I think what you want is a Delaware LLC. Foreign ownership doesn't matter as long as you have a "registered agent" in Delaware. I am not a lawyer, so this is the equivalent of legal advice you found on the underside of a Snapple bottle. But start your search there.
That's not nearly confusing enough. I was going to suggest that the official website of OpenOffice.org be OpenOfficeOrg.com, but that's already taken. For you enterprising netpreteneurs, may I suggest you begin synergizing web-scaled enterprise strategies with the following domain names, still available:
I think I remember this one. I think the trick to is to just run and jump right before the beginning of the gap. If you don't use turbo, it works out perfectly. (I may be forgetting and you might need to use turbo: either way, there's a very specific way you can jump that requires no mid-air adjustment and is very easy to execute once you figure it out).
"To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
It's more like being arrested for being a pirate because you own a boat or have been in water. Even if it's a toy schooner and you're in the bathtub.
Blu-Ray used single-layer BD discs (25GB) with MPEG-2 until about September or so. That's why their initial reviews were so horrid. HD DVD has been using VC1 since day one, IIRC. A new version of the VC1 encoder was developed recently, so improvements are still coming.
Note that Good Night and Good Luck fit on a single-layer (15GB) HD DVD and looked pretty good.
Now they're both using VC1 and/or Sony is using dual-layer discs (50GB) so the differences have disappeared.
Then there's MPEG-4/AVC/H.264. That's also being used in the occasional title (by Blu-Ray IIRC).
I'll have to mostly agree with you. When Halo and its sequel are the top two selling games on the console, it's hard to argue that they were central to the success. But: look a bit further. The rest of the Top 20 Xbox Games list shares a lot of entries with the Top 20 PS2 Games list: a racing game, Madden, some EA games, Tony Hawk, etc.
And here's where the differences appear. There's a lot more overlap in software in the US and Europe. Don't have a PS2? Don't worry, the Xbox has some stuff that might be as good or slightly worse/better. This is true again this generation with the PS3. The most overlap between consoles is between the PS3 and the 360. Here, in the US.
In Japan? Not as much. Their equivalents of the GTA series, Madden and the like are not out on both consoles.
So that has something to do with it. The Xbox had more equivalents (or like substitutions) for the North American and European markets.
And I don't mean people's homes. I mean the legislature. Require them to use other bulbs beginning in 2008. Then we'll see if they want to hold consumers accountable for the same thing.
I still fail to understand the argument about overpaying for stuff on eBay, at least on a personal level. If you have perfect information on the item (which is impossible but easier for some items than others) then you can never get ripped off. Let's say I'm a complete assbag and thus want the new Rod Stewart CD. I could get it for about $9 shipped from one of the Amazon marketplace sellers. I could also go to my local Jerk Store NBooks & Coffee and get it from the douchelord CD section for $15 with tax. If someone is selling it on eBay and I bid up to $8 (with shipping) on it, shill-bidding or not, I get it cheaper than my other two options. Sure, I could've gotten it for $6 had the shill bidder not appeared, but the end result is still positive to me. I, a (supposed) total dickhat, got my Rod Stewart CD for under than $9.
In this (fictional) recreation, shill-bidding is only a nuisance and honestly not much of a problem. If you bid your max, you can never pay more than the maximum you'd want to pay. In the example above, it is impossible to be "ripped off" and to get something for a price higher than the value to you. If the Rod Stewart CD gets shill-bid up to $11, then my (fictional) titface self never buys it. I simply get it elsewhere.
The problem isn't individual, it's collective. If a single Rod-Stewart-loving cocktard loses $2 in a transaction, it's nothing to get concerned about. But when this is happening to millions of Rod-Stewart-loving shitwads, it becomes a real problem.
This is definitely going to backfire. As you mentioned, small businesses are the ones least likely to not migrate to Mac or Linux. Most small businesses are unlikely to have lots of computers. But, like anything else, there's always some piece of software that needs Windows to run. The difference is that we might only be talking about 2 or 3 things in the whole company, not 2 or 3 things per department per branch.
If you finance your PS3 through SonyStyle.com, you get $100 off your purchase. This is effectively the same as the $100 price drop they'll announce in spring 2008, except you don't need to wait a year.
The yogurt you speak of is Actimel. It's been in Europe since at least 2000. It's US counterpart (also by Dannon/Danone) is called DanActive and came out sometime last year. The bacteria in that yogurt is L. Casei. A lot of supermarket chains don't carry it but the US's largest retailer (Wal-Mart) does.
I also tried Activia. It did seem to help somewhat, but it just tasted too boring, like regular old yogurt. DanActive/Actimel comes in little shot-sized packets that just make the process seem more manly and fun. Like the yogurt pirates would have drank.
The property that needs MMO treatment is Disney, not Bug's Life or Pirates or Lion King. Much like their theme parks are nice and compartmentalized, I imagine their MMO would be as well. There's a Caribbean Area for Pirates, etc. If you jump off a boat and start swimming around you might see mermaids or talking fishes a la Nemo. A Fairy Tale Land for princesses, gnomes, dwarves, etc.
This is the only way I see it working. I don't think something set so narrowly on any one property would work. Just build it all, and if someone's a huge Lion King fanatic they can stay in the Savannah but if they are adventurous they can take their talking wildebeest into Tron land.
All this device integration is useless. A decent phone (free w/contract), camera ($100) and DS ($130) will do each job better than the iPhone. That's not the point obviously. The iPhone has all of this integrated, but we're talking gaming here. No photographer would decide which cellphone to use as a replacement for their camera, and neither should a gamer. It is inevitable that 5-15 years in the future we will finally have a gaming platform that also happens to be a phone. And then there will be a game that will be great, and you will need that platform to play it. A portable singularity, if you will. But that time is not now, and this is like discussing the Outlook of iPhone Photography. (i.e. Silly).
Certainly from an enthusiast's point of view it would be great if the iPhone was an open platform so you could port Game XYZ to it, but even that isn't the case.
I'm not going to get too deep into this argument because I'm not in the frontlines as some other respondents are; I also don't want to argue free markets.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has a very large, very public set of data for the last few years. It breaks down employment by job type, etc. I was looking around in it a few months ago and did a little bit of investigating.
Disclaimer: I'm not an economist, although I studied it. This is obviously only as good as the data that it uses, and I will leave that up to you.
I looked at two main categories: "Computer and Mathematical Jobs" and "Architectural and Engineering Jobs" -- very broad by any standard. I then looked at the number of jobs we had and the mean salary of each job. The product was our economy's expenditure on these jobs. If we employed 3,000 hatmakers and paid them $30,000 each, we've spent $90 million on hatmakers.
Well, the results of that table are here. While Architecture and Engineering haven't been so hot, Computers and Mathematics has. We spent more on Computers & Mathematics jobs in 2004 than any year previous, including 1999 which was pre-bubble.
So, I looked into it a bit further. I looked at two jobs, as described by the BLS: Computer Programmer and Computer Systems Analyst. They each do the following:
Computer Programmer - Convert project specifications and statements of problems and procedures to detailed logical flow charts for coding into computer language. Develop and write computer programs to store, locate, and retrieve specific documents, data, and information. May program web sites.
Computer Systems Analyst - Analyze science, engineering, business, and all other data processing problems for application to electronic data processing systems. Analyze user requirements, procedures, and problems to automate or improve existing systems and review computer system capabilities, workflow, and scheduling limitations. May analyze or recommend commercially available software. Exclude persons working primarily as "Engineers" (17-2011 through 17-2199), "Mathematicians" (15-2021), or "Scientists" (19-1011 through 19-3099). May supervise computer programmers.
Note my italics. The first job is certainly one that is "easier" and the second one is "harder" --- certainly, the second person might make a bit more money or do higher-level thinking. It could be argued that the second job is "better" --- we want more people making sure widgets are built correctly rather than bolting in Section 7-G into hundreds of widgets a day.
Well, here's a table showing how those two jobs did. Make no mistake, we lost computer programmers. About 130,000 of them from 1999 to 2004. That's a lot of jobs. We're also spending less overall on these computer programmers: about $6 billion less.
But... what happened to the Systems Analyst, the one who "may" supervise the programmers? Well, we've added 70,000 of those jobs and since 1999 we're spending $7 billion more employing these guys. Overall, we're spending $1 billion more (inflation-adjusted) on Computer Programmers and Computer Systems Analysts, eventhough there's 60,000 less people being employed (out of a starting pool of almost a million people).
That, to me, looks like resources being shifted. It looks like there are more jobs supervising, and those jobs not only earn more, but their wages are steadily increasing. The old "lost" job is out of the door and on a desk in Romania or Bangalore. The new "replacement" job has arrived and it pays Americans more.
Overly simplified? Of course. There's any number of factors which can muddle up this data. But, this is hard data at least, and slightl
Didn't Gnarls Barkley's "Crazty" hit #1 back in April? I guess the distinction was that"crazy" later had a physical single you could buy. This isn't the first download-only song to break the Top 40. Rather, it is the first download-only song to hit the Top 40 that did not have a follow-up physical CD. Or something to that effect.
Summary: Not as big as the headline suggests, still important.
The new Warner Bros. "Total HD" hybrid disc and LG Electronics (re-announced) combo HD DVD/Blu-Ray drive are solutions for a problem we didn't ask for: studios being idiotic and only releasing movies in one format.
WB and Paramount get free passes for being the only studios to support both formats. Everyone else gets Fs.
The HD market is a tiny swab of moist air in the filled water bucket of DVD revenue. I think sales are still under 1%. I can guarantee you that they would be at 5% or more if this stupid format war never came around. That's the main issue.
I don't understand why Universal (and to some extent WB) continue to make these HD DVD/DVD combo discs. For the uninitiated, these are dual-sided discs, with the DVD on one side and the HD DVD on the other. Dual-sided discs are always more complicated and expensive to manufacture and they're really not a value-add to consumers. Most big releases on DVD go with multiple discs rather than multiple sides. So, it makes it a crappier product and on top of that, they charge a premium, anywhere from $10 to $20 (MSRP) for our "benefit"! Note: expect this to play out in this new/twin/hybrid Blu-Ray and HD DVD format. Why pay $25 for one movie when you can pay $40 for both, one of which is unnecessary?
And here LG joins the fray, offering a dual-format player for $800-$1300. Nevermind that at that price range a savvy shopper would be already able to buy both players. HDTV owners aren't buying the new formats because they don't want to pick the losing side. Why don't they want to pick the losing side? Because they don't want to buy a new player for the winning format years down the road. Mind you, in 2009 or 2010 HD players are going to be $199. So these people are holding off because they don't want to spend $199 in another year. And a new $1000 player is supposed to calm these fears?
I can't put it any clearer than this: they fucked up. Everyone did. And now to make up for their mistakes, we should pay extra. And we won't.
The best part? The statements we'll hear in 2008 that the HD market isn't catching on. And who's to blame? Why, not the studios, but pirates! Pirates took our profits.
This whole ordeal is being played out by giant billion-dollar corporations that are basically repeatedly hitting themselves and each other in the groin with a hammer. When we ask them to stop and re-think what they're doing, they just ask us for money to cover the medical expenses. And then they use that money to buy more fucking hammers.
I guess it's in the eyes of the beholder, but if I was a huge SiN fan I'd rather have only Episode 1 than nothing to begin with. Sure, a completed story-arc would be best, but that doesn't seem to be a viable option now.
About three weeks ago it was reported that a lot of the developers left Ritual and SiN Episodes is no more.
I never played all of the original SiN but I did play the demo back then and I liked it. I liked Shogo more though.
But... this raises a question. What if Episode 1 of SiN had never been released? The game would've been scrapped and the developers and publishers would not have been paid. Everyone loses. What we have now is that everyone still loses... we just lose less.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what you want is a Delaware LLC. Foreign ownership doesn't matter as long as you have a "registered agent" in Delaware. I am not a lawyer, so this is the equivalent of legal advice you found on the underside of a Snapple bottle. But start your search there.
...and thereby saved me the tedium of having to read Next.
That's not nearly confusing enough. I was going to suggest that the official website of OpenOffice.org be OpenOfficeOrg.com, but that's already taken. For you enterprising netpreteneurs, may I suggest you begin synergizing web-scaled enterprise strategies with the following domain names, still available:
http://www.openofficedotorg.com/
and
http://www.openofficeorgcom.org/
I think I remember this one. I think the trick to is to just run and jump right before the beginning of the gap. If you don't use turbo, it works out perfectly. (I may be forgetting and you might need to use turbo: either way, there's a very specific way you can jump that requires no mid-air adjustment and is very easy to execute once you figure it out).
"To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs."
It's more like being arrested for being a pirate because you own a boat or have been in water. Even if it's a toy schooner and you're in the bathtub.
Blu-Ray used single-layer BD discs (25GB) with MPEG-2 until about September or so. That's why their initial reviews were so horrid. HD DVD has been using VC1 since day one, IIRC. A new version of the VC1 encoder was developed recently, so improvements are still coming.
Note that Good Night and Good Luck fit on a single-layer (15GB) HD DVD and looked pretty good.
Now they're both using VC1 and/or Sony is using dual-layer discs (50GB) so the differences have disappeared.
Then there's MPEG-4/AVC/H.264. That's also being used in the occasional title (by Blu-Ray IIRC).
I'll have to mostly agree with you. When Halo and its sequel are the top two selling games on the console, it's hard to argue that they were central to the success. But: look a bit further. The rest of the Top 20 Xbox Games list shares a lot of entries with the Top 20 PS2 Games list: a racing game, Madden, some EA games, Tony Hawk, etc.
And here's where the differences appear. There's a lot more overlap in software in the US and Europe. Don't have a PS2? Don't worry, the Xbox has some stuff that might be as good or slightly worse/better. This is true again this generation with the PS3. The most overlap between consoles is between the PS3 and the 360. Here, in the US.
In Japan? Not as much. Their equivalents of the GTA series, Madden and the like are not out on both consoles.
So that has something to do with it. The Xbox had more equivalents (or like substitutions) for the North American and European markets.
And I don't mean people's homes. I mean the legislature. Require them to use other bulbs beginning in 2008. Then we'll see if they want to hold consumers accountable for the same thing.
I see no need for why we would ever need anything more than 640 cores per processor in the future.
I still fail to understand the argument about overpaying for stuff on eBay, at least on a personal level. If you have perfect information on the item (which is impossible but easier for some items than others) then you can never get ripped off. Let's say I'm a complete assbag and thus want the new Rod Stewart CD. I could get it for about $9 shipped from one of the Amazon marketplace sellers. I could also go to my local Jerk Store NBooks & Coffee and get it from the douchelord CD section for $15 with tax. If someone is selling it on eBay and I bid up to $8 (with shipping) on it, shill-bidding or not, I get it cheaper than my other two options. Sure, I could've gotten it for $6 had the shill bidder not appeared, but the end result is still positive to me. I, a (supposed) total dickhat, got my Rod Stewart CD for under than $9.
In this (fictional) recreation, shill-bidding is only a nuisance and honestly not much of a problem. If you bid your max, you can never pay more than the maximum you'd want to pay. In the example above, it is impossible to be "ripped off" and to get something for a price higher than the value to you. If the Rod Stewart CD gets shill-bid up to $11, then my (fictional) titface self never buys it. I simply get it elsewhere.
The problem isn't individual, it's collective. If a single Rod-Stewart-loving cocktard loses $2 in a transaction, it's nothing to get concerned about. But when this is happening to millions of Rod-Stewart-loving shitwads, it becomes a real problem.
This is definitely going to backfire. As you mentioned, small businesses are the ones least likely to not migrate to Mac or Linux. Most small businesses are unlikely to have lots of computers. But, like anything else, there's always some piece of software that needs Windows to run. The difference is that we might only be talking about 2 or 3 things in the whole company, not 2 or 3 things per department per branch.
I'm not sure if you mean Japan, but Zelda is launching in North America around October of 2007.
If you finance your PS3 through SonyStyle.com, you get $100 off your purchase. This is effectively the same as the $100 price drop they'll announce in spring 2008, except you don't need to wait a year.
The yogurt you speak of is Actimel. It's been in Europe since at least 2000. It's US counterpart (also by Dannon/Danone) is called DanActive and came out sometime last year. The bacteria in that yogurt is L. Casei . A lot of supermarket chains don't carry it but the US's largest retailer (Wal-Mart) does.
I also tried Activia. It did seem to help somewhat, but it just tasted too boring, like regular old yogurt. DanActive/Actimel comes in little shot-sized packets that just make the process seem more manly and fun. Like the yogurt pirates would have drank.
The property that needs MMO treatment is Disney, not Bug's Life or Pirates or Lion King. Much like their theme parks are nice and compartmentalized, I imagine their MMO would be as well. There's a Caribbean Area for Pirates, etc. If you jump off a boat and start swimming around you might see mermaids or talking fishes a la Nemo. A Fairy Tale Land for princesses, gnomes, dwarves, etc.
This is the only way I see it working. I don't think something set so narrowly on any one property would work. Just build it all, and if someone's a huge Lion King fanatic they can stay in the Savannah but if they are adventurous they can take their talking wildebeest into Tron land.
He said nothing about seeing Emilio Estevez on the fence.
All this device integration is useless. A decent phone (free w/contract), camera ($100) and DS ($130) will do each job better than the iPhone. That's not the point obviously. The iPhone has all of this integrated, but we're talking gaming here. No photographer would decide which cellphone to use as a replacement for their camera, and neither should a gamer. It is inevitable that 5-15 years in the future we will finally have a gaming platform that also happens to be a phone. And then there will be a game that will be great, and you will need that platform to play it. A portable singularity, if you will. But that time is not now, and this is like discussing the Outlook of iPhone Photography. (i.e. Silly).
Certainly from an enthusiast's point of view it would be great if the iPhone was an open platform so you could port Game XYZ to it, but even that isn't the case.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has a very large, very public set of data for the last few years. It breaks down employment by job type, etc. I was looking around in it a few months ago and did a little bit of investigating.
Disclaimer: I'm not an economist, although I studied it. This is obviously only as good as the data that it uses, and I will leave that up to you.
I looked at two main categories: "Computer and Mathematical Jobs" and "Architectural and Engineering Jobs" -- very broad by any standard. I then looked at the number of jobs we had and the mean salary of each job. The product was our economy's expenditure on these jobs. If we employed 3,000 hatmakers and paid them $30,000 each, we've spent $90 million on hatmakers.
Well, the results of that table are here. While Architecture and Engineering haven't been so hot, Computers and Mathematics has. We spent more on Computers & Mathematics jobs in 2004 than any year previous, including 1999 which was pre-bubble.
So, I looked into it a bit further. I looked at two jobs, as described by the BLS: Computer Programmer and Computer Systems Analyst. They each do the following:
Computer Programmer - Convert project specifications and statements of problems and procedures to detailed logical flow charts for coding into computer language. Develop and write computer programs to store, locate, and retrieve specific documents, data, and information. May program web sites.
Computer Systems Analyst - Analyze science, engineering, business, and all other data processing problems for application to electronic data processing systems. Analyze user requirements, procedures, and problems to automate or improve existing systems and review computer system capabilities, workflow, and scheduling limitations. May analyze or recommend commercially available software. Exclude persons working primarily as "Engineers" (17-2011 through 17-2199), "Mathematicians" (15-2021), or "Scientists" (19-1011 through 19-3099). May supervise computer programmers.
Note my italics. The first job is certainly one that is "easier" and the second one is "harder" --- certainly, the second person might make a bit more money or do higher-level thinking. It could be argued that the second job is "better" --- we want more people making sure widgets are built correctly rather than bolting in Section 7-G into hundreds of widgets a day.
Well, here's a table showing how those two jobs did. Make no mistake, we lost computer programmers. About 130,000 of them from 1999 to 2004. That's a lot of jobs. We're also spending less overall on these computer programmers: about $6 billion less.
But... what happened to the Systems Analyst, the one who "may" supervise the programmers? Well, we've added 70,000 of those jobs and since 1999 we're spending $7 billion more employing these guys. Overall, we're spending $1 billion more (inflation-adjusted) on Computer Programmers and Computer Systems Analysts, eventhough there's 60,000 less people being employed (out of a starting pool of almost a million people).
That, to me, looks like resources being shifted. It looks like there are more jobs supervising, and those jobs not only earn more, but their wages are steadily increasing. The old "lost" job is out of the door and on a desk in Romania or Bangalore. The new "replacement" job has arrived and it pays Americans more.
Overly simplified? Of course. There's any number of factors which can muddle up this data. But, this is hard data at least, and slightl
What about this: Download-only Single Becomes UK Number One
Didn't Gnarls Barkley's "Crazty" hit #1 back in April? I guess the distinction was that"crazy" later had a physical single you could buy. This isn't the first download-only song to break the Top 40. Rather, it is the first download-only song to hit the Top 40 that did not have a follow-up physical CD. Or something to that effect.
Summary: Not as big as the headline suggests, still important.
The new Warner Bros. "Total HD" hybrid disc and LG Electronics (re-announced) combo HD DVD/Blu-Ray drive are solutions for a problem we didn't ask for: studios being idiotic and only releasing movies in one format.
WB and Paramount get free passes for being the only studios to support both formats. Everyone else gets Fs.
The HD market is a tiny swab of moist air in the filled water bucket of DVD revenue. I think sales are still under 1%. I can guarantee you that they would be at 5% or more if this stupid format war never came around. That's the main issue.
I don't understand why Universal (and to some extent WB) continue to make these HD DVD/DVD combo discs. For the uninitiated, these are dual-sided discs, with the DVD on one side and the HD DVD on the other. Dual-sided discs are always more complicated and expensive to manufacture and they're really not a value-add to consumers. Most big releases on DVD go with multiple discs rather than multiple sides. So, it makes it a crappier product and on top of that, they charge a premium, anywhere from $10 to $20 (MSRP) for our "benefit"! Note: expect this to play out in this new/twin/hybrid Blu-Ray and HD DVD format. Why pay $25 for one movie when you can pay $40 for both, one of which is unnecessary?
And here LG joins the fray, offering a dual-format player for $800-$1300. Nevermind that at that price range a savvy shopper would be already able to buy both players. HDTV owners aren't buying the new formats because they don't want to pick the losing side. Why don't they want to pick the losing side? Because they don't want to buy a new player for the winning format years down the road. Mind you, in 2009 or 2010 HD players are going to be $199. So these people are holding off because they don't want to spend $199 in another year. And a new $1000 player is supposed to calm these fears?
I can't put it any clearer than this: they fucked up. Everyone did. And now to make up for their mistakes, we should pay extra. And we won't.
The best part? The statements we'll hear in 2008 that the HD market isn't catching on. And who's to blame? Why, not the studios, but pirates! Pirates took our profits.
This whole ordeal is being played out by giant billion-dollar corporations that are basically repeatedly hitting themselves and each other in the groin with a hammer. When we ask them to stop and re-think what they're doing, they just ask us for money to cover the medical expenses. And then they use that money to buy more fucking hammers.
I guess it's in the eyes of the beholder, but if I was a huge SiN fan I'd rather have only Episode 1 than nothing to begin with. Sure, a completed story-arc would be best, but that doesn't seem to be a viable option now.
About three weeks ago it was reported that a lot of the developers left Ritual and SiN Episodes is no more.
I never played all of the original SiN but I did play the demo back then and I liked it. I liked Shogo more though.
But... this raises a question. What if Episode 1 of SiN had never been released? The game would've been scrapped and the developers and publishers would not have been paid. Everyone loses. What we have now is that everyone still loses... we just lose less.
Sure, it might survive the Sahara or the Himalayas, but this is southern New Jersey we're talking about!
Well that's going to make the whole "Ihre Papiere, bitte!" question a bit difficult to answer, no?
I can take a guess as to what strand might be incompatible with life... Here's one famous one:
H-H-S-O-O-O-O (repeating)
If I recall, the first test case was the famous "Little Johnny" who was, after the test, a Little Johnny no more.