This happens so often, and it is not really surprising. What makes me sad is that there is a much safer way that this could be handled. Rather than giving out credit card numbers your card number being stored by everyone who want's to bill you in a recurring manner the card could instead be a private key, and used to sign a transaction statement. (or even a recurring transaction statement) That way when someone at megaCorp screws up and leaks all of there users CC data all that goes out are a bunch of "I will allow megaCorp to bill me $20 a month" signed statements.
EA has also been moving in on gaming studios, recently buying out Digital Illusions CE (DICE), the makers of the Battlefield series, after a long dispute. More disturbing are its actions towards French developer Ubisoft, maker of the Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia series. In what the Ubisoft CEO said was a "hostile action," EA purchased about 20 percent of the company in shares, according to the online magazine GameSpot. EA declared that this was merely an "investment," and they weren't interested in a hostile takeover. Being a paradigm of corporate consistency, EA said last week that it's considering buying more shares and isn't ruling out a takeover of Ubisoft.
I don't know what sort of evil corprate games they are playing, but knowing E.A. they will probably manage to shaft everyone.
No, its another bubble.
on
The New Boom
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
All of the points made in the article describe healthy growth, but a bubble looks a whole lot like healthy growth until it gets stretched out really thin. The wired article even points out:
Six years ago, people were likewise making the case that the dotcom frenzy was more boom than bubble, built as it was on the legitimate ground of the Internet revolution. And until late 1999 or so, maybe that was true.
What makes this a bubble, just like the last one was is more the outlook. When people are starting companies plans for how they are going to have a cash liquidity event you have a bubble. But its just the beginning of it, and I think we can eak another 3-4 good years out of it easily. That puts the pop around 2009, which just about lines up with what Harry Dent thinks
Actually, all of a sudden Delaware would have 50% of the country http://www.state.de.us/corp/default.shtml with a few other states pulling in oddly large numbers, and then a population fitting curve.
You asked for someone to respond to your argument about the increase in development costs and how Nintendo could hope to continue to be a niche player despite these. There are two relevant trends occurring simultaneously. The first is that the gaming industry as a whole is growing, but it is growing (roughly) linearly. The reason it is growing linearly is because there is roughly 100% saturation among children, who never stop playing video games as they grow older, but there is virtually no way to get a 40 year old who never played games before to start. So basically the industry is growing right along with the % of the population born after 1975. This will however max out at some point. The second trend as you pointed out, is that the cost of game development is increasing, but unlike the market it is increasing *exponentially* . The cost of main stream game development now is such that not even medium sized studios can afford to take a crack at it, and over 80% of main stream titles loose money. This trend is just going to get worse as bigger badder hardware goes into games.
I think that it is actually very clear that if you look at the these trends that Nintendo is making the right choice. If they dive into the shark tank with Sony and Microsoft the merciless competition will eat them alive. Instead Nintendo has chosen a tactic of trying to control development costs, which as you point out, have become absurd. Rather than trying to differentiate themselves by having better graphics, which would be a loosing battle, they are experimenting with the user interface. Though it is clear that they will never be able to eat the entire market like this, they will be able to hold on to 10% of the market forever, and do so in a profitable and low risk way. Profitable + Low Risk == Virtually Immortal.
A recent poll of americans demonstrates that over 90% of them are addicted to shoes. Virtually all of them responded that they would not leave the house in the morning without putting on shoe's and that not having shoes readily avalible while at the office caused them extream angsiety.
Many of those polled indicated that they actually wore shoes all day every day regardless of what other activities were being persued.
Further it has become clear to reaserchers that the human body, if provided with a steady stream of shoe wearing, will actually grow to be dependent on shoes, signifiganly reducing the users ability to carry on day to day tasks without shoes.
An excilent point, However if one were to make something along the lines of a PDA or phone with voice recognition the dedicated hardware would stay useful for much longer because you not only need to wait for the CPUs to catch up, but they need to pull so far ahead that they can compete in power consumption as well. (Which may be entirely impossible)
task specific silicon becomes very useful when you don't have as much space/power/heat-disipation as you want.
And Second that people are very, very inclined to obey. Even when they think what they are doing is wrong. This can be seen in the Milgram experiment. Rebelion comes hard.
More on topic, changing one parameter of complex system that is possibly well tuned for what it does, but not well tuned for parameter changes, may result in a system that is far less efficient or even completely broken.
But the human brain, as well as every evolved life form is actually very well tuned for parameter changes. Its a natural side effect of evolution, we are all evolved to, at some level, be robust in the face of tweaking (because thats what evolution is)
That said "more, bigger brain cells" does not nessisarily imply "smarter" and may very well imply dumber. If they put the rats through problem solving test I would be inclined to have much more respect for the results.
Re:Use an NP-hard problem
on
Gates on Spam
·
· Score: 2, Informative
mod parent up!! (informative)
The post which he is responding too could stand to learn a little about number theory. There are are all sorts of problems that are easy to generate with a known answer and hard to solve. The prime exsample is just one (which isn't too well suited for the task, but is one of the easiest to understand and exsplain)
your not thinking like a clever monkey. what if you instead drew the district lines so that 60 of your relitives were in your district, as well as 40 people who hate you. You thne got a freind with 20 relitives, and drew his district so that it included your other 40 relitives as well as his 20, while you publicly endorced him. Now all of a sudden you and your freind have taken 2 chairs, and 80 people have effectivly lost there vote.
Thats because a computer is like a chainsaw... you need to spend a lot of time in maintenance and keeping crap tuned, but when you actually apply it to the task it eats through it much faster than you could ever do by hand. Since keeping everything working is a flat time expense when you don't have all that much actual work to get done the advantages are much slimmer, or possibly not even there. When you have a lot of appropriate work though you can tear through it at breakneck speed.
their study can find whatever it wants, I think most IT people will still notice that the MS systems still topple like dominoes ever three months or so with a new virus while no other vendors products seem to have that problem.
I will be exspecting to see a new $1.20 fee on my phone bill this month labled something like "wireless portability fee" or maybe they will just roll up one of those other number portability fees.
Under this modle it would be quite possible to support your favorite peice of O.S.S. via voucher. Every little bit of cash helps, particularly for small projects.
Slashdot Mirror
This happens so often, and it is not really surprising. What makes me sad is that there is a much safer way that this could be handled. Rather than giving out credit card numbers your card number being stored by everyone who want's to bill you in a recurring manner the card could instead be a private key, and used to sign a transaction statement. (or even a recurring transaction statement) That way when someone at megaCorp screws up and leaks all of there users CC data all that goes out are a bunch of "I will allow megaCorp to bill me $20 a month" signed statements.
I pulled the above from this article:
http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/0
I don't know what sort of evil corprate games they are playing, but knowing E.A. they will probably manage to shaft everyone.
What makes this a bubble, just like the last one was is more the outlook. When people are starting companies plans for how they are going to have a cash liquidity event you have a bubble. But its just the beginning of it, and I think we can eak another 3-4 good years out of it easily. That puts the pop around 2009, which just about lines up with what Harry Dent thinks
mod parent up... usefull
Actually, all of a sudden Delaware would have 50% of the country http://www.state.de.us/corp/default.shtml with a few other states pulling in oddly large numbers, and then a population fitting curve.
critics referred to it as a toy
Last I checked video games were supposed to be toys.
I wonder if they will be trying to sue Freeedgar, the company that is hosting there S.E.C. Filings, as well
9
http://sec.freeedgar.com/displayText.asp?ID=65194
You asked for someone to respond to your argument about the increase in development costs and how Nintendo could hope to continue to be a niche player despite these.
There are two relevant trends occurring simultaneously. The first is that the gaming industry as a whole is growing, but it is growing (roughly) linearly. The reason it is growing linearly is because there is roughly 100% saturation among children, who never stop playing video games as they grow older, but there is virtually no way to get a 40 year old who never played games before to start. So basically the industry is growing right along with the % of the population born after 1975. This will however max out at some point.
The second trend as you pointed out, is that the cost of game development is increasing, but unlike the market it is increasing *exponentially* . The cost of main stream game development now is such that not even medium sized studios can afford to take a crack at it, and over 80% of main stream titles loose money. This trend is just going to get worse as bigger badder hardware goes into games.
I think that it is actually very clear that if you look at the these trends that Nintendo is making the right choice. If they dive into the shark tank with Sony and Microsoft the merciless competition will eat them alive. Instead Nintendo has chosen a tactic of trying to control development costs, which as you point out, have become absurd. Rather than trying to differentiate themselves by having better graphics, which would be a loosing battle, they are experimenting with the user interface.
Though it is clear that they will never be able to eat the entire market like this, they will be able to hold on to 10% of the market forever, and do so in a profitable and low risk way. Profitable + Low Risk == Virtually Immortal.
A recent poll of americans demonstrates that over 90% of them are addicted to shoes. Virtually all of them responded that they would not leave the house in the morning without putting on shoe's and that not having shoes readily avalible while at the office caused them extream angsiety.
Many of those polled indicated that they actually wore shoes all day every day regardless of what other activities were being persued.
Further it has become clear to reaserchers that the human body, if provided with a steady stream of shoe wearing, will actually grow to be dependent on shoes, signifiganly reducing the users ability to carry on day to day tasks without shoes.
But getting it installed is a real pain in the ass:e r.shtml
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badg
An excilent point, However if one were to make something along the lines of a PDA or phone with voice recognition the dedicated hardware would stay useful for much longer because you not only need to wait for the CPUs to catch up, but they need to pull so far ahead that they can compete in power consumption as well. (Which may be entirely impossible)
task specific silicon becomes very useful when you don't have as much space/power/heat-disipation as you want.
This is not a Defence but I would like to point out two things:
First you have violated Godwins Law
And Second that people are very, very inclined to obey. Even when they think what they are doing is wrong. This can be seen in the Milgram experiment. Rebelion comes hard.
No Jail is about keeping you from wandering off before your trial.
your thinking about prison, not jail.
More on topic, changing one parameter of complex system that is possibly well tuned for what it does, but not well tuned for parameter changes, may result in a system that is far less efficient or even completely broken.
But the human brain, as well as every evolved life form is actually very well tuned for parameter changes. Its a natural side effect of evolution, we are all evolved to, at some level, be robust in the face of tweaking (because thats what evolution is)
That said "more, bigger brain cells" does not nessisarily imply "smarter" and may very well imply dumber. If they put the rats through problem solving test I would be inclined to have much more respect for the results.
mod parent up!! (informative)
The post which he is responding too could stand to learn a little about number theory. There are are all sorts of problems that are easy to generate with a known answer and hard to solve. The prime exsample is just one (which isn't too well suited for the task, but is one of the easiest to understand and exsplain)
your not thinking like a clever monkey.
what if you instead drew the district lines so that 60 of your relitives were in your district, as well as 40 people who hate you. You thne got a freind with 20 relitives, and drew his district so that it included your other 40 relitives as well as his 20, while you publicly endorced him. Now all of a sudden you and your freind have taken 2 chairs, and 80 people have effectivly lost there vote.
Thats because a computer is like a chainsaw...
you need to spend a lot of time in maintenance and keeping crap tuned, but when you actually apply it to the task it eats through it much faster than you could ever do by hand. Since keeping everything working is a flat time expense when you don't have all that much actual work to get done the advantages are much slimmer, or possibly not even there. When you have a lot of appropriate work though you can tear through it at breakneck speed.
He's bound to find them too. On the moon a big rock is a WDM. (anyone here read "The moon is a harsh mistress?"
mod parent up.
damn man, comunicating diffrently is not the same as being unable to communicate.
This from a guy who has "free mummia" as his sig? I mean, if you want "give mummia a fair trial" thats one thing, but come on man.
I wish the parent could be moded higher than 5.
mod parent up.
It can be done... there are just some nasty side effects.
their study can find whatever it wants, I think most IT people will still notice that the MS systems still topple like dominoes ever three months or so with a new virus while no other vendors products seem to have that problem.
I will be exspecting to see a new $1.20 fee on my phone bill this month labled something like "wireless portability fee" or maybe they will just roll up one of those other number portability fees.
Under this modle it would be quite possible to support your favorite peice of O.S.S. via voucher. Every little bit of cash helps, particularly for small projects.