If what they are offering is the "free channels" bundled and the ones that cost them money as optional isn't that pretty much what most people want. I'm not a big sports guy beyond my home teams which are nearly always on the local channels so the opportunity to drop 40%-50% of my bill to get rid of channels I dont want would probably encourage me to get cable tv again.
No kidding...with my clients I had exactly 1 that is using office 2010, all of the others actually went backwards to office 2003 after the ribbon stuff gave secretaries fits. I had one spend nearly 10 grand only to go back to the old version about 6 months later, they just couldnt adjust macros were broken, templates had issues, it was a mess.
Thats kind of the point though your killing pixels...most know the difference enough that they want to keep fantasy and reality separate. However, a "more realistic" war-game might be a good idea just to show the real horror and consequences of war...just dont expect it to sell well and dont expect any good press no matter if it was made with good intentions.
Actually $30 would be about $50 cheaper than the cheapest cable package I can get locally that includes Starz. I would have no problem with ala carte programming if I could truly pick and choose my channels at a reasonable price. I'm not much of a sports guy for instance...dropping ESPN and Fox Sports from my cable bill according to known rates charged by the networks per viewer would drop my bill over $20 a month, but currently I can't get even basic cable without the espn tax. I like BBC America, but I can't get that without subscribing to the highest digital cable package.
The thing that made me drop cable was tracking my families viewing habits over a month, it turned out we watched a total of only 17 channels but paid over $170 a month for our cable package, I ditched tv went with the standard internet only deal and subscribed to netflix and hulu plus, I can't watch some of the shows I enjoy, but save enough monthly for a couple of season sets on dvd every month and still have money left over.
The article mentions real time info and updates which means using 3g most likely, but wasn't United one of the loudest in declaring wifi and 3g use unsafe for passengers to use because supposedly it could potentially interfere with flight controls? Wouldn't having them in direct contact with those instruments and controls be a bit bigger issue or were they just lying to make more money off of those back of the headrest phones?
Atari has been passed around like a cheap whore since the late 80's. First if was Atari, then it was sold to Warner who later sold it back to Jack Tramiel, Then it was merged with JTS Inc. then it was acquired by Hasbro which then sold it to IESA who had already purchased Infogrames and Infogrames and Atari were merged to become Infrogrames Interactive and has recently been relabeled Atari Interactive Inc.
Sure some people dont complete games, but I actually seek out long games. In the past 5--6 years my absolute favorite games are things like Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc. I have logged over 100 hours in Fallout 3 alone and I dont play that often, its just something I keep going back to. I realize that developers are looking for ways to reduce cost and increase revenue, but if they dont think there will be a "fallout" of their own they are delusional. I simply won't pay $60 for a short game even if its a "good" one...when those come out I wait until it hits bargain bins. Most gamers I know are the same way. They are already working on ways to kill off the used/rental market, now they want to offer less for the same price...I'm starting to think the game industry is trying to kill itself.
Cord Cutting has become fairly mainstream lately, probably more due to the economy than anything else but the trend started with people just tired if paying insanely high bills. Cable companies have enjoyed monopolies on internet in many areas since driving out local ISP's. Prices here were actually reasonable when there was competition but as speeds increased smaller companies didn't have any ability to compete. Prices in my area have gone up over 100% since I first had it installed 8 years ago. What was $69 for the deluxe package then is now almost $200. I dropped it down to internet and basic cable only, but their recent trick has been to raise the price of internet only so now I'm saving a whopping $18 over the "bundle" cost and yesterday it was announced that they are planning to drop "basic cable" within 5 years meaning everyone has to rent a box or cable card. IMHO this is desperation...they realize many people simply dont need cable tv anymore.
In convincing my family to cut the cord I tracked channels watched for 3 months...out of the 400+ channels available we watched a grand total of 16 and none of those channels were in the top ten as far as per subscriber costs go. Cable wont adapt to ala carte programming willingly so the only way to convince them is to let them bleed customers...perhaps then they will realize that some money is better than no money. Being simply an internet conduit scares the crap out of the fat cats in the cable industry for too long they have been able to sponge money from pay per view, premium channels, forced bundles, etc and now that those are becoming unneeded there only recourse in their eyes is to go to extreme measures to make having "internet only" a bad deal. Luckily Google is moving here with their fiber network...once that happens I have vowed to never give my cable company another dime.
Look at how many popular bands from the late 70's and early 80's are still around now and still popular. Bands like Aerosmith, Van Halen, ACDC, Pink Floyd, Kiss, Elvis Costello, The Cure, Prince, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders, John Melancamp, Bruce Springsteen, etc...are all still around in one form or another and all still selling well and have huge fan bases. Perhaps this the the time when the RIAA's hypocrisy is fully exposed and the tide turns? While money can be very influential in politics so is a support base...I would imagine that it would be rather easy for artists to enlighten and sway popular opinion. While I know its definitely a difficult fight, ultimately the politicians care about reelection more than how greased their palms get in the short term and going up for reelection as "the guy that screwed over Springsteen" surely isn't going to garner the popular vote, the RIAA may have the money but they dont have the electorate.
Time is always an overlooked factor in handheld gaming, sure games on the Sony and Nintendo handhelds are "deeper" much of the time, but when I have 5 minutes waiting in line or even 30 minutes in a doctors office, I dont want something that is going to take an hour to the next area where I can save or put the game down. With my kids they rarely finished a game anyway so casual stuff works much better.
They are kids accidents happen. My daughter broke her ds when she tripped over the dog in the kitchen...screen snapped off. The DS subsequent devices have been pretty fragile in comparison to the old gameboys and gameboy advance.
The prices and versatility of the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad have all but killed the market when it comes to kids and casual gamers. The versatility makes it more of a useful tool for adults to justify and for kids you can go through 30 games to find one your kid likes cheaper than buying 1 DS cartridge. The quality of iOS games have been steadily improving as well with more and more genres being covered. Even for hardcore gamers there are games with depth showing up that have better multiplayer options and equal gameplay. Some games even look better than anything on the other handhelds. It will be interesting to see what happens with Sony's next handheld offering but I have a feeling that dedicated handheld gaming platforms are going to be a niche product from now on. The only way to really counter that is with pricing and I dont see either sony or nintendo wanting to play that game at all. Nintendo's most reasonable prices stuff are on their download store and the cheapest are 200 points (roughly $2) which sounds reasonable but the stuff in that range generally wouldn't qualify as a demo much less a full game. On the sony side many of the 3rd party games coming out are ports of iOS games at a higher price. I just dont see them being willing or able to compete. The casual war is lost the only thing they can do now is go for the highest specs possible and hope the hardcore can't resist.
So some developers really thought that Amazon was actually going pay them 20% per app downloaded for free out of the kindness of their hearts? Why? How would that possibly benefit Amazon? The way it works now is Amazon eats the hosting costs, and creates thousands of possible "word of mouth" advertising walking billboards...
Between the spam and viruses, perhaps the time has come for some sort of digital postage? Its been discussed and shot down before but its reached a point where the ongoing costs of fighting spam, viruses and malware are outpacing previously proposed pricing for emails. It just seems ridiculous that I end up spending so much time and effort with my clients just trying to keep up with idiots who want to fuck up peoples computers and dealing with the ignorant (who admittedly shouldn't have to know all about that kind of crap) who find new ways to get infected on a seemingly weekly basis. Its not my favorite idea but what else can be done?
After owning all 3 at some point during this generation I've decided its my last console generation....I never thought I could be lured back to PC gaming after a long absence but the wii is just too casual, paying to play online with live is ridiculous considering how little I play multiplayer and Sony's issues up through their dismissal of their network security have made me think that I can really just do without consoles.
Not sure how this is "insightful", I dont know if I'm going to get the 5 or not but after switching from a droid to a captivate and finally to an iphone, I have been quite happy with it and would likely give the 5 the first look if and when I decide its time to upgrade. If it works well and its reliable I dont see a problem with sticking with something you already have experience with.
For some multiplayer is "where the fun is at" but please dont generalize all of us into that category. Many feel that with the current state of gaming, multiplayer is simply an excuse for developers to half-ass storylines and AI.
Most I have discussed this with have talked about this being their last "console generation" if even half of them follow through and go back to pc gaming how do you think the publishers are going to explain away lost sales. Back when I was still console gaming a few years ago I would occasionally buy used games and when good they usually enticed me to buy the next title when it was released. Most that I know that buy used do so because they aren't willing to pay $60 for a game so they wait until it hits a price point they feel comfortable playing and either buy used or new depending on what drops first. I dont see this doing much to raise revenues if anything I see it dropping initial revenues and then maybe if gamers attention spans last long enough increasing the sales when it hits bargain bins.
I dont think that would be gaining marketshare but simply trading it and I would imaging the power user market is far far smaller than the average consumer one. I really dont think Apple cares to be number one or about catering to everyone, they have found a niche and those that have them seem to love them and those that dont are free to find something else.
Roundabouts are great when drivers actually use them as intended the problem is there are too many rude asshats to make them practical. Here where I live there are 6 of them, I cant count the times that I watch people just whip around them without even looking to see if other cars are coming or if there are other cars already waiting to turn into them. I had a guy plow into me at one last year, he claimed that since he had a yield sign at the entrance that meant I was supposed to stop in the middle of the loop for him...actually made the point to argue that in court when he was issued a ticket. Drivers around here are idiots though, thats why we now have stop lights at freeway on ramps...people were too stupid to realize that if you leave no room for cars to merge into traffic eventually you just create enough congestion that no one can go anywhere.
$63 million to $600 million isnt going over budget, its running a scam. What is more perplexing than the current actions is that the govt allowed things to get that out of hand, in most cases when a project goes over budget by more than about 25% there are questions to answer and more often than not firings, beyond that and fraud is brought into question...this should have been figured out about $500 million ago.
Why dont we do one better and to extend protections to the RIAA and others just flat out ban copyrighted material from the internet...we could go back to the days when "lawlessness" ruled the internet but it was also inherently more useful.
Most of the problem with the legalization ballot measure in California was the campaign against it by the Humbolt County types who are currently "legal" growers...basically they pushed hard and begged for support from the public when medical mj was up for vote, but when it was opened up to the idea of real legalization they saw it as potential competition and profit loss, developed a "fuck you I got mine" attitude and turned on those they begged support from to start with.
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If what they are offering is the "free channels" bundled and the ones that cost them money as optional isn't that pretty much what most people want. I'm not a big sports guy beyond my home teams which are nearly always on the local channels so the opportunity to drop 40%-50% of my bill to get rid of channels I dont want would probably encourage me to get cable tv again.
No kidding...with my clients I had exactly 1 that is using office 2010, all of the others actually went backwards to office 2003 after the ribbon stuff gave secretaries fits. I had one spend nearly 10 grand only to go back to the old version about 6 months later, they just couldnt adjust macros were broken, templates had issues, it was a mess.
Thats kind of the point though your killing pixels...most know the difference enough that they want to keep fantasy and reality separate. However, a "more realistic" war-game might be a good idea just to show the real horror and consequences of war...just dont expect it to sell well and dont expect any good press no matter if it was made with good intentions.
Actually $30 would be about $50 cheaper than the cheapest cable package I can get locally that includes Starz. I would have no problem with ala carte programming if I could truly pick and choose my channels at a reasonable price. I'm not much of a sports guy for instance...dropping ESPN and Fox Sports from my cable bill according to known rates charged by the networks per viewer would drop my bill over $20 a month, but currently I can't get even basic cable without the espn tax. I like BBC America, but I can't get that without subscribing to the highest digital cable package.
The thing that made me drop cable was tracking my families viewing habits over a month, it turned out we watched a total of only 17 channels but paid over $170 a month for our cable package, I ditched tv went with the standard internet only deal and subscribed to netflix and hulu plus, I can't watch some of the shows I enjoy, but save enough monthly for a couple of season sets on dvd every month and still have money left over.
The article mentions real time info and updates which means using 3g most likely, but wasn't United one of the loudest in declaring wifi and 3g use unsafe for passengers to use because supposedly it could potentially interfere with flight controls? Wouldn't having them in direct contact with those instruments and controls be a bit bigger issue or were they just lying to make more money off of those back of the headrest phones?
Atari has been passed around like a cheap whore since the late 80's. First if was Atari, then it was sold to Warner who later sold it back to Jack Tramiel, Then it was merged with JTS Inc. then it was acquired by Hasbro which then sold it to IESA who had already purchased Infogrames and Infogrames and Atari were merged to become Infrogrames Interactive and has recently been relabeled Atari Interactive Inc.
Um its not the toolbar he is complaining about its the attempt to install google desktop search and chrome when you try to install it.
Sure some people dont complete games, but I actually seek out long games. In the past 5--6 years my absolute favorite games are things like Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc. I have logged over 100 hours in Fallout 3 alone and I dont play that often, its just something I keep going back to. I realize that developers are looking for ways to reduce cost and increase revenue, but if they dont think there will be a "fallout" of their own they are delusional. I simply won't pay $60 for a short game even if its a "good" one...when those come out I wait until it hits bargain bins. Most gamers I know are the same way. They are already working on ways to kill off the used/rental market, now they want to offer less for the same price...I'm starting to think the game industry is trying to kill itself.
Cord Cutting has become fairly mainstream lately, probably more due to the economy than anything else but the trend started with people just tired if paying insanely high bills. Cable companies have enjoyed monopolies on internet in many areas since driving out local ISP's. Prices here were actually reasonable when there was competition but as speeds increased smaller companies didn't have any ability to compete. Prices in my area have gone up over 100% since I first had it installed 8 years ago. What was $69 for the deluxe package then is now almost $200. I dropped it down to internet and basic cable only, but their recent trick has been to raise the price of internet only so now I'm saving a whopping $18 over the "bundle" cost and yesterday it was announced that they are planning to drop "basic cable" within 5 years meaning everyone has to rent a box or cable card. IMHO this is desperation...they realize many people simply dont need cable tv anymore.
In convincing my family to cut the cord I tracked channels watched for 3 months...out of the 400+ channels available we watched a grand total of 16 and none of those channels were in the top ten as far as per subscriber costs go. Cable wont adapt to ala carte programming willingly so the only way to convince them is to let them bleed customers...perhaps then they will realize that some money is better than no money. Being simply an internet conduit scares the crap out of the fat cats in the cable industry for too long they have been able to sponge money from pay per view, premium channels, forced bundles, etc and now that those are becoming unneeded there only recourse in their eyes is to go to extreme measures to make having "internet only" a bad deal. Luckily Google is moving here with their fiber network...once that happens I have vowed to never give my cable company another dime.
Shh were all supposed to be apple haters here...google does the same but with them its because they love us and want to protect us.
Look at how many popular bands from the late 70's and early 80's are still around now and still popular. Bands like Aerosmith, Van Halen, ACDC, Pink Floyd, Kiss, Elvis Costello, The Cure, Prince, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders, John Melancamp, Bruce Springsteen, etc...are all still around in one form or another and all still selling well and have huge fan bases. Perhaps this the the time when the RIAA's hypocrisy is fully exposed and the tide turns? While money can be very influential in politics so is a support base...I would imagine that it would be rather easy for artists to enlighten and sway popular opinion. While I know its definitely a difficult fight, ultimately the politicians care about reelection more than how greased their palms get in the short term and going up for reelection as "the guy that screwed over Springsteen" surely isn't going to garner the popular vote, the RIAA may have the money but they dont have the electorate.
Time is always an overlooked factor in handheld gaming, sure games on the Sony and Nintendo handhelds are "deeper" much of the time, but when I have 5 minutes waiting in line or even 30 minutes in a doctors office, I dont want something that is going to take an hour to the next area where I can save or put the game down. With my kids they rarely finished a game anyway so casual stuff works much better.
They are kids accidents happen. My daughter broke her ds when she tripped over the dog in the kitchen...screen snapped off. The DS subsequent devices have been pretty fragile in comparison to the old gameboys and gameboy advance.
The prices and versatility of the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad have all but killed the market when it comes to kids and casual gamers. The versatility makes it more of a useful tool for adults to justify and for kids you can go through 30 games to find one your kid likes cheaper than buying 1 DS cartridge. The quality of iOS games have been steadily improving as well with more and more genres being covered. Even for hardcore gamers there are games with depth showing up that have better multiplayer options and equal gameplay. Some games even look better than anything on the other handhelds. It will be interesting to see what happens with Sony's next handheld offering but I have a feeling that dedicated handheld gaming platforms are going to be a niche product from now on. The only way to really counter that is with pricing and I dont see either sony or nintendo wanting to play that game at all. Nintendo's most reasonable prices stuff are on their download store and the cheapest are 200 points (roughly $2) which sounds reasonable but the stuff in that range generally wouldn't qualify as a demo much less a full game. On the sony side many of the 3rd party games coming out are ports of iOS games at a higher price. I just dont see them being willing or able to compete. The casual war is lost the only thing they can do now is go for the highest specs possible and hope the hardcore can't resist.
So some developers really thought that Amazon was actually going pay them 20% per app downloaded for free out of the kindness of their hearts? Why? How would that possibly benefit Amazon? The way it works now is Amazon eats the hosting costs, and creates thousands of possible "word of mouth" advertising walking billboards...
Between the spam and viruses, perhaps the time has come for some sort of digital postage? Its been discussed and shot down before but its reached a point where the ongoing costs of fighting spam, viruses and malware are outpacing previously proposed pricing for emails. It just seems ridiculous that I end up spending so much time and effort with my clients just trying to keep up with idiots who want to fuck up peoples computers and dealing with the ignorant (who admittedly shouldn't have to know all about that kind of crap) who find new ways to get infected on a seemingly weekly basis. Its not my favorite idea but what else can be done?
After owning all 3 at some point during this generation I've decided its my last console generation....I never thought I could be lured back to PC gaming after a long absence but the wii is just too casual, paying to play online with live is ridiculous considering how little I play multiplayer and Sony's issues up through their dismissal of their network security have made me think that I can really just do without consoles.
Not sure how this is "insightful", I dont know if I'm going to get the 5 or not but after switching from a droid to a captivate and finally to an iphone, I have been quite happy with it and would likely give the 5 the first look if and when I decide its time to upgrade. If it works well and its reliable I dont see a problem with sticking with something you already have experience with.
For some multiplayer is "where the fun is at" but please dont generalize all of us into that category. Many feel that with the current state of gaming, multiplayer is simply an excuse for developers to half-ass storylines and AI.
Most I have discussed this with have talked about this being their last "console generation" if even half of them follow through and go back to pc gaming how do you think the publishers are going to explain away lost sales. Back when I was still console gaming a few years ago I would occasionally buy used games and when good they usually enticed me to buy the next title when it was released. Most that I know that buy used do so because they aren't willing to pay $60 for a game so they wait until it hits a price point they feel comfortable playing and either buy used or new depending on what drops first. I dont see this doing much to raise revenues if anything I see it dropping initial revenues and then maybe if gamers attention spans last long enough increasing the sales when it hits bargain bins.
I dont think that would be gaining marketshare but simply trading it and I would imaging the power user market is far far smaller than the average consumer one. I really dont think Apple cares to be number one or about catering to everyone, they have found a niche and those that have them seem to love them and those that dont are free to find something else.
Roundabouts are great when drivers actually use them as intended the problem is there are too many rude asshats to make them practical. Here where I live there are 6 of them, I cant count the times that I watch people just whip around them without even looking to see if other cars are coming or if there are other cars already waiting to turn into them. I had a guy plow into me at one last year, he claimed that since he had a yield sign at the entrance that meant I was supposed to stop in the middle of the loop for him...actually made the point to argue that in court when he was issued a ticket. Drivers around here are idiots though, thats why we now have stop lights at freeway on ramps...people were too stupid to realize that if you leave no room for cars to merge into traffic eventually you just create enough congestion that no one can go anywhere.
$63 million to $600 million isnt going over budget, its running a scam. What is more perplexing than the current actions is that the govt allowed things to get that out of hand, in most cases when a project goes over budget by more than about 25% there are questions to answer and more often than not firings, beyond that and fraud is brought into question...this should have been figured out about $500 million ago.
Why dont we do one better and to extend protections to the RIAA and others just flat out ban copyrighted material from the internet...we could go back to the days when "lawlessness" ruled the internet but it was also inherently more useful.
Most of the problem with the legalization ballot measure in California was the campaign against it by the Humbolt County types who are currently "legal" growers...basically they pushed hard and begged for support from the public when medical mj was up for vote, but when it was opened up to the idea of real legalization they saw it as potential competition and profit loss, developed a "fuck you I got mine" attitude and turned on those they begged support from to start with.