The merger will go through, regardless of what anybody says. Dollars are the literal coin of the realm, and Congress is incapable of responding to anything else. And, as has been pointed out, these companies have been spending millions to get their attention. So get ready for lousier service, data caps and higher prices. Because it's "good for the consumer".
The used game market is killing the very industry that it is feeding off of. Companies like GameStop now attribute over 60% of their annual revenues to used console games. They are leeches who feed off both the gamers and the industry. Or have you not noticed how they will pay you the equivalent of 10-15% of the value of a game you trade in, then immediately turn around and re-sell it for just $5 less than the retail price? It is a rip-off, plain and simple, that screws both gamers and the game companies.
Don't like the current pricing of video games? In 1978 a typical AAA title for the Atari 2600 game system cost $59.99. IN 1978 DOLLARS. This was a game on a cartridge with perhaps 16 KB of total storage capacity, and a development budget of less than $150,000. Today of course, development budgets for the best game franchises START at around $30m per title. Some, like the Modern Warfare games, have dev budgets in excess of $60m each. This, for games that support hundreds of hours of play and can fit on a dual-layer DVD. The retail price? Still $59.99.
I strongly suggest everyone calling for boycotts and piracy take a hard look at the industry, and understand that it's not the game developers and publishers that are ripping them off. It's the RETAILERS who are ripping everyone off, up and down the line. The developers and publishers are just trying to get back money that is rightfully theirs.
... it was in 1883. How many observatories did Earth even HAVE back then? This was before radar, before computers, before telephones. Normal photography was in its infancy and astrophotography didn't exist yet. Telescopes were still aimed by hand.
Whatever it was, I can easily believe that only one guy on Earth just happened to be observing the Sun during daytime and saw a transit of objects that nobody else reported.
I supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but I do not support the way they were handled. I do think the military-industrial complex should have been abolished long ago. Why? Because what has it done to protect us, really?
Vietnam? It didn't help us win.
Grenada? Yeah right. A banana republic with a few Cuban troops that our Salvation Army could have whipped.
Panama? See above.
Gulf War I? We didn't win that war, remember? We stopped just short of victory, a violation of one of the most fundamental principles of war that history has ever taught us: never leave an aggressor intact. We had to go back and do the job right in 2003.
Somalia? We were trying to help those people, they started shooting at us, so we left.
Confrontation with Saddam's forces while enforcing the no-fly zones and inspectors? Come on. We had about 20,000 troops in theater at the time. We don't need to spend $400b a year to maintain THAT, or any of our other troop commitments around the world.
Iraq War and Afghan War? We took an army with a military doctrine of slowing down a Soviet tank advance across Europe just long enough for our ICBMs to reach Moscow, and tried to use it to fight two major land wars in Asia. Big mistake. We SHOULD have immediately instituted a draft after 9/11, converted factories to war production, raised a massive army (like, 5 million men), and when the time was right, rolled into Iraq with at least a million strong. The PROPER way to occupy a country you defeat is to make sure your occupying troops are in every city, town and village so they can establish ORDER. That wasn't done. You can only spread 100,000 troops so far in a country if 28 million. And we have all seen the results.
They always make the same mistakes, thinking you can do war "on the cheap". You can't. But I am encouraged by Secretary Gates' plan. It may be a step in a direction we should have gone in decades ago.
And still people criticize us for sending in troops to impose order and stability, in a place that never had it to begin with. I got news for you bleeding hearts. If you want to help those people, re-establish law and order first. Once that is done, the business of distributing food and water, rebuilding infrastructure, re-establishing basic public services like sanitation etc, becomes infinitely easier.
Please, for the love of God, reality TV must be stopped. It has already degraded our culture and ruined our ability to appreciate anything urbane or tasteful. Garbage like this is just the final insult. Please, just stop.
I am with you guys. The US has become a paranoid culture bogged down with ultimately useless regulation and curbs on individual freedoms, thanks to 9/11. I said it then and I say it now: I would rather we turned Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran and Syria into radioactive parking lots, than lose what we were. But it's too late now. Osama has already won, especially when he has so many anti-government radicals in this country who are willing to provide aid and comfort to his cause. Welcome to the new reality.
It's way too late now obviously, but can we get rid of the "24 hour" news cycle and return to the "network news at 6 and 10pm" tradition? You know, before outlets like CNN, Fox etc had to go out and MAKE news because there wasn't enough to report, or have to bring on a bunch of clueless talking heads to fill time with speculation and innuendo that doesn't advance the story one iota? Back in the days when news outlets had enough time to RESEARCH stories, INTERVIEW relevant participants, CHECK their facts, and assemble it all in a format that a news anchor with actual INTEGRITY (i.e. Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Edward R. Murrow, etc) could then present to the public??
Sigh... I guess not...
Come on people, use your heads. Just like, I dunno, flying a commercial jet at low altitude over NYC, making a game about a battle in an ongoing war where many of the people involved are still fighting is just a bad idea, and shows not only insensitivity but also questionable taste.
It is a game. No matter how realistic the fighting is, it won't be like the real thing. It therefore trivializes the very real aspects of war that the soldiers who were there must have gone through. I'm glad the game was canceled, but I question the intelligence of those who greenlit it to begin with. At some point during the creative process, somebody must have had the courage to say "hey guys, maybe we shouldn't be doing a game like this so soon after the real event". But maybe not.
I agree with the first guy. He won't be slowed down by this, he will gain encouragement from it like any megalomaniac would. Luckily Planet Earth is rapidly running out of people who take him seriously, and oddly enough most of it is his fault.
Once there is nobody left and his pathetic attempts at self-promotion fall on deaf ears, I am betting he will turn to violence to call attention to himself again.
An asinine observation like this shows just how out of touch Sony really are. The initial arguments over which console hardware was "better" came down to the same thing it always has: seeing is believing. And Sony's claims of having superior hardware to the XBox360 rang hollow when the actual games look and play only "as good" as their 360 counterparts (or actually WORSE in many cases). Honestly, which game do you think showcases its console's strengths? Resistance, or Gears Of War?
Sony has some serious damage control to do here, and they had better wake up and smell the ashes. They have given up nearly all the game exclusivity deals that normally would have driven a nail into the coffin of any competitor (even Microsoft). Final Fantasy XIII is coming to both platforms. They lost Tekken. Even the bread and butter of the PS2 days, Grand Theft Auto, is superior on the 360 for many reasons. Overall the evolution of game development for PS3 has not come along like they expected and still lags behind its older, cheaper rival.
Sony had better lose the corporate arrogance and start helping their developers, cut their prices and start landing some console exclusives, or they're going to lose the whole show. The only thing that has kept them in the game has been the phenomenal success of the Wii (not considered by me to be a "next generation" platform), along with the XBox "red-ring-of-death" disaster that has created the perception among buyers that the console is unreliable. Otherwise this war would be over.
The Congressional investigation mentioned in the original story (which would potentially cost millions of course) wouldn't be necessary if people would just effing learn something about how computers work.
Investigation complete. Can they just give me the money instead? =D
Let's see... a government-funded study, to determine whether a sea animal likes music created by HUMANS.
Uh huh... right. You know what, screw all the bleeding-heart types. I think "boondoggle" is the word we're all searching for here.
That's what treehuggers *do*. They don't carefully analyze the impact on others or offer any alternative solutions; they just criticize things they think are bad, as well as the people they consider responsible. For society, the environment, their own point of view etc. Their favorite justification is to "call attention" to these things.
Too bad they spend so much time protesting in the street; if they spent that time and energy in the library instead, they could have solved many of the world's most vexing problems by now. While I'm sure they are sincere and they mean well, I nonetheless have made it my personal mission to staunchly ignore said treehuggers until they collectively decide to do something constructive and helpful with their copious free time.
Yeah, sounds like the normal spambots have been redirected to the war with Georgia. Once Russia blows them back into the Stone Age, the spam flow will be back up to its normal levels.
I recommend "The Forgotten Door" by Alexander Key (the author of the original Escape To Witch Mountain). It was one of my favorite sci-fi books when I was a kid, about a young boy who accidentally falls through a dimensional gateway and finds himself on Earth without any memory of who he is. He is then befriended by a kind family as he tries to make it back home. A great book for readers of all ages.
Yeah, if you get caught using company computers to do personal business like that, of course you're going to get nailed. That is true in most private sector companies, and especially true in government agencies where the rules are even stricter.
There's no story worth reporting here. Guy did something wrong, and he paid the price. Period. Move along, citizens...
In a corporate environment that may be good IT policy... but in a government body, communications between individuals or departments are by definition the property of the people of the United States. Those communications should NOT be destroyed, now or ever. Once the current administration leaves office they should be transferred to the National Archives (unless deemed classified); just as the documents, tapes and videos of previous administrations were handled.
There may have been incompetence involved, but at the very least this raises questions about accountability and suggests a cover-up; and the tinfoil hat-wearers out there already have enough conspiracy theory ammunition to last for the next 100 years as it is.
Slashdot Mirror
The merger will go through, regardless of what anybody says. Dollars are the literal coin of the realm, and Congress is incapable of responding to anything else. And, as has been pointed out, these companies have been spending millions to get their attention. So get ready for lousier service, data caps and higher prices. Because it's "good for the consumer".
In before the flame war.
What is this, 1940??
The used game market is killing the very industry that it is feeding off of. Companies like GameStop now attribute over 60% of their annual revenues to used console games. They are leeches who feed off both the gamers and the industry. Or have you not noticed how they will pay you the equivalent of 10-15% of the value of a game you trade in, then immediately turn around and re-sell it for just $5 less than the retail price? It is a rip-off, plain and simple, that screws both gamers and the game companies.
Don't like the current pricing of video games? In 1978 a typical AAA title for the Atari 2600 game system cost $59.99. IN 1978 DOLLARS. This was a game on a cartridge with perhaps 16 KB of total storage capacity, and a development budget of less than $150,000. Today of course, development budgets for the best game franchises START at around $30m per title. Some, like the Modern Warfare games, have dev budgets in excess of $60m each. This, for games that support hundreds of hours of play and can fit on a dual-layer DVD. The retail price? Still $59.99.
I strongly suggest everyone calling for boycotts and piracy take a hard look at the industry, and understand that it's not the game developers and publishers that are ripping them off. It's the RETAILERS who are ripping everyone off, up and down the line. The developers and publishers are just trying to get back money that is rightfully theirs.
... it was in 1883. How many observatories did Earth even HAVE back then? This was before radar, before computers, before telephones. Normal photography was in its infancy and astrophotography didn't exist yet. Telescopes were still aimed by hand. Whatever it was, I can easily believe that only one guy on Earth just happened to be observing the Sun during daytime and saw a transit of objects that nobody else reported.
I supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but I do not support the way they were handled. I do think the military-industrial complex should have been abolished long ago. Why? Because what has it done to protect us, really? Vietnam? It didn't help us win. Grenada? Yeah right. A banana republic with a few Cuban troops that our Salvation Army could have whipped. Panama? See above. Gulf War I? We didn't win that war, remember? We stopped just short of victory, a violation of one of the most fundamental principles of war that history has ever taught us: never leave an aggressor intact. We had to go back and do the job right in 2003. Somalia? We were trying to help those people, they started shooting at us, so we left. Confrontation with Saddam's forces while enforcing the no-fly zones and inspectors? Come on. We had about 20,000 troops in theater at the time. We don't need to spend $400b a year to maintain THAT, or any of our other troop commitments around the world. Iraq War and Afghan War? We took an army with a military doctrine of slowing down a Soviet tank advance across Europe just long enough for our ICBMs to reach Moscow, and tried to use it to fight two major land wars in Asia. Big mistake. We SHOULD have immediately instituted a draft after 9/11, converted factories to war production, raised a massive army (like, 5 million men), and when the time was right, rolled into Iraq with at least a million strong. The PROPER way to occupy a country you defeat is to make sure your occupying troops are in every city, town and village so they can establish ORDER. That wasn't done. You can only spread 100,000 troops so far in a country if 28 million. And we have all seen the results. They always make the same mistakes, thinking you can do war "on the cheap". You can't. But I am encouraged by Secretary Gates' plan. It may be a step in a direction we should have gone in decades ago.
And still people criticize us for sending in troops to impose order and stability, in a place that never had it to begin with. I got news for you bleeding hearts. If you want to help those people, re-establish law and order first. Once that is done, the business of distributing food and water, rebuilding infrastructure, re-establishing basic public services like sanitation etc, becomes infinitely easier.
Please, for the love of God, reality TV must be stopped. It has already degraded our culture and ruined our ability to appreciate anything urbane or tasteful. Garbage like this is just the final insult. Please, just stop.
I am with you guys. The US has become a paranoid culture bogged down with ultimately useless regulation and curbs on individual freedoms, thanks to 9/11. I said it then and I say it now: I would rather we turned Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran and Syria into radioactive parking lots, than lose what we were. But it's too late now. Osama has already won, especially when he has so many anti-government radicals in this country who are willing to provide aid and comfort to his cause. Welcome to the new reality.
And people thought the Republicans were bad...
It's way too late now obviously, but can we get rid of the "24 hour" news cycle and return to the "network news at 6 and 10pm" tradition? You know, before outlets like CNN, Fox etc had to go out and MAKE news because there wasn't enough to report, or have to bring on a bunch of clueless talking heads to fill time with speculation and innuendo that doesn't advance the story one iota? Back in the days when news outlets had enough time to RESEARCH stories, INTERVIEW relevant participants, CHECK their facts, and assemble it all in a format that a news anchor with actual INTEGRITY (i.e. Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Edward R. Murrow, etc) could then present to the public?? Sigh... I guess not...
Come on people, use your heads. Just like, I dunno, flying a commercial jet at low altitude over NYC, making a game about a battle in an ongoing war where many of the people involved are still fighting is just a bad idea, and shows not only insensitivity but also questionable taste.
It is a game. No matter how realistic the fighting is, it won't be like the real thing. It therefore trivializes the very real aspects of war that the soldiers who were there must have gone through. I'm glad the game was canceled, but I question the intelligence of those who greenlit it to begin with. At some point during the creative process, somebody must have had the courage to say "hey guys, maybe we shouldn't be doing a game like this so soon after the real event". But maybe not.
I agree with the first guy. He won't be slowed down by this, he will gain encouragement from it like any megalomaniac would. Luckily Planet Earth is rapidly running out of people who take him seriously, and oddly enough most of it is his fault. Once there is nobody left and his pathetic attempts at self-promotion fall on deaf ears, I am betting he will turn to violence to call attention to himself again.
An asinine observation like this shows just how out of touch Sony really are. The initial arguments over which console hardware was "better" came down to the same thing it always has: seeing is believing. And Sony's claims of having superior hardware to the XBox360 rang hollow when the actual games look and play only "as good" as their 360 counterparts (or actually WORSE in many cases). Honestly, which game do you think showcases its console's strengths? Resistance, or Gears Of War?
Sony has some serious damage control to do here, and they had better wake up and smell the ashes. They have given up nearly all the game exclusivity deals that normally would have driven a nail into the coffin of any competitor (even Microsoft). Final Fantasy XIII is coming to both platforms. They lost Tekken. Even the bread and butter of the PS2 days, Grand Theft Auto, is superior on the 360 for many reasons. Overall the evolution of game development for PS3 has not come along like they expected and still lags behind its older, cheaper rival.
Sony had better lose the corporate arrogance and start helping their developers, cut their prices and start landing some console exclusives, or they're going to lose the whole show. The only thing that has kept them in the game has been the phenomenal success of the Wii (not considered by me to be a "next generation" platform), along with the XBox "red-ring-of-death" disaster that has created the perception among buyers that the console is unreliable. Otherwise this war would be over.
The Congressional investigation mentioned in the original story (which would potentially cost millions of course) wouldn't be necessary if people would just effing learn something about how computers work. Investigation complete. Can they just give me the money instead? =D
Sting operation. Everyone who participates is subject to arrest. Enjoy, kiddies! :-D
Let's see... a government-funded study, to determine whether a sea animal likes music created by HUMANS. Uh huh... right. You know what, screw all the bleeding-heart types. I think "boondoggle" is the word we're all searching for here.
Let the flame wars commence...
That's what treehuggers *do*. They don't carefully analyze the impact on others or offer any alternative solutions; they just criticize things they think are bad, as well as the people they consider responsible. For society, the environment, their own point of view etc. Their favorite justification is to "call attention" to these things. Too bad they spend so much time protesting in the street; if they spent that time and energy in the library instead, they could have solved many of the world's most vexing problems by now. While I'm sure they are sincere and they mean well, I nonetheless have made it my personal mission to staunchly ignore said treehuggers until they collectively decide to do something constructive and helpful with their copious free time.
Yeah, sounds like the normal spambots have been redirected to the war with Georgia. Once Russia blows them back into the Stone Age, the spam flow will be back up to its normal levels.
I recommend "The Forgotten Door" by Alexander Key (the author of the original Escape To Witch Mountain). It was one of my favorite sci-fi books when I was a kid, about a young boy who accidentally falls through a dimensional gateway and finds himself on Earth without any memory of who he is. He is then befriended by a kind family as he tries to make it back home. A great book for readers of all ages.
Yeah, if you get caught using company computers to do personal business like that, of course you're going to get nailed. That is true in most private sector companies, and especially true in government agencies where the rules are even stricter. There's no story worth reporting here. Guy did something wrong, and he paid the price. Period. Move along, citizens...
In a corporate environment that may be good IT policy... but in a government body, communications between individuals or departments are by definition the property of the people of the United States. Those communications should NOT be destroyed, now or ever. Once the current administration leaves office they should be transferred to the National Archives (unless deemed classified); just as the documents, tapes and videos of previous administrations were handled. There may have been incompetence involved, but at the very least this raises questions about accountability and suggests a cover-up; and the tinfoil hat-wearers out there already have enough conspiracy theory ammunition to last for the next 100 years as it is.