I already have a cellphone that has enough monthly minutes that, for as little as I use the phone, it might as well just be unlimited. And I can take it with me anywhere, too.
Nonetheless, it's kind of neat making these free phone calls with Skype and hearing the people's voices come out of my computer speakers.
Have to see if I can get through to Dial-a-Song at 718-387-6962. Now it's free if I call from home as well as work...
Have you looked at RPGNow? It's an e-bookstore that sells PDFs of various games--some from the bigger gaming companies, others from small companies that you've never heard of, such as this giant robot RPG that was written by a friend of mine. Many of these are just as imaginative, if not more so, than a lot of the stuff you'll find from the larger companies--but since they're so small you'd never have heard of them.
...given that I watch DVDs through my computer anyway.
Now if a nice HD-DVD-ROM drive comes out in a year or so that can play both Blu and HD, and the price drops to something economical, that I could see getting...
It's called "overselling" and it's a common practice in not just the home Internet business, but the webhosting business. Webhosts are happy to sell you a package with umpteen zillion megabytes of storage space and bandwidth, because hardly anyone ever uses that much; if they didn't oversell, they'd have all these resources lying fallow--but on the other hand, let even a significant fraction of those websites actually start to use that much and the host is in trouble.
Come to think of it, banks work that way, too; they lend out most of what they take in so they actually have relatively little cash on hand. If a run starts on the bank, then they run out of cash very quickly.
It's a highly efficient way of maximizing use of resources when it is not expected that everyone will want to use those resources to capacity at once--but it only works when there isn't a reason to use them to capacity.
The irony is that until BitTorrent, broadband was having a hell of a time getting people to sign up--because, after all, what would they need it for? And now that there's actually a "killer app," people are signing up so fast and using so much that it's causing a "backslash" (heh heh). Either feast or famine, nothing in-between.
...because if they did make it, it would be considered a drug, subject to FDA regulations, and so forth.
By all rights, alcohol should be considered a drug. It is a drug. It's just that it has such a unique relationship with our society that it's essentially "grandfathered in"--the one time they tried to regulate it as a drug, it caused so much trouble that they ended up deregulating it again.
But a "synthetic alcohol," regardless of whether it's supposed to act just like alcohol without the bad side-effects, would not be the same thing as alcohol--so it would probably never be available in lieu of alcohol.
Furthermore, I'm not sure how they could incorporate it into beers, wines, or liquors, given that the character of the beverages is created at the same time the alcohol comes into being naturally. (Unless they could somehow genetically engineer yeast to make the synthetic stuff instead of the real stuff.) So what you're talking about is basically a synthetic form of Everclear.
Plus, sometimes you just wanna get out of the house. Go down to the Internet coffeeshop and game there, or to the LAN-gaming place but use your own computer that has all your custom macros on it--most LAN-gaming places won't let you put that stuff on their computer.
And there are also those folks who can't afford or don't have access to high-speed Internet in their area, so taking it on the road is the only way they can do it via high-speed at all.
It's probably not the sort of "collaboration software" that the blog entry talks about, but a group of writers from the RP Congress City of Heroes roleplaying/writing circle have found that the server-based collaborative editor MoonEdit can work better than email for the small, specialized uses of writing stories together. We can write and edit them together in real time, with characters immediately responding to each other, rather than trying to guess at what the other characters would say and emailing the stuff back and forth.
My guess is that they couldn't take the bandwidth strain of being slashdotted, so set up a redirect. Odd, given that they submitted the story to Slashdot themselves, and you'd think if they couldn't stand the heat they'd stay out of the kitchen.
So? You're paying for the work that was involved in putting together, collating, and organizing that "freely-available information" into a more usable form. If you don't want to buy it, then don't buy it, and spend the time collecting the information yourself instead.
Pen-and-paper roleplaying game books are high-priced for much the same reason. Small print runs = no economy of scale. This is why a lot of RPG supplements these days are sold as PDFs, thus pushing the printing and binding costs off on to the consumer.
The whole thing is rather silly given that probably 99.9% of people who use Office right now could probably go on using the version they currently have until the end of time and never miss Office Random-Year-of-the-Future. I mean, Office right now does everything the average letter-writer could need and more. MS has been banging on it long enough that there are no major features it lacks. Anything they add now is gilding the lily, adding random little features nobody will ever miss for the sake of changing the name and getting more money out of consumers. Who needs 2007 anyway?
No, it's been enforced. Google on the history of the roleplaying game Champions (Hero System) sometime. They were forced to change the word "superhero" to "super" on their covers, back in the '80s.
Yeah, one wonders where Cory was in the mid eighties when Champions was forced to call itself "the Super Roleplaying Game" instead of "the Superhero Roleplaying Game".
I've found it rather interesting to look at other games, books, fora, and so forth that are about supers and see just what terms they coin to get around the trademark. For example, City of Heroes talks about heroes, not superheroes.
There were no limitations beyond those stated. Copy freely and share with whomever you like. You have the Boy Scouts mailing list? Share with the Boy Scouts.
Example: if every person in the world downloaded a copy of David Weber's latest, and just loved it to pieces, how would that affect David's career? Absolute worldwide frenzy for his next, I'd say. How would that be bad for David? I bet there would be an incredible black market for snippets of his partially written next one. (Hah! Maybe this is my secret plan!)
I sure am glad I'm smarter than every other publisher, or maybe just not so susceptible to hypnosis. Hey whatever happened to Gutenberg? Did they burn him at the stake, or did he just live the quiet life of a German burgher? Lot's of others got burned, but that was for Bible stuff.
I think I might be starting to need the protection of a couple of German Princes. Hey, I've _got_ the preliminary tentative protection of a couple of German princes!:):):)
Exactly. Incentive to buy the hardbacks. Baen's a rather canny fellow, as he knows what the posts to this article have demonstrated: while there are some people who enjoy reading ebooks, the vast majority of people don't--but they may, out of curiosity, poke around and read a chapter or two on the screen, just enough to decide that they want to buy the print version. To Baen's mind, the more people who are exposed, the more people will buy the books. I don't have any links I can point to for specific proof that this is what he intends for the CDs rather than just the Free Library--the original Baen's Bar posts have long since expired--but that is his intention.
It will be interesting to see if Baen's philosophy changes any in the future when ebook readers pass the usability hurdles and come into more common use as direct substitutes for paper versions.
Actually, the Electronic ARCs and the first three quarters of the book are "prerelease," but when the final quarter is out and multiple formats become available, that is the final form. If I remember correctly anyway.
Ziplock baggies work, and don't result in water spots from turning pages with damp hands either. Even if you actually drop the thing in the tub, you can snatch it out before any water gets in--whereas with a paper book, you would end up with soggy pages.
Slashdot Mirror
I already have a cellphone that has enough monthly minutes that, for as little as I use the phone, it might as well just be unlimited. And I can take it with me anywhere, too.
Nonetheless, it's kind of neat making these free phone calls with Skype and hearing the people's voices come out of my computer speakers.
Have to see if I can get through to Dial-a-Song at 718-387-6962. Now it's free if I call from home as well as work...
Have you looked at RPGNow? It's an e-bookstore that sells PDFs of various games--some from the bigger gaming companies, others from small companies that you've never heard of, such as this giant robot RPG that was written by a friend of mine. Many of these are just as imaginative, if not more so, than a lot of the stuff you'll find from the larger companies--but since they're so small you'd never have heard of them.
In all fairness, he didn't say why he enjoyed reading Dvorak.
He could enjoy Dvorak for the same reason people enjoy watching bad movies--schadenfreude crossed with pointing and laughing.
...given that I watch DVDs through my computer anyway.
Now if a nice HD-DVD-ROM drive comes out in a year or so that can play both Blu and HD, and the price drops to something economical, that I could see getting...
It's called "overselling" and it's a common practice in not just the home Internet business, but the webhosting business. Webhosts are happy to sell you a package with umpteen zillion megabytes of storage space and bandwidth, because hardly anyone ever uses that much; if they didn't oversell, they'd have all these resources lying fallow--but on the other hand, let even a significant fraction of those websites actually start to use that much and the host is in trouble.
Come to think of it, banks work that way, too; they lend out most of what they take in so they actually have relatively little cash on hand. If a run starts on the bank, then they run out of cash very quickly.
It's a highly efficient way of maximizing use of resources when it is not expected that everyone will want to use those resources to capacity at once--but it only works when there isn't a reason to use them to capacity.
The irony is that until BitTorrent, broadband was having a hell of a time getting people to sign up--because, after all, what would they need it for? And now that there's actually a "killer app," people are signing up so fast and using so much that it's causing a "backslash" (heh heh). Either feast or famine, nothing in-between.
...because if they did make it, it would be considered a drug, subject to FDA regulations, and so forth.
By all rights, alcohol should be considered a drug. It is a drug. It's just that it has such a unique relationship with our society that it's essentially "grandfathered in"--the one time they tried to regulate it as a drug, it caused so much trouble that they ended up deregulating it again.
But a "synthetic alcohol," regardless of whether it's supposed to act just like alcohol without the bad side-effects, would not be the same thing as alcohol--so it would probably never be available in lieu of alcohol.
Furthermore, I'm not sure how they could incorporate it into beers, wines, or liquors, given that the character of the beverages is created at the same time the alcohol comes into being naturally. (Unless they could somehow genetically engineer yeast to make the synthetic stuff instead of the real stuff.) So what you're talking about is basically a synthetic form of Everclear.
...before somebody cracks it.
I mean, come on. Remember how Windows XP was supposed to phone home and authenticate?
Remember how easily that was cracked with a patch that swapped in files from a no-need-to-authenticate version?
I predict this will be cracked very quickly.
Plus, sometimes you just wanna get out of the house. Go down to the Internet coffeeshop and game there, or to the LAN-gaming place but use your own computer that has all your custom macros on it--most LAN-gaming places won't let you put that stuff on their computer.
And there are also those folks who can't afford or don't have access to high-speed Internet in their area, so taking it on the road is the only way they can do it via high-speed at all.
A friend of mine tried City of Heroes/Villains on his MacBook and was highly impressed by its performance.
It's probably not the sort of "collaboration software" that the blog entry talks about, but a group of writers from the RP Congress City of Heroes roleplaying/writing circle have found that the server-based collaborative editor MoonEdit can work better than email for the small, specialized uses of writing stories together. We can write and edit them together in real time, with characters immediately responding to each other, rather than trying to guess at what the other characters would say and emailing the stuff back and forth.
It's not the heat...it's the humidity.
My guess is that they couldn't take the bandwidth strain of being slashdotted, so set up a redirect. Odd, given that they submitted the story to Slashdot themselves, and you'd think if they couldn't stand the heat they'd stay out of the kitchen.
So? You're paying for the work that was involved in putting together, collating, and organizing that "freely-available information" into a more usable form. If you don't want to buy it, then don't buy it, and spend the time collecting the information yourself instead.
Pen-and-paper roleplaying game books are high-priced for much the same reason. Small print runs = no economy of scale. This is why a lot of RPG supplements these days are sold as PDFs, thus pushing the printing and binding costs off on to the consumer.
I don't even think he gave any real reasons why it would happen. He just more or less said it would because it would be nice.
Someone get out the anti-aircraft rockets and shoot that pie out of the sky.
The whole thing is rather silly given that probably 99.9% of people who use Office right now could probably go on using the version they currently have until the end of time and never miss Office Random-Year-of-the-Future. I mean, Office right now does everything the average letter-writer could need and more. MS has been banging on it long enough that there are no major features it lacks. Anything they add now is gilding the lily, adding random little features nobody will ever miss for the sake of changing the name and getting more money out of consumers. Who needs 2007 anyway?
A company called Ageia is making a physics processing card that will handle physics calculations. It will be supported by City of Heroes/Villains when it is available.
Um...no, no they're not. That article is from March 2005--it's over a year old. Marvel and NCSoft settled out of court in December.
No, it's been enforced. Google on the history of the roleplaying game Champions (Hero System) sometime. They were forced to change the word "superhero" to "super" on their covers, back in the '80s.
Yeah, one wonders where Cory was in the mid eighties when Champions was forced to call itself "the Super Roleplaying Game" instead of "the Superhero Roleplaying Game".
I've found it rather interesting to look at other games, books, fora, and so forth that are about supers and see just what terms they coin to get around the trademark. For example, City of Heroes talks about heroes, not superheroes.
Or perhaps even poultry-based fecal matter.
And just in case you were still wondering:
:) :) :)
Subject: Re: Slashdot on Ebooks:
Author: Jim Baen
Date: 11 Mar 2006 11:32 AM
Originally Posted: 11 Mar 2006 12:49 PM
There were no limitations beyond those stated. Copy freely and share with
whomever you like. You have the Boy Scouts mailing list? Share with the Boy
Scouts.
Example: if every person in the world downloaded a copy of David Weber's
latest, and just loved it to pieces, how would that affect David's career?
Absolute worldwide frenzy for his next, I'd say. How would that be bad for
David? I bet there would be an incredible black market for snippets of his
partially written next one. (Hah! Maybe this is my secret plan!)
I sure am glad I'm smarter than every other publisher, or maybe just not so
susceptible to hypnosis. Hey whatever happened to Gutenberg? Did they burn
him at the stake, or did he just live the quiet life of a German burgher?
Lot's of others got burned, but that was for Bible stuff.
I think I might be starting to need the protection of a couple of German
Princes. Hey, I've _got_ the preliminary tentative protection of a couple
of German princes!
Exactly. Incentive to buy the hardbacks. Baen's a rather canny fellow, as he knows what the posts to this article have demonstrated: while there are some people who enjoy reading ebooks, the vast majority of people don't--but they may, out of curiosity, poke around and read a chapter or two on the screen, just enough to decide that they want to buy the print version. To Baen's mind, the more people who are exposed, the more people will buy the books. I don't have any links I can point to for specific proof that this is what he intends for the CDs rather than just the Free Library--the original Baen's Bar posts have long since expired--but that is his intention.
It will be interesting to see if Baen's philosophy changes any in the future when ebook readers pass the usability hurdles and come into more common use as direct substitutes for paper versions.
Actually, the Electronic ARCs and the first three quarters of the book are "prerelease," but when the final quarter is out and multiple formats become available, that is the final form. If I remember correctly anyway.
Ziplock baggies work, and don't result in water spots from turning pages with damp hands either. Even if you actually drop the thing in the tub, you can snatch it out before any water gets in--whereas with a paper book, you would end up with soggy pages.