As several commenters have mentioned above, collecting and submitting taxes for all the various state, city, and local taxes would be a huge burden on small business. It is also unnecessary since most states already have a "use tax". Of course, no one actually pays the use tax. Why? Because the state has no idea how much stuff you have bought on-line, so why would you pay it?
So then, the solution is easy. Why not create a new Federal 1099-E form. A business dealing with another state does not have to collect any tax. At the end of the year they issue a Form 1099-E to each applicable state and to their customers. The customers now know the state knows how much they've bought so they will be compelled to pay the use tax. It will also be easy to do since they just have to add up all their 1099-Es. It shouldn't be difficult for a business to keep track of the total spending for a customer and issue a couple automated forms.
I doubt a "terrorist" is the kind of person who would actually spend money on software. I know perfectly reasonable teenagers who access software for free all the time on this thing called the internet.
Musicians should move to live performances to make money and accept that they shouldn't be millionaires for 1 album. They should work for a living like the rest of us.
Ya, and game designers should tour the country playing their games in front of audiences to get money. Hmm...
I'm not saying copyright isn't a big problem, but how does this model work for the gigantic gaming industry that I enjoy so much?
Some of the games for the Wii you could consider 'mature' in the gritty/violent sense are: No More Heroes. The Conduit. Madworld. Resident Evil 4. House of the Dead: Maximum Overkill. Dead Space: Extraction. Left for Dead. Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers
Did you mean Left 4 Dead? Because that has definitely not been released on the Wii.
I totally agree. So instead of regular users burning out the clutch (ie, Windows), they should be using a computer specifically designed to stop them from doing so. I guess that's the idea behind a Mac, and I guess that additional cost is probably worth it for those users. Shame about the lack of gaming though. Then again, you can play FarmVille just fine on a Mac...
You are being completely unfair. First of all, many of those programs are known for installing without the user's permission. Secondly, they are rather tricky. They produce screens that are very similar to screens that Windows and Security Suites use. Someone good with computers will quickly spot the problems, but fairly intelligent people that just browse the web a bit won't. This is not just happening to knuckle dragging mouthbreathers or something. I'm sure there are subjects where you would look like an idiot too (Cars, Plumbing, electrical, etc.) We can't all be proficient at everything.
I wasn't looking for a real answer. My point is that there isn't one. The two people I know didn't have disaster recovery files and they lost their system restore CDs awhile ago. I was actually prepared to install a cracked copy of Windows as a last resort. Even if they did have that stuff, it is still just way too complicated to be themselves. I'm supposed to tell the to RTFM? That ain't gonna' help.
Even advice from above is almost useless. Don't install anything from the internet unless you know it is safe. How the hell would they know it was safe? My mom claims she downloaded everything from "google". I couldn't get across the idea that while Google does have some of of it's own software for download, it is also a search engine with ads.
I don't need "instruction" from slashdot, I'm just saying that this is a huge problem for regular users.
I got to fight with Windows Police Pro after it got onto my Mom's computer. It pretty much makes the computer useless. It even changed the file registration for.exe's and.com's. Luckily, after fixing the registry I was able to get Malwarebyte working and got things running again.
My wife later told me about someone at work getting something similar. She asked what to do and I started rambling on about all the steps. She then asked what this non-techie should do. I had no idea. Find a geek or pay for one at Best Buy or something? It looks like that option would cost about $200! Maybe this is a good opportunity to buy a new computer? If I hadn't been able to help my Mom she would pretty much not have a usable computer now.
Anyone have advice for the average (or below average) joe on what to do when they are stuck with this? What advice is even good to avoid this? Don't install anything from the internet?
Off-topic, but it might be time for you to return to the loving folds of PC Gaming. Yes, the used market is pretty much dead, but PC Gaming is now insanely cheaper than console gaming, especially for the kind of person who can handle waiting for used games. Digital download services like Steam, Direct to Drive, Good old Games, Impulse, etc. are selling great PC games (sometimes less than a year old) for $5 - $20. Except for GoG, the game might be a little DRM encumbered, but at those prices I can ignore it. If I really want to play Fallout 3 in 10 years I'll just pirate it. I now have more PC games than I have time to even get to and I'm actually spending less than I did 10 years ago!
Or you could stay on the consoles where licensing fees automatically add to the price. And because the horde of teens will pay $50 for a 2 year old game, the prices on console games drop really, really slowly. I think most slashdotters can handle keeping a PC up to spec (and better than the consoles) for less than $200 a year, so the old "Gaming PCs cost too much" canard is no problem either.
What, what, what?? Dirty letters? Surely you don't mean the James Joyce that wrote Ulysses, right? I couldn't imagine such an updstanding author as Joyce sullying his reputation with dirty letters.
Hmm... that reminds me, I really should finish Ulysses. I just got to the last chapter!
I had mandatory touch-typing in middle school (6th-8th grades) and it was worthless. I didn't learn a thing - I typed slowly and uncomfortably.
Then one day, I decided I wanted to learn to program computers. I taught myself C, and halfway through the project discovered that I had become a pretty good touch typist. Typing is a skill like riding a bike - you'll learn it by doing it.
Hmm, my story is similar, except I didn't get to take the class. I taught myself C, and halfway through the project discovered that I had become pretty good at hunt and peck. A few years later, I took a typing class in High School. Then I cried about all wasted hours with the hunting and the pecking.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but even if kids don't like the touch typing class it will teach them the basic technique they need to know. They will only be good at it if they find reasons to type on their own. But without the basic technique, they'll just end up creating some horrible system of their own.
The original showed an Asian guy, a black guy and a white woman. How tediously politically correct. Also completely unrealistic for Poland. (Is it even realistic for the US?)
No, not really. If you ask the average person in the US what percentage of Americans are black you'll get crazy responses like 20% - 40%. I guess this comes from stuff like advertising and TV. Anyway, blacks make up about 13.4% of the US population.
OTOH, it is quite possible to actually see this kind of diversity. Most large businesses do not discriminate based on race.
Let's assume that this is an "open and shut" fair use claim. So what? This will do absolutely nothing to stop you from being sued. The suit will cost you a ton of money or you will lose. Now, you might feel that is a great way to spend your money, but Flickr doesn't want to spend their money dealing with this. Flickr did nothing wrong here. They made a simple, obvious business decision. The problem here is our copyright laws, which give big corporations that can pay for expensive lawyers all the power.
The parent tried to make the point that essentially mouse/keyboard players simply haven't had enough time using a controller to do it properly. I guess he was saying that a controller is actually better than kb/mouse? Certainly for platformers this is true. But for FPS a mouse is definitely better. Actually a Wii Nunchuck/mouse combination would be best. WASD is ok, but I wish I could hold an analog thumbstick in my left (w/several buttons at my fingertips) to move around.
Anyway, Pyrion, you are bit incorrect too. Early FPSs on consoles were simply awful. The aiming was terrible and the games totally had to rely on autoaiming. This really isn't true anymore. Just watch some 360 addict play Modern Warfare online. They are almost as good as an average player with a mouse. There is no autoaim there. Sure, some crappy FPS might still use autoaim, and it shows up in games where FPS shooting isn't the point, like GTA. But the major FPS titles actually work pretty well with a controller.
In a multiplayer match the kb/mouse guys would win, but you might be shocked at how well the gamepad players actually do. I wish someone could actually make this happen. I think uber-elite XBOX users could actually beat an average group of PC players.
you might as well buy a cheap guitar / bass / drum kit and do it for real.
No. I don't want to learn how to play a guitar. I'm not musically talented at all, but I can do pretty good on Expert in the games. This is fun. I get to listen to and experience the music in a fun way. To learn guitar would take forever, and I would never be very good at it. It doesn't matter how much time I spend on guitar games; I'm only doing it to have fun. Why not tell FPS players to quit wasting their time and join the army??
No, this isn't true. Half-life is, of course, such an important milestone in gaming mainly because of stuff not directly related to the graphics. However, Half-life simply could not have existed if it had looked like Doom. A certain level of realism was required for Valve to reach their goals in terms of gameplay and story telling.
Graphics alone will rarely make a game better, but better graphics actually create the possibilities of certain types of improved gameplay. Could Star Wars have been created with 1950s movie tech? No, the advances in special effects had to be created first and then used in an exciting way.
I'm under the impression that most of this stuff is a complete racket though. Sure, Sprint can put several thousand dollars on your bill in one month because you used your data plan in Canada or something. But did that actually cost Sprint very much? If not, who cares if you cannot pay the bill? As long as you can at least pay enough to cover Sprint's costs, it shouldn't be a big deal for them if you simply owe them a lot of money.
Games don't take $60 Million to make. Spectacular extravaganzas with high-detail hero models, high-detail set designs, high-detail world designs, full-orchestral scores, full-cinematic cuts, companion toy merchandising, and highly-predictable-never-escapes-the-rails storylines. That's what takes $60 Million to make.
Errr... that all sounds like great stuff, except for the toys and predictable parts. I don't get the "Great graphics and productions = no gameplay" mantra. Sure, some games are all flash, but that isn't always true. Any game mechanic that works with simple graphics can be incorporated into something with good graphics. And a few shallow people like me actually enjoy seeing things go boom sometimes.
Nintendo is making money hand over fist, they have no need to update the Wii
I'm not so sure. Nintendo was the only developer to price their system so that they actually made money on hardware sales. Microsoft and Sony need to keep selling games for their systems to actually make some money. Putting out a new system would just put them further in the hole.
Nintendo could easily increase their sales, a lot, if they did an upgrade right. As a lot of people have pointed out, the main problem with the Wii is that is WAY underpowered, plus the whole not really 1-to-1 controller problem. A Wii2 with a modern processor and built in Wii-Motion-Plus that is fully backwards compatable to the Wii would continue to rake in new sales, plus get a lot of Wii owners to upgrade. You argue that Nintendo has cornered the casual market, but that just means there is a big non-casual market still open to them. A new Wii could break into that market.
A quick example. The Wii currently has what may be the best FPS controller besides the mouse, but can't render a game that is up to the standards of FPS players. If you could play COD5 on the Wii using a slightly more accurate remote, I think that could draw in the hardcore players.
I really enjoyed Mass Effect, although it got repetitive in some parts. I don't see how a game in (essentially) the CRPG genre gets faulted for trying to be like a movie. Isn't that what RPGs have always been trying to do?? Even the early Final Fantasy games had cutscenes that tried to be movie-like. Is the problem here that you just don't like RPGs? I know ME isn't a great RPG, but they all really want to be interactive movies.
I found some of the movie influence in Mass Effect to be a huge postive. Just compare the dialogue sequences to Oblivion. In Oblivion you had a camera fixed on a weird looking person with terrible voice acting and a bland script. In Mass Effect you had a movie style camera switching positions with a cool looking alien, good voice acting, and a sometimes interesting script. Mass Effect was the first game I actually turned subtitles off so that I could watch and listen to everything.
ME definitely had some flaws, but it should be stuck in a category with Gears of War or even Assassin's Creed (although that was definitely fun for the first few hours).
Slashdot Mirror
But that's exactly the point! Ubi wants a few weeks or maybe, just maybe, a few months of no piracy.
As several commenters have mentioned above, collecting and submitting taxes for all the various state, city, and local taxes would be a huge burden on small business. It is also unnecessary since most states already have a "use tax". Of course, no one actually pays the use tax. Why? Because the state has no idea how much stuff you have bought on-line, so why would you pay it?
So then, the solution is easy. Why not create a new Federal 1099-E form. A business dealing with another state does not have to collect any tax. At the end of the year they issue a Form 1099-E to each applicable state and to their customers. The customers now know the state knows how much they've bought so they will be compelled to pay the use tax. It will also be easy to do since they just have to add up all their 1099-Es. It shouldn't be difficult for a business to keep track of the total spending for a customer and issue a couple automated forms.
I doubt a "terrorist" is the kind of person who would actually spend money on software. I know perfectly reasonable teenagers who access software for free all the time on this thing called the internet.
The guy answering the questions speculates this as a possibility at the bottom of the page.
Ya, and game designers should tour the country playing their games in front of audiences to get money. Hmm...
I'm not saying copyright isn't a big problem, but how does this model work for the gigantic gaming industry that I enjoy so much?
Did you mean Left 4 Dead? Because that has definitely not been released on the Wii.
I totally agree. So instead of regular users burning out the clutch (ie, Windows), they should be using a computer specifically designed to stop them from doing so. I guess that's the idea behind a Mac, and I guess that additional cost is probably worth it for those users. Shame about the lack of gaming though. Then again, you can play FarmVille just fine on a Mac...
You are being completely unfair. First of all, many of those programs are known for installing without the user's permission. Secondly, they are rather tricky. They produce screens that are very similar to screens that Windows and Security Suites use. Someone good with computers will quickly spot the problems, but fairly intelligent people that just browse the web a bit won't. This is not just happening to knuckle dragging mouthbreathers or something. I'm sure there are subjects where you would look like an idiot too (Cars, Plumbing, electrical, etc.) We can't all be proficient at everything.
I wasn't looking for a real answer. My point is that there isn't one. The two people I know didn't have disaster recovery files and they lost their system restore CDs awhile ago. I was actually prepared to install a cracked copy of Windows as a last resort. Even if they did have that stuff, it is still just way too complicated to be themselves. I'm supposed to tell the to RTFM? That ain't gonna' help.
Even advice from above is almost useless. Don't install anything from the internet unless you know it is safe. How the hell would they know it was safe? My mom claims she downloaded everything from "google". I couldn't get across the idea that while Google does have some of of it's own software for download, it is also a search engine with ads.
I don't need "instruction" from slashdot, I'm just saying that this is a huge problem for regular users.
I got to fight with Windows Police Pro after it got onto my Mom's computer. It pretty much makes the computer useless. It even changed the file registration for .exe's and .com's. Luckily, after fixing the registry I was able to get Malwarebyte working and got things running again.
My wife later told me about someone at work getting something similar. She asked what to do and I started rambling on about all the steps. She then asked what this non-techie should do. I had no idea. Find a geek or pay for one at Best Buy or something? It looks like that option would cost about $200! Maybe this is a good opportunity to buy a new computer? If I hadn't been able to help my Mom she would pretty much not have a usable computer now.
Anyone have advice for the average (or below average) joe on what to do when they are stuck with this? What advice is even good to avoid this? Don't install anything from the internet?
Off-topic, but it might be time for you to return to the loving folds of PC Gaming. Yes, the used market is pretty much dead, but PC Gaming is now insanely cheaper than console gaming, especially for the kind of person who can handle waiting for used games. Digital download services like Steam, Direct to Drive, Good old Games, Impulse, etc. are selling great PC games (sometimes less than a year old) for $5 - $20. Except for GoG, the game might be a little DRM encumbered, but at those prices I can ignore it. If I really want to play Fallout 3 in 10 years I'll just pirate it. I now have more PC games than I have time to even get to and I'm actually spending less than I did 10 years ago!
Or you could stay on the consoles where licensing fees automatically add to the price. And because the horde of teens will pay $50 for a 2 year old game, the prices on console games drop really, really slowly. I think most slashdotters can handle keeping a PC up to spec (and better than the consoles) for less than $200 a year, so the old "Gaming PCs cost too much" canard is no problem either.
What, what, what?? Dirty letters? Surely you don't mean the James Joyce that wrote Ulysses, right? I couldn't imagine such an updstanding author as Joyce sullying his reputation with dirty letters.
Hmm... that reminds me, I really should finish Ulysses. I just got to the last chapter!
get used to disappointment
Hmm, my story is similar, except I didn't get to take the class. I taught myself C, and halfway through the project discovered that I had become pretty good at hunt and peck. A few years later, I took a typing class in High School. Then I cried about all wasted hours with the hunting and the pecking.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but even if kids don't like the touch typing class it will teach them the basic technique they need to know. They will only be good at it if they find reasons to type on their own. But without the basic technique, they'll just end up creating some horrible system of their own.
No, not really. If you ask the average person in the US what percentage of Americans are black you'll get crazy responses like 20% - 40%. I guess this comes from stuff like advertising and TV. Anyway, blacks make up about 13.4% of the US population.
OTOH, it is quite possible to actually see this kind of diversity. Most large businesses do not discriminate based on race.
Let's assume that this is an "open and shut" fair use claim. So what? This will do absolutely nothing to stop you from being sued. The suit will cost you a ton of money or you will lose. Now, you might feel that is a great way to spend your money, but Flickr doesn't want to spend their money dealing with this. Flickr did nothing wrong here. They made a simple, obvious business decision. The problem here is our copyright laws, which give big corporations that can pay for expensive lawyers all the power.
Fair Use is pretty much dead.
WTF? You're supposed to keep arguing. You fail at the internet forever!
The parent tried to make the point that essentially mouse/keyboard players simply haven't had enough time using a controller to do it properly. I guess he was saying that a controller is actually better than kb/mouse? Certainly for platformers this is true. But for FPS a mouse is definitely better. Actually a Wii Nunchuck/mouse combination would be best. WASD is ok, but I wish I could hold an analog thumbstick in my left (w/several buttons at my fingertips) to move around.
Anyway, Pyrion, you are bit incorrect too. Early FPSs on consoles were simply awful. The aiming was terrible and the games totally had to rely on autoaiming. This really isn't true anymore. Just watch some 360 addict play Modern Warfare online. They are almost as good as an average player with a mouse. There is no autoaim there. Sure, some crappy FPS might still use autoaim, and it shows up in games where FPS shooting isn't the point, like GTA. But the major FPS titles actually work pretty well with a controller.
In a multiplayer match the kb/mouse guys would win, but you might be shocked at how well the gamepad players actually do. I wish someone could actually make this happen. I think uber-elite XBOX users could actually beat an average group of PC players.
No. I don't want to learn how to play a guitar. I'm not musically talented at all, but I can do pretty good on Expert in the games. This is fun. I get to listen to and experience the music in a fun way. To learn guitar would take forever, and I would never be very good at it. It doesn't matter how much time I spend on guitar games; I'm only doing it to have fun. Why not tell FPS players to quit wasting their time and join the army??
No, this isn't true. Half-life is, of course, such an important milestone in gaming mainly because of stuff not directly related to the graphics. However, Half-life simply could not have existed if it had looked like Doom. A certain level of realism was required for Valve to reach their goals in terms of gameplay and story telling.
Graphics alone will rarely make a game better, but better graphics actually create the possibilities of certain types of improved gameplay. Could Star Wars have been created with 1950s movie tech? No, the advances in special effects had to be created first and then used in an exciting way.
I can't read what word you wrote. It is filtered or something.
I'm under the impression that most of this stuff is a complete racket though. Sure, Sprint can put several thousand dollars on your bill in one month because you used your data plan in Canada or something. But did that actually cost Sprint very much? If not, who cares if you cannot pay the bill? As long as you can at least pay enough to cover Sprint's costs, it shouldn't be a big deal for them if you simply owe them a lot of money.
Errr... that all sounds like great stuff, except for the toys and predictable parts. I don't get the "Great graphics and productions = no gameplay" mantra. Sure, some games are all flash, but that isn't always true. Any game mechanic that works with simple graphics can be incorporated into something with good graphics. And a few shallow people like me actually enjoy seeing things go boom sometimes.
I'm not so sure. Nintendo was the only developer to price their system so that they actually made money on hardware sales. Microsoft and Sony need to keep selling games for their systems to actually make some money. Putting out a new system would just put them further in the hole.
Nintendo could easily increase their sales, a lot, if they did an upgrade right. As a lot of people have pointed out, the main problem with the Wii is that is WAY underpowered, plus the whole not really 1-to-1 controller problem. A Wii2 with a modern processor and built in Wii-Motion-Plus that is fully backwards compatable to the Wii would continue to rake in new sales, plus get a lot of Wii owners to upgrade. You argue that Nintendo has cornered the casual market, but that just means there is a big non-casual market still open to them. A new Wii could break into that market.
A quick example. The Wii currently has what may be the best FPS controller besides the mouse, but can't render a game that is up to the standards of FPS players. If you could play COD5 on the Wii using a slightly more accurate remote, I think that could draw in the hardcore players.
I really enjoyed Mass Effect, although it got repetitive in some parts. I don't see how a game in (essentially) the CRPG genre gets faulted for trying to be like a movie. Isn't that what RPGs have always been trying to do?? Even the early Final Fantasy games had cutscenes that tried to be movie-like. Is the problem here that you just don't like RPGs? I know ME isn't a great RPG, but they all really want to be interactive movies.
I found some of the movie influence in Mass Effect to be a huge postive. Just compare the dialogue sequences to Oblivion. In Oblivion you had a camera fixed on a weird looking person with terrible voice acting and a bland script. In Mass Effect you had a movie style camera switching positions with a cool looking alien, good voice acting, and a sometimes interesting script. Mass Effect was the first game I actually turned subtitles off so that I could watch and listen to everything.
ME definitely had some flaws, but it should be stuck in a category with Gears of War or even Assassin's Creed (although that was definitely fun for the first few hours).