Agreed! This happens all the time. I'm astounded at the cheek of these people. If you look in the Vancouver Buy and Sell you see a metric ton of these. They stopped doing it on the online version, but before every 10 ads or so the Buy and Sell had a big public-service bulletin about how buying pirated software was bad, etc. It used to crack me up how these service bulletins got sandwiched in between ads for people doing just that. They probably removed them because nobody was paying attention. But seriously, in my mind, you copy a game for a friend, that's sort of a bad, no cookie for you type thing. But selling the stuff? That's getting down on your knees and praying for big-time trouble. I fully support anyone dumb enough to do that getting hit with the full force of the law. I'm just surprised it doesn't happen more often.
That is simply not true. OEMs couldn't give a rat's ass if consumers are able to recognize ANYTHING in their boxes. Why? Because they don't want people thinking about what's IN the box, they want people thinking about where the box came from. Don't believe me? Who makes Dell's sound cards/integrated chips? Graphics chipsets on their lower end machines? How about Sony? Hewlett Packard? Acer? How many consumers do you think even know who SiS is? Via? Realtek? Crystal? S3? For that matter, how many non geek computer users even know who nVidia and ATi are?
Further, just about *EVERY* mom and pop place I know of sells AMD systems, so I don't buy your Mom and Pop argument.
Sure, they all sell them NOW. I acquired that banner in late 2000, when the Athlons were first being introduced. 3 or 4 years ago it was rare to see open advertisments for AMD kit in the mom and pop shops. But my friend is a hardware supplier for corporations, including the one I work at, so maybe he got leaned on a little more strenuously. Which is really odd, because it's not like customers ever visit his place of business. He does it all over the phone or fax and delivers everything to the customer's site.
Dell would be supplying them, regardless of what Intel wanted.
Not necessarily. There's a reason that Dell is known as Intel's bitch. Over the last year or two the relationship between Dell and Intel has changed from Dell getting smacked around like a trailer park wife to Dell threatening to sleep around, but for the longest time it was Dell who was firmly under the Intel thumb, as were the other Tier One manufacturers.
You have to understand the position that Dell is/was in. They make barely any money on a given system. They sell a box for $399, they're probably making $25 or $30 on it after all the dust settles. If Intel threatens to raise their unit prices on CPUs even $10, that's 33% of the profit on those units that vanishes. And Intel threatened that as a consequence if anyone also sold AMD systems. The other Tier One manufacturers like IBM and Compaq had wider margins, so it was easier for them to take a chance with AMD. But even for them it was baby steps until AMD was able to ramp up production to levels that they would be able to meet demand if a Tier One told Intel to take a hike. And when that came to pass, Intel suddenly realized they weren't in the driver's seat with those Tier Ones anymore. It's activity like that which kept AMD out of a lot of system builders for almost a decade, not advertising and brand recognition. Go ask the average Dell customer what CPU's in their tower that sits on the floor. Probably half of them won't know or care.
Does Intel have a strong market power? Sure. Are they using that illegally? Quite possibly.
If that quite possibly turns out to be true, that's all that's required to be found guilty in this lawsuit. If it's against the law, it's AGAINST the LAW. Period. It doesn't matter if you agree with the law, it doesn't matter if your competitor is doing "well enough", it doesn't matter if your competitor is starting to do better than you. There was a law you broke and now you will have to face the consequences. And I know damn well that Intel engages in this kind of behavior as a matter of doing business. How? I know a hardware supplier in town. He's a friend of mine. One day a few years ago when he was delivering a bunch of parts to me at the office he gave me a 6' x 4' wall banner from AMD, because he knew I bought AMD based systems from him all the time. I thanked him for it, and asked him what the occasion was. He said "I had it up and some of the Intel guys came in and saw it. They got really mad and told me to get rid of it or they wouldn't be so accomodating to us, so I had to take it down!" I asked him what he meant by "accomodating", and he told me they were hinting that maybe he wouldn't be getting his orders as quickly, and there may be problems doing returns with faulty units, etc.
Intel spends a *LOT* of money on the "Intel Inside" and Pentium image. AMD spends very little and is not well known outside techie circles. That "Intel Inside" sticker does mean something to a lot of people, even if they don't know WHAT it means. It's brand recognition.
You don't think that part of their brand recognition advantage over AMD is based on getting rid of all the AMD propaganda from the mom and pop shops like my friend's place, do you?
The Dimensional Fortress's main gun was a beam to behold. At full power, the beam's diameter was a quater of a mile, with a range out to at least lunar orbit (couple hundred thousand miles) and it disintigrated everything it touched.
Think you have Interstate 76's stuff backwards there. I loved that game, and to be honest I barely remember how the voiceovers even sound. It was ALL about the gameplay. Which was great.
Good voice acting CANNOT save a bad game. Just like incredible visuals can't save a crappy movie.
See? THIS is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. The little digs that non-experts are losers and not worth the oxygen they consume. The attitude of everyone who uses Linux should be an expert, no excuses.
Here's a clue for you. 99.9% of people could not give a flying fuck how their computer works. They don't WANT to know how it works. It's not in their scope. They don't want to do kernel level hacking, they want their bloody email, or Yahoo news, or photos of their grandkids. They know that they move the mouse in Windows and click a couple of times and they have a printer that works. They don't want to fuck around in a config file for an hour while looking at the man pages. They don't have the experience to do that, and they don't want to invest the time to do it. And we as a computer industry have been LYING to these people for 2 decades about how goddamn easy these computers are for people to use.
To apply your line of thinking to a different discipline:
Do you change your own oil? I do. Can you do your own tune ups? I can. Can you swap out a transmission in an afternoon with another one from a junker? I can and have. Can you rebuild your car's engine from a teardown? I have. Do I have the attitude that everyone who drives a car should be able to do all of these things or they don't belong behind a wheel? Of course not. Everyone is good at something, and it's asinine to expect that the majority of the population has the time and inclination to become proficient in something like bare metal computer usage, especially when they don't NEED it.
I know I shouldn't reply to this, but what the hell.
You want to know why I thought he's a bit of a zealot? Here's why.
Think of a city. Any city. How many people are in that city? Let's say for an average city, 200,000 people. How many of them use computers? In a first world country, probably 120,000 of them on a given day. Now, of those people, how many maintain servers?.5%?.1%? Less than that?
He looked at the writeup and the first thing that popped into his mind was to do with servers. Which is a matter of concern to only a very small percentage of the population that the article was aimed at. That is zeal for his outlook (as I gather he probably takes care of servers), hence Zealotry. There's nothing BAD about being called a zealot, so what's with the bile you fire my way? I'm simply insane? I think you bar pretty damn low for your definition of insane. Like on the ground.
If you RTFM, it sounds like this is more geared towards people using it on a desktop.
And it's that kind of zealotry that puts people off trying linux. You may be thinking you're helping, but what the average non-tech geek hears from a statement is this:
"Learn to do it without a GUI. Only stupid people need GUIs"
Now, like I say, that's not what you mean to say, but that's how "Learn to do things without pretty GUIs. That's the best way to learn." will be interpreted by a fair percentage of non tech people.
If the store cannot provide meaningful information on the products they sell via their staff, perhaps they should stop advertising that they're the place to go for such things. Call me crazy, but when I go to a place that they are experts or "your headquarters for" something and they turn out to be as useless as tits on a mule, I think it's legitimate to have a beef with that.
Ground water from a tap is usually around 6C - 8C depending on where you are, etc. I knew a guy who did this type of thing except used a radiator from a car and the cold source was his cold water tap. Warm water was vented down the drain. Worked fine. Till his landlord wanted to know how he was using so much damn water...
But if you live in a large apartment block chances are nobody would ever be the wiser...
I certainly wouldn't want my children to do it, as a parent. But I also realize that there are quite literally tons of people who if you presented them with the option of a shuttle flight and told them up front there was a 5% chance they wouldn't be coming back, they'd do it. Let's face it, if the human race was as careful about other dangerous endeavors as it has been about space flight, we'd still be debating about whether it's a good idea to put those dang horseless carriages on the road, seeing as they don't think for themselves and all..
I don't know that moving the people on the 253 browser projects over to ALSA and telling them to "make sound work" would solve the sound problem
It might, but that's not what I was pointing out. I was pointing out that part of the reason that Linux on the desktop is still sucking in many different ways is that people don't consider it interesting to go off and fix the suckiness, they instead go and start another browser project, or MySQL web interface, or whatever. This is both the strength of open source software, and it's weakness. It's like living in a town where everyone's jobs focused on what they wanted to do instead of what needs doing. Who'd pick up the garbage? Who'd dig the ditches and lay pipe in the rain? Who'd really be a plumber (literally working in other people's excrement) if there wasn't that large hourly rate? Same thing with open source. This is where M$ and others whom you pay money to do have an advantage becuase they can point to the crapwork that needs doing and tell someone working there to fix it or find another job. So it gets fixed.
Thinking of the authors of software as interchangeable is unrealistic
I never said that, or for that matter suggested that they switch projects. I just pointed it out as a glaring weakness in the OSS model. You said it yourself: People work on the projects that interest them.
The point, dear poster, is that if something as simple as getting two program to play sound through a common mainstream card AT THE SAME TIME like you can do in Windows is beyond the abilities of someone with JWZ's skill and obvious capability, well. I'd say that reflects pretty bloody badly on ALSA and the whole "Linux on the desktop" in general.
I'm guessing this wasn't the only thing that pushed him over the edge, more of the last stroke in a "death of 1000 cuts" scenario that I see played out with others. Hell, I run a dual XP/Fedora system and I alternate between the two based largely on which one is pissing me off less at the moment. And the sound thing does suck ass. So did fighting to get my Radeon 9800 going in multi-monitor at anything above 2048x768. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux to death, and would not run anything else for my servers, but the desktop experience is lacking. Basic, basic things just don't work or aren't there like they are in Windows or OSX. Like playing two sounds at once. Or easy multi-monitor configuration. Or sharing a drive
Instead of people going "Oh, poor baby, suck it up!", we as Linux users and developers should be taking this for exactly what it is: Someone pointing out why their Linux usability experience sucks so goddamn bad that they go to something else. Instead of saying "that's how it is, get used to it", we should be working on FIXING IT. Not bringing out 253 browser projects.
This is incorrect. I downed it and played it last night. No gamespy reg, no IGN reg. You just have to create a profile for yourself in the game and it's good to go.
The difference is we're used to commodity purchases with our games. Your analogy is only truly valid if before these satellite and cable companies came along everyone went to the store and purchased tapes of the shows they wanted to watch. That happens now with DVDs of course, but it evolved in reverse. What I am saying is this:
99.9% of games that people play are purchase once, use as many times as you like. Put it on a shelf for a year or 10 and then bring it down and play it again. You own it. Just like a table, it's there until you sell it or break it. It's what people are used to and how they equate value for their purchase.
Television, on the other hand, people are used to a subscription model, the opposite to what is above. People got used to that way of doing things because there was (and still is) no other choice except getting three channels over the air. The other thing about TV is that there is hardly ever the same "replay" value as a video game. No matter how many times you watch Titanic, that damn boat still sinks. As a result, most people couldn't care less about not owning a copy of 99% of the TV they watch. A video game you can ususally play many different ways and evokes different challenges to you. As an example, playing through Diablo as each of the different character types gives a different experience.
Some people may like to do the subscription model for games as well. I'm just not one of them. From my perspective it seems like money out the window becuase for me I've spent the last 25 years purchasing games and having something to hold in my hand as a result that never expires (barring physical damage). To me a game is a THING I buy, not a nebulous subscription to access things for a limited time.
I don't have to blow 50 bucks a year for each title
That's correct. You instead get to blow $20 a month or whatever it works out to. But you own nothing at all in the end. You mention it's like Satellite. Well, no, not really. A satellite company has a firm footing and when you subscribe you can be pretty sure it's going to still be in business in a year when you go and get the satellite equipment. Do we have the same guarantee with these guys? Suppose you drop $300 on this system and 6 months or a year down the road the company finally collapses under the weight of that financial hole they've been digging for years. Now you have a box on your TV and no service to go with it. And no shiny discs to put into it to make it go bing. It sounds good now, but down the road it's like paying rent. Out the window and it never comes back. I learned this playing Tanarus a few years ago when it was $10 a month for just that. One day I woke up and realized I'd blown $180 on one bloody game with nothing tangible that was "mine". Cancel the subscription, and off goes the game. That's probably why I've never gotten into MMORPGs, either.
Not just one provider or phone. I've seen it with my phone and a colleague's phone as well. We're in Canada, he's on Telus with a Motorola RAZR, and I'm on Fido with a Sony Ericsson Z600. It's 'handy' since the majority of the time it precedes an incoming call by about 3 seconds, so it serves as a bit of early warning.
I'm not saying the whole game, but the start of the Russian campaign with the battle for Stalingrad is unbelieveable. I knew from history class back lo those many years ago that the battle of Stalingrad was a meat grinder for the Russian army, but that level hammered home on an emotional level just how bloody awful it was. The supply shortages, the Comissars reinforcing Stalin's "Not one step backward" directive at the point of a machinegun, etc. That to me brought home how that battle must have been like no game has done before or since.
Well, the original point of the parent was that Nintendo has a really popular brand in Mario and Nintendo so they won't be going down the tubes as a hardware company and pulling a Sega.
I pointed out that Sega had someone in Sonic who was in the same league name-recognition wise, and it didn't help them at all.
Sega is now a software-only company as a plan B. This wasn't their first choice as a destiny.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed! This happens all the time. I'm astounded at the cheek of these people. If you look in the Vancouver Buy and Sell you see a metric ton of these. They stopped doing it on the online version, but before every 10 ads or so the Buy and Sell had a big public-service bulletin about how buying pirated software was bad, etc. It used to crack me up how these service bulletins got sandwiched in between ads for people doing just that. They probably removed them because nobody was paying attention.
But seriously, in my mind, you copy a game for a friend, that's sort of a bad, no cookie for you type thing. But selling the stuff? That's getting down on your knees and praying for big-time trouble. I fully support anyone dumb enough to do that getting hit with the full force of the law. I'm just surprised it doesn't happen more often.
Good background info. Thanks
The public doesn't buy, and the OEM's don't buy
That is simply not true. OEMs couldn't give a rat's ass if consumers are able to recognize ANYTHING in their boxes. Why? Because they don't want people thinking about what's IN the box, they want people thinking about where the box came from. Don't believe me? Who makes Dell's sound cards/integrated chips? Graphics chipsets on their lower end machines? How about Sony? Hewlett Packard? Acer? How many consumers do you think even know who SiS is? Via? Realtek? Crystal? S3? For that matter, how many non geek computer users even know who nVidia and ATi are?
Further, just about *EVERY* mom and pop place I know of sells AMD systems, so I don't buy your Mom and Pop argument.
Sure, they all sell them NOW. I acquired that banner in late 2000, when the Athlons were first being introduced. 3 or 4 years ago it was rare to see open advertisments for AMD kit in the mom and pop shops. But my friend is a hardware supplier for corporations, including the one I work at, so maybe he got leaned on a little more strenuously. Which is really odd, because it's not like customers ever visit his place of business. He does it all over the phone or fax and delivers everything to the customer's site.
Dell would be supplying them, regardless of what Intel wanted.
Not necessarily. There's a reason that Dell is known as Intel's bitch. Over the last year or two the relationship between Dell and Intel has changed from Dell getting smacked around like a trailer park wife to Dell threatening to sleep around, but for the longest time it was Dell who was firmly under the Intel thumb, as were the other Tier One manufacturers.
You have to understand the position that Dell is/was in. They make barely any money on a given system. They sell a box for $399, they're probably making $25 or $30 on it after all the dust settles. If Intel threatens to raise their unit prices on CPUs even $10, that's 33% of the profit on those units that vanishes. And Intel threatened that as a consequence if anyone also sold AMD systems. The other Tier One manufacturers like IBM and Compaq had wider margins, so it was easier for them to take a chance with AMD. But even for them it was baby steps until AMD was able to ramp up production to levels that they would be able to meet demand if a Tier One told Intel to take a hike. And when that came to pass, Intel suddenly realized they weren't in the driver's seat with those Tier Ones anymore.
It's activity like that which kept AMD out of a lot of system builders for almost a decade, not advertising and brand recognition. Go ask the average Dell customer what CPU's in their tower that sits on the floor. Probably half of them won't know or care.
Does Intel have a strong market power? Sure. Are they using that illegally? Quite possibly.
If that quite possibly turns out to be true, that's all that's required to be found guilty in this lawsuit. If it's against the law, it's AGAINST the LAW. Period. It doesn't matter if you agree with the law, it doesn't matter if your competitor is doing "well enough", it doesn't matter if your competitor is starting to do better than you. There was a law you broke and now you will have to face the consequences.
And I know damn well that Intel engages in this kind of behavior as a matter of doing business. How? I know a hardware supplier in town. He's a friend of mine. One day a few years ago when he was delivering a bunch of parts to me at the office he gave me a 6' x 4' wall banner from AMD, because he knew I bought AMD based systems from him all the time. I thanked him for it, and asked him what the occasion was. He said "I had it up and some of the Intel guys came in and saw it. They got really mad and told me to get rid of it or they wouldn't be so accomodating to us, so I had to take it down!" I asked him what he meant by "accomodating", and he told me they were hinting that maybe he wouldn't be getting his orders as quickly, and there may be problems doing returns with faulty units, etc.
Intel spends a *LOT* of money on the "Intel Inside" and Pentium image. AMD spends very little and is not well known outside techie circles. That "Intel Inside" sticker does mean something to a lot of people, even if they don't know WHAT it means. It's brand recognition.
You don't think that part of their brand recognition advantage over AMD is based on getting rid of all the AMD propaganda from the mom and pop shops like my friend's place, do you?
The Dimensional Fortress's main gun was a beam to behold. At full power, the beam's diameter was a quater of a mile, with a range out to at least lunar orbit (couple hundred thousand miles) and it disintigrated everything it touched.
Think you have Interstate 76's stuff backwards there. I loved that game, and to be honest I barely remember how the voiceovers even sound. It was ALL about the gameplay. Which was great.
Good voice acting CANNOT save a bad game. Just like incredible visuals can't save a crappy movie.
Well then it's his lucky year!
The CRIA thing was only introduced as a bill, it's not law yet. Contact your MP. I have.
Thank you for proving why I shouldn't have violated my long-standing policy of replying to trolls.
An as a tip for the future, when you're insulting someone else's intelligence, you should really spell check.
but you are also extrememly stupid
Otherwise people may think YOU're the one who is extremely stupid.
Actually, based on some of your other statements in this thread, I think I just hit a nerve. Seems like YOU are the zealot here..
Are the kind of a person who wants to be just another average luser^H^H^H^H^H person or do you want to be an expert?
See? THIS is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. The little digs that non-experts are losers and not worth the oxygen they consume. The attitude of everyone who uses Linux should be an expert, no excuses.
Here's a clue for you. 99.9% of people could not give a flying fuck how their computer works. They don't WANT to know how it works. It's not in their scope. They don't want to do kernel level hacking, they want their bloody email, or Yahoo news, or photos of their grandkids. They know that they move the mouse in Windows and click a couple of times and they have a printer that works. They don't want to fuck around in a config file for an hour while looking at the man pages. They don't have the experience to do that, and they don't want to invest the time to do it. And we as a computer industry have been LYING to these people for 2 decades about how goddamn easy these computers are for people to use.
To apply your line of thinking to a different discipline:
Do you change your own oil? I do.
Can you do your own tune ups? I can.
Can you swap out a transmission in an afternoon with another one from a junker? I can and have.
Can you rebuild your car's engine from a teardown? I have.
Do I have the attitude that everyone who drives a car should be able to do all of these things or they don't belong behind a wheel? Of course not. Everyone is good at something, and it's asinine to expect that the majority of the population has the time and inclination to become proficient in something like bare metal computer usage, especially when they don't NEED it.
I know I shouldn't reply to this, but what the hell.
.5%? .1%? Less than that?
You want to know why I thought he's a bit of a zealot? Here's why.
Think of a city. Any city. How many people are in that city? Let's say for an average city, 200,000 people. How many of them use computers? In a first world country, probably 120,000 of them on a given day. Now, of those people, how many maintain servers?
He looked at the writeup and the first thing that popped into his mind was to do with servers. Which is a matter of concern to only a very small percentage of the population that the article was aimed at. That is zeal for his outlook (as I gather he probably takes care of servers), hence Zealotry.
There's nothing BAD about being called a zealot, so what's with the bile you fire my way? I'm simply insane? I think you bar pretty damn low for your definition of insane. Like on the ground.
Not all people need servers either...
If you RTFM, it sounds like this is more geared towards people using it on a desktop.
And it's that kind of zealotry that puts people off trying linux. You may be thinking you're helping, but what the average non-tech geek hears from a statement is this:
"Learn to do it without a GUI. Only stupid people need GUIs"
Now, like I say, that's not what you mean to say, but that's how "Learn to do things without pretty GUIs. That's the best way to learn." will be interpreted by a fair percentage of non tech people.
If the store cannot provide meaningful information on the products they sell via their staff, perhaps they should stop advertising that they're the place to go for such things. Call me crazy, but when I go to a place that they are experts or "your headquarters for" something and they turn out to be as useless as tits on a mule, I think it's legitimate to have a beef with that.
Ground water from a tap is usually around 6C - 8C depending on where you are, etc. I knew a guy who did this type of thing except used a radiator from a car and the cold source was his cold water tap. Warm water was vented down the drain. Worked fine. Till his landlord wanted to know how he was using so much damn water...
But if you live in a large apartment block chances are nobody would ever be the wiser...
I certainly wouldn't want my children to do it, as a parent. But I also realize that there are quite literally tons of people who if you presented them with the option of a shuttle flight and told them up front there was a 5% chance they wouldn't be coming back, they'd do it.
Let's face it, if the human race was as careful about other dangerous endeavors as it has been about space flight, we'd still be debating about whether it's a good idea to put those dang horseless carriages on the road, seeing as they don't think for themselves and all..
I don't know that moving the people on the 253 browser projects over to ALSA and telling them to "make sound work" would solve the sound problem
It might, but that's not what I was pointing out. I was pointing out that part of the reason that Linux on the desktop is still sucking in many different ways is that people don't consider it interesting to go off and fix the suckiness, they instead go and start another browser project, or MySQL web interface, or whatever. This is both the strength of open source software, and it's weakness. It's like living in a town where everyone's jobs focused on what they wanted to do instead of what needs doing. Who'd pick up the garbage? Who'd dig the ditches and lay pipe in the rain? Who'd really be a plumber (literally working in other people's excrement) if there wasn't that large hourly rate? Same thing with open source. This is where M$ and others whom you pay money to do have an advantage becuase they can point to the crapwork that needs doing and tell someone working there to fix it or find another job. So it gets fixed.
Thinking of the authors of software as interchangeable is unrealistic
I never said that, or for that matter suggested that they switch projects. I just pointed it out as a glaring weakness in the OSS model. You said it yourself: People work on the projects that interest them.
The point, dear poster, is that if something as simple as getting two program to play sound through a common mainstream card AT THE SAME TIME like you can do in Windows is beyond the abilities of someone with JWZ's skill and obvious capability, well. I'd say that reflects pretty bloody badly on ALSA and the whole "Linux on the desktop" in general.
I'm guessing this wasn't the only thing that pushed him over the edge, more of the last stroke in a "death of 1000 cuts" scenario that I see played out with others. Hell, I run a dual XP/Fedora system and I alternate between the two based largely on which one is pissing me off less at the moment. And the sound thing does suck ass. So did fighting to get my Radeon 9800 going in multi-monitor at anything above 2048x768. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux to death, and would not run anything else for my servers, but the desktop experience is lacking. Basic, basic things just don't work or aren't there like they are in Windows or OSX. Like playing two sounds at once. Or easy multi-monitor configuration. Or sharing a drive
Instead of people going "Oh, poor baby, suck it up!", we as Linux users and developers should be taking this for exactly what it is: Someone pointing out why their Linux usability experience sucks so goddamn bad that they go to something else. Instead of saying "that's how it is, get used to it", we should be working on FIXING IT. Not bringing out 253 browser projects.
This is incorrect. I downed it and played it last night. No gamespy reg, no IGN reg. You just have to create a profile for yourself in the game and it's good to go.
The difference is we're used to commodity purchases with our games. Your analogy is only truly valid if before these satellite and cable companies came along everyone went to the store and purchased tapes of the shows they wanted to watch. That happens now with DVDs of course, but it evolved in reverse. What I am saying is this:
99.9% of games that people play are purchase once, use as many times as you like. Put it on a shelf for a year or 10 and then bring it down and play it again. You own it. Just like a table, it's there until you sell it or break it. It's what people are used to and how they equate value for their purchase.
Television, on the other hand, people are used to a subscription model, the opposite to what is above. People got used to that way of doing things because there was (and still is) no other choice except getting three channels over the air. The other thing about TV is that there is hardly ever the same "replay" value as a video game. No matter how many times you watch Titanic, that damn boat still sinks. As a result, most people couldn't care less about not owning a copy of 99% of the TV they watch. A video game you can ususally play many different ways and evokes different challenges to you. As an example, playing through Diablo as each of the different character types gives a different experience.
Some people may like to do the subscription model for games as well. I'm just not one of them. From my perspective it seems like money out the window becuase for me I've spent the last 25 years purchasing games and having something to hold in my hand as a result that never expires (barring physical damage). To me a game is a THING I buy, not a nebulous subscription to access things for a limited time.
I don't have to blow 50 bucks a year for each title
That's correct. You instead get to blow $20 a month or whatever it works out to. But you own nothing at all in the end.
You mention it's like Satellite. Well, no, not really. A satellite company has a firm footing and when you subscribe you can be pretty sure it's going to still be in business in a year when you go and get the satellite equipment. Do we have the same guarantee with these guys? Suppose you drop $300 on this system and 6 months or a year down the road the company finally collapses under the weight of that financial hole they've been digging for years. Now you have a box on your TV and no service to go with it. And no shiny discs to put into it to make it go bing.
It sounds good now, but down the road it's like paying rent. Out the window and it never comes back. I learned this playing Tanarus a few years ago when it was $10 a month for just that. One day I woke up and realized I'd blown $180 on one bloody game with nothing tangible that was "mine". Cancel the subscription, and off goes the game. That's probably why I've never gotten into MMORPGs, either.
Not just one provider or phone. I've seen it with my phone and a colleague's phone as well. We're in Canada, he's on Telus with a Motorola RAZR, and I'm on Fido with a Sony Ericsson Z600. It's 'handy' since the majority of the time it precedes an incoming call by about 3 seconds, so it serves as a bit of early warning.
I'm not saying the whole game, but the start of the Russian campaign with the battle for Stalingrad is unbelieveable. I knew from history class back lo those many years ago that the battle of Stalingrad was a meat grinder for the Russian army, but that level hammered home on an emotional level just how bloody awful it was. The supply shortages, the Comissars reinforcing Stalin's "Not one step backward" directive at the point of a machinegun, etc. That to me brought home how that battle must have been like no game has done before or since.
Bah! My bad... didn't even see it.
Apologies..
Well, the original point of the parent was that Nintendo has a really popular brand in Mario and Nintendo so they won't be going down the tubes as a hardware company and pulling a Sega.
I pointed out that Sega had someone in Sonic who was in the same league name-recognition wise, and it didn't help them at all.
Sega is now a software-only company as a plan B. This wasn't their first choice as a destiny.