Hmmm. I don't what can be easier than putting the tape in and pressing play. Surely you're not suggesting that putting a disc in, waiting for the menu screen, and then fiddling with usually poorly-designed menus is easier?
As opposed to, putting the tape in, waiting for it rewind, then pressing play. Then adjusting tracking if necessary. No, wait, just a bit more, OK, now it looks good. Then pressing fast-forward to go over the commercials and trailers, then hit play again when the actual movie starts. Oh, you want to see the scene where hero loses the bad guy in a car chase. OK, I think that's about 25 minutes in... etc.
When VHS/Betamax came out there weren't really any other widely available options for people seeing movies in their homes. Even at $25 (in those days), assuming you weren't talking about titles still in the rental window, that was a novelty.
Laserdisc arrived but was cumbersome, with players pretty expensive in North America and titles not as widely available. There was good jump in technology but it was just not worthwhile for the average consumer.
DVD had a similar jump in technology but actually increasing ease of use over VHS. When DVDs came out, they were at least $20 in stores. I still remember seeing a copy of Universal Soldier on sale for over $50 at Best Buy. But, if you looked online, especially during the.com years in 1998-1999, there were a lot of online retailers selling DVDs for $1 (or less) simply to drive market share and bring in consumers. And while standalone players were expensive, it was becoming more and more common to be able to view your DVDs on laptops or computers. Then the PS2 and Xbox came out and made it even more commonplace. There's at least six pieces of hardware in my house right now that could play a DVD, and not one of them is a stand-alone DVD player.
I don't think the price of the discs is going to be this next generation's hurdle. TVs that properly display HD content are still at least $1000 even after dramatic price drops over the past couple of years. TVs where the average person can tell the difference between DVD and HD content are going to be even more expensive.
But the main thing is plain and simple: What, besides video and audio quality, do BluRay and HD-DVD offer?
Absolutely nothing. It doesn't make DVDs any easier to use. From what I have heard, I don't think they are scratch-proof. You can't easily record, like VHS or Tivo.
There's been an endless parade of products which hawked higher quality without a change in convenience. If quality was everything that mattered, all movies would come with a DTS track, HD adoption would've spread like wildfire, and people would own SACD players and HD-VCRs. I don't think HD on DVD is going to fail. But what is going to happen is that people will only buy it after it's been out a few years and most new DVD players play the other two formats as well. Any studio exec that things that people are going to replace all of their exiting DVDs with BluRay titles should start acting a bit more logically before their unrealistic expectations bit them in the ass.
"While it's hard to blame Take-Two for its reliance on a blockbuster franchise, eventually gamers are likely to tire of the GTA formula, or the games will no longer feel fresh when placed side-by-side with titles that perhaps improve on that formula."
Well, iD seems to be barrelling along just fine on the strength of the same game. Epic is doing Gears of War but that's probably the first non-Unreal game to come out of them in the past 8 years. (To be fair, both of these companies, to my knowledge, derive or derived income by licensing their game engine).
McDonald's seems to be doing OK only selling hamburgers.
Take Two's reliance on a blockbuster franchise is only bad if having one bad game can crumble their company. If they can publish a GTA game that sells only "OK" (say, 1 million copies) and still run the business profitably, then they're fine. Otherwise, they're a bloated company with few cash reserves. GTA is not the problem in that case.
The questions you ask can certainly be ported over to any new job in any industry.
While they may well be making several times their previous salaries in MMORPGs, what happens if the game is simply closed by its manufacturers, or something better comes along that players flock to?
This is no different than working at a restaurant, bar, nightclub or any business which can easily close and has high turnover.
If they can't then map their skills from one game to another, they're suddenly out of luck and out of a job - how sustainable is this sort of job?
That depends on the industry. The MMO world doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. I'm not sure how viable it is to "play" full-time in games like Star Wars, WoW, UO, or EQ, so I am thinking that Second Life's system is for the time being, pretty unique.
However, learning property management in Second Life might give you a leg up in the real world over someone else who has never done it. If you're a reporter, that might help you become a writer for a game rag or a local paper. Second Life is certainly not as good as real experience, but it's better than nothing.
If you're extremely skilled, content you create for games might get you noticed by a developer.
So your choices, besides not doing anything like it ever again, range from working in another MMORPG, doing the same trade but in real life, or working in game development, in that order of realism.
I certainly wouldn't quit my day job simply out of the security it would afford me.
Skill, talent, and hard work are your ultimate job security. If you have those it doesn't matter if your dabbling in freelancing or working for the government, you'll have job security during your entire life.
But what if Sony bought Linden Games? What if now in Second Life you could use Linden Dollars only to buy VAIO laptops, and WEGA TVs, and Walkmen? What if you could only be a punk rocker, surfer, or skateboarder? Would I have any chance at suing Sony for in effect destroying my career?
I wonder if they can take "advergaming" to the next level. What if you worked as a rep for Volvo and got paid to walk around Second Life and asking property owners if you could put up a Volvo billboard? Or if you had a car dealership where real Volvos could be bought (or concept cars).
I just use all the bitmap files that came with Windows 95. Ahh, yes, nothing like a level made up of blue marble and fall leaves.
Re:Nintendo is in trouble with the Revolution
on
Nintendo's New Look
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Your comment is interesting. You mention how awesome the interconnectivity of the 360 is (and you're right). But then you mention enjoying playing "indie" games for $5. With the exception of maybe Mutant Storm Reloaded and maybe Marble Blast Ultra, all the others games are about as non-HD as you can get. You don't need HD to play backgammon, or Bejeweled, or a billiards game, or any of the 1980s Midway arcade ports. You don't need an HDTV to enjoy Geometry Wars. Yet these are the games that are flourishing. Sure, they have some bells and whistles that take advantage of the hardware, but that's just that: bells and whistles. It shows there's a market for fun.
Now imagine something similar to Xbox Live Arcade, only the hardware is 1/3 the price. That could be very good.
You can tell that iTunes is being embraced by everyone when the top-selling songs are "Grillz" by Nelly, "Shake That" by Eminem and "L.O.V.E." by Ashlee Simpson.
The chart is interesting but it seems to focus on a pretty specific subset or group of subsets of the table-top gaming genre. This would be akin to talking about fantasy writing and then just mentioning people who worked on Forgotten Realms books.
Much to my chagrin, Settlers of Catan is mentioned in the summary, but not actually charted. TFA doesn't even mention that game or Klaus Teuber. Ravensburger publishes some of the best games I've ever played. The problem is only a very small fraction of them ever makes it to the US. For those who like easy-to-pick up games that are never the same twice, may I recommend The Amazeing Labyrinth which is sort of a treasure hunt game where the board changes every round.
There's some data which makes sense to have categorized. Say, work by client or project, music by genre/album/artist, photo by subject or date. But at some point you get to documents which you don't need to update often or plain just don't have their own archiving system. I stick all that stuff into a "Miscellaneous" folder which is then organized by month. It's sort of a giant junk drawer. The difference is that I remember when I worked on something and I can find it pretty easily. Anything else I can just use the OS's search or an indexed-search program like Copernic Desktop Search. It's not ideal, but it works for the time being for anything that can't be categorized.
As far as a "storage crisis" that can be resolved pretty easily. With $100 you can get 200+ GB hard drives if you know where to look. By the time you fill one or two of those up, 500 GB hard drives will be that much cheaper. Or, just get in the habit of searching for files over 20MB and deleting them if you don't think you'll need them again.
What's funny about Xbox Live is that the features that are standard now on most 360 games (Online leaderboards) are the ones where Microsoft needs to pay to keep information. In some games, like Project Gotham Racing 3, you can actually see videos of the top players getting those records, so you know exactly how they got it. However, these are features you get no matter what version of Xbox Live you have (Silver, which is free, or Gold). Microsoft actually charges more for the things that, ideally, could be done for free - that is, playing other players online.
Honestly, the $50 a year bothered me a hell of a lot when I first heard about it. As an oft PC gamer I thought it was too my right to be able to play a console online without having to pay. I held out for a while. Eventually, I got a 60-day trial and was so hooked on it that I didn't mind paying $50. It's less than $5 a month and I play it enough to make it worth it. This argument is not too different from the arguments against monthly fees for MMORPGs. It's not innately bad or good, it's just a business model. Time and the market will determine which are feasible and which are not.
If the PS3 has a DVR, that's no doubt a great thing to many people. If you see TV over regular coax cable or have over-the-air HDTV reception, this will be great. However, there's a ton of people who have subscribers (DirectTV, Comcast, Time-Warner, Dish) where AFAIK the only way to see expanded and/or HD content is through that content provider's digital set-top box.
The two workarounds would be to have inputs and outputs to record the content (analog) or to have a Cable Card slot. But Cable Cards usually have monthly fees attached to them about equal in price to the fees for the content provider's DVR.
What strikes me as interesting is that Sony wants people to believe that you can happily move around movies, music, TV shows to and from your PS3 and your PSP. Yet this same company is the one that doesn't let you rip CDs that you've already bought. What Sony is not saying is that you can move your purchased content around. (See Sony's answer to iTMS). I can't see this being an easy, open way to move around your media. Not with Sony.
Also, if consumers really wanted DVRs with their game machines, the PSX would've been a huge hit that Sony would've brought to territories outside of Japan.
Oh, and I hate to say it, but it's a good 99% bet in my experience that if you don't know how to code or program, you do not have it all figured out. But hey, it's your dime.
I have a similar background to the submitter, but not his problem. I know enough about code that I know I hate it. Anything beyond simple scripting gets tedious. Luckily, I have a smidgen of experience (an intro to C++ class, some db design) so it helps me to know what is "easy" and what is "hard" -- that way I can still talk to about programming without knowing a lot of the technical details.
On the other hand, if you're a developer, it's a great asset if you can communicate technical requirements and limitations that can be understood in plain english.
To take this analogy a bit further, he's not the one in charge of suing other companies over silly patent disputes. He's not even the manager hiring the attorneys.
It's a war, but he's not the soldier killing others. He's not even the person directing the soldiers. He's just a guy working on the trigger mechanism for a gun that will eventually find itself in the hands of soldiers.
I say keep working at it, get some patents under your belt, then see if you can change the system from within once you're high up enough. Part of making the "right" decision is to know what time to make it. You'll have a lot more influence once you're on management or upper management's level as opposed to being one of the worker bees. Quitting or saying something now just gets rid of any chance of change that you could make.
It only takes a journalist with half a brain to do a little bit of research: 2005 was bad because 2004 was great, especially the fourth quarter. Think of it: Halo 2, GTA: San Andreas, World of Warcraft, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, not to mention The Sims series. And the first three all came out at the end of Q4 2004.
Another effect, especially on the fourth quarter, is EA buying out the NFL and Players Inc. killing off Sega's NFL2K series. The result? In 2004, Madden '05 sold approximately 4.1MM units for the PS2 and Xbox (2.9 and 1.2 respectively). In 2004, NFL2K5 sold about 2.5MM units (albeit at a lower price). In 2005, Madden '06 sold somewhere around 4MM units, more or less, basically letting EA shoot the video game industry in the foot.
Who knows if the negative media attention on video games had anything to do with it? I don't think it prompted any changes among Slashdot (or, say, Penny Arcade) readers, but who knows if some parents maybe cut out some purchases and tried to go a more wholesome route this year?
And why doesn't anyone talk about multi-year trends. It seems a bit ridiculous to forecast some sort of overall collapse based on a single quarter's results.
I'm usually wary of people who don't trust doctors or medicines or seem a bit "New Agey" -- which I thought was where your post was heading. But what you say certainly makes sense. As much as I hate referencing Flavor-of-the-Month self-help guides, I did read a passage in one that was very revealing.
It basically broke down tasks like this: A task is either important or not important. Then, a task is also either urgent or not urgent. Things like taking care of your health are not urgent (until it's too late) and are also important. But it is unlikely for anyone to do anything about it because health and your physical, mental, and social condition is determined usually over a span of decades. So people spend more time on things that are urgent, regardless of whether they are important (paying bills) or not important (catching the most recent episode of a TV series).
But the parent is right. If you're depending on energy drinks more than once a month to make it through basic tasks then you need to get more rest. And that's the only solution. I personally avoid having any caffeine after lunch, as it usually stays in my system for a long time and I'd rather be tired and sleepy than tired and awake when bedtime rolls around.
Reading John Perry Barlow's extremely optimistic Wired article "Africa Rising" leads us to believe Africa may be able to leapfrog the whole wires-in-the-ground thing. That it will be suddenly a market so large that Microsoft not having its tentacles in it would cause serious economic concern for them is laughable. I hope for the best too, but I don't see that happening in the next ten years. This at least, coming from speaking with people who actually lived in Africa.
Well let's make a few assumptions after we get some facts out of the way.
The RIAA, for 2004, reported about $12BN in total music sales, including CDs, Cassettes, Vinyl LPs, and any other form of physical media. (Note: According to the RIAA, the average CD sold for $14.90 --- that's tremendously high!) This does not include any download sales, nor does it include concerts, artist merchandise, licensing songs for movies, commercials, etc. This is basically what American consumers gave to the RIAA.
(Note: I do not know if independent record sales are included here. For example, your local band, etc. For the intents and purposes of this argument, we are going to assume that your local band "gets it" and has several of their songs available on MP3 on their website).
Now, the U.S. has about 295 million people now and 21% of them are under 15 years of age. So let's say there's about 233 million people who bear the economic burden of buying music, whether for themselves or for the under-15 age group. Then, on average, each person in this 233 million subset spends roughly $52 a year on music, or a little under $4.50 per month.
Conversely, if everyone in this subset were to pay $4 per month on this new all-you-can-eat system, you'd be left with "only" $11 billion in revenues for music sales. The questions, then, are as follows:
Will there still be $1 billion in music sales even if you can download for "free"?
Would the RIAA make everyone pay, or just those who want to? If the average person spends $4.50 per month on music, I would think the heavy users of this new system would be those on the top % of users, those who don't blink at spending $100-$200 per month on CDs. Likewise, if its optional, its feasible to say that many who don't pay a lot for music now will suddenly want to do that.
How do CD costs factor into this? Surely, the manufacturing and printing is part of the cost. That won't exist anymore if there's no CD, right? Depending on your source (CNN, Rolling Stone), the physical costs of making and shipping CD are somewhere between $1 and $2. So, realistically, you'd be looking at cost savings of $1-$1.5 billion at least, if all CDs were gone. Whether online or offline, there will still be retailer markup (Best Buy vs. iTMS), distribution (servers, bandwidth), etc. I would imagine these costs would be lower too.
How would artists be compensated? Does their share of downloads cut into the overall pie?
Will labels cut costs and reduce their overhead? Will this make them more able to gamble on smaller artists?
My main problem with this $4-unlimited-no-DRM "tax" that everyone pays is that it then very directly defines the revenue stream for record labels. They have X people paying a $4 "tax" to hear music, we know our sales will be at least this much. Where is the economic incentive for them to cut costs? How do they decide when it's a good year or a bad year if they have a set amount of income always coming in?
It's been roughly six years since Napster et. al. has affected the music industry. I'm not siding with the labels here, but when CD-single sales drop 95%+ in a decade there are definite strong external factors at work here; file-sharing is only one of them. It may take another six years or more for a functional, workable system to emerge. It is asinine to believe that large companies (Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Time-Warner) won't be in control of this. I just hope the artists get a bit more out if it next time around.
You hit the nail on the head. The OP is unfortunately asking a very broad question. It's like asking, "Do businesses need a website?" Depends on the business. Most could at least benefit. As far as mobile friendly websites, what's wrong with making a small, from-scratch HTML with just the basics? Contact info, directions, a news item or two. I would say people using mobile devices need access to information quickly. Graphics/etc shouldn't matter too much... for the time being.
Funny that it's the Revolution getting attention for this. I remember a couple of games (especially driving/racing games) that could be played on the N64 using only one hand.
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to, putting the tape in, waiting for it rewind, then pressing play. Then adjusting tracking if necessary. No, wait, just a bit more, OK, now it looks good. Then pressing fast-forward to go over the commercials and trailers, then hit play again when the actual movie starts. Oh, you want to see the scene where hero loses the bad guy in a car chase. OK, I think that's about 25 minutes in... etc.
Yes, I am suggesting it's easier.
The question is "Is it worth it?"
.com years in 1998-1999, there were a lot of online retailers selling DVDs for $1 (or less) simply to drive market share and bring in consumers. And while standalone players were expensive, it was becoming more and more common to be able to view your DVDs on laptops or computers. Then the PS2 and Xbox came out and made it even more commonplace. There's at least six pieces of hardware in my house right now that could play a DVD, and not one of them is a stand-alone DVD player.
When VHS/Betamax came out there weren't really any other widely available options for people seeing movies in their homes. Even at $25 (in those days), assuming you weren't talking about titles still in the rental window, that was a novelty.
Laserdisc arrived but was cumbersome, with players pretty expensive in North America and titles not as widely available. There was good jump in technology but it was just not worthwhile for the average consumer.
DVD had a similar jump in technology but actually increasing ease of use over VHS. When DVDs came out, they were at least $20 in stores. I still remember seeing a copy of Universal Soldier on sale for over $50 at Best Buy. But, if you looked online, especially during the
I don't think the price of the discs is going to be this next generation's hurdle. TVs that properly display HD content are still at least $1000 even after dramatic price drops over the past couple of years. TVs where the average person can tell the difference between DVD and HD content are going to be even more expensive.
But the main thing is plain and simple: What, besides video and audio quality, do BluRay and HD-DVD offer?
Absolutely nothing. It doesn't make DVDs any easier to use. From what I have heard, I don't think they are scratch-proof. You can't easily record, like VHS or Tivo.
There's been an endless parade of products which hawked higher quality without a change in convenience. If quality was everything that mattered, all movies would come with a DTS track, HD adoption would've spread like wildfire, and people would own SACD players and HD-VCRs. I don't think HD on DVD is going to fail. But what is going to happen is that people will only buy it after it's been out a few years and most new DVD players play the other two formats as well. Any studio exec that things that people are going to replace all of their exiting DVDs with BluRay titles should start acting a bit more logically before their unrealistic expectations bit them in the ass.
Well, iD seems to be barrelling along just fine on the strength of the same game. Epic is doing Gears of War but that's probably the first non-Unreal game to come out of them in the past 8 years. (To be fair, both of these companies, to my knowledge, derive or derived income by licensing their game engine).
McDonald's seems to be doing OK only selling hamburgers.
Take Two's reliance on a blockbuster franchise is only bad if having one bad game can crumble their company. If they can publish a GTA game that sells only "OK" (say, 1 million copies) and still run the business profitably, then they're fine. Otherwise, they're a bloated company with few cash reserves. GTA is not the problem in that case.
This is no different than working at a restaurant, bar, nightclub or any business which can easily close and has high turnover.
That depends on the industry. The MMO world doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. I'm not sure how viable it is to "play" full-time in games like Star Wars, WoW, UO, or EQ, so I am thinking that Second Life's system is for the time being, pretty unique.
However, learning property management in Second Life might give you a leg up in the real world over someone else who has never done it. If you're a reporter, that might help you become a writer for a game rag or a local paper. Second Life is certainly not as good as real experience, but it's better than nothing.
If you're extremely skilled, content you create for games might get you noticed by a developer.
So your choices, besides not doing anything like it ever again, range from working in another MMORPG, doing the same trade but in real life, or working in game development, in that order of realism.
Skill, talent, and hard work are your ultimate job security. If you have those it doesn't matter if your dabbling in freelancing or working for the government, you'll have job security during your entire life.
But what if Sony bought Linden Games? What if now in Second Life you could use Linden Dollars only to buy VAIO laptops, and WEGA TVs, and Walkmen? What if you could only be a punk rocker, surfer, or skateboarder? Would I have any chance at suing Sony for in effect destroying my career?
I wonder if they can take "advergaming" to the next level. What if you worked as a rep for Volvo and got paid to walk around Second Life and asking property owners if you could put up a Volvo billboard? Or if you had a car dealership where real Volvos could be bought (or concept cars).
What next? Microsoft makes software for Apple? Apple switches to UNIX? Apple uses Intel for processors?
This story is ludicrous!
I just use all the bitmap files that came with Windows 95. Ahh, yes, nothing like a level made up of blue marble and fall leaves.
Your comment is interesting. You mention how awesome the interconnectivity of the 360 is (and you're right). But then you mention enjoying playing "indie" games for $5. With the exception of maybe Mutant Storm Reloaded and maybe Marble Blast Ultra, all the others games are about as non-HD as you can get. You don't need HD to play backgammon, or Bejeweled, or a billiards game, or any of the 1980s Midway arcade ports. You don't need an HDTV to enjoy Geometry Wars. Yet these are the games that are flourishing. Sure, they have some bells and whistles that take advantage of the hardware, but that's just that: bells and whistles. It shows there's a market for fun.
Now imagine something similar to Xbox Live Arcade, only the hardware is 1/3 the price. That could be very good.
You can tell that iTunes is being embraced by everyone when the top-selling songs are "Grillz" by Nelly, "Shake That" by Eminem and "L.O.V.E." by Ashlee Simpson.
The chart is interesting but it seems to focus on a pretty specific subset or group of subsets of the table-top gaming genre. This would be akin to talking about fantasy writing and then just mentioning people who worked on Forgotten Realms books.
Much to my chagrin, Settlers of Catan is mentioned in the summary, but not actually charted. TFA doesn't even mention that game or Klaus Teuber. Ravensburger publishes some of the best games I've ever played. The problem is only a very small fraction of them ever makes it to the US. For those who like easy-to-pick up games that are never the same twice, may I recommend The Amazeing Labyrinth which is sort of a treasure hunt game where the board changes every round.
There's some data which makes sense to have categorized. Say, work by client or project, music by genre/album/artist, photo by subject or date. But at some point you get to documents which you don't need to update often or plain just don't have their own archiving system. I stick all that stuff into a "Miscellaneous" folder which is then organized by month. It's sort of a giant junk drawer. The difference is that I remember when I worked on something and I can find it pretty easily. Anything else I can just use the OS's search or an indexed-search program like Copernic Desktop Search. It's not ideal, but it works for the time being for anything that can't be categorized.
As far as a "storage crisis" that can be resolved pretty easily. With $100 you can get 200+ GB hard drives if you know where to look. By the time you fill one or two of those up, 500 GB hard drives will be that much cheaper. Or, just get in the habit of searching for files over 20MB and deleting them if you don't think you'll need them again.
It better run on Ubuntu!
The results will all be the same: The nearest toilette.
What's funny about Xbox Live is that the features that are standard now on most 360 games (Online leaderboards) are the ones where Microsoft needs to pay to keep information. In some games, like Project Gotham Racing 3, you can actually see videos of the top players getting those records, so you know exactly how they got it. However, these are features you get no matter what version of Xbox Live you have (Silver, which is free, or Gold). Microsoft actually charges more for the things that, ideally, could be done for free - that is, playing other players online.
Honestly, the $50 a year bothered me a hell of a lot when I first heard about it. As an oft PC gamer I thought it was too my right to be able to play a console online without having to pay. I held out for a while. Eventually, I got a 60-day trial and was so hooked on it that I didn't mind paying $50. It's less than $5 a month and I play it enough to make it worth it. This argument is not too different from the arguments against monthly fees for MMORPGs. It's not innately bad or good, it's just a business model. Time and the market will determine which are feasible and which are not.
If the PS3 has a DVR, that's no doubt a great thing to many people. If you see TV over regular coax cable or have over-the-air HDTV reception, this will be great. However, there's a ton of people who have subscribers (DirectTV, Comcast, Time-Warner, Dish) where AFAIK the only way to see expanded and/or HD content is through that content provider's digital set-top box.
The two workarounds would be to have inputs and outputs to record the content (analog) or to have a Cable Card slot. But Cable Cards usually have monthly fees attached to them about equal in price to the fees for the content provider's DVR.
What strikes me as interesting is that Sony wants people to believe that you can happily move around movies, music, TV shows to and from your PS3 and your PSP. Yet this same company is the one that doesn't let you rip CDs that you've already bought. What Sony is not saying is that you can move your purchased content around. (See Sony's answer to iTMS). I can't see this being an easy, open way to move around your media. Not with Sony.
Also, if consumers really wanted DVRs with their game machines, the PSX would've been a huge hit that Sony would've brought to territories outside of Japan.
I have a similar background to the submitter, but not his problem. I know enough about code that I know I hate it. Anything beyond simple scripting gets tedious. Luckily, I have a smidgen of experience (an intro to C++ class, some db design) so it helps me to know what is "easy" and what is "hard" -- that way I can still talk to about programming without knowing a lot of the technical details.
On the other hand, if you're a developer, it's a great asset if you can communicate technical requirements and limitations that can be understood in plain english.
I find it funny that this is a front-page article that appears a few days after the article praising Geometry Wars to no end.
To take this analogy a bit further, he's not the one in charge of suing other companies over silly patent disputes. He's not even the manager hiring the attorneys.
It's a war, but he's not the soldier killing others. He's not even the person directing the soldiers. He's just a guy working on the trigger mechanism for a gun that will eventually find itself in the hands of soldiers.
I say keep working at it, get some patents under your belt, then see if you can change the system from within once you're high up enough. Part of making the "right" decision is to know what time to make it. You'll have a lot more influence once you're on management or upper management's level as opposed to being one of the worker bees. Quitting or saying something now just gets rid of any chance of change that you could make.
It only takes a journalist with half a brain to do a little bit of research: 2005 was bad because 2004 was great, especially the fourth quarter. Think of it: Halo 2, GTA: San Andreas, World of Warcraft, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, not to mention The Sims series. And the first three all came out at the end of Q4 2004.
Another effect, especially on the fourth quarter, is EA buying out the NFL and Players Inc. killing off Sega's NFL2K series. The result? In 2004, Madden '05 sold approximately 4.1MM units for the PS2 and Xbox (2.9 and 1.2 respectively). In 2004, NFL2K5 sold about 2.5MM units (albeit at a lower price). In 2005, Madden '06 sold somewhere around 4MM units, more or less, basically letting EA shoot the video game industry in the foot.
Who knows if the negative media attention on video games had anything to do with it? I don't think it prompted any changes among Slashdot (or, say, Penny Arcade) readers, but who knows if some parents maybe cut out some purchases and tried to go a more wholesome route this year?
And why doesn't anyone talk about multi-year trends. It seems a bit ridiculous to forecast some sort of overall collapse based on a single quarter's results.
Careful. That's the kind of attitude that could put you in charge of editing Slashdot!
It is possible that some Firefox users, like me, have stopped using the internet altogether.
I'm usually wary of people who don't trust doctors or medicines or seem a bit "New Agey" -- which I thought was where your post was heading. But what you say certainly makes sense. As much as I hate referencing Flavor-of-the-Month self-help guides, I did read a passage in one that was very revealing.
It basically broke down tasks like this: A task is either important or not important. Then, a task is also either urgent or not urgent. Things like taking care of your health are not urgent (until it's too late) and are also important. But it is unlikely for anyone to do anything about it because health and your physical, mental, and social condition is determined usually over a span of decades. So people spend more time on things that are urgent, regardless of whether they are important (paying bills) or not important (catching the most recent episode of a TV series).
But the parent is right. If you're depending on energy drinks more than once a month to make it through basic tasks then you need to get more rest. And that's the only solution. I personally avoid having any caffeine after lunch, as it usually stays in my system for a long time and I'd rather be tired and sleepy than tired and awake when bedtime rolls around.
Reading John Perry Barlow's extremely optimistic Wired article "Africa Rising" leads us to believe Africa may be able to leapfrog the whole wires-in-the-ground thing. That it will be suddenly a market so large that Microsoft not having its tentacles in it would cause serious economic concern for them is laughable. I hope for the best too, but I don't see that happening in the next ten years. This at least, coming from speaking with people who actually lived in Africa.
The RIAA, for 2004, reported about $12BN in total music sales, including CDs, Cassettes, Vinyl LPs, and any other form of physical media. (Note: According to the RIAA, the average CD sold for $14.90 --- that's tremendously high!) This does not include any download sales, nor does it include concerts, artist merchandise, licensing songs for movies, commercials, etc. This is basically what American consumers gave to the RIAA.
(Note: I do not know if independent record sales are included here. For example, your local band, etc. For the intents and purposes of this argument, we are going to assume that your local band "gets it" and has several of their songs available on MP3 on their website).
Now, the U.S. has about 295 million people now and 21% of them are under 15 years of age. So let's say there's about 233 million people who bear the economic burden of buying music, whether for themselves or for the under-15 age group. Then, on average, each person in this 233 million subset spends roughly $52 a year on music, or a little under $4.50 per month.
Conversely, if everyone in this subset were to pay $4 per month on this new all-you-can-eat system, you'd be left with "only" $11 billion in revenues for music sales. The questions, then, are as follows:
My main problem with this $4-unlimited-no-DRM "tax" that everyone pays is that it then very directly defines the revenue stream for record labels. They have X people paying a $4 "tax" to hear music, we know our sales will be at least this much. Where is the economic incentive for them to cut costs? How do they decide when it's a good year or a bad year if they have a set amount of income always coming in?
It's been roughly six years since Napster et. al. has affected the music industry. I'm not siding with the labels here, but when CD-single sales drop 95%+ in a decade there are definite strong external factors at work here; file-sharing is only one of them. It may take another six years or more for a functional, workable system to emerge. It is asinine to believe that large companies (Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Time-Warner) won't be in control of this. I just hope the artists get a bit more out if it next time around.
You hit the nail on the head. The OP is unfortunately asking a very broad question. It's like asking, "Do businesses need a website?" Depends on the business. Most could at least benefit. As far as mobile friendly websites, what's wrong with making a small, from-scratch HTML with just the basics? Contact info, directions, a news item or two. I would say people using mobile devices need access to information quickly. Graphics/etc shouldn't matter too much... for the time being.
Funny that it's the Revolution getting attention for this. I remember a couple of games (especially driving/racing games) that could be played on the N64 using only one hand.
And there's always Duck Hunt.