So buy at the stupidly reduced weekend sale rates. The original L4D sold at a two thousand percent higher rate when price was reduced by 80%, resulting in 4x as much profit (by my back of the napkin maths, in a perfect universe of no ISP fees etc). Who pays full price nowerdays anyway?
I download movies and tv shows because I don't like watching broadcast TV. Any that deserve a repeat viewing get bought on DVD (which is probably about 80%)
Shows which I first watched online through unlicensed channels, the result of which being me purchasing a DVD:
- Lost (Series 1 - 3, I regret this now but I really enjoyed series 1)
- Fringe (Series 1, I'm told it's going the way of Lost so I might watch the next one online and see if it's good)
- House (Series 1 - 5. Amazing show)
- Futurama (Series 1 - 4)
- Prison Break (Series 1 - 3, will get 4 when I see it)
- Heroes (Series 1 and 2, watched 3 on iPlayer, may get 4).
Averaging at £20 per boxed set (conservative extimate) I put that at £360 I would not have spent if it weren't for piracy. I certainly would never have bought House (you'll notice a common theme of Sci-Fi through all but one of the other boxed sets).
That's probably true if you get games one at a time, but the only time I've seen a pirated game on a DS was when it was loaded onto a flash card, with around 40 other titles. Unless DS games are $10 each, $400 per cartridge is hardly pushing it.
I agree that it won't be per owner of the device, but just putting an relevant figure out there based on my own experience.
It is never a foregone conclusion that you will always to do a product recall, if you are doing proper risk management.
Essentially, the art of risk management is figuring out how far to go with mitigations of various risks.
To illustrate with an excessively simplistic example (Assume a perfect vacuum and a frictionless environment):
Let's say you work for a major car manufacturer, you sell A products/year, and if you miss a sale, that's it, you're not getting it back.
So that means that you lose the profit on A products every year.
Next, you look at the potential hazards, and calculate how often you expect to have each hazard occur per year. For example, to be simple, let's pretend your only hazard is that you expect is the rear differential to locking up after leaving somewhere at 60 mph, causing the car to crash and burn, killing everyone inside. This means your Annualized Rate of Occurrence (ARO) is Bsmouldering wrecks/year.
Further ascribe a value to average out-of-court settlement from smouldering wrecks due to locking rear differential; C.That means your Single Loss Expectancy is As, times C.
From A times C and B, we can calculate the Annualized Loss Expectancy, that is, the cost of a single occurrence times the probability of occurrence in any given year. So let's let X be the ALE of A times B times C.
If the annualized cost of having issuing a recall to mitigate only the risk of smouldering car wrecks is greater than X, the Annualized Loss Expectancy, we don't do one, because it makes no business sense. You just take the loss when it happens, because it's cheaper than dealing preventing it.
Of course, it's *never* quite this simple, and sometimes the SLE is essentially infinite (such as when loss of CxO bonuses could occur) and thus you spare no expense in mitigating the risk. Sometimes, you can't easily quantify the cost, because it isn't always money, it could be, for example, perks like a new Mercedes Black every year.
But it is *never* a foregone conclusion that you should automatically spend money mitigating risk without first thinking about if the mitigation costs more than the risk itself.
Now I can look forward to being pulled out of line because of a facial expression which looked like nervousness which was only there because I was nervous of being pulled out of line, having my bags opened and searched (not that I would carry anything embarrassing or improper) and my life examined for a couple of hours (possibly missing my flight) all because some dudes with fake passports and box cutters got an idiot pilot of a plane, full of idiot passengers who sat on their collective hands while being told they were going to die, to fly it into a building.
Seriously... This is idiotic, solves nothing, and only inconveniences holiday makers and businessmen. No way am I flying to America until this daft security theatre is scrapped and sanity once more is restored.
Uhhh... I do read the requirements, hence I don't own C&C4, Assassin's Creed 2, or any other game which requires always-on DRM (The last game I bought requiring "online activation" was Mass Effect... In 2008.)
Further, the statement that it only hurts paying customers who don't read the box is completely false. How about the folks who did read the box for Assassin's Creed 2, bought the game anyway, then couldn't play it for 24 hours because UbiSoft's authentication servers were offline? That wouldn't have happened with the online-to-play requirement.
I suspect you're one of those people who just accepts that whatever big corps do is totally out of your control, and are happy when they use a little Astroglide to help the process along. Sucks to be you.
I agree! Getting punched in the jaw is definitely better than being stabbed in the neck, but they both suck.
I might prefer less restrictive DRM than more restrictive DRM, but ultimately (as your last paragraph states!) it only hurts paying customers. I can't see how you "laud... Blizzard's actions" here.
It's almost as though you like being punched in the face, because hey, at least you're not getting stabbed. Why not neither?
Just remember that with a 2 hour watch time for Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 will take 7 hours, Mass Effect 3 will take 21, 4 will take 3 days 4 hours, and 5 will take a month at least. Best to go to the bathroom first.
They didn't make a film of The Watchmen; They made the Watchmen comic book move.
The only adaptation was the ending, presumably because explaining Barbastus to the peons who think Die Hard 4.0 is technically accurate would leave most cinema goers with a sore head. The rest was, scene for scene, the comic book main story.
It's still law in the UK that a Hackney Carriage (London black cab) must at all times carry a bail of hay. This is from when Hackney Carriages were still carriages; It's just that the law was never repealed when they were replaced with automobiles.
I was going go go with "Fsck you like a RAID array" but didn't know if one does fsck a raid array, or use some special on-card solution for disk checking.
Slashdot Mirror
Who would have thought that Blue-on-Blue would translate so well from Team Fortress.
So buy at the stupidly reduced weekend sale rates. The original L4D sold at a two thousand percent higher rate when price was reduced by 80%, resulting in 4x as much profit (by my back of the napkin maths, in a perfect universe of no ISP fees etc). Who pays full price nowerdays anyway?
The Steam service will end, and if it's done through liquidators then Valve won't get to release the DRM. I recall a saying about baskets and eggs...
I download movies and tv shows because I don't like watching broadcast TV. Any that deserve a repeat viewing get bought on DVD (which is probably about 80%)
Shows which I first watched online through unlicensed channels, the result of which being me purchasing a DVD:
- Lost (Series 1 - 3, I regret this now but I really enjoyed series 1)
- Fringe (Series 1, I'm told it's going the way of Lost so I might watch the next one online and see if it's good)
- House (Series 1 - 5. Amazing show)
- Futurama (Series 1 - 4)
- Prison Break (Series 1 - 3, will get 4 when I see it)
- Heroes (Series 1 and 2, watched 3 on iPlayer, may get 4).
Averaging at £20 per boxed set (conservative extimate) I put that at £360 I would not have spent if it weren't for piracy. I certainly would never have bought House (you'll notice a common theme of Sci-Fi through all but one of the other boxed sets).
That's probably true if you get games one at a time, but the only time I've seen a pirated game on a DS was when it was loaded onto a flash card, with around 40 other titles. Unless DS games are $10 each, $400 per cartridge is hardly pushing it.
I agree that it won't be per owner of the device, but just putting an relevant figure out there based on my own experience.
I don't need to stockpile rations. With a sharp knife and a quiet step, I can have both yours and mine.
I couldn't help myself...
It is never a foregone conclusion that you will always to do a product recall, if you are doing proper risk management.
Essentially, the art of risk management is figuring out how far to go with mitigations of various risks.
To illustrate with an excessively simplistic example (Assume a perfect vacuum and a frictionless environment):
Let's say you work for a major car manufacturer, you sell A products/year, and if you miss a sale, that's it, you're not getting it back.
So that means that you lose the profit on A products every year.
Next, you look at the potential hazards, and calculate how often you expect to have each hazard occur per year. For example, to be simple, let's pretend your only hazard is that you expect is the rear differential to locking up after leaving somewhere at 60 mph, causing the car to crash and burn, killing everyone inside. This means your Annualized Rate of Occurrence (ARO) is B smouldering wrecks/year.
Further ascribe a value to average out-of-court settlement from smouldering wrecks due to locking rear differential; C.That means your Single Loss Expectancy is As, times C.
From A times C and B, we can calculate the Annualized Loss Expectancy, that is, the cost of a single occurrence times the probability of occurrence in any given year. So let's let X be the ALE of A times B times C.
If the annualized cost of having issuing a recall to mitigate only the risk of smouldering car wrecks is greater than X, the Annualized Loss Expectancy, we don't do one, because it makes no business sense. You just take the loss when it happens, because it's cheaper than dealing preventing it.
Of course, it's *never* quite this simple, and sometimes the SLE is essentially infinite (such as when loss of CxO bonuses could occur) and thus you spare no expense in mitigating the risk. Sometimes, you can't easily quantify the cost, because it isn't always money, it could be, for example, perks like a new Mercedes Black every year.
But it is *never* a foregone conclusion that you should automatically spend money mitigating risk without first thinking about if the mitigation costs more than the risk itself.
I voi what you did là.
Haaaaaahahaha... The stub is about the UK.
Fine, I won't fly anywhere, and I'll write to my Lib Dem MP to tell Clegg to scrap it. Plenty of great places in the UK that I haven't been to.
Now I can look forward to being pulled out of line because of a facial expression which looked like nervousness which was only there because I was nervous of being pulled out of line, having my bags opened and searched (not that I would carry anything embarrassing or improper) and my life examined for a couple of hours (possibly missing my flight) all because some dudes with fake passports and box cutters got an idiot pilot of a plane, full of idiot passengers who sat on their collective hands while being told they were going to die, to fly it into a building.
Seriously... This is idiotic, solves nothing, and only inconveniences holiday makers and businessmen. No way am I flying to America until this daft security theatre is scrapped and sanity once more is restored.
Yes. Your figure is low by an order of magnitude, for an oil company contribution.
America still has a right to free speech?
Awww bugger :p
Still... 1976?!
Uhhh... I do read the requirements, hence I don't own C&C4, Assassin's Creed 2, or any other game which requires always-on DRM (The last game I bought requiring "online activation" was Mass Effect... In 2008.)
Further, the statement that it only hurts paying customers who don't read the box is completely false. How about the folks who did read the box for Assassin's Creed 2, bought the game anyway, then couldn't play it for 24 hours because UbiSoft's authentication servers were offline? That wouldn't have happened with the online-to-play requirement.
I suspect you're one of those people who just accepts that whatever big corps do is totally out of your control, and are happy when they use a little Astroglide to help the process along. Sucks to be you.
That's fine. I rarely get useful phonecalls on my mobile anyway, excluding at the weekend. I might just start turning it off, or leaving it at home.
The only mobile calls I get at work are social. Maybe this isn't such a bad idea.
I agree! Getting punched in the jaw is definitely better than being stabbed in the neck, but they both suck.
... Blizzard's actions" here.
I might prefer less restrictive DRM than more restrictive DRM, but ultimately (as your last paragraph states!) it only hurts paying customers. I can't see how you "laud
It's almost as though you like being punched in the face, because hey, at least you're not getting stabbed. Why not neither?
Just remember that with a 2 hour watch time for Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 will take 7 hours, Mass Effect 3 will take 21, 4 will take 3 days 4 hours, and 5 will take a month at least. Best to go to the bathroom first.
They didn't make a film of The Watchmen; They made the Watchmen comic book move.
The only adaptation was the ending, presumably because explaining Barbastus to the peons who think Die Hard 4.0 is technically accurate would leave most cinema goers with a sore head. The rest was, scene for scene, the comic book main story.
French fries are what you get at a McDonalds. Chips are what you get with your steak in a franchise restaurant.
It's still law in the UK that a Hackney Carriage (London black cab) must at all times carry a bail of hay. This is from when Hackney Carriages were still carriages; It's just that the law was never repealed when they were replaced with automobiles.
I was going go go with "Fsck you like a RAID array" but didn't know if one does fsck a raid array, or use some special on-card solution for disk checking.
Just clap your hands to exit!
Should have stuck Windows ME on it. That's already crapware.
No, there was that guy who once mistook what his PC tech meant when he said he should scan his 3.5" floppy for viruses.
That didn't end well.
Blue Face of Death.