Still sounds like nVIDIA's ahead with the GeForce Ultra, in terms of 3-d performance at least. Though unless you're obsessed with driving Quake's FPS as high is it will go, it's going to be a while before anyone's really going to need cards this powerful (and expensive). --
I liked the Matrix, but it was definitely overrated (especially in the geek community it appears); it appears to me that there have been very few really good sci-fi movies in the past few years. Even the best (Gattaca, Pitch Black) weren't that memorable. --
Hell, I didn't want the help of the one I got, but there was no way to get rid of her. Well, eventually she fell in battle. My point was just that she shouldn't offer help if she's not going to give it for free; she should have said "I'd send some troops with you, but we're hard pressed to defend the camp as it is" or something like that... --
Hmmm, moderated down twice for overrated. Funny thing is since my karma is maxed out, I didn't gain any points for being modded up, but I lost points for being modded down. Ah well, knew I was going to lose karma for that post anyway, just assumed it would be as a troll... --
You know, the annoying thing isn't that they troll, but that they do it so badly. Spam is the last refuge of the incompetent; in my day if we wanted to write flamebait we did it better. --
What I liked is the "I'll put my soldiers at your disposal" line after you kill Blood Raven--sure you get one for free (who refuses to talk to you),
but the rest you have to pay for. Could have finished Act 1 in like 20 minutes if the entire band of soldiers actually came with me and helped kill off the baddies... --
Yeah, I've got to agree, Age of Empires was one of the greatest games ever. And my first computer game ever was an MS one; Microsoft Flight Simulator version 1. The WW1 part was kind of fun... --
Well the same thing happened with Sega; on both the Saturn and the Dreamcast they added all sorts of peripherals: keyboards, modems, etc. The Dreamcast actually seemed to do well on the market, but I don't know how well the extras sold, and I doubt many people bought it for the add-ons.
--
The Xbox team had it right the first time; just do games. People will not buy a unified entertainment unit. Look what happened to all the interactive TV plans a few years back. Or the 3D0 even further back. Of course, eventually there will be a breakthrough product that will actually succeed (like the Palm Pilot succeeded in the decades-old electronic address book market), but since they're already taking a big chance with introducing a new console system, I'd stick with that. --
Federal anti-trust law states that victims of monopolistic practices can sue for three times what they've lost. Not sure if that holds true in state courts, but if it does they could be out some serious money; even if it's just that one state, California makes up a sizeable chunk of the US' population. --
Two of these companies already have their own version of UNIX. Why don't they just open-source AIX and/or HP-UX? I mean, not to say anything bad about the linux team, I use it all the time. But is it really that technologically ahead of the commercial unices? The whole thing sounds more a product of the marketing departments than R&D. --
Re:Developers all want a royalty. NOT.
on
Salon on the XBox
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· Score: 2
The downside is that if a large chunk of the console revenue must be derived from software royalties, it must be made impossible to bypass the console company in the production of a title.
I can very easily see some of the larger game houses being attracted to the Xbox because of this (and the article seems to support this). It puts them all in the same boat; they all sink or they all float. Of course, MS has the resources to withstand another flop, but a bad investment in technology could sink some of the smaller game makers. And MS has a nasty tendency to back out of development partnerships, leaving the other party holding the bag.
The whole licensing thing also keeps small competitors out; MS can close whoever it wants out of the development process. --
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Donating is like voting, not buying. By your logic, people shouldn't vote either: their personal vote is unlikely to make the decision, and if they don't vote, they save the time and effort of voting.
Actually, your voting issue kind of proves my point. A relatively low percentage of eligible people in the US actually DO vote; the majority feel that it's just a waste of their time. And if there was a 50 dollar "voting fee" for each vote, that would probably cut back even more on it. And of course I think people should vote as a matter of principle. Just like I think people should voluntarily pay under your system. I wasn't speaking against it's philosophy, I was just saying that due to self-interest on the part of consumers it probably wouldn't work.
This is the result of moderate-scaled businesses being driven out of business. Megacorps grow beyond their naturally efficient size to gain the advantages of legal thuggery and government lobbying (esp. for corporate welfare), and the family businesses are being driven into garages.
Beyond preventing monopolistic practices and enforcing environmental and labor practices, I don't think the government should interfere with
business, either for or against it. I certainly don't agree with our lobbying system and the tax breaks and government support large corporations often get away with. Just because I support some form of public welfare doesn't mean I think corporations should qualify.
I don't have any statistics on it, so I won't comment too much about the moderate-size company thing. All I can say is that all the ones I know about seem to be doing just fine.
First of all, it's morally wrong to steal from me to raise your children. It's a form of slavery.
That's just follows your idea that it's theft for the government to take your money, and isn't particular to the education aspect of it. I still consider taxation part of a voluntary social contract, and not theft.
Secondly, the education per dollar of public school is so low that even an individual parent's share of the tax burden is more than adequate to produce the same level of education on the free market.
I don't know about that. Like I said before, most people underestimate the actual quality of public school. While it can be low in places, it can also be quite high; a lot of of the statistics are skewed in my opinion.
Oh yes, that's right. You believe that tax-supported bureaucratic government monopolies are as efficient as free market production. If you believe that, there's no point in me arguing the point, you probably also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairie.
Of course I don't believe that. I've emphasized in my prior posts that government bureacracies ARE less-efficient. However, I believe certain fundamental services should be supplied by the government because a) they will be extended to people who can't afford it, and b) a potentially dangerous need for profit will be removed. In regards to the latter point, I think the free-market proponents make a major error in thinking that ALL services can be privatized. Some things just might not be able to make a profit, but they MUST be supplied.
--
When one company underprices its goods, the consumers benefit from the lower prices. When they raise them again, the consumers hurt for a little while, but it becomes profitable to compete again and the situation corrects itself. That competition can spring up awfully quickly when the consumer feels cheated and actively hates the company that is gouging them.
I don't think the competition can always spring up fast enough. Especially in high tech fields, where you need a massive amount of capital to begin construction (think semiconductor industry).
Not at all. The self-interest component is effectively purchase of status. You pay to be treated as a relevant person by buskware developers.
But unless there are short-term, direct, personal benefits to be gotten from paying the developer, I don't think most people will do it. If 50 people like a piece of software, and 49 pay, the one who doesn't wins out economically; they've gotten the software, keep their money, and rely on the rest of the pool to encourage the developer. By not knowing how many other people pay, each of those 50 people are placed into the position where they probably won't send out the checks.
Without this kind of barriers, it would be, for example, cheaper to eat in restaurants or have take-out delivered than to eat at home (saving everyone lots of time). That's the insanity I'm talking about.
Why is that insanity? My time is worth a certain amount of money; if I go to a restaurant and avoid spending time cooking, I can very easily come out ahead. It's just the idea of specialization; I specialize in certain things and do them efficiently. It makes more sense economically for me to pay someone else to do those things that I do inefficiently. Extremely personalized services, which could easily be provided by microbusinesses (the perfect escape from corporate wageslavery), are made prohibitively expensive by these taxes.
Actually I don't see that happening; small business development has been increasing in recent years I think. And under our current tax system, small businesses have advantages over the salary model. If you own a small business, you can (and a lot do) merge your personal and business finances. Have the home owned by the business, and your car, and pay yourself a small salary. You get all the benefits of living a comfortable existence, with the tax breaks you have in having a low personal worth.
Let's not ignore the fact that everybody pays for public schools, too. If the gov't didn't take the money from you by force, you could afford to send your kid to private school or hire a group-tutor
The amount of your tax dollar that goes to pay for schooling your children is much less than it would cost for private school, as the cost is taken from everyone. It's a social cost; we all benefit from an educated populace, even if we don't have children in the school system. If you're talking about taxes as a whole being the money the government takes from you, yes, you probably could afford to send your children to private school with that money. But you'd also have to pay for all the other services the government would usually provide. Add private school tuition to paying for your water supply, sewage system use, sanitation, roads and highways,
fire and police, etc. and the amount your paying approaches what you pay in taxes (or exceeds it depending on your income level).
As for the quality of the school system, I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. First of all, the US has had a reasonably good school system through most of it's history; pointing to recent problems as evidence that public schooling doesn't work just ignores a huge chunk of history in which it did.
I am a product of public school, up to and including college, and I think I received a decent education. There were always special programs and more advanced classes that students could enter if they weren't being challenged by the regular ones. I don't think the social promotion idea is as bad as most people think, on the elementary school level, simply because there isn't enough of a difference (in my mind) between different grades there. When you get into higher grades, of course it's wrong, but I think it's inevitable considering that a lot of kids just don't have the desire to go through with it. The answer, to my mind, is to bring back the idea of trade schools, where kids who don't fit into a college track can go to learn a skill that in most cases ends up being more useful than a college degree. It's one of the reasons a lot of foreign schools outperform ours; the students who aren't cut out for academics are moved out.
--
Slashdot Mirror
Still sounds like nVIDIA's ahead with the GeForce Ultra, in terms of 3-d performance at least. Though unless you're obsessed with driving Quake's FPS as high is it will go, it's going to be a while before anyone's really going to need cards this powerful (and expensive).
--
I liked the Matrix, but it was definitely overrated (especially in the geek community it appears); it appears to me that there have been very few really good sci-fi movies in the past few years. Even the best (Gattaca, Pitch Black) weren't that memorable.
--
Hey, couldn't you argue that PL(/I) was the successor to C? Or Perl?
No?
Fine. Never mind.
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Hey, why isn't anyone complaining how the GPL license isn't compatible with the NASM license, and demanding the FSF change it?
--
Now that's style.
--
Hell, I didn't want the help of the one I got, but there was no way to get rid of her. Well, eventually she fell in battle. My point was just that she shouldn't offer help if she's not going to give it for free; she should have said "I'd send some troops with you, but we're hard pressed to defend the camp as it is" or something like that...
--
Yeah, I couldn't manage that brand of ultra-sophisticated humor that slashdot specializes in...
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Does this mean I can register micrösoft.com and yàhoo.com and släshdot.org?
--
Hmmm, moderated down twice for overrated. Funny thing is since my karma is maxed out, I didn't gain any points for being modded up, but I lost points for being modded down. Ah well, knew I was going to lose karma for that post anyway, just assumed it would be as a troll...
--
You know, the annoying thing isn't that they troll, but that they do it so badly. Spam is the last refuge of the incompetent; in my day if we wanted to write flamebait we did it better.
--
D2 is great because it's so much like nethack.
--
What I liked is the "I'll put my soldiers at your disposal" line after you kill Blood Raven--sure you get one for free (who refuses to talk to you), but the rest you have to pay for. Could have finished Act 1 in like 20 minutes if the entire band of soldiers actually came with me and helped kill off the baddies...
--
Imagine a Beowu--ok, I'll stop.
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Actually, the Linux/Windows debate makes more sense. Which is a very sad thing.
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I take it you've tried other publishers?
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The only thing they recommend is a replacement for the only browser that actually works well near perfectly: ie on the mac.
--
Yeah, I've got to agree, Age of Empires was one of the greatest games ever. And my first computer game ever was an MS one; Microsoft Flight Simulator version 1. The WW1 part was kind of fun...
--
Your argument relies on the idea that creating and or selling an emulator is illegal. It's not. The courts have already ruled on it.
--
Well the same thing happened with Sega; on both the Saturn and the Dreamcast they added all sorts of peripherals: keyboards, modems, etc. The Dreamcast actually seemed to do well on the market, but I don't know how well the extras sold, and I doubt many people bought it for the add-ons.
--
The Xbox team had it right the first time; just do games. People will not buy a unified entertainment unit. Look what happened to all the interactive TV plans a few years back. Or the 3D0 even further back. Of course, eventually there will be a breakthrough product that will actually succeed (like the Palm Pilot succeeded in the decades-old electronic address book market), but since they're already taking a big chance with introducing a new console system, I'd stick with that.
--
Federal anti-trust law states that victims of monopolistic practices can sue for three times what they've lost. Not sure if that holds true in state courts, but if it does they could be out some serious money; even if it's just that one state, California makes up a sizeable chunk of the US' population.
--
Two of these companies already have their own version of UNIX. Why don't they just open-source AIX and/or HP-UX? I mean, not to say anything bad about the linux team, I use it all the time. But is it really that technologically ahead of the commercial unices? The whole thing sounds more a product of the marketing departments than R&D.
--
The downside is that if a large chunk of the console revenue must be derived from software royalties, it must be made impossible to bypass the console company in the production of a title.
I can very easily see some of the larger game houses being attracted to the Xbox because of this (and the article seems to support this). It puts them all in the same boat; they all sink or they all float. Of course, MS has the resources to withstand another flop, but a bad investment in technology could sink some of the smaller game makers. And MS has a nasty tendency to back out of development partnerships, leaving the other party holding the bag.
The whole licensing thing also keeps small competitors out; MS can close whoever it wants out of the development process.
--
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Donating is like voting, not buying. By your logic, people shouldn't vote either: their personal vote is unlikely to make the decision, and if they don't vote, they save the time and effort of voting.
Actually, your voting issue kind of proves my point. A relatively low percentage of eligible people in the US actually DO vote; the majority feel that it's just a waste of their time. And if there was a 50 dollar "voting fee" for each vote, that would probably cut back even more on it. And of course I think people should vote as a matter of principle. Just like I think people should voluntarily pay under your system. I wasn't speaking against it's philosophy, I was just saying that due to self-interest on the part of consumers it probably wouldn't work.
This is the result of moderate-scaled businesses being driven out of business. Megacorps grow beyond their naturally efficient size to gain the advantages of legal thuggery and government lobbying (esp. for corporate welfare), and the family businesses are being driven into garages.
Beyond preventing monopolistic practices and enforcing environmental and labor practices, I don't think the government should interfere with business, either for or against it. I certainly don't agree with our lobbying system and the tax breaks and government support large corporations often get away with. Just because I support some form of public welfare doesn't mean I think corporations should qualify.
I don't have any statistics on it, so I won't comment too much about the moderate-size company thing. All I can say is that all the ones I know about seem to be doing just fine.
First of all, it's morally wrong to steal from me to raise your children. It's a form of slavery.
That's just follows your idea that it's theft for the government to take your money, and isn't particular to the education aspect of it. I still consider taxation part of a voluntary social contract, and not theft.
Secondly, the education per dollar of public school is so low that even an individual parent's share of the tax burden is more than adequate to produce the same level of education on the free market.
I don't know about that. Like I said before, most people underestimate the actual quality of public school. While it can be low in places, it can also be quite high; a lot of of the statistics are skewed in my opinion.
Oh yes, that's right. You believe that tax-supported bureaucratic government monopolies are as efficient as free market production. If you believe that, there's no point in me arguing the point, you probably also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairie.
Of course I don't believe that. I've emphasized in my prior posts that government bureacracies ARE less-efficient. However, I believe certain fundamental services should be supplied by the government because a) they will be extended to people who can't afford it, and b) a potentially dangerous need for profit will be removed. In regards to the latter point, I think the free-market proponents make a major error in thinking that ALL services can be privatized. Some things just might not be able to make a profit, but they MUST be supplied.
--
When one company underprices its goods, the consumers benefit from the lower prices. When they raise them again, the consumers hurt for a little while, but it becomes profitable to compete again and the situation corrects itself. That competition can spring up awfully quickly when the consumer feels cheated and actively hates the company that is gouging them.
I don't think the competition can always spring up fast enough. Especially in high tech fields, where you need a massive amount of capital to begin construction (think semiconductor industry).
Not at all. The self-interest component is effectively purchase of status. You pay to be treated as a relevant person by buskware developers.
But unless there are short-term, direct, personal benefits to be gotten from paying the developer, I don't think most people will do it. If 50 people like a piece of software, and 49 pay, the one who doesn't wins out economically; they've gotten the software, keep their money, and rely on the rest of the pool to encourage the developer. By not knowing how many other people pay, each of those 50 people are placed into the position where they probably won't send out the checks.
Without this kind of barriers, it would be, for example, cheaper to eat in restaurants or have take-out delivered than to eat at home (saving everyone lots of time). That's the insanity I'm talking about.
Why is that insanity? My time is worth a certain amount of money; if I go to a restaurant and avoid spending time cooking, I can very easily come out ahead. It's just the idea of specialization; I specialize in certain things and do them efficiently. It makes more sense economically for me to pay someone else to do those things that I do inefficiently.
Extremely personalized services, which could easily be provided by microbusinesses (the perfect escape from corporate wageslavery), are made prohibitively expensive by these taxes.
Actually I don't see that happening; small business development has been increasing in recent years I think. And under our current tax system, small businesses have advantages over the salary model. If you own a small business, you can (and a lot do) merge your personal and business finances. Have the home owned by the business, and your car, and pay yourself a small salary. You get all the benefits of living a comfortable existence, with the tax breaks you have in having a low personal worth.
Let's not ignore the fact that everybody pays for public schools, too. If the gov't didn't take the money from you by force, you could afford to send your kid to private school or hire a group-tutor
The amount of your tax dollar that goes to pay for schooling your children is much less than it would cost for private school, as the cost is taken from everyone. It's a social cost; we all benefit from an educated populace, even if we don't have children in the school system. If you're talking about taxes as a whole being the money the government takes from you, yes, you probably could afford to send your children to private school with that money. But you'd also have to pay for all the other services the government would usually provide. Add private school tuition to paying for your water supply, sewage system use, sanitation, roads and highways, fire and police, etc. and the amount your paying approaches what you pay in taxes (or exceeds it depending on your income level).
As for the quality of the school system, I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. First of all, the US has had a reasonably good school system through most of it's history; pointing to recent problems as evidence that public schooling doesn't work just ignores a huge chunk of history in which it did.
I am a product of public school, up to and including college, and I think I received a decent education. There were always special programs and more advanced classes that students could enter if they weren't being challenged by the regular ones. I don't think the social promotion idea is as bad as most people think, on the elementary school level, simply because there isn't enough of a difference (in my mind) between different grades there. When you get into higher grades, of course it's wrong, but I think it's inevitable considering that a lot of kids just don't have the desire to go through with it. The answer, to my mind, is to bring back the idea of trade schools, where kids who don't fit into a college track can go to learn a skill that in most cases ends up being more useful than a college degree. It's one of the reasons a lot of foreign schools outperform ours; the students who aren't cut out for academics are moved out.
--