article. Now, Wal Mart wants to cut out your online alternatives to preserve their outdated business model. And the consumer gets hurt if Wally World gets their way.
And small stores can survive and even thrive with Wal-Mart because of the proximity effect. Stores physically close to Wal-Mart actually get more business after Wal-Mart moves in. Stores do, however, have to specialize and carry the stuff that Wal-Mart doesn't.
-1, Theory conflicts with reality
Yes, but few stores can survive just on selling the things that Wal Mart doesn't. Wal Mart's strategy is to sell the lowest common denominator products at the lowest common denominator prices, to maximize foot traffic (and sales). There simply isn't enough profit to sell other products to uphold a store.
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking... if there isn't enough profit to uphold a store selling product B, C and D, then product B, C and D don't deserve to exist. That's the worst lo
Guilt? How can there be guilt if there are profits?
Take Union Carbide, for instance... I didn't have any guilt when their chemical accident killed thousands of people... but I sure had guilt when their stock dropped!
Guilt is for investors who lose their shirts, and for liberals. We manly men, we don't know this 'guilt' thing you talk of.
MS spent $20 million in TEMPEST research. That's technology to scan your computer monitor from outside on the street, in layman's terms. MS monopoly tactics pale in comparison to the research money they put into curbing our civil liberties. Their DRM warfare against digital rights, all by itself, eclipses the worst Google could ever do.
As long as MS and Google are active forces against each other, it's all good in my mind.
Mighty Martian doesn't realize how much words like that embolden the enemy.
A transparent population governed by a completely secret and impenetrable law enforcement is the only way to protect us from terror, pedophiles and mp3 pirates.
It would be interesting to see what economic position that the typical person that accepts the Libertarian ideology or simply falls for the Myth of American Capitalism fits into. My intuition suspects that they would not be overly wealthy in general by U.S. standards.
Actually, my bet is their economic situation is exceedingly good. Few besides those who live a life of ease, comfort, can espouse such selfish, every-man-is-an-island beliefs with a sober mind. Your intuition is not wrong, though; their wealth is rarely self-gained. The word your intuition is looking for, is inheritance...
"Perhaps the reason no one is handing out flyers in your town is because your town is a driving town where people live their lives in enclosed glass and steel bubbles, and not a real city where people walk down the street to get a cup of coffee."
Point taken, you're actually very close to the mark there. We do still walk down to the local Starbuck's wannabe, though.
Try that in my town. They'll round you up faster than you can say "whoops."
I drive around here every day. No fliers anywhere, except a few staked signs during election time. The ones that do go up, get taken down within a day. I actually timed it once for an unbelieving in-law.
Freedom from Government censorship isn't worth anything when corporations can make an end run around them and shut you up.
You can't go anywhere now and put out fliers because there's ordninances against it. You can't broadcast online because ISP's shut you down when you say something "objectionable enough".
We need free speech zones on the internet that do not depend on corporations or Government.
Less than a quarter of the US technology jobs lost earlier this decade have been recovered in the past two years, according to a labor union's study.
Technology workers lost 395,600 jobs in the three years ended in March 2004, according to the report released yesterday by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Through February, 88,600 have been recouped, according to the survey, which was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech.
The recovery has been ``jobless," Seattle-based WashTech said in a statement.
Companies kept firing workers or shutting down well past the official November 2001 end of the US recession, the union said. The pace of hiring picked up in the final five months of the survey period, according to the study.
``It is far too soon to celebrate a strong recovery," Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois professor and one of the study's co-authors, said in the statement. ``Moreover the jobs impact of offshoring is considerable."
WashTech, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, has been critical of plans by companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest printer maker, and International Business Machines Corp., the biggest provider of computer services, to cut jobs and hire workers overseas.
Professionals in Seattle and San Francisco have fared better than those in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and San Jose, Calif., which have seen only modest recovery.
Employment in Los Angeles ``continues to fall significantly," the study said.
``Although IT industry employment is finally recovering, the current period is characterized by slow and faltering growth," according to the report.
``For workers in this industry, employment prospects have improved somewhat, though many have been unable to secure jobs that allow them to use the full range of their skills and expertise," it said.
Hiring for computer and data-processing grew at the second-fastest rate of all industries in the United States during the 1990s, adding more than one million jobs, according to the report.
Because there are plenty of spelling, reading and writing proficient coders who are also out of work. Don't worry, I'll have that article in 24 hours.:)
A MMORPG with NPC's is as close an analogy as humanly possible.
I haven't even heard of one MMORPG that isn't infamous for bullies/grievers and their rotten admins who help them out. I don't like subscribing/paying for abuse. That's what marriage is for, folks. MMORPGs are like a marriage minus the occasional sex *grin*. (Ok, well getting out of a MMORPG is cheaper.)
Also, I would never ask for an Oblivion-like game to be multi player. If I wanted that I'd play a MUD or MMORPG.
BTW Dot hack for the PS2 was pretty ambitious as an MMORPG simulator. Too bad it was too hard to even play.:(
Slashdot Mirror
What alternative energy research are they doing? Links, please?
Forcible transfer of wealth from the citizens to the wealthy and the corporate elite = the American way
Transfer of wealth, forcible or market-aggravated, from the wealthy and corporate elite to the citizens = godless communism = bad, bad thing.
[neo con parody off]
We're the world's 6th largest economy. If we tank, they tank. Demand plummets because California's out of the equation. Oil prices fall, and their stock falls.
Plus, we get to pursue alternative energy a lot faster. California will be bruised but we'll come out of it even better off than Brazil.
Then the rest of the world will follow our example, and the oil companies will get bent over like a cocktail waitress wandering into the NFL post game locker room.
First of all, if this micropayment system is allowed to take off, gamers will pay far more than the price of their console in micropayments as all game studios will harness this. You'll pay $60 for Final Fantasy XV, and then $1 for every level. It'll be a micropayment bloodbath. So no, this strategy is not affordable.
Then on top of this, when you re-sell the game, everyone has to buy the levels all over again since it is tied to your console. This is Sony with a sniper rifle zeroing in on the reseller market.
Moreover, why do I need to hand over my credit card and personal info and register my single player game to Sony, or anyone else? Sony wants everyone who buys a game to have to register with Sony and that's b.s.
This is one hard core PS3 fan boy who just suddenly decided not to buy a PS3. And I love the Playstation series.
Yup, it's a terroristic threat alright. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I still would have amnesia if I were to actually see such a thing happen.....
Indeed.
In our case, the guy who "plagiarized" my work knew his stuff backwards and forwards and could defend it to the professor without even looking at it. This is a far more true example of an act that straddles the collaboration/cheating line with 9 toes on the side of collaboration.
Modern day cheaters? They don't know diddly squat about what they're lifting.
Also, I give props to our prof for grilling each and every one of us. That took obsess^H^H^H^H^H^Hdedication.
I meant, "MS will require all PC software & games be VISTA compatible whether the consumers want it or not, and people will just obey."
Addendum: I sure hope that MS doesn't so completely lock down the market that the pathway out of their grip leads us into mass adoption of remote server services (like hosting the OS and major apps remotely; that rough beast has almost made its way to Bethlehem already).
how people are willing to put up with all the bugs that Windows has, and all the restrictions it is now tacking on.
MS will require all PC software & games be XP compatible whether the consumers want it or not, and people will just obey.
Whatever happened to consumers dictating how the market changes?
During our final programming assignment, our instructor monitored all data coming through the lpr, recorded all our unix command .history files, and wouldn't allow printouts to leave the lab. The jerk didn't think about something as simple as me just letting someone look at my printout.
.tar files! :D
The guy who copied my code was an old school cheater; he needed five lines of code to crack a problem that he was beating himself over the head with, and once he had the answer, it was nothing at all to write it in his own way.
He also explained every line of his code to our instructor. He never knew anything. Not even who ypsnarf'd his sun box and deleted all his log
LOL!!! Hole in one. The gates of consumer oblivion are opening all over the console gaming world and the corporate Daedra are loose upon the populace.
I for one have little choice but to shake my iron warhammer with anger and welcome my new micropayment-extracting masters.
Of course, I could ditch my 360 at this point and abandon console gaming...
-1, reading comprehension problem.
No one was blaming the off-shoring of manufacturing on Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is blamed for grossly accelerating it. There's a major difference there.
-1, worst example EVER
Wait, people are going to pay shipping and wait x days to purchase a drill & batteries online (which they may need today) instead of going to Ace Hardware/Home Depot/Lowe's? Exactly what planet is this version of Santa Cruz located on?
-1, tunnel vision
It also brings down the wages, too. And cheaper gasoline & groceries mean nothing when you're out of a job because your store closed down. Also, Mom & Pop music stores had employees who knew their product; ever asked a Wal Mart employee where the industrial rock/pop/hip hop/country/etc. section is, or who's the new up&coming artist in that genre? Try it sometime.
Also, consolidated shopping is even more fun for superior products that Wal Mart decides they don't want to carry. So instead of you getting your favorite brand that you want, now you're railroaded into buying whatever Wal Mart dictates is okay to sell, because no one else is around to compete and sell other brands. So much for consumer choice there.
Also, so much for employee choice. The old adage, "if you don't like the working conditions here, QUIT!!! and find another job" doesn't work as well in a city with a Wal Mart store. By the time they're done, there's not many other places to work, except Burger King.
Oh, and Wal Mart stores are also known to close down from time to time; leaving an entire town without a department store at all. You want to talk about driving times?
And another thing: Wal Mart is also known for refusing to sell some artists' music because it's "objectionable". Where do you go to get those artists, then? Cue this article. Now, Wal Mart wants to cut out your online alternatives to preserve their outdated business model. And the consumer gets hurt if Wally World gets their way.
-1, Theory conflicts with reality
Yes, but few stores can survive just on selling the things that Wal Mart doesn't. Wal Mart's strategy is to sell the lowest common denominator products at the lowest common denominator prices, to maximize foot traffic (and sales). There simply isn't enough profit to sell other products to uphold a store.
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking... if there isn't enough profit to uphold a store selling product B, C and D, then product B, C and D don't deserve to exist. That's the worst lo
Guilt? How can there be guilt if there are profits?
Take Union Carbide, for instance... I didn't have any guilt when their chemical accident killed thousands of people... but I sure had guilt when their stock dropped!
Guilt is for investors who lose their shirts, and for liberals. We manly men, we don't know this 'guilt' thing you talk of.
[end republican parody]
MS spent $20 million in TEMPEST research. That's technology to scan your computer monitor from outside on the street, in layman's terms. MS monopoly tactics pale in comparison to the research money they put into curbing our civil liberties. Their DRM warfare against digital rights, all by itself, eclipses the worst Google could ever do.
As long as MS and Google are active forces against each other, it's all good in my mind.
How many other DSL/cable modem providers are there in your area?
Mighty Martian doesn't realize how much words like that embolden the enemy.
A transparent population governed by a completely secret and impenetrable law enforcement is the only way to protect us from terror, pedophiles and mp3 pirates.
Heil-er, hi y'all!
[gonzales apologist mode off]
Actually, my bet is their economic situation is exceedingly good. Few besides those who live a life of ease, comfort, can espouse such selfish, every-man-is-an-island beliefs with a sober mind. Your intuition is not wrong, though; their wealth is rarely self-gained. The word your intuition is looking for, is inheritance...
Your post just gave the trust fund baby neo con slashdotters a major coronary.
Now please do five "hail Halliburtons" and tithe an extra ten percent for welfare subsidies for bankrupt corporations, and sin no more my child.
CustomDesigned posted an actual solution to the problem, that's cause right there for some upward modding.
"Perhaps the reason no one is handing out flyers in your town is because your town is a driving town where people live their lives in enclosed glass and steel bubbles, and not a real city where people walk down the street to get a cup of coffee."
Point taken, you're actually very close to the mark there. We do still walk down to the local Starbuck's wannabe, though.
Try that in my town. They'll round you up faster than you can say "whoops."
I drive around here every day. No fliers anywhere, except a few staked signs during election time. The ones that do go up, get taken down within a day. I actually timed it once for an unbelieving in-law.
Freedom from Government censorship isn't worth anything when corporations can make an end run around them and shut you up.
You can't go anywhere now and put out fliers because there's ordninances against it. You can't broadcast online because ISP's shut you down when you say something "objectionable enough".
We need free speech zones on the internet that do not depend on corporations or Government.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006 /06/15/study_us_tech_sector_isnt_recouping_job_los ses?mode=PF
Study: US tech sector isn't recouping job losses
By Bloomberg News | June 15, 2006
Less than a quarter of the US technology jobs lost earlier this decade have been recovered in the past two years, according to a labor union's study.
Technology workers lost 395,600 jobs in the three years ended in March 2004, according to the report released yesterday by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Through February, 88,600 have been recouped, according to the survey, which was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech.
The recovery has been ``jobless," Seattle-based WashTech said in a statement.
Companies kept firing workers or shutting down well past the official November 2001 end of the US recession, the union said. The pace of hiring picked up in the final five months of the survey period, according to the study.
``It is far too soon to celebrate a strong recovery," Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois professor and one of the study's co-authors, said in the statement. ``Moreover the jobs impact of offshoring is considerable."
WashTech, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, has been critical of plans by companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest printer maker, and International Business Machines Corp., the biggest provider of computer services, to cut jobs and hire workers overseas.
Professionals in Seattle and San Francisco have fared better than those in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and San Jose, Calif., which have seen only modest recovery.
Employment in Los Angeles ``continues to fall significantly," the study said.
``Although IT industry employment is finally recovering, the current period is characterized by slow and faltering growth," according to the report.
``For workers in this industry, employment prospects have improved somewhat, though many have been unable to secure jobs that allow them to use the full range of their skills and expertise," it said.
Hiring for computer and data-processing grew at the second-fastest rate of all industries in the United States during the 1990s, adding more than one million jobs, according to the report.
Why should I be forced to base my retirement on social security when I can gamble in the stock market instead?
Look at all the Enron employees who got rich. I'd rather be them. Wouldn't you?
[republican parody off]
Because there are plenty of spelling, reading and writing proficient coders who are also out of work. Don't worry, I'll have that article in 24 hours. :)
A MMORPG with NPC's is as close an analogy as humanly possible.
:(
I haven't even heard of one MMORPG that isn't infamous for bullies/grievers and their rotten admins who help them out. I don't like subscribing/paying for abuse. That's what marriage is for, folks. MMORPGs are like a marriage minus the occasional sex *grin*. (Ok, well getting out of a MMORPG is cheaper.)
Also, I would never ask for an Oblivion-like game to be multi player. If I wanted that I'd play a MUD or MMORPG.
BTW Dot hack for the PS2 was pretty ambitious as an MMORPG simulator. Too bad it was too hard to even play.