I only opened this article to read the ensuing Venture Bros. jokes, and no one managed to post any with +3 or better moderation. Reanimated corpse slugs could have done better. Slashdot, you've failed me for the... well, neither first nor last time... but you've still failed me.
Or just a good UI design. When you have to have 3 knobs for the heating system, 8 buttons & 3 knobs for the radio, 4 buttons for your GPS, etc. all in a fairly small space (center console) then, sure, it makes sense to provide tactile feedback.
On the other hand, if you can give the user 3-4 simple, intuitive buttons to select the option they want in 2 clicks, and then reduce most functions to 2 giant "UP" and "DOWN" buttons...
Following the English tradition, U.S. juries have usually been composed of 12 jurors, and the jury's verdict has usually been required to be unanimous. However, in many jurisdictions, the number of jurors is often reduced to a lesser number (such as five or six) by legislative enactment, or by agreement of both sides. Some jurisdictions also permit a verdict to be returned despite the dissent of one, two, or three jurors.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they got this judgment right. Relevant Massachusetts law says libel is untruthful or malicious statements against a person's character. Staples made statements that, while truthful, may well have been malicious due to the scope and context of their presentation.
Now a judge or jury will hear arguments from both sides. Previously, a judge had simply heard Staples say (paraphrasing) "nothing in this widely distributed e-mail that defamed the plaintiff was factually untrue, so these charges must be dismissed." This disregarded the fact that the e-mail describing Noonan's firing for violation of company policies was itself a violation of company policy, that the subtext of the message implied he had willfully violated company policy for his own profit when he maintains the violations were done in a combination of good faith and company-wide SOP that defied the letter of the written and largely un-enforced official policy, and that the context and timing of the firing as well as the inclusion of his name in the e-mail might lead those who read it to believe that Staples felt he had broken the law.
Seems that both parties acted immorally. Noonan simply wants his day in court to prove that Staples also acted illegally. His case DOES deserve to be heard, and Massachusetts probably DOES need to reexamine this law.
You make good points BUT you don't carry them far enough.
You point out both that the bulk of new game costs are unrelated to printing, packaging, and distributing the game. In the case of Left4Dead sold on Steam, Valve can probably expect something like 95% of the purchase cost paid by the consumer to go directly to their bank accounts. (Other manufacturers with direct sales may see something more like 80-90%, and all publishers can probably expect something like a $5-$10 per until cost to sell from a traditional brick & mortar mart.)
You also claim that "companies are making less money than they did in the long run (on average)." As you point out, this is being done by selling a limited number of games at $60 each. You also claim that you feel like this is a bargain. While for you that may be the case, the research highlighted in the article suggests that there is a larger un-tapped market of people who feel that $50-$60 per game is too much money to pay.
If there 3 times as many customers are willing to buy a game at $30 vs. $60 or if it's 6 times as many customers are willing buy at $20 vs. $60 then it makes perfect sense for both the customers AND the game companies to sell them at lower cost. The big change since 1989 is that there is a much larger (even adjusted for population growth) customer base for PC games than there ever was for NES (and/or likely ever will be for any console).
My $0.02: Lower the prices enough and you'll sell enough copies to more than make up for the difference.
P.S.-IMO, the only way we'll see an MMO capable of truly competing with WoW in the next 3-5 years is if someone takes this model to the extreme. Every sale of the game will have to be ~at cost and come with several free guest passes (10-15 keys for buying in the box, 3-5 passes if you buy online). Once people start playing, offer basic & collector's edition account upgrades in addition to the monthly fee.
This goes nicely with their King Kong defense, though. "See, we can't control what our supporters are doing to your web sites, just like we can't control the information that's getting posted on our forums. If you're going to accuse us of copyright infringement, you might just as well accuse us of hacking."
The problem is that I'm hoping to build a low-profile PC. The entry point for low-profile NVidia video cards is fairly high. At least, that I've been able to find.
I don't have anything against NVidia products--the video card on my current system is the second NVidia board so far--but I did take offense to the blanket statement stating no one would ever have cause to look for a specific integrated graphics chipset.
I'm currently on a hold for funding reasons, but I've intentionally sought out a motherboard with Intel integrated graphics based on a review that suggests it would be suitable, and possibly the best low-budget option, for watching HDTV under MythTV.
There's a couple of different sources and philosophies about how much of each sale (by source) goes to the actual artist.
If anyone can direct me to the proper site, I'd happily send Bob Dylan the $8 - $75 dollars I owe him for his albums that I have been unable to conveniently purchase legitimately.
For those too lazy to visit WikiPedia (and/or in case it gets pulled soon):
EU Law, adopted by Sweden, indicates that service providers cannot, and are not expected to be, able to monitor all of the information passing through their site. e.g. I post a link to a copyrighted document on/. then it is not the fault of/. editors.
One of the defendants lawyers pointed out the applicability of the law in this case by theorizing "The person responsible for uploads [of copyrighted files] might as well be a user named King Kong in the jungles of Cambodia" reminding the court that the onus to show a direct link between the defendants and the copyrighted material is on the prosecution.
Now for the important bit.
Similarities of King Kong defense to Chewbacca defense:
I think you're misrepresenting the quality of expert that is required for the bulk of improvements.
For example, when we elect officials to local government, we don't necessarily expect them to have a law degree and relevant experience. We simply want them to have a minimal skill set and a drive to serve. Ideally, we like when there's a large enough group meeting that set of criteria that we can then use a democratic process to pare this down to only the most qualified (or, more accurately the most popular) candidate(s).
Perhaps Wikipedia (or a fork) could benefit from a similar process. Editor-experts could be chosen from interested candidates by public referendum, serve for a set period of time, and thus implant a sense of responsibility (and hopefully credibility) to a specific article or group of articles.
What's that expression? Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
Once when asked by a cop why I was holding a sign I said, "some cute chick over there gave it to me, I dont want to drop it and litter" He took the sign as a favor to me.
Apart from the fact that the currency limit in the US wasn't necessarily $500, it may be greater in foreign currency--say, 500 British pounds or 500 Euro, which would work out to far more than $500.
And I'm sure they're also counting ATM fees at some atrocious amount. Probably $normal_fee + $overdraft_penalty + $fraud_penalty on every single transaction.
People I know who've run into the text message cap one month have contacted their cell phone companies and received pretty much identical responses. "If you'd like to upgrade to our monthly unlimited plan we'd be happy to retroactively apply it to last month's bill."
Why? Because $NN per month every month for the foreseeable future is a much better deal for them than $XXX dollars and an angry customer. Now if you called and canceled the unlimited plan the next day and go over again, good luck getting them to cut you slack twice.
Telecoms have long been saying that they can't provide the service they're selling customers--at least not in the form of a 24/7 pipe. Now they're finally coming out in the open about the limitations. That'd be great if consumers actually had viable alternatives. As it stands consumers with more than 2 choices are extremely lucky, but even in those cases where multiple choices ARE available it's likely that ALL of the companies have similar caps.
If you're fortunate enough to live in an area where you have the option, vote with your wallets.
Say I'm picked up a couple of blocks away from a crime scene shortly after a murder was committed, before one or more eyewitnesses, by someone matching my physical description. If I lack a credible alibi for the exact time of the murders it's not unreasonable to have me stand in a line-up. If I am incorrectly identified there will be an opportunity in court to discredit the witness.
On the other hand, imagine I'm charged with something like drunk and disorderly and a DNA sample is taken. Then 32 years later a hair matching my DNA is found at a murder scene--or, worse yet, if I have children with someone else who has had a DNA sample taken and a hair which could match our child(ren)'s DNA is found. There is no longer circumstantial evidence for my suspicion, or the suspicion of my progeny. But if the case is sufficiently high-profile (a la JonBennet Ramsey) you know that the investigators will have me/my offspring hauled in for questioning anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely the crack editors here at Slashdot would ferret a fraud out in less than a heartbeat...
I only opened this article to read the ensuing Venture Bros. jokes, and no one managed to post any with +3 or better moderation. Reanimated corpse slugs could have done better. Slashdot, you've failed me for the... well, neither first nor last time... but you've still failed me.
Or just a good UI design. When you have to have 3 knobs for the heating system, 8 buttons & 3 knobs for the radio, 4 buttons for your GPS, etc. all in a fairly small space (center console) then, sure, it makes sense to provide tactile feedback.
On the other hand, if you can give the user 3-4 simple, intuitive buttons to select the option they want in 2 clicks, and then reduce most functions to 2 giant "UP" and "DOWN" buttons...
Could someone please tell me the title of the movie he's referencing so I could torrent it?
Here it is:
Following the English tradition, U.S. juries have usually been composed of 12 jurors, and the jury's verdict has usually been required to be unanimous. However, in many jurisdictions, the number of jurors is often reduced to a lesser number (such as five or six) by legislative enactment, or by agreement of both sides. Some jurisdictions also permit a verdict to be returned despite the dissent of one, two, or three jurors.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they got this judgment right. Relevant Massachusetts law says libel is untruthful or malicious statements against a person's character. Staples made statements that, while truthful, may well have been malicious due to the scope and context of their presentation.
Now a judge or jury will hear arguments from both sides. Previously, a judge had simply heard Staples say (paraphrasing) "nothing in this widely distributed e-mail that defamed the plaintiff was factually untrue, so these charges must be dismissed." This disregarded the fact that the e-mail describing Noonan's firing for violation of company policies was itself a violation of company policy, that the subtext of the message implied he had willfully violated company policy for his own profit when he maintains the violations were done in a combination of good faith and company-wide SOP that defied the letter of the written and largely un-enforced official policy, and that the context and timing of the firing as well as the inclusion of his name in the e-mail might lead those who read it to believe that Staples felt he had broken the law.
Seems that both parties acted immorally. Noonan simply wants his day in court to prove that Staples also acted illegally. His case DOES deserve to be heard, and Massachusetts probably DOES need to reexamine this law.
There are collapsing paradox waves at work here.
What if someone else opposed to hypocrisy is found to be a hypocrite?
Would you continue to advance your anti-hypocritical agenda, or abandon it on principle?
Great, now I've even confused myself.
Wait... what year is it?
Crap, I think I overslept for my high school class.
You make good points BUT you don't carry them far enough.
You point out both that the bulk of new game costs are unrelated to printing, packaging, and distributing the game. In the case of Left4Dead sold on Steam, Valve can probably expect something like 95% of the purchase cost paid by the consumer to go directly to their bank accounts. (Other manufacturers with direct sales may see something more like 80-90%, and all publishers can probably expect something like a $5-$10 per until cost to sell from a traditional brick & mortar mart.)
You also claim that "companies are making less money than they did in the long run (on average)." As you point out, this is being done by selling a limited number of games at $60 each. You also claim that you feel like this is a bargain. While for you that may be the case, the research highlighted in the article suggests that there is a larger un-tapped market of people who feel that $50-$60 per game is too much money to pay.
If there 3 times as many customers are willing to buy a game at $30 vs. $60 or if it's 6 times as many customers are willing buy at $20 vs. $60 then it makes perfect sense for both the customers AND the game companies to sell them at lower cost. The big change since 1989 is that there is a much larger (even adjusted for population growth) customer base for PC games than there ever was for NES (and/or likely ever will be for any console).
My $0.02: Lower the prices enough and you'll sell enough copies to more than make up for the difference.
P.S.-IMO, the only way we'll see an MMO capable of truly competing with WoW in the next 3-5 years is if someone takes this model to the extreme. Every sale of the game will have to be ~at cost and come with several free guest passes (10-15 keys for buying in the box, 3-5 passes if you buy online). Once people start playing, offer basic & collector's edition account upgrades in addition to the monthly fee.
This goes nicely with their King Kong defense, though. "See, we can't control what our supporters are doing to your web sites, just like we can't control the information that's getting posted on our forums. If you're going to accuse us of copyright infringement, you might just as well accuse us of hacking."
Thanks for the advice, I'll be sure to check those out.
The problem is that I'm hoping to build a low-profile PC. The entry point for low-profile NVidia video cards is fairly high. At least, that I've been able to find.
I don't have anything against NVidia products--the video card on my current system is the second NVidia board so far--but I did take offense to the blanket statement stating no one would ever have cause to look for a specific integrated graphics chipset.
I'm currently on a hold for funding reasons, but I've intentionally sought out a motherboard with Intel integrated graphics based on a review that suggests it would be suitable, and possibly the best low-budget option, for watching HDTV under MythTV.
There's a couple of different sources and philosophies about how much of each sale (by source) goes to the actual artist.
If anyone can direct me to the proper site, I'd happily send Bob Dylan the $8 - $75 dollars I owe him for his albums that I have been unable to conveniently purchase legitimately.
EU Law, adopted by Sweden, indicates that service providers cannot, and are not expected to be, able to monitor all of the information passing through their site. e.g. I post a link to a copyrighted document on
One of the defendants lawyers pointed out the applicability of the law in this case by theorizing "The person responsible for uploads [of copyrighted files] might as well be a user named King Kong in the jungles of Cambodia" reminding the court that the onus to show a direct link between the defendants and the copyrighted material is on the prosecution.
Now for the important bit.
Similarities of King Kong defense to Chewbacca defense:
Dissimilarities:
Did anyone else
who actually RTFA
feel that the
blog used an un-
necessarily re-
strictive charac-
ter per line limit?
Maybe normally
their stories are written as
haiku paragraphs
I think you're misrepresenting the quality of expert that is required for the bulk of improvements.
For example, when we elect officials to local government, we don't necessarily expect them to have a law degree and relevant experience. We simply want them to have a minimal skill set and a drive to serve. Ideally, we like when there's a large enough group meeting that set of criteria that we can then use a democratic process to pare this down to only the most qualified (or, more accurately the most popular) candidate(s).
Perhaps Wikipedia (or a fork) could benefit from a similar process. Editor-experts could be chosen from interested candidates by public referendum, serve for a set period of time, and thus implant a sense of responsibility (and hopefully credibility) to a specific article or group of articles.
What's that expression? Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
Whose chopper is this?
Zed's.
Who's Zed?
Zed's risen again, baby, Zed's risen again.
Once when asked by a cop why I was holding a sign I said, "some cute chick over there gave it to me, I dont want to drop it and litter" He took the sign as a favor to me.
Glad to see you're standing by your convictions.
So says the Anonymous Coward...
Apart from the fact that the currency limit in the US wasn't necessarily $500, it may be greater in foreign currency--say, 500 British pounds or 500 Euro, which would work out to far more than $500.
And I'm sure they're also counting ATM fees at some atrocious amount. Probably $normal_fee + $overdraft_penalty + $fraud_penalty on every single transaction.
People I know who've run into the text message cap one month have contacted their cell phone companies and received pretty much identical responses. "If you'd like to upgrade to our monthly unlimited plan we'd be happy to retroactively apply it to last month's bill."
Why? Because $NN per month every month for the foreseeable future is a much better deal for them than $XXX dollars and an angry customer. Now if you called and canceled the unlimited plan the next day and go over again, good luck getting them to cut you slack twice.
Telecoms have long been saying that they can't provide the service they're selling customers--at least not in the form of a 24/7 pipe. Now they're finally coming out in the open about the limitations. That'd be great if consumers actually had viable alternatives. As it stands consumers with more than 2 choices are extremely lucky, but even in those cases where multiple choices ARE available it's likely that ALL of the companies have similar caps.
If you're fortunate enough to live in an area where you have the option, vote with your wallets.
Say I'm picked up a couple of blocks away from a crime scene shortly after a murder was committed, before one or more eyewitnesses, by someone matching my physical description. If I lack a credible alibi for the exact time of the murders it's not unreasonable to have me stand in a line-up. If I am incorrectly identified there will be an opportunity in court to discredit the witness.
On the other hand, imagine I'm charged with something like drunk and disorderly and a DNA sample is taken. Then 32 years later a hair matching my DNA is found at a murder scene--or, worse yet, if I have children with someone else who has had a DNA sample taken and a hair which could match our child(ren)'s DNA is found. There is no longer circumstantial evidence for my suspicion, or the suspicion of my progeny. But if the case is sufficiently high-profile (a la JonBennet Ramsey) you know that the investigators will have me/my offspring hauled in for questioning anyways.
Does that count as a specific objection?
Your link proves the question posited by the title of the summary was answered 20 years before it was asked.
No one said you were allowed to use facts.