If they have figures showing DRM increases paid-for copies sold by 50%
... then they've pulled those figures out of their asses.
There is no evidence that DRM has ever resulted in increased sales. At best, you can try to point to reduced piracy rates, but most pirates aren't going to buy the game if piracy is eliminated.
And yes, your numbers are bad. You're assuming that 100% of pirates will purchase software if they can't pirate it. That is an absolutely ludicrous assumption.
Fun Fact: The games that don't include an online component on the PS3 and XBox don't include an online component for other platforms either.
The drop in numbers is real and it applies to all platforms, but it isn't a sign that multiplayer is any less popular or that it's going away.
For a while, publishers insisted on multiplayer being added to every possible game. Eventually, however, they realized that multiplayer support doesn't guarantee sales and doesn't warrant the investment required to add it to every game. Some games just aren't a good fit (Bioshock 2, for example). The drop in the number of games supporting multiplayer reflects that.
Most people would recognize that my comment was in response to the suggestion of a trade embargo.
But not you!
You seem to think "Freedom Fries" were some sort of defense against weapons of mass destruction and my fear is that we'll come up with an even stupider defense.
What an interesting view of the world you must have.
That's because they forced people to work and weren't trying to commit wholesale slaughter, unlike the Nazis to whom they're being equated here.
If the numbers on the Wikipedia page are to be believed, the death rate appears to have been lower than the current global mortality rate; 0.7% vs 0.9%. People in the labor camps were certainly treated harshly, but they weren't being slaughtered en masse.
The person I responded to was using the phrase in the literal sense. Knitting and woodworking leave you with something physical that you can show as a result of your effort. You can't show a good relationship the same way. It's not a material object that you can hold up for others to see.
Then the price drops by a few dollars per bitcoin between when you accepted the payment when you exchange it and you find yourself having lost money on all your sales in that currency for the day.
Yeah... businesses are going to fall all over themselves trying to jump on that bandwagon.
Warming your brain is a common activity that's well studied. It happens every time you exercise and your body temperature goes up. The effects of hyperthermia are also well known and they occur at temperatures significantly higher than what your cell phone signal would ever produce in your brain.
Hanging out with friends doesn't leave you with anything to show for the time spent, but I doubt you'd find many people who would opt for knitting a scarf or building a shelf instead.
Not everything valuable can be held up and shown; not everything that can be held up and shown is valuable.
The person you replied to didn't propose a solution. His entire idea is to stop doing things to mitigate the problem, let everyone suffer and hope that someone fixes it.
Nothing on that form even comes close to accounting for that level of stupid.
Why should the USA's taxpayers be funding the weather data collection for the entire globe (which is basically what happens right now)?
Because the vast majority of our weather satellites orbit the planet and it makes absolutely no sense to only collect data over a portion of the planet when you can collect data for the entire planet for virtually no added cost.
All prescription medication in pill and capsule form is small and easily missed by parents, especially if it has fallen on the floor at a friend's house. Plus, prescription medications are far, far more dangerous to a child than a magnet ever will be.
Should we ban all prescription medication?
It is literally impossible to ban everything that can hurt a child in order to make up for parents not doing their job and supervising their children.
Oh don't be silly. This isn't thought crime. It's pre-thought crime. The criminal hasn't even thought about committing the crime and he's already guilty!
The broken window fallacy doesn't really describe the situation well. The windows aren't being broken. Businesses can keep using older versions of IE and use a different browser for everything other than the applications that are dependent on the older versions of IE. A broken window isn't something you can keep using internally in your house while using a different window externally.
The company I work for did that for quite a while, in fact, and installed Firefox as the browser that should be used for everything except the internal applications. They eventually replaced the applications with newer ones that work with both Firefox and IE9 and up (and Opera and Chrome, in fact, though those aren't officially supported) and the older IE was updated on all computers.
without knowing the comparable energy, pesticide and water inputs it's a bit tough to determine whether there's any economic advantage
Here's a study from 2008 which gives that very information.
"From extensive analysis holding all things equal between the feedstocks, sugar beets is a much more efficient feedstock. Sugar beet ethanol loses only 51.1% of the energy it provides, whereas corn loses 90.35% of the energy in the production of the ethanol."
It's entirely possible that he doesn't have a mortgage payment, you know. Not everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs and some people have actually paid off their houses.
You just have to be listening while sitting motionless in an isolated room with nothing else to produce background noise.
Sounds a lot like a coffin to me, though, and I prefer to mix my music with the rest of my life. I won't hear whatever loss there might be in an MP3 because I'll be making too much noise dancing.
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I don't give a shit about your health. I do give a shit about people abusing the fuck out of language and redefining words to suit their own purposes.
If I murder someone, I'm a murderer. It doesn't matter if I only do it once a year.
If you smoke and you intend to continue smoking, you are a smoker. To claim otherwise is fucking ignorant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8762zEOkSo
The general definition of which you speak is stupid. Don't use it because it just makes you sound like an idiot.
The electric vibrating broom turned out to be a bad idea.
If they have figures showing DRM increases paid-for copies sold by 50%
... then they've pulled those figures out of their asses.
There is no evidence that DRM has ever resulted in increased sales. At best, you can try to point to reduced piracy rates, but most pirates aren't going to buy the game if piracy is eliminated.
And yes, your numbers are bad. You're assuming that 100% of pirates will purchase software if they can't pirate it. That is an absolutely ludicrous assumption.
Fun Fact: The games that don't include an online component on the PS3 and XBox don't include an online component for other platforms either.
The drop in numbers is real and it applies to all platforms, but it isn't a sign that multiplayer is any less popular or that it's going away.
For a while, publishers insisted on multiplayer being added to every possible game. Eventually, however, they realized that multiplayer support doesn't guarantee sales and doesn't warrant the investment required to add it to every game. Some games just aren't a good fit (Bioshock 2, for example). The drop in the number of games supporting multiplayer reflects that.
Most people would recognize that my comment was in response to the suggestion of a trade embargo.
But not you!
You seem to think "Freedom Fries" were some sort of defense against weapons of mass destruction and my fear is that we'll come up with an even stupider defense.
What an interesting view of the world you must have.
I hope not. The Freedom Fries were stupid enough. I don't want to see what the idiots in charge of the country come up with next.
Well, technically they were called labor camps.
That's because they forced people to work and weren't trying to commit wholesale slaughter, unlike the Nazis to whom they're being equated here.
If the numbers on the Wikipedia page are to be believed, the death rate appears to have been lower than the current global mortality rate; 0.7% vs 0.9%. People in the labor camps were certainly treated harshly, but they weren't being slaughtered en masse.
True. Sometimes it's a drag queen who overdid the glitter.
The person I responded to was using the phrase in the literal sense. Knitting and woodworking leave you with something physical that you can show as a result of your effort. You can't show a good relationship the same way. It's not a material object that you can hold up for others to see.
Then the price drops by a few dollars per bitcoin between when you accepted the payment when you exchange it and you find yourself having lost money on all your sales in that currency for the day.
Yeah... businesses are going to fall all over themselves trying to jump on that bandwagon.
Warming your brain is a common activity that's well studied. It happens every time you exercise and your body temperature goes up. The effects of hyperthermia are also well known and they occur at temperatures significantly higher than what your cell phone signal would ever produce in your brain.
Hanging out with friends doesn't leave you with anything to show for the time spent, but I doubt you'd find many people who would opt for knitting a scarf or building a shelf instead.
Not everything valuable can be held up and shown; not everything that can be held up and shown is valuable.
The person you replied to didn't propose a solution. His entire idea is to stop doing things to mitigate the problem, let everyone suffer and hope that someone fixes it.
Nothing on that form even comes close to accounting for that level of stupid.
What's your point? Just because one company was generous a decade ago, no other company is ever allowed to be generous in the same way?
Why should the USA's taxpayers be funding the weather data collection for the entire globe (which is basically what happens right now)?
Because the vast majority of our weather satellites orbit the planet and it makes absolutely no sense to only collect data over a portion of the planet when you can collect data for the entire planet for virtually no added cost.
All prescription medication in pill and capsule form is small and easily missed by parents, especially if it has fallen on the floor at a friend's house. Plus, prescription medications are far, far more dangerous to a child than a magnet ever will be.
Should we ban all prescription medication?
It is literally impossible to ban everything that can hurt a child in order to make up for parents not doing their job and supervising their children.
Oh don't be silly. This isn't thought crime. It's pre-thought crime. The criminal hasn't even thought about committing the crime and he's already guilty!
Microsoft has discovered the advantages of tiling window managers.
Which is funny, because Windows 1.0 didn't allow overlapping Windows, so users were basically forced into tiling.
Metro: Windows 1.0 R2
The broken window fallacy doesn't really describe the situation well. The windows aren't being broken. Businesses can keep using older versions of IE and use a different browser for everything other than the applications that are dependent on the older versions of IE. A broken window isn't something you can keep using internally in your house while using a different window externally.
The company I work for did that for quite a while, in fact, and installed Firefox as the browser that should be used for everything except the internal applications. They eventually replaced the applications with newer ones that work with both Firefox and IE9 and up (and Opera and Chrome, in fact, though those aren't officially supported) and the older IE was updated on all computers.
without knowing the comparable energy, pesticide and water inputs it's a bit tough to determine whether there's any economic advantage
Here's a study from 2008 which gives that very information.
"From extensive analysis holding all things equal between the feedstocks, sugar beets is a much more efficient feedstock. Sugar beet ethanol loses only 51.1% of the energy it provides, whereas corn loses 90.35% of the energy in the production of the ethanol."
It's entirely possible that he doesn't have a mortgage payment, you know. Not everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs and some people have actually paid off their houses.
"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
Because it's in the constitution. Regulation of commerce has always been the domain of the US Government.
You just have to be listening while sitting motionless in an isolated room with nothing else to produce background noise.
Sounds a lot like a coffin to me, though, and I prefer to mix my music with the rest of my life. I won't hear whatever loss there might be in an MP3 because I'll be making too much noise dancing.
Let's all look forward to the days when people like the guy who got into Sarah Palin's email can be summarily executed without a trial.