No, CDs will not die off. At least not quite yet. There is something more rewarding about having an LP or a CD as opposed to pointing to a folder which represents a a few sectors of your hard drive in such an order that they can play 'Blueberry Hill'.
DVDs have been able to be downloaded quickly and easily for the past couple of years, but you're right, burners are not the norm yet. At the very least, you will still want to back up your music.
I still buy a LOT of CDs. My appetite for new music is insatiable to only several degrees below financial ruin. I usually buy the CD, convert it to MP3, then listen to that. I'm still uncomfortable buying albums on iTunes because, well, I just paid money for a file. Paying $0.99 for Guerilla Black's 'Compton' is basically a drop in the hat, so I don't mind. But I'd rather keep "important" works in a format which is at least already backed up. Even if I keep all my CD cases in a box in the basement and all my discs in binders.
The problem then, is not so much with CDs as it is with iTunes - economically, it makes sense - but for $0.99 I'd like to get more than what amounts to a really good FM recording.
Not informed, so I will take wild, stabbing guesses:
I first noticed that they had different publishers... Maybe for whatever reason he could change the title and sell it with someone else? I mean 'The Professor' and 'The Surgeon' almost have the same damn cover!
As far as 'The Meaning' my guess is that Mr. Winchester spent a very long time putting together all kinds of information on the OED as he was researching for 'The Professor' and decided, "Hey, I'll write a book based on this too."
Considering that the other two are not as popular or well-known I guess that these tomes were made for completists. Personally, I wouldn't mind reading more from the architectural side of 'The Devil in the White City' -- the serial killer thing was a bit overdone by the end.
Of course, this is nothing compared to Michael Crichton whose books, for the most part, end in everything blowing up. State of Fear? Check. Prey? Check. Jurassic Park? Check. Congo? Check. Sphere? Check (I think)...and the list goes on...
"...He did not give any indication about what specific subgenre the game would fall under or what platforms it would be released for."
That's ok. That's what the millions of uninformed "experts" spouting vague conjecture on internet forums are for.
I personally know for a fact* that the new game will "employ massive scalability, breathtaking 3D environments taking place in a rich story-based realm, immersive best-of-breed interactive e-benchmarks, and breasts."
Why yes, I did just concieve that using eBizWeb's Game Press Release Maker Gold v1.5! Why do you ask?
* factn. Reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; speculation or supposition
$distributors were given money by investors to convince business to switch to this solution. Business still have a choice of going with $distributor and having support etc. or running an OS without a company backing it. Businesses like having someone they can call when something goes wrong.
If the products were all the same, then business, or rather, "the market" would gravitate towards the free solution. But there's a reason everyone didn't just go to Debian.org and get what they needed. Hell, you can BUY Debian if you want. To someone, it is worth $14.99, and there's a business model based on it.
It would be an entirely other thing if $distributor tried to pretend that $free_version didn't exist, but as far as I know, that hasn't been the case.
The trend is not moving in the direction of having only cell phones. The trend is moving into being easier to contact, having your own number, and not paying extra for long distance.
In any large enough WiFi area (say, the proposal in Philadelphia), VOIP becomes cellular. Cellular still has problems of dropped calls, bad signals, bad quality, high expense, and many other things. If you live anywhere outside of the Eastern corridor or major metropolitan areas you find out that no service is 100% reliable nationwide.
If I was in college now, I would see more value from a $25 VOIP box than from a $50 cellphone. Or I might not.
The answer is going to be the company that puts both of those together into one product, hardware and software wise. When you're home, you talk on your wireless phone over VOIP. In the middle of a call you realize you have to pick up some milk and drive away. You begin to be out of range for VOIP, cellular kicks in. On the way back to the store, you get another call on the same phone. Cellular minutes start counting. Once you park, VOIP is in range and kicks in.
A very similar system to this already existed in Germany five years ago. Don't ask me why it's not been in the U.S. since then.
Remember, it's not about VOIP vs. Telephone. It's just plain communications. Smart companies will build based on that, not specific technologies.
Well, updates were a bit dicey. Today I noticed a green glowing thing in the top right-hand corner of Firefox. Being an idiot, I simply clicked on it. It says "Updates are available!" -- it downloaded them, upgraded my plug-in (Homeland Security Threat Level), and everything works A-O-K.
My question is, why didn't they make this a little bit more obvious? Not a splash screen but maybe something that appears the first X times. How else would I have known Firefox was ready to update? Especially when "I" am Joe User?
It was my understanding that in your country, there is some sort of backwards or ironic relationship between yourself and the ice-cream. The ice-cream is the consumer perhaps?
I'm not sure, I have to check my Meme History book.
Unfortunately, value is simply the aggregate of all current and future profits. You can't talk about a company's value without talking about stock price which is based on profitability. To wit:
"Good will, happy customers, and a reputation for practicing enlightened ethics all
[prevent loss of profit through civil suits or torts]."
Keep in mind "good will" and "happy customers" are all means to profit. The only reason that not every company practices it is because they are very difficult to implement and achieve in the short term and they don't guarantee profitability. If they had an immediate short-term effect (1 year) and they guaranteed profits, everyone would do it.
We're going to have a Supreme Court case arguing either what Is is?* Or, to be more direct, you need to argue that Is is not IsNot? But then if IsNot is something, then it Is something?
Well, something is going to happen. Alone in the Dark is on track to lose $5-10m, even estimating the market abroad and home video. At some point, Uwe will need to turn a significant profit. Otherwise he's not going to be making too many movies. I mean, you don't see Cimino making too many movies.
On the other hand, say you're a game publisher and Uwe Boll comes up to you and wants to buy your film. You know it will forever tie your game to something really really terrible. Yet they still say yes. So, the publishers are at fault too.
I wanted to do that as well and call it the "1995" skin. Instead I just did this: FD1995. I think most good web page design is a mix between knowledge of organization / spacing / interface, good coding, good visual design. Most people are good at one, if any.
"We" are not being ruled more by corporations. The employees are "ruled" by corporations, and in most economies, you've got a nice* at-will system. Microsoft terminated their own jobs**, not the Danish government's. If I was the Danish government, I would switch to Linux within the next 24 months so they've got less MS power hanging over their head.
So what do you do as an employer? If I worked for a company so interested in their own profit that they would revoke any involvement with stakeholders (employees, government/community) I'd be concerned -- as it's a sign that they are less than ethical. At that point, each individual could leave. BUT -- most individuals put ethics below their own paychecks and that's why these companies can continue doing what they're doing.
Remember, corporations are a distinct legal entity but in sociological terms they are an aggregate of people, that's all.
If we're ruled by anything, it's money. It may not be the #1 ruler in your world, but it plays a big role. If it doesn't, send me $10,000.:)
* Economically, it's nice, because it makes for more free market. In reality, most companies don't fire people for no reason, at least not individually. Most people too, leave two week's notice so they don't screw over their employer. It's not perfect, but it's better than unionized labor for most professions.
I completely forgot about that one in my post. A friend had a Saturn but I didn't know anyone else with one. I actually own one now that someone left for me, and all they have is like Zombie Kill Patrol or something along those lines. So you can understand why I have selectively forgotten it.:)
I think even if the Dreamcast could play Saturn games, it would not have made a very big difference. The Saturn was a bit too Japanese for most U.S. consumers and didn't really have a very good game library for Americans. Now that I give it some further thought, there aren't too many games which nowadays are "must have" that are not at least on one other console. I still only own Twisted Metal: Black and Katamari Damacy because for every other PS2 game, I could simply wait for the Xbox version to come out - and I'm casual enough of a gamer to not really know about some of the more esoteric PS2 games which I am missing out on.
At this point, I'm glad that the consoles are spaced out so that, if I really wanted to, I could buy both the Xbox 2 and the PS3 without any major strain on my budget without having to decide on picking only one of them.
Well, Sega had some major issues with the Dreamcast. (The "Edge" here is Xbox vs. PS3).
First off, it was NOT a DVD player. The PS2 arrived at a critical time where a lot of younger folk still had not had a DVD player and you couldn't get many DVD players under the $100-150 range. So, presto, you buy a $249 console (or whatever it was), and now you've got a DVD player as well. Edge: Slightly Sony. The PS2 might have next-gen DVD media, but who has the hardware to support it? Unless next-gen displays come down to earth levels ($1,000-$4,000) no one will care to adopt this. See, for example, SACD.
Second, by the time the Dreamcast was out in the US, the PS2 was only a month or two away from being released in Japan. Had Sega really hit the market a year before, they could've gobbled up a lot of market share from the aging, ailing N64 and PS1. But when "9-9-99" hit everyone had seen the PS2 videos and knew what was around the corner. Edge: Unknown. This all has to do with expectations. In 1999, everyone knew the PS2 would be insane. Will the PS3 be "insane" compared to the Xbox 2? We'll know this year.
Third, the Dreamcast had no backwards compatibility (to what? the Sega CD?). The PS2 did, so automatically you had a very nice, large game library to play with. Edge: Unknown. Sony, I assume, will have PS1 and PS2 compatability in the PS3. The jury is still out on Xbox 2 having backwards compatibility.
Fourth, EA did not have EA Sports on the Dreamcast. You couldn't play Madden or NBA Live. Now, for most people here, these are non-titles. But a very very large amount of people play these, and face it, Sega didn't have it. If EA continues with Microsoft, the Xbox 2 will have a market advantage come this fall. If you want to play the cool sports games, you need to get the Xbox 2, or settle with the slower version on the PS2. Edge: Microsoft.
I don't think it's plausible that Sony will go the way of Nintendo or Sega. At the same time, I can't see Microsoft getting out of the home gaming market. What IS interesting is the issue of piracy. It greatly affected the Dreamcast and the Xbox, neither did well. But (until recently), that was not the case with the PS2, nor the case with Gamecube. So it doesn't seem to be a primary effect on market position.
I think it is realistic to say that Nintendo will NOT be getting the top spot and will be a No. 2 or No. 3 competitor.
So, no, I would not place any bets on Sony being guaranteed to win. I'm not biased either, I have both systems (and got them both well after release).
I saw this on Google News this morning and wondered why Slashdot hadn't picked up on it already. As soon as I read the headline and the article, I began to wonder... How safe is this to do this research?
I'm not talking about the safety of recipients once this goes into the real-world (although that can be alarming), but about the research itself.
I'm pretty far removed from science in any practical setting, but what are the procedures for this kind of research? I've seen too many movies like 28 Days Later to not imagine some accident or oversight to cause some sort of mutant airborne HIV.
Also, does HIV even infect mice? I know there's a human/ape HIV and a feline HIV but I had not hear of mice HIV. Think of some sewer rat biting you...
That's just my mid-day alarmist self. Note I'm not against the research, just wondering about it...
Slashdot Mirror
Way to generalise based on your own experience...
No, CDs will not die off. At least not quite yet. There is something more rewarding about having an LP or a CD as opposed to pointing to a folder which represents a a few sectors of your hard drive in such an order that they can play 'Blueberry Hill'.
DVDs have been able to be downloaded quickly and easily for the past couple of years, but you're right, burners are not the norm yet. At the very least, you will still want to back up your music.
I still buy a LOT of CDs. My appetite for new music is insatiable to only several degrees below financial ruin. I usually buy the CD, convert it to MP3, then listen to that. I'm still uncomfortable buying albums on iTunes because, well, I just paid money for a file. Paying $0.99 for Guerilla Black's 'Compton' is basically a drop in the hat, so I don't mind. But I'd rather keep "important" works in a format which is at least already backed up. Even if I keep all my CD cases in a box in the basement and all my discs in binders.
The problem then, is not so much with CDs as it is with iTunes - economically, it makes sense - but for $0.99 I'd like to get more than what amounts to a really good FM recording.
Not informed, so I will take wild, stabbing guesses:
..and the list goes on...
I first noticed that they had different publishers... Maybe for whatever reason he could change the title and sell it with someone else? I mean 'The Professor' and 'The Surgeon' almost have the same damn cover!
As far as 'The Meaning' my guess is that Mr. Winchester spent a very long time putting together all kinds of information on the OED as he was researching for 'The Professor' and decided, "Hey, I'll write a book based on this too."
Considering that the other two are not as popular or well-known I guess that these tomes were made for completists. Personally, I wouldn't mind reading more from the architectural side of 'The Devil in the White City' -- the serial killer thing was a bit overdone by the end.
Of course, this is nothing compared to Michael Crichton whose books, for the most part, end in everything blowing up.
State of Fear? Check.
Prey? Check.
Jurassic Park? Check.
Congo? Check.
Sphere? Check (I think).
I'm too busy right now to contribute. But... as soon as I enter the asylum again rest assured I will continue contributing as I did before!
That's ok. That's what the millions of uninformed "experts" spouting vague conjecture on internet forums are for.
I personally know for a fact* that the new game will "employ massive scalability, breathtaking 3D environments taking place in a rich story-based realm, immersive best-of-breed interactive e-benchmarks, and breasts."
Why yes, I did just concieve that using eBizWeb's Game Press Release Maker Gold v1.5! Why do you ask?
* fact n. Reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; speculation or supposition
Other side of the coin:
$distributors were given money by investors to convince business to switch to this solution. Business still have a choice of going with $distributor and having support etc. or running an OS without a company backing it. Businesses like having someone they can call when something goes wrong.
If the products were all the same, then business, or rather, "the market" would gravitate towards the free solution. But there's a reason everyone didn't just go to Debian.org and get what they needed. Hell, you can BUY Debian if you want. To someone, it is worth $14.99, and there's a business model based on it.
It would be an entirely other thing if $distributor tried to pretend that $free_version didn't exist, but as far as I know, that hasn't been the case.
The trend is not moving in the direction of having only cell phones. The trend is moving into being easier to contact, having your own number, and not paying extra for long distance.
In any large enough WiFi area (say, the proposal in Philadelphia), VOIP becomes cellular. Cellular still has problems of dropped calls, bad signals, bad quality, high expense, and many other things. If you live anywhere outside of the Eastern corridor or major metropolitan areas you find out that no service is 100% reliable nationwide.
If I was in college now, I would see more value from a $25 VOIP box than from a $50 cellphone. Or I might not.
The answer is going to be the company that puts both of those together into one product, hardware and software wise. When you're home, you talk on your wireless phone over VOIP. In the middle of a call you realize you have to pick up some milk and drive away. You begin to be out of range for VOIP, cellular kicks in. On the way back to the store, you get another call on the same phone. Cellular minutes start counting. Once you park, VOIP is in range and kicks in.
A very similar system to this already existed in Germany five years ago. Don't ask me why it's not been in the U.S. since then.
Remember, it's not about VOIP vs. Telephone. It's just plain communications. Smart companies will build based on that, not specific technologies.
You're right. It looks like it was done by Mattel.
To be fair, the VirtuaBoy was never a VR headset, more of a VR table decoration you can look into.
Also, you forgot the Power Glove and the action/jumping pad from the late 1980s.
Sega had some interesting stuff. I do believe they beat Sony with the Sega CD. The Sega Channel was interesting, as was the 32x.
...the what???
Well, updates were a bit dicey. Today I noticed a green glowing thing in the top right-hand corner of Firefox. Being an idiot, I simply clicked on it. It says "Updates are available!" -- it downloaded them, upgraded my plug-in (Homeland Security Threat Level), and everything works A-O-K.
My question is, why didn't they make this a little bit more obvious? Not a splash screen but maybe something that appears the first X times. How else would I have known Firefox was ready to update? Especially when "I" am Joe User?
It was my understanding that in your country, there is some sort of backwards or ironic relationship between yourself and the ice-cream. The ice-cream is the consumer perhaps?
I'm not sure, I have to check my Meme History book.
Keep in mind "good will" and "happy customers" are all means to profit. The only reason that not every company practices it is because they are very difficult to implement and achieve in the short term and they don't guarantee profitability. If they had an immediate short-term effect (1 year) and they guaranteed profits, everyone would do it.
Good to know I wasn't the only one. I thought maybe Longhorn got a release date. If so, it is ahead of schedule.
Ok, so... what now?
We're going to have a Supreme Court case arguing either what Is is?* Or, to be more direct, you need to argue that Is is not IsNot? But then if IsNot is something, then it Is something?
Yes, this makes perfect sense.
* See Clinton's Grand Jury testimony.
We're a bit too late for that one...
Well, something is going to happen. Alone in the Dark is on track to lose $5-10m, even estimating the market abroad and home video. At some point, Uwe will need to turn a significant profit. Otherwise he's not going to be making too many movies. I mean, you don't see Cimino making too many movies.
On the other hand, say you're a game publisher and Uwe Boll comes up to you and wants to buy your film. You know it will forever tie your game to something really really terrible. Yet they still say yes. So, the publishers are at fault too.
Screw that. Make sure the next Rovers are running these and we'll heat up Mars in no time.
How many Libraries of Congress squared is that? Or is the measurement more like LoC / VW because of the Martian moon rocks?
No, seriously. That's like really small right? Like 1/100ths of an inch?
I wanted to do that as well and call it the "1995" skin. Instead I just did this: FD1995. I think most good web page design is a mix between knowledge of organization / spacing / interface, good coding, good visual design. Most people are good at one, if any.
He just forecast every possible color.
He has, literally, every single hue on there. What a goon.
"We" are not being ruled more by corporations. The employees are "ruled" by corporations, and in most economies, you've got a nice* at-will system. Microsoft terminated their own jobs**, not the Danish government's. If I was the Danish government, I would switch to Linux within the next 24 months so they've got less MS power hanging over their head.
:)
So what do you do as an employer? If I worked for a company so interested in their own profit that they would revoke any involvement with stakeholders (employees, government/community) I'd be concerned -- as it's a sign that they are less than ethical. At that point, each individual could leave. BUT -- most individuals put ethics below their own paychecks and that's why these companies can continue doing what they're doing.
Remember, corporations are a distinct legal entity but in sociological terms they are an aggregate of people, that's all.
If we're ruled by anything, it's money. It may not be the #1 ruler in your world, but it plays a big role. If it doesn't, send me $10,000.
* Economically, it's nice, because it makes for more free market. In reality, most companies don't fire people for no reason, at least not individually. Most people too, leave two week's notice so they don't screw over their employer. It's not perfect, but it's better than unionized labor for most professions.
** By proxy.
Not Tesla - he was trying to discredit Westinghouse, going as far as trying to name the device after him.
Just another of Edison's terrible business decisions later in his life.
I completely forgot about that one in my post. A friend had a Saturn but I didn't know anyone else with one. I actually own one now that someone left for me, and all they have is like Zombie Kill Patrol or something along those lines. :)
So you can understand why I have selectively forgotten it.
I think even if the Dreamcast could play Saturn games, it would not have made a very big difference. The Saturn was a bit too Japanese for most U.S. consumers and didn't really have a very good game library for Americans. Now that I give it some further thought, there aren't too many games which nowadays are "must have" that are not at least on one other console. I still only own Twisted Metal: Black and Katamari Damacy because for every other PS2 game, I could simply wait for the Xbox version to come out - and I'm casual enough of a gamer to not really know about some of the more esoteric PS2 games which I am missing out on.
At this point, I'm glad that the consoles are spaced out so that, if I really wanted to, I could buy both the Xbox 2 and the PS3 without any major strain on my budget without having to decide on picking only one of them.
Well, Sega had some major issues with the Dreamcast. (The "Edge" here is Xbox vs. PS3).
First off, it was NOT a DVD player. The PS2 arrived at a critical time where a lot of younger folk still had not had a DVD player and you couldn't get many DVD players under the $100-150 range. So, presto, you buy a $249 console (or whatever it was), and now you've got a DVD player as well. Edge: Slightly Sony. The PS2 might have next-gen DVD media, but who has the hardware to support it? Unless next-gen displays come down to earth levels ($1,000-$4,000) no one will care to adopt this. See, for example, SACD.
Second, by the time the Dreamcast was out in the US, the PS2 was only a month or two away from being released in Japan. Had Sega really hit the market a year before, they could've gobbled up a lot of market share from the aging, ailing N64 and PS1. But when "9-9-99" hit everyone had seen the PS2 videos and knew what was around the corner. Edge: Unknown. This all has to do with expectations. In 1999, everyone knew the PS2 would be insane. Will the PS3 be "insane" compared to the Xbox 2? We'll know this year.
Third, the Dreamcast had no backwards compatibility (to what? the Sega CD?). The PS2 did, so automatically you had a very nice, large game library to play with. Edge: Unknown. Sony, I assume, will have PS1 and PS2 compatability in the PS3. The jury is still out on Xbox 2 having backwards compatibility.
Fourth, EA did not have EA Sports on the Dreamcast. You couldn't play Madden or NBA Live. Now, for most people here, these are non-titles. But a very very large amount of people play these, and face it, Sega didn't have it. If EA continues with Microsoft, the Xbox 2 will have a market advantage come this fall. If you want to play the cool sports games, you need to get the Xbox 2, or settle with the slower version on the PS2. Edge: Microsoft.
I don't think it's plausible that Sony will go the way of Nintendo or Sega. At the same time, I can't see Microsoft getting out of the home gaming market. What IS interesting is the issue of piracy. It greatly affected the Dreamcast and the Xbox, neither did well. But (until recently), that was not the case with the PS2, nor the case with Gamecube. So it doesn't seem to be a primary effect on market position.
I think it is realistic to say that Nintendo will NOT be getting the top spot and will be a No. 2 or No. 3 competitor.
So, no, I would not place any bets on Sony being guaranteed to win. I'm not biased either, I have both systems (and got them both well after release).
I saw this on Google News this morning and wondered why Slashdot hadn't picked up on it already. As soon as I read the headline and the article, I began to wonder... How safe is this to do this research?
I'm not talking about the safety of recipients once this goes into the real-world (although that can be alarming), but about the research itself.
I'm pretty far removed from science in any practical setting, but what are the procedures for this kind of research? I've seen too many movies like 28 Days Later to not imagine some accident or oversight to cause some sort of mutant airborne HIV.
Also, does HIV even infect mice? I know there's a human/ape HIV and a feline HIV but I had not hear of mice HIV. Think of some sewer rat biting you...
That's just my mid-day alarmist self. Note I'm not against the research, just wondering about it...