The best solution for this problem is to provide for a true market solution for both the producers and the users. I've been researching and writing about peercasting for years now, and I do think this is a great solution to the problem.
First of all, if the content is free, then someone wants that content watched. If that original producer is willing to put a price on the cost of a complete download, those who are helping to provide bandwidth for that download should get offered a piece of the action. If it costs Microsoft $0.02 to transfer 100MB, they should offer $0.015 to anyone willing to provide 100MB of re-transfer bandwidth. The peercasting server would only handle peercasting to their top tier redistributors (based on recent history, bandwidth, stability, etc) who would then redistribute to others. Microsoft's costs drop, and the users have a market incentive for provide more bandwidth or stability. Top tier redistros don't necessarily even make more money than the guys at the bottom -- its all a numbers game.
Secondly, the opportunity for P2P to take over antiquated services such as TV, radio or any other broad-distribution medium is getting closer -- but it relies on advertisers, still. Let an end user become a re-distro and THEY can tap into the advertising proceed. Sure, this screws things up for the big monopolistic distribution companies (every TV and radio distributor, cable company, satellite company, etc), but it would quickly bring more stability to a market perverted by copyright rules and DMCA-style regulations.
We have cable (Tivo HD with 2 cableCards, plus an MCE for our XViD movies and playing DVDs) and we're transitioning away quickly. Our cable bill is ridiculous, and more often than not, we'll download torrents of shows we want to watch rather than wait for them to be recorded by the Tivo.
Honestly, I'd rather pay a la carte for shows we like than deal with the cable mess. A la carte would mean better handling of their massive bandwidth, and a better distribution of proceeds for shows. No need for Nielsen when advertisers will know exactly who is buying what.
I think we'd honestly pay $5 for a 30 minute show -- what does it cost in our time preference to sit down for 30 minutes? I'd pay less with ads. If we liked the show,we'd pay for an annual subscription -- giving shows the chance to continue even without massive ad-funding (see: Firefly).
With our 8-12Mbps Comcast Internet (not oversold in our neighborhood, yet), we download moves quickly enough to make it worth the wait. If we like the movie, we'll buy it, but I have no problem reimbursing even without a physical medium to save it.
I can't figure the TV distro system out, really. Sure, the powers-that-be are paying millions (or more) to keep the monopoly they have, but as the next generation ages, I'm sure the old system will hit the toilet, to be replaced by what? Hopefully more a la carte.
This is an example where customers and businesses are on the same side, with governments and law enforcement actually protecting them by catching the bad guys.
Even though I'm an anti-state kind of guy, it is times like this that I can at least applaud government for doing something right, although probably very inefficiently.
I coaxed my retired father to join the web a few years back (e-mail, slingbox, casual web browsing) and I get 5-10 e-mails a week from him forwarding some bank notification that is a phishing attempt. He has bank accounts with every major bank so all the phishing e-mails hit a bank he has. I keep telling him that his bank won't e-mail him about anything important (maybe a bill notification or whatever), but I told him to NEVER EVER click a link or call a number in an e-mail from anyone other than myself and our direct family. I set up bookmarks for him to go direct, and also gave him the phone number to the banks to call in case he's worried.
For me, the best thing we can do is just teach others the right way to browse, read e-mails and reply to things that sound scary. While I do applaud the government here for slamming some fraudsters, I think it is way cheaper, more secure and more protective of our freedoms to provide proper education to each other, rather than rely on government. All they'll use this for is more reasons to encroach on our inherent rights and take away more privacies.
As more people get burned, more people will learn. Fall off your bike a few times and you'll either realize you need more practice, or you shouldn't bike. We don't need the bike-fall police to protect us.
Note to others: train your parents, children, siblings and friends on the problems regarding phishing or any scam e-mails.
If you look over history, governments have taken metals that were supposed to be a certain weight, and mysteriously removed weight from them and still called the weight the same thing.
Look at the standard weight known as the "dollar" (thaler). It used to be the equivalent of 1/20th of an ounce of gold. Then it was 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Last month that same dollar weight standard was 1/650th of an ounce of gold, and today I believe it is 1/711th of an ounce of gold.
The Roman Empire leaders also had mysteriously disappearing weights... Their Denarius lost over 99% of its official weight over just a few hundred years.
As many know, I am anti-copyright to begin with, but I wonder why Knight isn't setting up to sue VH1 for "stealing" "his" content and rebroadcasting it.
Not only did they take his content, but they also attempted to defend his content via the (fraudulent) DMCA and call it their own.
Might as well go David vs. Goliath in this case, and settle the score with VH1 for the fully penalty of the law.
Re:Back when people could actually code..
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I wrote a multinode door in Turbo Pascal called Wilderness Adventure. Sort of a text based ANSI version of Ultima, with ideas stolen from The Pit. The multiplayer communicated via temp transaction files (.FLG is what I called it) and the other nodes would constantly search for new FLG files then delete their particular incoming files. All done on a ram drive, of course. Talk about churning, but it worked (sort of) with a delay.
As for the COM ports, I was high tech -- we used a Digiboard which overcame many of the IRQ issues. We did use BNU Fossil for a while, but Digi's drivers were phenomenal under DesqView. I think our boards supported 16 ports.
Eventually we tossed DV and moved to MajorBBS because it was really well handled for multinode. That was an awesome programming experience in C, the last time I will ever touch a programming language again, especially a multinode thread-based one:)
No multi-monitors, here. My first LAN was based on the God-cursed LANtastic, and I had more than enough PCs in my room/office. Hercules was terrible, high res green screen? Ack. Talk about burn-in, hah.
Multinode gaming BBSes > 0-day warez systems.
Re:Back when people could actually code..
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QEMM was awesome, especially under DESQview with a 386. The problem on my 286 (12 Mhz with Turbo button, of course) was that it had extended memory, not expanded, so it didn't work with QEMM. The 386, OTOH, worked great. My first multinode BBS ran 6 nodes under DESQview and I still had more than enough processor speed to do some basic text gaming in another window. XDV.com was in my autoexec.bat by default.
Ahh, the days of the 640k cap. Remember "real-time" memory compression software? Ugh.
If you have 1000 impressions and just 10 clicks, the CTR ratio is 1%. If you have 100 impressions and 10 clicks, CTR is 10% and - more importantly - you earn more for each click.
In the long run, with GOOD referrals, yes. If all your referrals are MySpace or from sites with low pagerank or low authority, then your CPC can fall significantly.
The only sites I can imagine who are REALLY anti-ad blockers are those sites who truly make good money on CPM (cost per impression) rather than CPC. CPM sites can also be churn sites (hoping for millions of hits of 1 or 2 pages rather than considerably fewer hits that go deeper into their site).
The CPC on my personal blogs has increased significantly over time, but that is due to positive traffic. The best CPC seems to be from visitors with NO referrer (ie, coming to the site via a bookmark or manually entering the URL), but this may just be a short time discrepancy rather than a truism.
Of course, if your site is garbage, and is associated with highly-competitive key phrases (think "make money fast" or "paris hilton"), you'll earn almost nothing even with high traffic or decent referral sites.
I wouldn't be surprised...anything pro-Nintendo or pro-Apple tends to get modded that way. I guess I should just accept that...I just wish that more intelligent debate would be modded up rather than just one side all the time. I actually meant what I wrote to be funny, but of course it gets modded troll;)
I'm there with you, too. I've often received +4/+5 mods (which I appreciate!) that I personally think were overmoderated. I sort of wish we could gain our own mod-points by having the opportunity to unmod our own posts in exchange for moderations points useful in the same slashdot article. Sort of cool to take +3 of your own to mod others who you think deserve more rep than your post. Of course you can't mod in articles you've posted in, but that's an easy fix.
I am curious why you think a Wii Zapper is a gimmick 30 somethings should be excited for? It seems the epitome of something targeted towards younger audiences. The sort of "ooh, I get to shoot stuff with a gun" crowd. Other than the nostalgia of the light gun for the 8-bit Nintendo, I really don't see this hitting our (I'll say that even though I am not quite a 30-something yet but close enough) age group.
For us, the Wii is more than just a single-gamer system 100% of the time. We love inviting our friends over (and nieces and nephews or kids of friends) and playing anything that is remotely physically-entertaining. Having something in your hand beyond just the Wiimote makes the game that much more enjoyable.
Our living room is huge and we have everything slide-able on the hardwood to move out of the way, so 4 people in a large room, still slamming into one-another is a blast. The "gimmick" is there, but it adds to our entertainment (as much as the gimmicky guitars of GH2 or the low quality mics of SingStar on the PS2). Sometimes, the fun of a gimmick is the fact that it IS a gimmick, but as you age those fun gimmicks are just another avenue to laugh at yourself or at others.
A few years back I co-designed a small piece of hardware that went inline with a mic cable to randomly twist a singer's voice, so that good singers would "accidentally" sound like they're singing off-key. It was a hilarious gimmick at a karaoke event we'd hold monthly or so, because their voice sounded wrong in their monitors, making them think THEY were off-key. A gimmick, yes, but hilarious for those "in the know."
Laughter is what we're usually missing living in the U.S., methinks. I go to Six Flags Great America at least once a week to hit the roller coasters, and I've seen nothing but frowns and depression on the faces of people there to "have fun." Give me the gimmicks, and I'll have a blast.
So do the customers I maintain blogs and information diaries for. When I said "we" I didn't necessarily only mean my extreme-anarchist blogs, but the information sites I maintain for my commercial clients. The biggest frustration I see with commercial clients is that they want every hit to register even if the person hitting them is blocking ads and investing an hour a month responding to their ("my") entries. Ugh.
Of course, if every publisher mimicked my thoughts on ad-blocking, my market and income would decrease, so maybe it's a good thing that the typical publisher-sucker is ignoring the profit (financial and informational) potential of adblocking readers.
ROFL! I have to blink in amazement. There's a ton of work out there, I don't even have to work my referrals anymore.
From the e-mails I get on a daily basis (via slashdot and other blogs I post on), it seems that 7 out of 10 "geeks" in IT area frustrated with either their lack of work (self-employed 1099) or their lack of pay (slave W2). In almost every market I have visited, including some really small towns in the dust bowl, there's a ton of work, but a lack of proper marketing. Sad.
That is too bad because you definitely have the right energy level. Lot of headaches, though. If I get anything in that part of the country I'll steer them your way. I've got some doc management and process people in Milwaukee who are first class.
The headaches are the problem. I _love_ to travel and do so almost weekly lately, but I hate the phone and e-mail in terms of running offices. If there's a problem, I'm more likely to hop a plane than deal with it via telcom. Us A.D.D. guys are better hands-on under a deadline anyway:)
As for Milwaukee, I also _love_ Milwaukee, but I am saddened by the increasingly resistant market there. The big-R Recession is hitting there first, it seems, of all the non-Michigan Midwest towns, and I have a ton of friends out of work who moved up there for a lower-cost-of-living life. The housing bubble in Milwaukee is ridiculous, too, but there are still opportunities for entrepreneurs, just not as many as other towns (even smaller towns).
We've been outsourcing some data-center maintenance work to Rockford, Illinois and Des Moines, Iowa paying higher-than-market rates in towns with excellent labor and a more stable family structure. The family-issues I've seen for local hires is extreme, why can't people keep relationships afloat? Oh yeah, they're keeping up with the Joneses, I guess.
Clever marketing. Microsoft dorks them and you get to be the hero. The PR value is priceless.
That's the plan! Actually, the referrals that we pass on from the "good business" freebies could be very profitable, so there's more than just a simple "return customer" PR perspective there. Nothing better than one CEO saying to another "This company actually downgraded all our new accounting PCs from Vista for free, and they're running so much better."
We can't count on Microsoft but we can always count on good 'ol Adam. It's a good investment in time because I've got money someone says, "Hey, since you're here, can you look at..." which are the magic words that mean you get the bill the call anyway.
Actually, if it was minimal work, I'd probably cover that, too. Some clients LOVE seeing freebie invoices, especially since the freebies always say "September 10, 2007: $620, Discount: $-620" But of course there are always issues beyond that service call that would bring more cash into the near-future than we'd lose.
Keeps your face fresh around the office, you can schmooze while you're working, talk to them about alternative operating systems...it's a great idea. One that I fully intend to shamelessly copy.:) Bothers me I didn't think of it on my own...but I'll get over it.
Here's another one for you that worked for some subsidiaries I helped start:
Take the going market rate for small-sized businesses (5-50 desktops, 1-3 servers) and nuke $5-$10 an hour off of it. If the going rate is $80-$120, charge $75-$110. Offer a $10/hour preferred-bonus on all hours billed, and place that bonus on your monthly invoices. If your invoice is for $1500 one month, $1200 the other and $2000 the third, the third month's invoice would say "Bonus Available: $440" Include with your invoice a small catalog of bonus options and let the customer use their bonuses to purchase them (for the business, for their home, etc).
The subsidiary that did this increased their market share significantly over just the first 3 months of me working with them. The bonus hardware was offered at MSRP, so the actual bonus dollars only cost them $3-$6 per hour, and the bonus hardware was not covered under any labor warranty, which increased the service/maintenance cost over 3 years to cover double to triple the cost of the hardware. If I remember correctly, one customer (a headhunter) replaced their entire workstation and server network (maybe 10 machines and 1 server) in 2 years with "free" bonus hardware, and the CEO got a laptop for his kid for college "free" also. Net profit dropped only 3% versus expected profit, because gross billing was way up due to the bonuses.
The new subsidiary I am starting in Northern Illinois will be taking the idea to the home support group (sort of like geek squad, without the geeks, focused on home networks of CEOs and management types who have terrible luck getting their in-house guy to come over). "Free" stuff like Tivos, restaurant dining certificates, and golfing certificates should do very well in the 5 areas I'm hoping to target.
When people in IT complain to me that there isn't a lot of work, I just have to shrug. There's work at every price tier we investigated: from the $40/hour consulting monkey (no offense) to the $300/hour consulting guru. The problem is marketing: don't be a geek, be a business owner. Don't be a geek, be a parent. Don't be a geek, be a music nut. I'll never understand the lack of inspiration in the IT field, if we took most of our ideas nationally, there'd be huge profits ahead. Too bad I'm too A.D.D. to focus on a national roll-out:)
Of course something originally designed by the US Naval Research Laboratory and then spun off to an "independent pro-privacy group" such as the EFF would have loopholes, insecurities, and unwieldly aspects of it.
One thing that doesn't make sense to me: why does Tor operate MOSTLY over primary networks with non-tor functions? Doesn't it make sense that people who rely on Tor-offered anonymity would only operate the network bound to a specific NIC, a specific router and a specific network connection, separate from their main non-anonymous one? If anonymity is that important, why even bother trying to maintain an anonymous network connection concurrent with your non-anonymous one, with both utilizing the same single-point of exit/entry?
Exactly. People seem to not be able to grasp the simple premise that it costs an ad network money to show ads (bandwidth and their own server infrastructure and so on). Logically if clicks and everything else are equal the more impressions you have the less they can pay you as they need to cover their own cost of showing the ads.
Plus I am aware that most advertising middle men (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, in most cases) also manually check sites with high click-through ratios (I believe over 4%). If the site is obviously spam or low quality traffic, the manual check allows the middle man to downgrade the payout for future clicks. A _lot_ of spam site hosts are frustrated because their high incomes are getting slaughtered.
For us, we LOVE those who block ads, and we'll continue to love them, too. Geeks are MUCH more likely to respond to an article, post or opinion -- those responses increase our likelihood of maintaining repeat readers, gaining new readers, or proposing new topics of discussion based on those comments and replies. As I said in the OP, I'd rather someone spent 5 minutes replying to me than gain 15 cents from a click. That reply could make dozens or hundreds of dollars in the future from new articles written, or search engines finding that response and placing it highly in the future.
We consult with a variety of $100m+ corporations in the Chicago area. Our last summary on Vista had three word: Don't Install It. One contractor asked us for a study (paid for by them) into Vista, and we sent them that very summary and billed them $1.50 (which I believe they paid).
I'm very open about IT developments to my clientele. I've explained to them for almost 20 years that MOST of the hype in an industry is designed to pad the pockets of consultants such as myself. Of our client base, almost none were going to be bothered by Y2K. I think we were one of a handful of consultants who didn't bill more than a few bucks for the entire Y2K fiasco, and we also let our clients know this. We make _more_ money because we are honest about the gimmicks of the trade: we don't want to make money doing work that isn't necessary. When a client takes us off a project, and the project drops in efficiency, they know we were needed. Most consultants, when fired, are a net positive to the firing client.
Vista will never run in my office, in my home, or in the homes and offices of my clients, until the third party software developers require it. For most large companies, Vista offers zero additional efficiency, profitability, or reduced downtime. How else can you sell an upgrade unless it does at least 2 of those things better than XP?
XP runs fine. I know it is hated, but it runs fine on hundreds/thousands of desktops and laptops and servers we maintain or provide services for. Is it efficient? No, but my customers know they're paying for the lower efficiency/stability by being compatible with the software and hardware THEY need (CAD, print RIPs, accounting flagship programs, etc). Vista offers NOTHING.
Let Microsoft kill pirate Vista installs: as far as I know, the only installs I'm aware of are pirated ones. Anyone who runs Vista now that we consult with gets a FREE downgrade to a legitimate XP license. That's how firm I am on Vista: I'll pay for the labor to downgrade it.
Microsoft's non-customers: in the Black Our customers: giving MS the Red. Bank statement, that is.
I'm not familiar with DARPA's research, but I've read quite a few independent research studies on the topic over a decade or more.
For me, the research is based on the idea of open bandwidth (unlicensed, low government regulation if any) to move towards software radios that can hop frequencies based on sending-power/frequency harmony, power-supply availability, bandwidth-needs, latency-needs and nearby mesh-capability.
I'm known here as the anti-FCC guy, because my decade+ of study has led me to believe that software radios would be the most beneficial implementation of communication, ever, although it would totally destroy the regulated monopolize market for communications. It's crazy to me to think that bandwidth is wasted on broadcast TV, WiFi, AM/FM radio, etc, when all of those systems can work harmoniously together while still being independent, based on what data is actually transmitted.
Your "home" telephone/cable/internet connection would quickly find the frequencies it needs based on its upstream link (or links, in a mesh situation), to prioritize what you need for your service. Since you're the one paying for the electricity to send, you could also cap your uplink bandwidth based on what you're willing to pay. Those who need maximum uplink bandwidth may pay significantly more to use a higher output to a uplink node further away with more bandwidth, while those who want "free" connections to the overall stream would have to cap their uplink power needs at a lower level. The receiving node might also be part of a co-op that charges for a connection, or they may be an open node for someone who is happy to share in the mesh. It seems like a virtually possible idea.
Comcast/T-Mobile/Level3 could make their money by setting up nodes "everywhere" for a cost, while also setting a lower-level acceptance network for no cost to try to get people to see their options. Open source promoters might open their nodes up freely, and at any power level, for anyone, but also have to be willing to pay for their uplink power consumption for those using their systems. Everyone who wants could have QoS caps for unknown connectors, or open their QoS caps for those who are "known" on their network as users sharing their own systems openly, or to people within the same network.
To me, it sounds like an excellent idea. Those who are in far-off lands without many nodes or many connections are still free to hire communications companies to provide T1/DSL/etc connections to the greater mesh network. In this case, we're talking about the option of meshing, just not wirelessly, and still having a connectino to the rest of the world. How continents connect is one concern, as well as how DNS would operate, but I think both of those answers would be taken care of in a market economy answer rather than a regulated one.
I posted it and I was surprised by the modding myself. I just wanted to mention from a "30-something married geek" perspective that we're excited about these "gimmicks" because they do have a positive function for us, who are a significantly ignored market in general. Most of the gaming sites I check out from time-to-time seem to focus more on the teens/young adults than the mid-adults who might be a huge untapped income stream for gaming companies.
I've been studying mesh networks, including Internet-based ones such as peercast networks, for quite some time. A few things to consider:
1. The strength of nodes you can connect to should be based on their strength versus others. Strength should be rated by uplink connection speed (is one node connected to the web versus other nodes connected only to other nodes?), power availability (is one node connected to a power supply verses a battery?), recent packet loss history and recent downtime history.
2. Node saturation: if a node with a lower network latency oversaturated? Connect to a less saturated, higher latency node.
3. Data needs: are you sending voice/video or data? Real-time connections should take precedence over data, of course.
The problem is way more complicated than it seems. For me, a perfect mesh/peercast network would allow data to navigate based on need as well as navigate to those who are the strongest nodes. Do current mesh networks consider these ideas? As far as I know, many of them don't.
As a publisher of a variety of blogs and a hoster of dozens of forums, javascript-based advertising accounts for nearly 30% of our income. Another 30% is based on direct advertising or link-sales along with paid-for-articles (which we fully disclose), and the rest is made up by subscriptions.
We openly advertise that our ads are blockable, and that users who are not interested in ads SHOULD block them. For us, users who are not interested in the advertisers products should block the ads so that our click-through rate is actually higher. When one of our users blocks ads they won't click, our CTR goes up. When our CTR goes up, our direct customers pay MORE for the outreach than if we forced ads on everyone, even those who don't want ads.
We've been slowly updating our sites to actively disable ads for anyone who logs in and sets their ads to "none" (even if they aren't subscribers). Again, this is no concern to us.
The clicks we do provide to our advertisers are generally good clicks, with users interested in the site or product. This makes our site even more valuable, as we have had more than a few dozen advertisers submit bids for our sites specifically, rather than just random appearances because of the site being "on topic" for the ads. Directly bid ads get us a LOT more CPC or CPM (sometimes in the $1-$2+ range), so again it is good that non-interested readers would disable ads, making our click-through even higher for those direct ads.
Considering that we're making a decent 5 figures annually, more than 1/2 of that from direct advertisers rather than random AdSense ads, I think it's a win-win situation. Users who like what we write will either pay, or accept ads. Users who don't want ads don't display them, but they still give us a profit by being responsive to things written via e-mail or combox responses. I'd rather get 5 minutes of a person's time to respond than $0.15 for some random ad click.
When you run an ad-sponsored site, you have two choices: get a lot of crappy traffic and get low CPM (barely covering your hosting cost), or get GOOD limited traffic and get a high CPM from those accepting ads (or getting a profit through a subscription or an intellectual profit from a reply or an e-mail).
Oh fuck! I didn't know the USA is occupying us (Finland), I didn't even know there were US soldiers here since Finland does not belong to NATO.
I believe the initial troops were deployed after Finland disassociated itself with the Nazis per Roosevelt's command to them to do so. I also believe that there was/is a small troop deployment in regards to the Global War on Prostitution that the U.S. was/is involved in during the 80s and 90s, and probably is still involved in today.
According to my Finland troop information, as of 2005 the United States has about 170 troops installed in Finland since 2000. The numbers have grown from about 17 on average in 1950 to about ten times that now. Not sure what their primary purpose is, though.
Your points would carry a lot more weight without the hyperbole. Having a military base in some country, with their permission, isn't "occupying" them.
It doesn't? So if China had a military base, say in Houston, TX, you would not feel occupied? You'd feel safer?
YOU may not think it is an occupation, but I've visited more than a few dozen countries with U.S. military bases (including Poland, where I have a home not far from the U.S. base in Poznan) and the residents don't understand the point of U.S. troops on their soil, not even for defensive purposes. Almost all of those countries have their own military bodies, and many of the residents near those bases are uncertain about Imperialist nations presenting a military presence in their country. This is from direct conversations I've had in peaceful nations.
The term 'occupation' indicates control over territory.
I can basically agree with this, but I don't think that's what the other countries necessarily feel. Just because U.S. troops might have been invited by past regimes, does not meant that they are there because the citizens of a nation wanted them there. Occupation may be by force, or it might be welcomed because a leader who uses force welcomed the new regime for whatever purpose. In either way, those directly facing the military base as a neighbor are not usually happy with the troops that are there.
We don't 'occupy' Cuba. We have a naval base there, but we don't control the rest of the country. (Unless you think that Castro is just a U.S. puppet. Or something.) To be honest, the world would probably be a significantly safer place if the U.S. did have significant control over several of the countries on that list, but we don't.
Occupation does not generally mean direct control by the troops or the military. In many cases, the control comes from the leaders of the occupying country over the leaders of the occupied country, even if it is not open contact with communique available to the citizens of either countries.
The U.S. doesn't have control over any nation it tried to maintain control over. Not Iraq, not Afghanistan, so why would you feel that the world would be a better place if the U.S. had tried to control anyone else?
I think you're right that people would be willing to buy AO games (especially if they weren't _too_ porny, just a flash here and there), the problem is that lots of stores wouldn't sell them, and you would be locked out of the lucrative console market entirely.
So let them sell them to website retailers or even directly. The web allows many more gaming products to be promoted through word-of-mouth, blogs, gaming sites, etc.
This means AO games will be low budget affairs that will tend to suck. This reinforces the idea that AO games are sucky porno titles and the circle continues.
I wonder if there is a market for dual-rated games: sell one version that is rated T/M, and one version that is AO. That'll quickly decide if a game can be sold if it was AO.
That said, the Japanese make tons of mostly identical porno games, but they tend to be very cheap to make (only a couple hundred drawings, a few thousand words of dialog, no gameplay to speak of) and can turn a profit with even very modest sales.
I'm not familiar with the line drawn for AO games: is it just nudity, or can it be based on violence, swearing, or other "concerns"?
the above is not flamebait. It's a statment of fact. Nothing like some right wing mod not getting the picture...
What is more odd is that more than half of the countries we occupied were occupied under a Democrat-leaning Executive and Congress.
Many of those countries listed are permanent occupations, with actual military bases installed. Some of the countries are odd to see there (Spain? Australia? Austria? Poland?)
There is no surprise when I travel Europe or Asia and actually feel the hatred by the common citizens towards the U.S. It takes a lot of time, but I've explained to many people that the U.S. government has no connection to U.S. citizens: they've moved beyond common ideals such as "by the People", and it is both parties' faults.
As the wifey and I got older, our response on regular gaming systems has fallen quite a bit. It may also have to do with the fact that we don't play for hours on end, so our skills have depreciated because of the lack of regular play, too.
Since we purhcased our Wiis (two of them, one for the home, one for travel), our relationship is stronger, we have more fun with friends, and we're just as likely to play a game versus watch TV.
We both are awaiting this because, while it is a gimmick, it adds another level of fun to the games, especially for 30-somethings. It's a great form of exercise, already, but each new "controller" option just adds that much more interest for us in the Wii. Our PS3 and X360 are only used for high def stuff, I can't remember if we even have any games left. But our Wii game purchases are consistent (used, usually, to save a few bucks), and we still get a good hour or two of gaming in a day when we don't have a lot on our plates.
Even if we don't give the new add-on two thumbs up, I'm sure it'll have a place and time in our gaming. Big props to Nintendo for keeping us involved with gaming, and still keep us competitive even against our teenage nieces and nephews who stay over on occasion.
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The best solution for this problem is to provide for a true market solution for both the producers and the users. I've been researching and writing about peercasting for years now, and I do think this is a great solution to the problem.
First of all, if the content is free, then someone wants that content watched. If that original producer is willing to put a price on the cost of a complete download, those who are helping to provide bandwidth for that download should get offered a piece of the action. If it costs Microsoft $0.02 to transfer 100MB, they should offer $0.015 to anyone willing to provide 100MB of re-transfer bandwidth. The peercasting server would only handle peercasting to their top tier redistributors (based on recent history, bandwidth, stability, etc) who would then redistribute to others. Microsoft's costs drop, and the users have a market incentive for provide more bandwidth or stability. Top tier redistros don't necessarily even make more money than the guys at the bottom -- its all a numbers game.
Secondly, the opportunity for P2P to take over antiquated services such as TV, radio or any other broad-distribution medium is getting closer -- but it relies on advertisers, still. Let an end user become a re-distro and THEY can tap into the advertising proceed. Sure, this screws things up for the big monopolistic distribution companies (every TV and radio distributor, cable company, satellite company, etc), but it would quickly bring more stability to a market perverted by copyright rules and DMCA-style regulations.
We have cable (Tivo HD with 2 cableCards, plus an MCE for our XViD movies and playing DVDs) and we're transitioning away quickly. Our cable bill is ridiculous, and more often than not, we'll download torrents of shows we want to watch rather than wait for them to be recorded by the Tivo.
Honestly, I'd rather pay a la carte for shows we like than deal with the cable mess. A la carte would mean better handling of their massive bandwidth, and a better distribution of proceeds for shows. No need for Nielsen when advertisers will know exactly who is buying what.
I think we'd honestly pay $5 for a 30 minute show -- what does it cost in our time preference to sit down for 30 minutes? I'd pay less with ads. If we liked the show,we'd pay for an annual subscription -- giving shows the chance to continue even without massive ad-funding (see: Firefly).
With our 8-12Mbps Comcast Internet (not oversold in our neighborhood, yet), we download moves quickly enough to make it worth the wait. If we like the movie, we'll buy it, but I have no problem reimbursing even without a physical medium to save it.
I can't figure the TV distro system out, really. Sure, the powers-that-be are paying millions (or more) to keep the monopoly they have, but as the next generation ages, I'm sure the old system will hit the toilet, to be replaced by what? Hopefully more a la carte.
This is an example where customers and businesses are on the same side, with governments and law enforcement actually protecting them by catching the bad guys.
Even though I'm an anti-state kind of guy, it is times like this that I can at least applaud government for doing something right, although probably very inefficiently.
I coaxed my retired father to join the web a few years back (e-mail, slingbox, casual web browsing) and I get 5-10 e-mails a week from him forwarding some bank notification that is a phishing attempt. He has bank accounts with every major bank so all the phishing e-mails hit a bank he has. I keep telling him that his bank won't e-mail him about anything important (maybe a bill notification or whatever), but I told him to NEVER EVER click a link or call a number in an e-mail from anyone other than myself and our direct family. I set up bookmarks for him to go direct, and also gave him the phone number to the banks to call in case he's worried.
For me, the best thing we can do is just teach others the right way to browse, read e-mails and reply to things that sound scary. While I do applaud the government here for slamming some fraudsters, I think it is way cheaper, more secure and more protective of our freedoms to provide proper education to each other, rather than rely on government. All they'll use this for is more reasons to encroach on our inherent rights and take away more privacies.
As more people get burned, more people will learn. Fall off your bike a few times and you'll either realize you need more practice, or you shouldn't bike. We don't need the bike-fall police to protect us.
Note to others: train your parents, children, siblings and friends on the problems regarding phishing or any scam e-mails.
If you look over history, governments have taken metals that were supposed to be a certain weight, and mysteriously removed weight from them and still called the weight the same thing.
Look at the standard weight known as the "dollar" (thaler). It used to be the equivalent of 1/20th of an ounce of gold. Then it was 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Last month that same dollar weight standard was 1/650th of an ounce of gold, and today I believe it is 1/711th of an ounce of gold.
The Roman Empire leaders also had mysteriously disappearing weights... Their Denarius lost over 99% of its official weight over just a few hundred years.
It is definitely a mystery...
As many know, I am anti-copyright to begin with, but I wonder why Knight isn't setting up to sue VH1 for "stealing" "his" content and rebroadcasting it.
Not only did they take his content, but they also attempted to defend his content via the (fraudulent) DMCA and call it their own.
Might as well go David vs. Goliath in this case, and settle the score with VH1 for the fully penalty of the law.
I wrote a multinode door in Turbo Pascal called Wilderness Adventure. Sort of a text based ANSI version of Ultima, with ideas stolen from The Pit. The multiplayer communicated via temp transaction files (.FLG is what I called it) and the other nodes would constantly search for new FLG files then delete their particular incoming files. All done on a ram drive, of course. Talk about churning, but it worked (sort of) with a delay.
:)
As for the COM ports, I was high tech -- we used a Digiboard which overcame many of the IRQ issues. We did use BNU Fossil for a while, but Digi's drivers were phenomenal under DesqView. I think our boards supported 16 ports.
Eventually we tossed DV and moved to MajorBBS because it was really well handled for multinode. That was an awesome programming experience in C, the last time I will ever touch a programming language again, especially a multinode thread-based one
No multi-monitors, here. My first LAN was based on the God-cursed LANtastic, and I had more than enough PCs in my room/office. Hercules was terrible, high res green screen? Ack. Talk about burn-in, hah.
Multinode gaming BBSes > 0-day warez systems.
QEMM was awesome, especially under DESQview with a 386. The problem on my 286 (12 Mhz with Turbo button, of course) was that it had extended memory, not expanded, so it didn't work with QEMM. The 386, OTOH, worked great. My first multinode BBS ran 6 nodes under DESQview and I still had more than enough processor speed to do some basic text gaming in another window. XDV.com was in my autoexec.bat by default.
Ahh, the days of the 640k cap. Remember "real-time" memory compression software? Ugh.
If you have 1000 impressions and just 10 clicks, the CTR ratio is 1%. If you have 100 impressions and 10 clicks, CTR is 10% and - more importantly - you earn more for each click.
In the long run, with GOOD referrals, yes. If all your referrals are MySpace or from sites with low pagerank or low authority, then your CPC can fall significantly.
The only sites I can imagine who are REALLY anti-ad blockers are those sites who truly make good money on CPM (cost per impression) rather than CPC. CPM sites can also be churn sites (hoping for millions of hits of 1 or 2 pages rather than considerably fewer hits that go deeper into their site).
The CPC on my personal blogs has increased significantly over time, but that is due to positive traffic. The best CPC seems to be from visitors with NO referrer (ie, coming to the site via a bookmark or manually entering the URL), but this may just be a short time discrepancy rather than a truism.
Of course, if your site is garbage, and is associated with highly-competitive key phrases (think "make money fast" or "paris hilton"), you'll earn almost nothing even with high traffic or decent referral sites.
I wouldn't be surprised...anything pro-Nintendo or pro-Apple tends to get modded that way. I guess I should just accept that...I just wish that more intelligent debate would be modded up rather than just one side all the time. I actually meant what I wrote to be funny, but of course it gets modded troll ;)
I'm there with you, too. I've often received +4/+5 mods (which I appreciate!) that I personally think were overmoderated. I sort of wish we could gain our own mod-points by having the opportunity to unmod our own posts in exchange for moderations points useful in the same slashdot article. Sort of cool to take +3 of your own to mod others who you think deserve more rep than your post. Of course you can't mod in articles you've posted in, but that's an easy fix.
I am curious why you think a Wii Zapper is a gimmick 30 somethings should be excited for? It seems the epitome of something targeted towards younger audiences. The sort of "ooh, I get to shoot stuff with a gun" crowd. Other than the nostalgia of the light gun for the 8-bit Nintendo, I really don't see this hitting our (I'll say that even though I am not quite a 30-something yet but close enough) age group.
For us, the Wii is more than just a single-gamer system 100% of the time. We love inviting our friends over (and nieces and nephews or kids of friends) and playing anything that is remotely physically-entertaining. Having something in your hand beyond just the Wiimote makes the game that much more enjoyable.
Our living room is huge and we have everything slide-able on the hardwood to move out of the way, so 4 people in a large room, still slamming into one-another is a blast. The "gimmick" is there, but it adds to our entertainment (as much as the gimmicky guitars of GH2 or the low quality mics of SingStar on the PS2). Sometimes, the fun of a gimmick is the fact that it IS a gimmick, but as you age those fun gimmicks are just another avenue to laugh at yourself or at others.
A few years back I co-designed a small piece of hardware that went inline with a mic cable to randomly twist a singer's voice, so that good singers would "accidentally" sound like they're singing off-key. It was a hilarious gimmick at a karaoke event we'd hold monthly or so, because their voice sounded wrong in their monitors, making them think THEY were off-key. A gimmick, yes, but hilarious for those "in the know."
Laughter is what we're usually missing living in the U.S., methinks. I go to Six Flags Great America at least once a week to hit the roller coasters, and I've seen nothing but frowns and depression on the faces of people there to "have fun." Give me the gimmicks, and I'll have a blast.
He will reap the rewards of his winning strategy.
So do the customers I maintain blogs and information diaries for. When I said "we" I didn't necessarily only mean my extreme-anarchist blogs, but the information sites I maintain for my commercial clients. The biggest frustration I see with commercial clients is that they want every hit to register even if the person hitting them is blocking ads and investing an hour a month responding to their ("my") entries. Ugh.
Of course, if every publisher mimicked my thoughts on ad-blocking, my market and income would decrease, so maybe it's a good thing that the typical publisher-sucker is ignoring the profit (financial and informational) potential of adblocking readers.
ROFL! I have to blink in amazement. There's a ton of work out there, I don't even have to work my referrals anymore.
:)
From the e-mails I get on a daily basis (via slashdot and other blogs I post on), it seems that 7 out of 10 "geeks" in IT area frustrated with either their lack of work (self-employed 1099) or their lack of pay (slave W2). In almost every market I have visited, including some really small towns in the dust bowl, there's a ton of work, but a lack of proper marketing. Sad.
That is too bad because you definitely have the right energy level. Lot of headaches, though. If I get anything in that part of the country I'll steer them your way. I've got some doc management and process people in Milwaukee who are first class.
The headaches are the problem. I _love_ to travel and do so almost weekly lately, but I hate the phone and e-mail in terms of running offices. If there's a problem, I'm more likely to hop a plane than deal with it via telcom. Us A.D.D. guys are better hands-on under a deadline anyway
As for Milwaukee, I also _love_ Milwaukee, but I am saddened by the increasingly resistant market there. The big-R Recession is hitting there first, it seems, of all the non-Michigan Midwest towns, and I have a ton of friends out of work who moved up there for a lower-cost-of-living life. The housing bubble in Milwaukee is ridiculous, too, but there are still opportunities for entrepreneurs, just not as many as other towns (even smaller towns).
We've been outsourcing some data-center maintenance work to Rockford, Illinois and Des Moines, Iowa paying higher-than-market rates in towns with excellent labor and a more stable family structure. The family-issues I've seen for local hires is extreme, why can't people keep relationships afloat? Oh yeah, they're keeping up with the Joneses, I guess.
Clever marketing. Microsoft dorks them and you get to be the hero. The PR value is priceless.
:) Bothers me I didn't think of it on my own...but I'll get over it.
:)
That's the plan! Actually, the referrals that we pass on from the "good business" freebies could be very profitable, so there's more than just a simple "return customer" PR perspective there. Nothing better than one CEO saying to another "This company actually downgraded all our new accounting PCs from Vista for free, and they're running so much better."
We can't count on Microsoft but we can always count on good 'ol Adam. It's a good investment in time because I've got money someone says, "Hey, since you're here, can you look at..." which are the magic words that mean you get the bill the call anyway.
Actually, if it was minimal work, I'd probably cover that, too. Some clients LOVE seeing freebie invoices, especially since the freebies always say "September 10, 2007: $620, Discount: $-620" But of course there are always issues beyond that service call that would bring more cash into the near-future than we'd lose.
Keeps your face fresh around the office, you can schmooze while you're working, talk to them about alternative operating systems...it's a great idea. One that I fully intend to shamelessly copy.
Here's another one for you that worked for some subsidiaries I helped start:
Take the going market rate for small-sized businesses (5-50 desktops, 1-3 servers) and nuke $5-$10 an hour off of it. If the going rate is $80-$120, charge $75-$110. Offer a $10/hour preferred-bonus on all hours billed, and place that bonus on your monthly invoices. If your invoice is for $1500 one month, $1200 the other and $2000 the third, the third month's invoice would say "Bonus Available: $440" Include with your invoice a small catalog of bonus options and let the customer use their bonuses to purchase them (for the business, for their home, etc).
The subsidiary that did this increased their market share significantly over just the first 3 months of me working with them. The bonus hardware was offered at MSRP, so the actual bonus dollars only cost them $3-$6 per hour, and the bonus hardware was not covered under any labor warranty, which increased the service/maintenance cost over 3 years to cover double to triple the cost of the hardware. If I remember correctly, one customer (a headhunter) replaced their entire workstation and server network (maybe 10 machines and 1 server) in 2 years with "free" bonus hardware, and the CEO got a laptop for his kid for college "free" also. Net profit dropped only 3% versus expected profit, because gross billing was way up due to the bonuses.
The new subsidiary I am starting in Northern Illinois will be taking the idea to the home support group (sort of like geek squad, without the geeks, focused on home networks of CEOs and management types who have terrible luck getting their in-house guy to come over). "Free" stuff like Tivos, restaurant dining certificates, and golfing certificates should do very well in the 5 areas I'm hoping to target.
When people in IT complain to me that there isn't a lot of work, I just have to shrug. There's work at every price tier we investigated: from the $40/hour consulting monkey (no offense) to the $300/hour consulting guru. The problem is marketing: don't be a geek, be a business owner. Don't be a geek, be a parent. Don't be a geek, be a music nut. I'll never understand the lack of inspiration in the IT field, if we took most of our ideas nationally, there'd be huge profits ahead. Too bad I'm too A.D.D. to focus on a national roll-out
Good luck!
Of course something originally designed by the US Naval Research Laboratory and then spun off to an "independent pro-privacy group" such as the EFF would have loopholes, insecurities, and unwieldly aspects of it.
One thing that doesn't make sense to me: why does Tor operate MOSTLY over primary networks with non-tor functions? Doesn't it make sense that people who rely on Tor-offered anonymity would only operate the network bound to a specific NIC, a specific router and a specific network connection, separate from their main non-anonymous one? If anonymity is that important, why even bother trying to maintain an anonymous network connection concurrent with your non-anonymous one, with both utilizing the same single-point of exit/entry?
Doesn't make sense.
Exactly. People seem to not be able to grasp the simple premise that it costs an ad network money to show ads (bandwidth and their own server infrastructure and so on). Logically if clicks and everything else are equal the more impressions you have the less they can pay you as they need to cover their own cost of showing the ads.
Plus I am aware that most advertising middle men (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, in most cases) also manually check sites with high click-through ratios (I believe over 4%). If the site is obviously spam or low quality traffic, the manual check allows the middle man to downgrade the payout for future clicks. A _lot_ of spam site hosts are frustrated because their high incomes are getting slaughtered.
For us, we LOVE those who block ads, and we'll continue to love them, too. Geeks are MUCH more likely to respond to an article, post or opinion -- those responses increase our likelihood of maintaining repeat readers, gaining new readers, or proposing new topics of discussion based on those comments and replies. As I said in the OP, I'd rather someone spent 5 minutes replying to me than gain 15 cents from a click. That reply could make dozens or hundreds of dollars in the future from new articles written, or search engines finding that response and placing it highly in the future.
We consult with a variety of $100m+ corporations in the Chicago area. Our last summary on Vista had three word: Don't Install It. One contractor asked us for a study (paid for by them) into Vista, and we sent them that very summary and billed them $1.50 (which I believe they paid).
I'm very open about IT developments to my clientele. I've explained to them for almost 20 years that MOST of the hype in an industry is designed to pad the pockets of consultants such as myself. Of our client base, almost none were going to be bothered by Y2K. I think we were one of a handful of consultants who didn't bill more than a few bucks for the entire Y2K fiasco, and we also let our clients know this. We make _more_ money because we are honest about the gimmicks of the trade: we don't want to make money doing work that isn't necessary. When a client takes us off a project, and the project drops in efficiency, they know we were needed. Most consultants, when fired, are a net positive to the firing client.
Vista will never run in my office, in my home, or in the homes and offices of my clients, until the third party software developers require it. For most large companies, Vista offers zero additional efficiency, profitability, or reduced downtime. How else can you sell an upgrade unless it does at least 2 of those things better than XP?
XP runs fine. I know it is hated, but it runs fine on hundreds/thousands of desktops and laptops and servers we maintain or provide services for. Is it efficient? No, but my customers know they're paying for the lower efficiency/stability by being compatible with the software and hardware THEY need (CAD, print RIPs, accounting flagship programs, etc). Vista offers NOTHING.
Let Microsoft kill pirate Vista installs: as far as I know, the only installs I'm aware of are pirated ones. Anyone who runs Vista now that we consult with gets a FREE downgrade to a legitimate XP license. That's how firm I am on Vista: I'll pay for the labor to downgrade it.
Microsoft's non-customers: in the Black
Our customers: giving MS the Red. Bank statement, that is.
I'm not familiar with DARPA's research, but I've read quite a few independent research studies on the topic over a decade or more.
For me, the research is based on the idea of open bandwidth (unlicensed, low government regulation if any) to move towards software radios that can hop frequencies based on sending-power/frequency harmony, power-supply availability, bandwidth-needs, latency-needs and nearby mesh-capability.
I'm known here as the anti-FCC guy, because my decade+ of study has led me to believe that software radios would be the most beneficial implementation of communication, ever, although it would totally destroy the regulated monopolize market for communications. It's crazy to me to think that bandwidth is wasted on broadcast TV, WiFi, AM/FM radio, etc, when all of those systems can work harmoniously together while still being independent, based on what data is actually transmitted.
Your "home" telephone/cable/internet connection would quickly find the frequencies it needs based on its upstream link (or links, in a mesh situation), to prioritize what you need for your service. Since you're the one paying for the electricity to send, you could also cap your uplink bandwidth based on what you're willing to pay. Those who need maximum uplink bandwidth may pay significantly more to use a higher output to a uplink node further away with more bandwidth, while those who want "free" connections to the overall stream would have to cap their uplink power needs at a lower level. The receiving node might also be part of a co-op that charges for a connection, or they may be an open node for someone who is happy to share in the mesh. It seems like a virtually possible idea.
Comcast/T-Mobile/Level3 could make their money by setting up nodes "everywhere" for a cost, while also setting a lower-level acceptance network for no cost to try to get people to see their options. Open source promoters might open their nodes up freely, and at any power level, for anyone, but also have to be willing to pay for their uplink power consumption for those using their systems. Everyone who wants could have QoS caps for unknown connectors, or open their QoS caps for those who are "known" on their network as users sharing their own systems openly, or to people within the same network.
To me, it sounds like an excellent idea. Those who are in far-off lands without many nodes or many connections are still free to hire communications companies to provide T1/DSL/etc connections to the greater mesh network. In this case, we're talking about the option of meshing, just not wirelessly, and still having a connectino to the rest of the world. How continents connect is one concern, as well as how DNS would operate, but I think both of those answers would be taken care of in a market economy answer rather than a regulated one.
I posted it and I was surprised by the modding myself. I just wanted to mention from a "30-something married geek" perspective that we're excited about these "gimmicks" because they do have a positive function for us, who are a significantly ignored market in general. Most of the gaming sites I check out from time-to-time seem to focus more on the teens/young adults than the mid-adults who might be a huge untapped income stream for gaming companies.
I've been studying mesh networks, including Internet-based ones such as peercast networks, for quite some time. A few things to consider:
1. The strength of nodes you can connect to should be based on their strength versus others. Strength should be rated by uplink connection speed (is one node connected to the web versus other nodes connected only to other nodes?), power availability (is one node connected to a power supply verses a battery?), recent packet loss history and recent downtime history.
2. Node saturation: if a node with a lower network latency oversaturated? Connect to a less saturated, higher latency node.
3. Data needs: are you sending voice/video or data? Real-time connections should take precedence over data, of course.
The problem is way more complicated than it seems. For me, a perfect mesh/peercast network would allow data to navigate based on need as well as navigate to those who are the strongest nodes. Do current mesh networks consider these ideas? As far as I know, many of them don't.
As a publisher of a variety of blogs and a hoster of dozens of forums, javascript-based advertising accounts for nearly 30% of our income. Another 30% is based on direct advertising or link-sales along with paid-for-articles (which we fully disclose), and the rest is made up by subscriptions.
We openly advertise that our ads are blockable, and that users who are not interested in ads SHOULD block them. For us, users who are not interested in the advertisers products should block the ads so that our click-through rate is actually higher. When one of our users blocks ads they won't click, our CTR goes up. When our CTR goes up, our direct customers pay MORE for the outreach than if we forced ads on everyone, even those who don't want ads.
We've been slowly updating our sites to actively disable ads for anyone who logs in and sets their ads to "none" (even if they aren't subscribers). Again, this is no concern to us.
The clicks we do provide to our advertisers are generally good clicks, with users interested in the site or product. This makes our site even more valuable, as we have had more than a few dozen advertisers submit bids for our sites specifically, rather than just random appearances because of the site being "on topic" for the ads. Directly bid ads get us a LOT more CPC or CPM (sometimes in the $1-$2+ range), so again it is good that non-interested readers would disable ads, making our click-through even higher for those direct ads.
Considering that we're making a decent 5 figures annually, more than 1/2 of that from direct advertisers rather than random AdSense ads, I think it's a win-win situation. Users who like what we write will either pay, or accept ads. Users who don't want ads don't display them, but they still give us a profit by being responsive to things written via e-mail or combox responses. I'd rather get 5 minutes of a person's time to respond than $0.15 for some random ad click.
When you run an ad-sponsored site, you have two choices: get a lot of crappy traffic and get low CPM (barely covering your hosting cost), or get GOOD limited traffic and get a high CPM from those accepting ads (or getting a profit through a subscription or an intellectual profit from a reply or an e-mail).
Oh fuck! I didn't know the USA is occupying us (Finland), I didn't even know there were US soldiers here since Finland does not belong to NATO.
I believe the initial troops were deployed after Finland disassociated itself with the Nazis per Roosevelt's command to them to do so. I also believe that there was/is a small troop deployment in regards to the Global War on Prostitution that the U.S. was/is involved in during the 80s and 90s, and probably is still involved in today.
According to my Finland troop information, as of 2005 the United States has about 170 troops installed in Finland since 2000. The numbers have grown from about 17 on average in 1950 to about ten times that now. Not sure what their primary purpose is, though.
Your points would carry a lot more weight without the hyperbole. Having a military base in some country, with their permission, isn't "occupying" them.
It doesn't? So if China had a military base, say in Houston, TX, you would not feel occupied? You'd feel safer?
YOU may not think it is an occupation, but I've visited more than a few dozen countries with U.S. military bases (including Poland, where I have a home not far from the U.S. base in Poznan) and the residents don't understand the point of U.S. troops on their soil, not even for defensive purposes. Almost all of those countries have their own military bodies, and many of the residents near those bases are uncertain about Imperialist nations presenting a military presence in their country. This is from direct conversations I've had in peaceful nations.
The term 'occupation' indicates control over territory.
I can basically agree with this, but I don't think that's what the other countries necessarily feel. Just because U.S. troops might have been invited by past regimes, does not meant that they are there because the citizens of a nation wanted them there. Occupation may be by force, or it might be welcomed because a leader who uses force welcomed the new regime for whatever purpose. In either way, those directly facing the military base as a neighbor are not usually happy with the troops that are there.
We don't 'occupy' Cuba. We have a naval base there, but we don't control the rest of the country. (Unless you think that Castro is just a U.S. puppet. Or something.) To be honest, the world would probably be a significantly safer place if the U.S. did have significant control over several of the countries on that list, but we don't.
Occupation does not generally mean direct control by the troops or the military. In many cases, the control comes from the leaders of the occupying country over the leaders of the occupied country, even if it is not open contact with communique available to the citizens of either countries.
The U.S. doesn't have control over any nation it tried to maintain control over. Not Iraq, not Afghanistan, so why would you feel that the world would be a better place if the U.S. had tried to control anyone else?
I think you're right that people would be willing to buy AO games (especially if they weren't _too_ porny, just a flash here and there), the problem is that lots of stores wouldn't sell them, and you would be locked out of the lucrative console market entirely.
So let them sell them to website retailers or even directly. The web allows many more gaming products to be promoted through word-of-mouth, blogs, gaming sites, etc.
This means AO games will be low budget affairs that will tend to suck. This reinforces the idea that AO games are sucky porno titles and the circle continues.
I wonder if there is a market for dual-rated games: sell one version that is rated T/M, and one version that is AO. That'll quickly decide if a game can be sold if it was AO.
That said, the Japanese make tons of mostly identical porno games, but they tend to be very cheap to make (only a couple hundred drawings, a few thousand words of dialog, no gameplay to speak of) and can turn a profit with even very modest sales.
I'm not familiar with the line drawn for AO games: is it just nudity, or can it be based on violence, swearing, or other "concerns"?
the above is not flamebait. It's a statment of fact. Nothing like some right wing mod not getting the picture...
What is more odd is that more than half of the countries we occupied were occupied under a Democrat-leaning Executive and Congress.
Many of those countries listed are permanent occupations, with actual military bases installed. Some of the countries are odd to see there (Spain? Australia? Austria? Poland?)
There is no surprise when I travel Europe or Asia and actually feel the hatred by the common citizens towards the U.S. It takes a lot of time, but I've explained to many people that the U.S. government has no connection to U.S. citizens: they've moved beyond common ideals such as "by the People", and it is both parties' faults.
When did what happens in Germany effect us in the States?
Oh yeah, Germany is one of the 135 countries that we currently occupy. Here is the list:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan
Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile
China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Cote D'lvoire, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic
Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador
Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana
Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia
Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia
Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique
Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway
Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore
Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden
Switzerland, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia
Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom
Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe
source
As the wifey and I got older, our response on regular gaming systems has fallen quite a bit. It may also have to do with the fact that we don't play for hours on end, so our skills have depreciated because of the lack of regular play, too.
Since we purhcased our Wiis (two of them, one for the home, one for travel), our relationship is stronger, we have more fun with friends, and we're just as likely to play a game versus watch TV.
We both are awaiting this because, while it is a gimmick, it adds another level of fun to the games, especially for 30-somethings. It's a great form of exercise, already, but each new "controller" option just adds that much more interest for us in the Wii. Our PS3 and X360 are only used for high def stuff, I can't remember if we even have any games left. But our Wii game purchases are consistent (used, usually, to save a few bucks), and we still get a good hour or two of gaming in a day when we don't have a lot on our plates.
Even if we don't give the new add-on two thumbs up, I'm sure it'll have a place and time in our gaming. Big props to Nintendo for keeping us involved with gaming, and still keep us competitive even against our teenage nieces and nephews who stay over on occasion.