Breakaway hits make up a good chunk of game revenue. I forget the exact statistics, but gaming companies only make money on a couple of big sellers. Putting out demos is marketing, and marketing is vital in hit-driven industries. It's like how singers get their hit single onto the radio to sell their CD. If their single sucks, then their CD won't sell, but that's part of the game.
But this is education, because the software engineers will be honing their skills, and providing a literature (code) base for future generations. Training accountants or lawyers, on the other hand, is probably a dead loss.
I thought that 40% of tax payers in the US didn't pay any net tax (from Wikipedia's Income_tax_in_the_United_States). I guess that the median tax payer pays about 10%, and the top tax payers pay a fortune. That's pretty common pattern in democracies - a small minority gets gerrymandered into taking it in the rear, for the benefit of the majority. In Australia it's worse - the rich don't pay tax, and the poor don't pay tax, but well off wage earners pay a fortune.
So can I deduct my new gaming rig as a business expense?
If they tax gold farming as income, gamers should have the right to deduct their account costs, computer, and internet use as legitimate business expenses (provided they make some money from their endeavors).
When I say should, that is my moral judgment, and it doesn't mean the IRS won't try to screw people.
Prior to this, Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_to_Doomsday) in 1990 on the Sega Megadrive, and other systems - was a DnD style team RPG that let you use "Quick combat" to put characters on "auto-combat" for the fight scene.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were older examples.
120 Hz? NVIDIA has just *doubled* the graphics requirements of every game on the planet! Computational scientists are going to be very happy about this - now an i7 extreme with dual 280 cards is going to be an absolute dog. And not just running Crysis.
I guess you gamers are going to have to subsidize computational advances for a few more years yet. Oh, and you get 3D games in the bargain, so I guess it's win-win.
Xbox is best for console games, PC is best for PC games. Wii is the best and only platform for Wii games, which is highly differentiated from most mainstream games. I guess the usual genres (button mashing fighter games and platform games on consoles; FPS, RPS, and RPG games on PC) are not so great on a Wii. Wii games have not matured into proper genres yet, but give them some time. Wii fit and Wii sports are nice technology demonstrators (just like Quake 3 was a great engine demonstrator on the PC), but not fantastic games. Great games marry a well known genre with great stories, challenge curves, artwork, plot, and so on; all of which takes time, iterative design, and lots of competition. If Nintendo wanted the Wii to really take off, they could release a few free engines / dev kits for new developers to play around with, then wait for the legendary games to emerge.
What's the bet they decide that the best way to protect consumers is to have a common, reliable DRM system, rather than ad-hoc unreliable DRM. Then they can legally enforce everyone has to use it.
I bet that most of the attendees of any "Town Hall" meeting are paid lobbyists, and not many of them will represent consumers.
Add that to the fact that the lobbyists will understand the problem better than our elected representatives, and their (biased) ideas will probably be the best ones to reach the ears of the real decision makers.
Australia has this great show called "The Hollowmen", which parodies this process. I've heard it isn't too far from the truth, in some cases.
I know that lipstick is a good investement in downturns (as women use make-up rather than new clothes to make a statement), as is cheap liquor. I wouldn't be so sure about porn, per say (as the internet undercuts it), but sex "equipment" might see an upsurge. (This is not investement advice.)
You should be more sensitive. We just had a Macworld Keynote with none of the overdue iMacs, minis, or MacPros released, no new LCD, and no new iPhone. And no Steve. Why does food and shelter even matter?
The US is the only Anglo-Saxon country where free speech (or a limited slice thereof) is constitutionally protected. I think we have some implicit "fair use, if the court thinks it is OK" laws that some judges kind-of made up, but nothing really codified. Don't rely on this, I'm not a lawyer.
The Jaws of Life? Oh; La-di-da! When I was a lad, the tooth fairy yanked out our teeth with a shifting spanner, cut off our legs, and took both our kidneys for transplants. Then when we came home to the used condom we had to live in, our father would beat us with sleep with a red-hot poker.
There is a guy called Steve Keen who more or less predicted the collapse using an ODE system. When he presented his findings (some time ago) he claims that the economists in the crowd thought that a 6 variable ODE was so complicated that he had to have made a mistake.
(12) Lispers will remain quietly smug. Except Paul Graham, who will be vocally smug. (13) Pythoneers will remain vocally smug, except Guido who is busy doing real work. (14) Open source software development remain 5 years ahead of Microsofts, except for the GUI, which lags by a decade. (15) Someone will write a new distributed version control system. (16) New web frameworks are written in Python (x3), Ruby (x2) and Cobol. Database work is still difficult. (17).net is upgraded to another version. Nobody had figured out what the previous version did. (18) Scrum get's a new acronym, to the disgust of its advocates. (19) Outside of a select few programmers and/.ers, nobody in the real world cares.
Slashdot Mirror
Breakaway hits make up a good chunk of game revenue. I forget the exact statistics, but gaming companies only make money on a couple of big sellers. Putting out demos is marketing, and marketing is vital in hit-driven industries. It's like how singers get their hit single onto the radio to sell their CD. If their single sucks, then their CD won't sell, but that's part of the game.
You can't just point a butcher knife at somebodies head, and pull the trigger.
Stabbing is not so likely to kill as shooting, as the victim can often fight back, staunch the wound, and call for help.
There is a reason why soldiers are armed with a gun, instead of a knife, or a front loading rifle like the 2nd amendment was written for.
But this is education, because the software engineers will be honing their skills, and providing a literature (code) base for future generations. Training accountants or lawyers, on the other hand, is probably a dead loss.
I thought that 40% of tax payers in the US didn't pay any net tax (from Wikipedia's Income_tax_in_the_United_States). I guess that the median tax payer pays about 10%, and the top tax payers pay a fortune. That's pretty common pattern in democracies - a small minority gets gerrymandered into taking it in the rear, for the benefit of the majority. In Australia it's worse - the rich don't pay tax, and the poor don't pay tax, but well off wage earners pay a fortune.
So can I deduct my new gaming rig as a business expense?
If they tax gold farming as income, gamers should have the right to deduct their account costs, computer, and internet use as legitimate business expenses (provided they make some money from their endeavors).
When I say should, that is my moral judgment, and it doesn't mean the IRS won't try to screw people.
Still, it's good to know we slashdotted google. I bet that hasn't happened for a while.
Prior to this, Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_to_Doomsday) in 1990 on the Sega Megadrive, and other systems - was a DnD style team RPG that let you use "Quick combat" to put characters on "auto-combat" for the fight scene.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were older examples.
Did they just put a front-end on Mnesia?
120 Hz? NVIDIA has just *doubled* the graphics requirements of every game on the planet! Computational scientists are going to be very happy about this - now an i7 extreme with dual 280 cards is going to be an absolute dog. And not just running Crysis.
I guess you gamers are going to have to subsidize computational advances for a few more years yet. Oh, and you get 3D games in the bargain, so I guess it's win-win.
Xbox is best for console games, PC is best for PC games. Wii is the best and only platform for Wii games, which is highly differentiated from most mainstream games. I guess the usual genres (button mashing fighter games and platform games on consoles; FPS, RPS, and RPG games on PC) are not so great on a Wii. Wii games have not matured into proper genres yet, but give them some time. Wii fit and Wii sports are nice technology demonstrators (just like Quake 3 was a great engine demonstrator on the PC), but not fantastic games. Great games marry a well known genre with great stories, challenge curves, artwork, plot, and so on; all of which takes time, iterative design, and lots of competition. If Nintendo wanted the Wii to really take off, they could release a few free engines / dev kits for new developers to play around with, then wait for the legendary games to emerge.
I think nethack can be compiled to run on a 64 bit system. If not, it's open source, so you can modify it yourself.
In 1 years time, it will be worth 40% of what they paid for it. That's an investement, isn't it? Heck, it's not even a bad investement these days.
What's the bet they decide that the best way to protect consumers is to have a common, reliable DRM system, rather than ad-hoc unreliable DRM. Then they can legally enforce everyone has to use it.
I bet that most of the attendees of any "Town Hall" meeting are paid lobbyists, and not many of them will represent consumers.
Add that to the fact that the lobbyists will understand the problem better than our elected representatives, and their (biased) ideas will probably be the best ones to reach the ears of the real decision makers.
Australia has this great show called "The Hollowmen", which parodies this process. I've heard it isn't too far from the truth, in some cases.
I know that lipstick is a good investement in downturns (as women use make-up rather than new clothes to make a statement), as is cheap liquor. I wouldn't be so sure about porn, per say (as the internet undercuts it), but sex "equipment" might see an upsurge. (This is not investement advice.)
You should be more sensitive. We just had a Macworld Keynote with none of the overdue iMacs, minis, or MacPros released, no new LCD, and no new iPhone. And no Steve. Why does food and shelter even matter?
There was an 87 patent of representing 3D objects on a 2D screen. Was that included? Cause I think a few games may rely on that sort of method.
I tried it, but my avatar rolled too many 1s, and they won't give me another :(
Is the damage reversible, or do New Yorkers stay like that indefinitely?
The US is the only Anglo-Saxon country where free speech (or a limited slice thereof) is constitutionally protected. I think we have some implicit "fair use, if the court thinks it is OK" laws that some judges kind-of made up, but nothing really codified. Don't rely on this, I'm not a lawyer.
Learning to code? Learning a musical instrument? Martial arts? Latin dancing? Anything with a 2 year learning code is a hobby (or a job), not a game.
The Jaws of Life? Oh; La-di-da! When I was a lad, the tooth fairy yanked out our teeth with a shifting spanner, cut off our legs, and took both our kidneys for transplants. Then when we came home to the used condom we had to live in, our father would beat us with sleep with a red-hot poker.
There is a guy called Steve Keen who more or less predicted the collapse using an ODE system. When he presented his findings (some time ago) he claims that the economists in the crowd thought that a 6 variable ODE was so complicated that he had to have made a mistake.
And I thought it was a sex box.
... and I just lost my apostrophe license.
(12) Lispers will remain quietly smug. Except Paul Graham, who will be vocally smug. .net is upgraded to another version. Nobody had figured out what the previous version did. /.ers, nobody in the real world cares.
(13) Pythoneers will remain vocally smug, except Guido who is busy doing real work.
(14) Open source software development remain 5 years ahead of Microsofts, except for the GUI, which lags by a decade.
(15) Someone will write a new distributed version control system.
(16) New web frameworks are written in Python (x3), Ruby (x2) and Cobol. Database work is still difficult.
(17)
(18) Scrum get's a new acronym, to the disgust of its advocates.
(19) Outside of a select few programmers and