I don't see the problem with the pricing either. Single songs are usually about $1. Ringtones, if bought, are horrendously expensive, I believe in the $4 range (or more, or less, I've never bought one). So three songs and a ringtone for $6 to $7 sounds about right.
Singles, in CD form, are usually notoriously expensive. Take, for example, Coldplay. Now you might think Coldplay is rubbish, but that's OK, their music is not under discussion right now. Let's take a look at some of their singles discography:
Five versions of the "Clocks" single, including the vinyl-only. Four versions of the "Don't Panic" single, each different depending on which country it was released in.
Not to single out Coldplay, but a lot of bands do this. Radiohead splits singles across two CDs, so to get all the live cuts and B-sides you need to fork over $10, or more, if you're unlucky enough to have to import it from Japan.
But you know... that's OK. The singles in this case are designed to milk the super-fan dry. Most musicians do it. Singles used to be for people who only wanted to pay for the one song. At the $7+ price point, no one is going to casually buy the single if the album (on sale or via download) can be had for a few dollars more.
If this was the default price for all music, it would bother me. But I see it as a new add-on to singles. Previously they may had a downloadble Quicktime video, now they have a ringtone. The business model isn't surprising. I'm not saying it can't be improved, but it's no different from what we've seen the past ten years.
Goldfarb's power source is about the size of a pencil and contains a special catalyst that causes hydrogen peroxide to burn produce pure steam which is used to open and close a series of valves.
The valves are connected to the spring-loaded joints by belts made of a special monofilament used in appliance handles and aircraft parts and a small sealed canister of hydrogen peroxide that easily fits in the upper arm can provide enough energy to power the device for 18 hours of normal activity. Does it make a choo-chooo sound when you're punching anyone?
You know, back in the dot-com days, I was in the business of selling eyeballs. To my surprise and the horror of most companies, "eyeballs" apparently was not meant in the literal sense. I don't know what the police did with my jar, but I never did hear from any of the hobos whose eyes I scooped out.
The "s" is for sucker. Only suckers trust https links. By the way, let me tell you about my uncle. You see, he's a recently overthrown despot in Zimbabwe and he needs some help with taking some funds out of his account in Mauritius...
For instance, how do you see a trail as it winds over grassland and leads into the woods? How does one see a year old trail that is partially overgrown, or a new trail not completely tramped down. How do you track down an animal from smattering of scat, nibbles and tracks over rocks, dirt, grassland, and the tree line? How does a human being see a camouflaged predator slinking behind the tree line? How do you read the sky and know what the weather will be later that day? How do you look at a river and know if it's crossable or not? Back at home, how do you play your relatives, friends, and enemies in the tribe so that you are elected leader when the Big Man passes away? Or how do you manage to convince your husband that your new pregnancy is his, and not your secret lovers'? I'm sorry, are you a character on the TV show Lost? Your examples seem to indicate so.
I think I've seen an episode of this. Intergoogling the tubes just now I couldn't find any info on it though. Is it perhaps called "China from the Inside"? It ran as a four-part documentary on PBS. I saw the first episode, about how the Communist Party controls people even in remote areas. Didn't know it was a series.
The answer to helping these people advance is not to stop buying their products, which puts them right back where they were - with nothing. The answer is to continue to buy their products, which empowers them and gives them options. You're partly right. Not buying the product certainly won't help that worker, unless you replace the purchase of that product with something that is fair to its workers. The problem is, I don't know who that company is, in electronics at least.
One example I can think of is Blackspot Shoes, a "shoe brand" created by the equally loony and insightful AdBusters magazine. At $78/pair, they're more expensive than the Converse All-Stars they copy (which used to be made in the USA).
I'm not in the market for shoes, but it's nice to know.
And here is a write-up about someone from Chumby Industries visiting Shenzhen to get their production line up-to-date. It's more about the area than anything about the factory.
I've never needed to install anything to have Comcast cable. Worst comes to worst, just tell them you have a console and may buy a computer later on. Or say the computer doesn't have a network card and you'll get one later.
From a consumer's standpoint, it was terribly boring. Most surprises you could count on one hand. Last year's E3 was much better, in my opinion.
But this year's E3 wasn't bad. It just seemed not to be... for us. Nintendo's presentation seemed especially aimed at investors and other developers. The sooner you can get someone to join your platform, the sooner you can have a lot of great third party titles, which has been a Nintendo console weakness the past ten years. The message seemed to be, "We're doing well. Developers, join us if you haven't already done so. It's worth the investment of time and money."
Sony's was actually wonderful, compared to last year's embarassment. At least most of the games announced seem to be available in the next 18 months and not years and years off.
I don't remember who said this (Lewis Black?) but it was in a Playboy article a while ago. They said that while they weren't sure about global warming being caused by emissions, he understood that emissions were bad and could get behind cutting them.
At the very extreme, you wouldn't let a car run inside your house. Pollution is obviously very bad, especially in excess. And there will always be excess. But what's wrong with simply wanting to cut pollution? I don't need "global warming" as a reason to make sure vehicles have less emmissions. As long as the alternative isn't more environmentally damaging, I don't even mind paying slightly more. After all pollution does have costs, but they can't be easily dollarized.
On, one hand, I would love to see more serious AO-rated games. On the other, I think if that would happen, 95% of them would be silly exploitation games like Manhunt 2.
Well, aside from HD DVD and BD, what is there "to settle" in HD? Broadcasters have all been using (and mostly continue to use) the same standards: 720p and 1080i with your TV/cable box up- or downscaling as it sees fit. I'm not particularly bleeding edge but I've had an HDTV for about five years. If you've gone to any major electronics retailer you can see the slow death of regular tube (CRT) TVs. They're slowly being driven out as other technologies (LCD) keep dropping in price.
Not everyone is going to upgrade in the next year or five. Televisions can last a very, very long time. As of last year my parents still had a 20+ year old set from Sears in the bedroom. For people where that's "good enough" they may never need to upgrade.
But, once you do upgrade and your budget is north of, say, $200, it's going to be harder to avoid HDTV. The dust settled years ago. At this point, you might just be waiting for the "best ever" TV to come out and I assume that since you're reading a tech site, you know full well any TV you buy will reach obsolescence in a year or so. But you can still watch TV, movies, and play games on it. Just like on all the obsolete ten year old TVs we have right now.
I agree with you, but also note that on the business end of things, that's going to lead to failure unless you're the kind of studio (like Valve) that can shoulder interminably long delays.
I knew one of the developers for one of those really half-assed paintball games from the late 90's and he said they just didn't code for any AI, eventhough you could play against "computer opponents" -- what they had was nothing even remotely resembling AI, just some basic, possibly randomized script.
Who knows if that was the right or the wrong decision.
For licensed games, the title is more important than the content. The game needs to hit when the movie comes out, or when the album comes out, or when there's a new season of the show, etc.
Take the atrocious 50 Cent: Bulletproof game, for example. Vivendi Universal got that game out about 9 days after the movie hit theatres. In their eyes (and they're probably right) releasing it when it was "ready" (2006? Never?) would've cost them more in development time and lost sales than releasing a crappy game.
I wish you were right. I wish the market as a whole looked at "quality" games above all else. But they don't. Licensed crap like Bulletproof (or the nth Pacman or Sonic game) sells based on the name alone. Money gets made, and parents don't care because the (1)6-year old kid playing the game doesn't know any better.
The way for developers to stop making crappy games is to stop buying crappy games. But half a million people still bought the 50 Cent game (and other games like it) so this won't end.
Don't blame the business people. They're just following the money, which comes from idiot consumers. Teams like the one you describe are probably working for the good studios already anyway.
I haven't played this series since Vice City and I'm glad that we finally get a modern, more stylized version of it. The voiceover seems to point at some Russian/Eastern European immigrant moving up the ranks in American crime. It's reminiscent of the beginning in movies like The Godfather or Scarface where you see the world through the eyes of a newcomer.
That's a terrible comparison. There's been a market agreement that as consoles age, there needs to be a price drop OR an improvement in the console, with improvements in the console (new NES design, Neo Geo CDZ, slim PS2, Nintendo's handhelds) usually coming much later in the console's life cycle, many times after there's been a price drop.
The problem here is that now Microsoft is actually making the PS3 look like a fantastic deal. The Elite is $20 less than the (now rare) 20GB PS3, which for those $20 more offers a Blu-Ray player. At the very extreme end of the comparison, you'd need an Elite ($479), an HD DVD player ($199), a USB card reader ($10), and the Xbox 360 Wifi dongle ($99) to emulate the $599 PS3. The PS3 owner could buy a game, another controller, and upgrade their hard drive to 250GB or more at the same price.
Spring after the first full calendar year of release is also the traditional time for price drops. Those are nowhere to be found.
And there's going to be another version of the Xbox when the new 65nm process comes in.
Microsoft, technically is not doing anything immoral. It's not even unethical. But what they're doing is creating distrust and dismay among its current customers. Why do you think Sony ran so many ads for the PS3 in 2006? It wasn't to advertise it. Everyone who was in the market for a console knew the PS3 was coming. They spent millions of dollars to make their current customers feel good about their purchase. Hey, you spent $700 to play an FPS and a port of an old Xbox 360 game. But don't worry, here's commercials showing how cool and hip you are.
I heard, at some point, that the Elite would lose its black color in a few months and go down to a $399 price and the current premium model would replace the core. This makes sense, but I don't know if its true.
To finalize my point, in your comment you refer to Ford. Last I checked, the only Ford models for sale now at 50% of the 2000 pricing are used models. Sony's silver PS2 is the equivalent of Ford cosmetically updating a 2000 Ford Taurus and offering it new at a price of $8,500.
Brian Hastings made an excellent point earlier this week:
Your friend Reggie invites you over for a Wii Party. It's awesome. You and your friends partake in whatever beverages are legally appropriate for your age group. The next day everyone who went to the party rushes out and buys a Wii. A week later Reggie hosts another Wii Party. This time only half the group comes. It's still fun, but there isn't quite as much shoving to get at the Wiimote. The next week Reggie hosts another Wii Party. You tell him you have bird flu. That's how it goes. It's only fun for so long. Now, mind you, from a business standpoint it's excellent. Consider the distilled truth: "The next day everyone who went to the party rushes out and buys a Wii." What other console can say that? Hell, what other product?
Even if you do play it, you can't do much with each other's friend codes. At least not yet.
I understand it's mythologically correct to use the term "chimera" but whenever I hear it I always envision something else: a ghastly soulless beast with an iron heart, breathing fire out of a cavernous tooth-lined maw, crushing entire houses under gigantic feathered elephant legs; a scaled, whiplike tail kicks up ashy dust clouds as its dragged for miles behind this monstrocity.
No matter how many times I hear the biological equivalent of the term (which is never as exciting) I'm always let down. I always think some giant monster has been discovered, or someone turned into this monster, or geneticists have new clues as to the cause of this monster.
It's a bit annoying once I'm letdown but for a precious few seconds I'm always aghast in wonder.
Think of it as a lofty, maybe unreachable goal. Of course you can't replicate Silicon Valley in Siberia. Some random town Wyoming can't decide to become "the next Tokyo" either. There's systemic problems in Russia that no amount of buildings, fiber, and computers will fix. But it's a start.
Slashdot Mirror
Rats fleeing?
The article mentioned accountants leaving, not the lawyers or executives.
I don't see the problem with the pricing either. Single songs are usually about $1. Ringtones, if bought, are horrendously expensive, I believe in the $4 range (or more, or less, I've never bought one). So three songs and a ringtone for $6 to $7 sounds about right.
Singles, in CD form, are usually notoriously expensive. Take, for example, Coldplay. Now you might think Coldplay is rubbish, but that's OK, their music is not under discussion right now. Let's take a look at some of their singles discography:
Five versions of the "Clocks" single, including the vinyl-only.
Four versions of the "Don't Panic" single, each different depending on which country it was released in.
Not to single out Coldplay, but a lot of bands do this. Radiohead splits singles across two CDs, so to get all the live cuts and B-sides you need to fork over $10, or more, if you're unlucky enough to have to import it from Japan.
But you know... that's OK. The singles in this case are designed to milk the super-fan dry. Most musicians do it. Singles used to be for people who only wanted to pay for the one song. At the $7+ price point, no one is going to casually buy the single if the album (on sale or via download) can be had for a few dollars more.
If this was the default price for all music, it would bother me. But I see it as a new add-on to singles. Previously they may had a downloadble Quicktime video, now they have a ringtone. The business model isn't surprising. I'm not saying it can't be improved, but it's no different from what we've seen the past ten years.
Yeah, this technology would be a great way to find highly concentrated groups of assholes.
The valves are connected to the spring-loaded joints by belts made of a special monofilament used in appliance handles and aircraft parts and a small sealed canister of hydrogen peroxide that easily fits in the upper arm can provide enough energy to power the device for 18 hours of normal activity. Does it make a choo-chooo sound when you're punching anyone?
You know, back in the dot-com days, I was in the business of selling eyeballs. To my surprise and the horror of most companies, "eyeballs" apparently was not meant in the literal sense. I don't know what the police did with my jar, but I never did hear from any of the hobos whose eyes I scooped out.
:(
I hope they're ok.
The "s" is for sucker. Only suckers trust https links. By the way, let me tell you about my uncle. You see, he's a recently overthrown despot in Zimbabwe and he needs some help with taking some funds out of his account in Mauritius...
I think the common saying goes like this: "A snowflake's chance in hel--
Nevermind. I see you got it right.
I think I've seen an episode of this. Intergoogling the tubes just now I couldn't find any info on it though. Is it perhaps called "China from the Inside"? It ran as a four-part documentary on PBS. I saw the first episode, about how the Communist Party controls people even in remote areas. Didn't know it was a series.
One example I can think of is Blackspot Shoes, a "shoe brand" created by the equally loony and insightful AdBusters magazine. At $78/pair, they're more expensive than the Converse All-Stars they copy (which used to be made in the USA).
I'm not in the market for shoes, but it's nice to know.
Wired had a great photo gallery of factories and assembly lines in China.
And here is a write-up about someone from Chumby Industries visiting Shenzhen to get their production line up-to-date. It's more about the area than anything about the factory.
Someone tell the thieves that no matter how many walls they cross with it in England, the rock won't turn into Claire Danes, er, Yvaine.
I've never needed to install anything to have Comcast cable. Worst comes to worst, just tell them you have a console and may buy a computer later on. Or say the computer doesn't have a network card and you'll get one later.
From a consumer's standpoint, it was terribly boring. Most surprises you could count on one hand. Last year's E3 was much better, in my opinion.
But this year's E3 wasn't bad. It just seemed not to be... for us. Nintendo's presentation seemed especially aimed at investors and other developers. The sooner you can get someone to join your platform, the sooner you can have a lot of great third party titles, which has been a Nintendo console weakness the past ten years. The message seemed to be, "We're doing well. Developers, join us if you haven't already done so. It's worth the investment of time and money."
Sony's was actually wonderful, compared to last year's embarassment. At least most of the games announced seem to be available in the next 18 months and not years and years off.
Microsoft's I didn't see.
I don't remember who said this (Lewis Black?) but it was in a Playboy article a while ago. They said that while they weren't sure about global warming being caused by emissions, he understood that emissions were bad and could get behind cutting them.
At the very extreme, you wouldn't let a car run inside your house. Pollution is obviously very bad, especially in excess. And there will always be excess. But what's wrong with simply wanting to cut pollution? I don't need "global warming" as a reason to make sure vehicles have less emmissions. As long as the alternative isn't more environmentally damaging, I don't even mind paying slightly more. After all pollution does have costs, but they can't be easily dollarized.
On, one hand, I would love to see more serious AO-rated games. On the other, I think if that would happen, 95% of them would be silly exploitation games like Manhunt 2.
Because we're finally close to the "virtual reality" that used to sell so many magazine covers (and Lawnmower Man tickets) ten/fifteen years ago.
Well, aside from HD DVD and BD, what is there "to settle" in HD? Broadcasters have all been using (and mostly continue to use) the same standards: 720p and 1080i with your TV/cable box up- or downscaling as it sees fit. I'm not particularly bleeding edge but I've had an HDTV for about five years. If you've gone to any major electronics retailer you can see the slow death of regular tube (CRT) TVs. They're slowly being driven out as other technologies (LCD) keep dropping in price.
Not everyone is going to upgrade in the next year or five. Televisions can last a very, very long time. As of last year my parents still had a 20+ year old set from Sears in the bedroom. For people where that's "good enough" they may never need to upgrade.
But, once you do upgrade and your budget is north of, say, $200, it's going to be harder to avoid HDTV. The dust settled years ago. At this point, you might just be waiting for the "best ever" TV to come out and I assume that since you're reading a tech site, you know full well any TV you buy will reach obsolescence in a year or so. But you can still watch TV, movies, and play games on it. Just like on all the obsolete ten year old TVs we have right now.
I agree with you, but also note that on the business end of things, that's going to lead to failure unless you're the kind of studio (like Valve) that can shoulder interminably long delays.
I knew one of the developers for one of those really half-assed paintball games from the late 90's and he said they just didn't code for any AI, eventhough you could play against "computer opponents" -- what they had was nothing even remotely resembling AI, just some basic, possibly randomized script.
Who knows if that was the right or the wrong decision.
For licensed games, the title is more important than the content. The game needs to hit when the movie comes out, or when the album comes out, or when there's a new season of the show, etc.
Take the atrocious 50 Cent: Bulletproof game, for example. Vivendi Universal got that game out about 9 days after the movie hit theatres. In their eyes (and they're probably right) releasing it when it was "ready" (2006? Never?) would've cost them more in development time and lost sales than releasing a crappy game.
I wish you were right. I wish the market as a whole looked at "quality" games above all else. But they don't. Licensed crap like Bulletproof (or the nth Pacman or Sonic game) sells based on the name alone. Money gets made, and parents don't care because the (1)6-year old kid playing the game doesn't know any better.
The way for developers to stop making crappy games is to stop buying crappy games. But half a million people still bought the 50 Cent game (and other games like it) so this won't end.
Don't blame the business people. They're just following the money, which comes from idiot consumers. Teams like the one you describe are probably working for the good studios already anyway.
I haven't played this series since Vice City and I'm glad that we finally get a modern, more stylized version of it. The voiceover seems to point at some Russian/Eastern European immigrant moving up the ranks in American crime. It's reminiscent of the beginning in movies like The Godfather or Scarface where you see the world through the eyes of a newcomer.
Here's the direct download link for the 720P WMV file. Or, you can see it on YouTube as well.
That's a terrible comparison. There's been a market agreement that as consoles age, there needs to be a price drop OR an improvement in the console, with improvements in the console (new NES design, Neo Geo CDZ, slim PS2, Nintendo's handhelds) usually coming much later in the console's life cycle, many times after there's been a price drop.
The problem here is that now Microsoft is actually making the PS3 look like a fantastic deal. The Elite is $20 less than the (now rare) 20GB PS3, which for those $20 more offers a Blu-Ray player. At the very extreme end of the comparison, you'd need an Elite ($479), an HD DVD player ($199), a USB card reader ($10), and the Xbox 360 Wifi dongle ($99) to emulate the $599 PS3. The PS3 owner could buy a game, another controller, and upgrade their hard drive to 250GB or more at the same price.
Spring after the first full calendar year of release is also the traditional time for price drops. Those are nowhere to be found.
And there's going to be another version of the Xbox when the new 65nm process comes in.
Microsoft, technically is not doing anything immoral. It's not even unethical. But what they're doing is creating distrust and dismay among its current customers. Why do you think Sony ran so many ads for the PS3 in 2006? It wasn't to advertise it. Everyone who was in the market for a console knew the PS3 was coming. They spent millions of dollars to make their current customers feel good about their purchase. Hey, you spent $700 to play an FPS and a port of an old Xbox 360 game. But don't worry, here's commercials showing how cool and hip you are.
I heard, at some point, that the Elite would lose its black color in a few months and go down to a $399 price and the current premium model would replace the core. This makes sense, but I don't know if its true.
To finalize my point, in your comment you refer to Ford. Last I checked, the only Ford models for sale now at 50% of the 2000 pricing are used models. Sony's silver PS2 is the equivalent of Ford cosmetically updating a 2000 Ford Taurus and offering it new at a price of $8,500.
Brian Hastings made an excellent point earlier this week: Your friend Reggie invites you over for a Wii Party. It's awesome. You and your friends partake in whatever beverages are legally appropriate for your age group. The next day everyone who went to the party rushes out and buys a Wii. A week later Reggie hosts another Wii Party. This time only half the group comes. It's still fun, but there isn't quite as much shoving to get at the Wiimote. The next week Reggie hosts another Wii Party. You tell him you have bird flu. That's how it goes. It's only fun for so long. Now, mind you, from a business standpoint it's excellent. Consider the distilled truth: "The next day everyone who went to the party rushes out and buys a Wii." What other console can say that? Hell, what other product?
Even if you do play it, you can't do much with each other's friend codes. At least not yet.
I understand it's mythologically correct to use the term "chimera" but whenever I hear it I always envision something else: a ghastly soulless beast with an iron heart, breathing fire out of a cavernous tooth-lined maw, crushing entire houses under gigantic feathered elephant legs; a scaled, whiplike tail kicks up ashy dust clouds as its dragged for miles behind this monstrocity.
No matter how many times I hear the biological equivalent of the term (which is never as exciting) I'm always let down. I always think some giant monster has been discovered, or someone turned into this monster, or geneticists have new clues as to the cause of this monster.
It's a bit annoying once I'm letdown but for a precious few seconds I'm always aghast in wonder.
Think of it as a lofty, maybe unreachable goal. Of course you can't replicate Silicon Valley in Siberia. Some random town Wyoming can't decide to become "the next Tokyo" either. There's systemic problems in Russia that no amount of buildings, fiber, and computers will fix. But it's a start.
And they've got land to spare, or so I hear.