That is a great idea, especially because you could do it in more than one store. If Tower, Warehouse, etc. all had a couple dozen returns in each store on these CDs I'm sure they would not file a superb report for them.
I was actually contemplating starting a Electronic Consumer Education group - a regular gathering in a public square to hand out flyers and have speakers about current pressing events. Anyone in the Portland, OR area want to chat about this?
I didn't say all of them were.. but a huge portion of them are. Definitely the majority.
I think it depends mostly on their parents. For instance, you read slashdot, on the nerd side of life. You bought your daughter an imac and an ibook.. she's exposed. What about those kids whose parents bought them a computer but no one aside from the school is there to show them what it is.
A lot of kids will be upset about this, but I'd venture to guess the majority wont even realize it's there.
True - and good points. I remember when I was younger and listening to music (any, whether it be insipid or not:)) I would just pick whatever was closest... hopefully the consumer market this is targeted at will cause this to flop. I can't imagine the first run of sales dropping because of it though. I fear this will succeed, and shortly thereafter a lot of CDs will hit the shelf that have this "Feature" - then it will be interesting to see the market trend.
I wonder how hard it would be to convince the world to not buy any RIAA CD's for 6 months or so... that would definitely illustrate the consumers voice. To bad that would require people, and not sheeple.
hehe, damn you guys crack me up you really do. I would suggest therapy for you.. It might do you some good, seriously.
AdForce shut down in June also, dumbass. You should keep FuckedCompany.com up a little bit more so you could have read it. It was fun, the last two weeks the company was in business we just played UT and AOE2.
I still find it funny you have nothing better to do than try to remain anonymous and make really stupid insults against me.
To debunk the insults.. I worked at AdForce for 1 year as a contractor, then signed on for 6 months as a full time employee because they asked nicely. They paid me really well, and I got 7 weeks severence plus 2 bonuses (excluding sign on bonus ) and cashed out vacation.
Yeah.. that sure was idiocy. Making over $100K in 6 months sure was the stupidest decision I made.. boy am I glad you were able to point it out to me.
P.S. I happen to have a job now.. shelter isn't a problem either.
Thanks.. good way to spend a few minutes chuckling at the misguided anger and delusions of my good ol' buddies.
I used to work for an advertising company (writing internal software)... a lot of the marketing guys were actually cool (much more so than the sample) however there were still a significant number that were that stupid. It's not that the marketing people are that stupid.. it's that the CEOs are that stupid. If marketing gets X amount of dollars to produce a new encrypted CD over previous, they'll sell the idea to the C*O's and it happens.
Well, the obvious result is to flag this as a big joke. We all know no one really wants to listen to them around here.
The thing is, this is probably just a sample. The thing to look out for is all the 14 year old girls who never play their CDs in their computers but the CD player their parents bought them for their birthday.
It'll look like a tremendous success. "Oh look! No one cares that this CD came out unsupported on computers, lets mass market!".
Next, you'll have your favorite RIAA-signed musician being forced into the same distribution plan..
Now, go talk to your little sister about how she's going to have to go with out her poppy boy band shit for a while.
A definitely good and valid point. I was explaining the dangers of the DMCA to a friend and she asked why it was a problem. The screaming negative is she is a junior engineer.
I fear by the time congress and the masses understand the repercussions of the DMCA and other related laws it will be too late, as we've already given the corporate bodies too much power.
It's a sad state in which corporations get more freedoms than an individual.
Your analogies are absolutely flawed because AEBPR's intent is not to allow people to break the law. That isn't why it was written and that wasn't why it was published.
It's a competitor to Adobe. It reads ebooks and exports PDF's. Free market, right? Nope, Adobe doesn't like competition.
His software has legal purposes too. Yes, it has illegal purposes but it's more analogous to someone manufacturing a gun in Russia and selling it in America. Oh wait! You can kill someone with this gun! We better arrest this guy because Smith&Wesson informed us that it exists and he's coming into town to give a speech on How to build hunting rifles for maximum damage.
I think it's very important for individuals to understand exactly why the DMCA is flawed and who it is there to benefit. It's not there to prohibit illegal software, it's there to prohibit competition that is unlicensed. But who's going to license their technology out to a competitor? Not Adobe, apparently.
For what it counts, this sentiment is sadly shared by myself. I do not understand how so easily consumers have lost their voice to corporations, and the masses. It's sadly growing into a nebulous entity no longer controlled by the government, a government established by the people for the people.
I have paid my taxes, and my dues. I'm strongly considering re-rooting myself into a true free economy and country. I know nothing is perfect, but there are many countries that are much better than what we're finding here. I try to relate this to the automobile industry, and the rail road industry. It takes a while for thought transition to change. For individuals to accept the new innovation into daily life and then a balance will occur. Unfortunately, through all those "revolutions" we have kept our speech. Here, we have lost our voice. Our freedom of speech has been abolished and placed into the hands of other individuals, not appointed by state, to determine what is ok to say.
I feel useless to change this, but I will never stop protesting. I'll never stop sending emails to everyone I know. I believe in freedom, sadly enough I don't believe in America anymore.
I must say that this may be the best idea I've read in the thread.
If it's organized as a campaign to get say, 10,000 individuals releasing it on every website, FTP, etc. saying they wrote it there is no way to prove who actually wrote it. So, you still be held liable for Trafficking a circumvention device but it's not as if they are going to throw you in prison or try each and every person.
I don't agree with a lot of what you say, but I agree with your general idea. I think it's important that kids do have usable hardware but as a developer in both home and office I don't want other people on my 3 major development boxes (one server, one workstation, one laptop). Regardless of their age.
I just dont like to take risks, I think that was his major point and unfortunately most people dont have money to buy bleeding edge computers for the youngsters so they get last weeks hardware.
I'd be willing to be a lot of people will pay for it. I know I will. It's handy to be able to view documents in Linux that previously were either a pain in the ass or impossible to view.
Time is money, saving time to view this natively saves money.
Every programmer knows the correct way to measure your greatness is to see how many lines you can write without getting any errors. (Syntax or logical).
Hence, The Great Programmer really was probably a kid playing with Deity Basic his mom got him for christmas and now we're stuck living in his malformed world because he doesn't know proper techniques.
But.. is it really a surprise thinking of it this way. This explains every natural disaster, problem, and why-do-bad-things-happen-to-good people.
Karma.c:293:
if ( entity.action() == K_GOOD ) entity.karma(entity.karma()-1);
...
if ( entity.karma()
All because of a single typo.. damn I need a more productive job..
What, and that the GameCube is the "same" as a high-end Mac because it has a PowerPC chip? If someone is such a haaard-coooore PC gamer, why are they messing with consoles anyhow? Oh, yeah, stability and available game titles. Same as everyone else.
Uhm, XBox specs:
733Mhz, nVidia graphics card with 64MB Ram and DVD/CD with a 3d audio card. I can build that in my garage, they're not doing anything special. Yes, the video card is "custom designed" by nVidia but I doubt there is much there that the current top-of-the-market nVidia card will do standalone.
As for your ports comment...
Microsoft wouldn't be doing the ports, first off. However, it's additional licenses that Microsoft sells. The game company would be doing the ports, the QA Cycles, and everything else that they do for the normal game. So I'm not sure why you gathered that I said Microsoft would actually do the porting.. it makes no sense.
My personal opinion is more power to em. It's called making money. Granted, Microsoft does a lot of unethical things I dont think that buying a company out and politely asking them (hehe.. right) to only support your platform is a bad thing. The vision gets clouded because of all the other stupid shit microsoft pulls.
The only problem with that is that many people aren't going to want a full fledge computer in their living room.
Keyboard, mouse - wireless maybe, but a pain in the ass to actually use looking at a TV (There are reasons why desks exist).
It's great for your average email user and everything, but with the cost of "Budget PC's" now it doesn't matter. No matter what happens Microsoft gets paid... they're good at that.
The Dreamcast SDK does not ship with WinCE standard. There are some games that use WinCE as the operating system. Microsoft had delayed on it and Sega gave up waiting for it and used their own operating system (or another vendors, not sure).
Consoles do have bootloaders burned.. that is what you see when you turn it on without putting in a disc, etc. However, that pretty much is the extent of it. The discs contain the actual operating system (kernel and supporting libs) that gets booted.
My point was that the Dreamcast was originally only going to use wince and if you produced a DC game it had to be on the wince platform. Since Microsoft fludged around so much Sega dropped them. I personally think that using WinCE + Direct3D is a better way to develop console games (I wish there was a stripped linux + GLX + SDL kit that was "mainstream" more) just for the purpose of portability. If you can use the same (mostly) libs for development on a console that you do for a PC porting becomes a breeze.
Any good gaming company wont get forced by Microsoft to make them X-Box only. They still can do the PC (Windows based) market. Granted Microsoft can make their life difficult but as long as Microsoft is selling licenses for the SDK and boot sector on the CDs (I'm assuming XBox is running the modified wince (ouch) that Dreamcast was supposed to ship with) and they are selling licenses for their Windows based gaming platforms they're happy.
It's a lot better for them to sell one XBox dev package + one Win dev package than only one or the other. I can imagine a lot of the people are going to buy both the console and PC version of the game.
But the GameCube will be better..
Sweet, sweet Mario Kart.
I think that the X-Box is going to be a disappointment to a lot of PC Gamers anyway. They're going to realize their new console is the same as the Dell high end gaming box. Granted, it's a lot cheaper and has the TV out why the duplication? I'd be willing to bet that within a year of the release Microsoft will release the "XBox Center" or some other snazzy marketing name yielding the ability to play Xbox games on your PC.
No, a lot of companies pull out of Chapter 11. It's not champagne and lollipops. Most of the time it's stupid decisions made in the beginning of the company, like Scott said.
The purpose of a Chapter 11 is to re-establish a relationship with your creditors so you can start getting your business setup again.
You file because of bad times, bad decisions, bad whatever. Hopefully it goes good, and it fades into history.
Actually, in any porting effort when you deal with a lot of the system level code you can enhance and clean up the code a lot.
Thereby actually making it better than the original platform version. Look at UT, a nice 45 second load time under windows and a fraction of that under Linux.
Just because of that the game is better in my opinion. I hate waiting for it to load up under windows.
And under windows, it doesn't properly release my sound card either so I have to reboot right after playing it... dont see that happening under Linux now do ya?
I'm not sure of your logic on this. If you go through the Chapter 11 successfully and fairly, it doesn't taint your record and cause them to flee like you're a lepar.
Besides, if the company is as Scott said, Cash positive the line of credit is probably not a huge concern. They already have their shop setup, which is most of the costs of any company. They have employees, and are "balanced" out. All expansion and everything can come from their profit margin.
I'd be more surprised to see Loki sold than Loki buying or expanding their business model in the next 2 years. Chapter 11 isn't the end-all-you're-screwed, you still deal with your creditors. Everyone should walk away mostly pleased. That's what the purpose of it is.
Slashdot Mirror
I was actually contemplating starting a Electronic Consumer Education group - a regular gathering in a public square to hand out flyers and have speakers about current pressing events. Anyone in the Portland, OR area want to chat about this?
I think it depends mostly on their parents. For instance, you read slashdot, on the nerd side of life. You bought your daughter an imac and an ibook.. she's exposed. What about those kids whose parents bought them a computer but no one aside from the school is there to show them what it is.
A lot of kids will be upset about this, but I'd venture to guess the majority wont even realize it's there.
I wonder how hard it would be to convince the world to not buy any RIAA CD's for 6 months or so... that would definitely illustrate the consumers voice. To bad that would require people, and not sheeple.
Wow, hey that was so clever. I marvel at your intellectual superiority.. you know I always have. I always knew you were better than me. Really.
AdForce shut down in June also, dumbass. You should keep FuckedCompany.com up a little bit more so you could have read it. It was fun, the last two weeks the company was in business we just played UT and AOE2.
I still find it funny you have nothing better to do than try to remain anonymous and make really stupid insults against me.
To debunk the insults.. I worked at AdForce for 1 year as a contractor, then signed on for 6 months as a full time employee because they asked nicely. They paid me really well, and I got 7 weeks severence plus 2 bonuses (excluding sign on bonus ) and cashed out vacation.
Yeah.. that sure was idiocy. Making over $100K in 6 months sure was the stupidest decision I made.. boy am I glad you were able to point it out to me.
P.S. I happen to have a job now.. shelter isn't a problem either.
Thanks.. good way to spend a few minutes chuckling at the misguided anger and delusions of my good ol' buddies.
All they need to prove is that it works.
The thing is, this is probably just a sample. The thing to look out for is all the 14 year old girls who never play their CDs in their computers but the CD player their parents bought them for their birthday.
It'll look like a tremendous success. "Oh look! No one cares that this CD came out unsupported on computers, lets mass market!".
Next, you'll have your favorite RIAA-signed musician being forced into the same distribution plan..
Now, go talk to your little sister about how she's going to have to go with out her poppy boy band shit for a while.
I fear by the time congress and the masses understand the repercussions of the DMCA and other related laws it will be too late, as we've already given the corporate bodies too much power.
It's a sad state in which corporations get more freedoms than an individual.
And some of us do use RPG's for Elk. What do you think all those hillbillies who win the lottery do with their money?
It's a competitor to Adobe. It reads ebooks and exports PDF's. Free market, right? Nope, Adobe doesn't like competition.
His software has legal purposes too. Yes, it has illegal purposes but it's more analogous to someone manufacturing a gun in Russia and selling it in America. Oh wait! You can kill someone with this gun! We better arrest this guy because Smith&Wesson informed us that it exists and he's coming into town to give a speech on How to build hunting rifles for maximum damage.
I think it's very important for individuals to understand exactly why the DMCA is flawed and who it is there to benefit. It's not there to prohibit illegal software, it's there to prohibit competition that is unlicensed. But who's going to license their technology out to a competitor? Not Adobe, apparently.
I have paid my taxes, and my dues. I'm strongly considering re-rooting myself into a true free economy and country. I know nothing is perfect, but there are many countries that are much better than what we're finding here. I try to relate this to the automobile industry, and the rail road industry. It takes a while for thought transition to change. For individuals to accept the new innovation into daily life and then a balance will occur. Unfortunately, through all those "revolutions" we have kept our speech. Here, we have lost our voice. Our freedom of speech has been abolished and placed into the hands of other individuals, not appointed by state, to determine what is ok to say.
I feel useless to change this, but I will never stop protesting. I'll never stop sending emails to everyone I know. I believe in freedom, sadly enough I don't believe in America anymore.
If it's organized as a campaign to get say, 10,000 individuals releasing it on every website, FTP, etc. saying they wrote it there is no way to prove who actually wrote it. So, you still be held liable for Trafficking a circumvention device but it's not as if they are going to throw you in prison or try each and every person.
I'd be willing to do it.
I just dont like to take risks, I think that was his major point and unfortunately most people dont have money to buy bleeding edge computers for the youngsters so they get last weeks hardware.
Time is money, saving time to view this natively saves money.
Hence, The Great Programmer really was probably a kid playing with Deity Basic his mom got him for christmas and now we're stuck living in his malformed world because he doesn't know proper techniques.
But.. is it really a surprise thinking of it this way. This explains every natural disaster, problem, and why-do-bad-things-happen-to-good people.
Karma.c:293:
if ( entity.action() == K_GOOD )
entity.karma(entity.karma()-1);
...
if ( entity.karma()
All because of a single typo.. damn I need a more productive job..
Uhm, XBox specs:
733Mhz, nVidia graphics card with 64MB Ram and DVD/CD with a 3d audio card. I can build that in my garage, they're not doing anything special. Yes, the video card is "custom designed" by nVidia but I doubt there is much there that the current top-of-the-market nVidia card will do standalone.
As for your ports comment...
Microsoft wouldn't be doing the ports, first off. However, it's additional licenses that Microsoft sells. The game company would be doing the ports, the QA Cycles, and everything else that they do for the normal game. So I'm not sure why you gathered that I said Microsoft would actually do the porting.. it makes no sense.
You can see how much I follow the XBox, thanks for the info :)
My personal opinion is more power to em. It's called making money. Granted, Microsoft does a lot of unethical things I dont think that buying a company out and politely asking them (hehe.. right) to only support your platform is a bad thing. The vision gets clouded because of all the other stupid shit microsoft pulls.
Keyboard, mouse - wireless maybe, but a pain in the ass to actually use looking at a TV (There are reasons why desks exist).
It's great for your average email user and everything, but with the cost of "Budget PC's" now it doesn't matter. No matter what happens Microsoft gets paid... they're good at that.
Consoles do have bootloaders burned.. that is what you see when you turn it on without putting in a disc, etc. However, that pretty much is the extent of it. The discs contain the actual operating system (kernel and supporting libs) that gets booted.
My point was that the Dreamcast was originally only going to use wince and if you produced a DC game it had to be on the wince platform. Since Microsoft fludged around so much Sega dropped them. I personally think that using WinCE + Direct3D is a better way to develop console games (I wish there was a stripped linux + GLX + SDL kit that was "mainstream" more) just for the purpose of portability. If you can use the same (mostly) libs for development on a console that you do for a PC porting becomes a breeze.
It's a lot better for them to sell one XBox dev package + one Win dev package than only one or the other. I can imagine a lot of the people are going to buy both the console and PC version of the game.
Sweet, sweet Mario Kart.
I think that the X-Box is going to be a disappointment to a lot of PC Gamers anyway. They're going to realize their new console is the same as the Dell high end gaming box. Granted, it's a lot cheaper and has the TV out why the duplication? I'd be willing to bet that within a year of the release Microsoft will release the "XBox Center" or some other snazzy marketing name yielding the ability to play Xbox games on your PC.
The purpose of a Chapter 11 is to re-establish a relationship with your creditors so you can start getting your business setup again.
You file because of bad times, bad decisions, bad whatever. Hopefully it goes good, and it fades into history.
Thereby actually making it better than the original platform version. Look at UT, a nice 45 second load time under windows and a fraction of that under Linux.
Just because of that the game is better in my opinion. I hate waiting for it to load up under windows.
And under windows, it doesn't properly release my sound card either so I have to reboot right after playing it... dont see that happening under Linux now do ya?
Besides, if the company is as Scott said, Cash positive the line of credit is probably not a huge concern. They already have their shop setup, which is most of the costs of any company. They have employees, and are "balanced" out. All expansion and everything can come from their profit margin.
I'd be more surprised to see Loki sold than Loki buying or expanding their business model in the next 2 years. Chapter 11 isn't the end-all-you're-screwed, you still deal with your creditors. Everyone should walk away mostly pleased. That's what the purpose of it is.