To be honest, for my part, the Wii simply doesn't have any games worth pirating. I mentioned I have one, and I have 2 games for it and am never likely to get more... the reason isn't because its too difficult, its because the Wii doesn't have any games that I want.
I've been tempted to get a DS, but I would have to pirate certain games for it. I'd like to have Breath of Fire II and Final Fantasy VI on a new handheld system sure, but I already bought those games once(twice already in the case of FF VI) I'm not spending another $40 now just to get them again.
Actually, I'd be really happy if they had a $5 service or something to swap in your old copy for a new one for the new system should you choose to do so.
As another point I think another part of the reason that the DS piracy is so rampant is that the DS is made for portability... all those cards flopping around isn't exactly very portable. You need a good case so you don't lose any, and then you've got to swap them out to swap between games all the time... a lot of people (and some have already mentioned this) are going to be attracted to the pirate cards simply for convenience. Once they've gone through the trouble of getting what they needed to pirate games anyways for a different reason... more of them would be inclined to pirate than if this wasn't a factor.
Yes, the Wii was simply a more convenient example for me to use.
The DS suffers from some of the same problems in that it also targets a more casual gaming audience. Its the old 80/20 rule of thumb for many things like that. 80% of your sales come from 20% of your target group. In the land of Video games at least the top 10% would be your hardcore gamers, which aren't all that terribly interested in the Wii/DS. People that spend upwards of $1000/year on video games(I'm in this bracket) rather than the $100-$150 average. Though with the rising price of video games (I was marking that at 20+ games vs 2-3 games) it could be more like $150-200 vs $1200+
Very true, however the DS game sales have been doing much better than the Wii from what I understand.
Also: Yes, you're correct about the Gamecube. It was a bit more powerful in raw hardware but in the end not as much could be pushed from it(I think it had something to do with vector units iirc) I know I've seen PS2 games that blow anything on the Gamecube out of the water... then again that may not be a symptom of the game system itself but more a cause of Nintendo not attracting the kind of developers that will go to those lengths to push a system to its max.
Heres a fun fact: One of the most massive reasons for many becoming tolerant of it is the (accurate) perception that many have no choice but to pirate some software to begin with because the legal version doesn't work on their platform with the DRM installed...
I also think the president is using piracy as a cop out to explain why there aren't more games being produced for the Wii by third party developers. In reality it has more to do with the fact that the gamecube was low in horsepower for its generation and the Wii is not much of an improvement in that regard... developing for the Wii along with the PS3, Xbox360 + PC adds an entire new development line thats much much further removed from the other 3 than any of those 3 are removed from each other. I mean, the Wii is so much lower in power that you're talking new textures, new models, new physics engine... the works. This is the reason you're not seeing the big titles for it even though technically its market penetration is greater. It also doesn't help that its market penetration is almost entirely the very casual gamer... people that may buy 2-3 games a year at birthday/christmas and not buy any others. Theres outstanding sales for the Wii itself and the mario/wii fit games but the other titles that come to the platform have mostly languished despite the overall console ownership numbers.
Case in point: I own a wii, I have Wii sports and Wii fit, and likely will never buy another game for the thing. I know at least 4 other people that are in the same boat.
Cheap means that it should be approximately divided up as a figure based on how much the average person pays for cable right now. If the average cable subscriber pays $90/month for cable and watches we'll say... 100 hours of TV per month, which is perfectly reasonable given that thats $90 per household and I wouldn't be surprised to know that it was actually much higher... that means an episode of House should cost me $1 MAX. They can even throw a minute of ads into it at the beginning as long as they charge me $1. When pricing becomes realistic and makes it to that level, then I'll stop bit torrenting. While legal services are charging me $5-6 PLUS per episode, hells no.
Of course, they aren't going to do that, because in reality they're looking at this as a way to make more money(and not a little more money no, a LOT more money), not simply keep existing market share. In the end they're losing market share to bit torrent et al and gaining a whole lot of bad press.
With a minute of ads on something like House(which gets over 2 million viewers average, on first showing, which means at the very least those 2 million are watching it). They'll be sitting at 2 million an episode at $1 plus the few ads which for something as popular as house would probably hit another million easy even on a minute(less air time for commercials makes that air time more valuable too). These are very conservative estimates since I know that NTV alone(a station local to myself) used to get between 500,000 and 1 million viewers for house on average, and thats totally outside of the ratings lists for the show. Theres another 500k-1m right there. Add up CTV which also carries it and has a much larger market... and all the other networks that carry it and suddenly theres a LOT of cash flowing in, are you telling me that this isn't going to make about the same as what they're making off of it now? As it stands they would also get some revenue from me, as currently they get none. I only watch maybe 3 shows, house is one of them. I'm not paying $60+ per month for whats probably 6 episodes on average of the 3 shows I actually watch.
Um? Right. Get at least one or two facts straight before claiming to know something about the industry.
So #1 amd has reached the top end of the quad core, the new x6 matches them for most everything.
#2 AMD does and has had higher yields than almost every other single manufacturer in the business, not just Intel, everyone. Coupled with this the fact that their current manufacturing deal means they don't pay a single dime for wasted silicon and who the hell do you think is going to win the price war again? Intel was taking losses on certain chips not so long ago just to compete with *AMD* in the price war, not the other way around. AMD for almost 2 years with the Athlon 64 series was winning both performance and pricing. Intel was selling more expensive chips that didn't perform as well.
Oh, and heres a recent source for most of that. I thought I was going to have to go back a little ways, maybe into 09 to get something, but apparently AMDs manufacturers are outdoing themselves yet again so we don't need to worry about that.
Not necessarily true. The liberals refused a few attempts at this sort of thing outright under the Chretien government.
Unfortunately I'd like to vote the NDP into power, but I have a fear of a very very real possibility that once in they would sacrifice everything but their particular special interests just to stay in power. So they still don't get my vote for now. The greens aren't a real option. They're mostly PETA-like lunatics. I did see one very promising green a little while back... he was even reasonable, it was astonishing. I think hes NDP now. Which while not much better is still slightly better.
I'm far enough away from this whole thing that I *almost* want the failure analysis engineering team to deem it necessary to either seal it or burn the reserves via nuke.
Am I the only one left that hasn't been eaten by the "If we force it and make them look at it often enough they'll eventually like it, no matter how bad" syndrome that seems to be affecting everyone with regards to that stupid ribbon?
While I do in large part agree with this assessment... ADHD does exist. I have a sister thats living proof. Countless hours were spent trying to make her sit still and focus for more than 10 minutes but all attempts failed. She only somewhat gained control of it when she got older and mature enough to want to control it herself. Even now she still has problems though.
I've had this done with 3 monitors for a couple of months now. Its actually pretty easy to do and I got the bezel down to about 1/8th of an inch which is barely noticeable at all. They were Lenovo 22" monitors to begin with and only had a little more than 1/2" of bezel between two monitors regardless. Sadly I actually LIKED the bezel for separating things I was working on multiple desktops with, I noticed this after the mod was done of course.
They've also started doing this "Learning how to learn" thing in schools that my little sister went to.
The major problem here is, university(supposedly the most "qualified") professors are the ones that designed this garbage. The students learn at an even slower pace due to this. Kids are sponges, literally. They learn by observing and doing, at the age that you're trying to force structured thinking onto most of these kids they still haven't absorbed enough information to begin to structure it.
As an aside trying to teach them HOW to learn is a waste of time regardless. Let them find their own ways, they'll likely do better for it. I know I did.
Modded off topic, too bad theres not a -1 Wrong moderation.
Back on topic: There are SOME decent provisions in the ACTA, however on the whole the entire thing needs to be torn up and burned. Start over with something reasonable and above board rather than having all this secrecy surrounding it. Even with leaks we can't trust our governments to continue in this despicable fashion.
Its about time the national pastime became criticizing the government. The number of people in your country that vote based on "Oh, I recognize that name *check*" or "Hmm, this name looks friendly" is disturbing.
Kids are kept from doing anything dangerous at all, and kept out of anything remotely linked to responsibility. No, school grades do NOT count.
I'm glad I grew up somewhere thats considered more backwards. I was given work to do, and that work mattered. I felt better when it was accomplished, and it taught me responsibility. When I was 12 I was given an axe and told to go split wood. People most places would be HUNG for that.
"What? You gave your child the responsibility of not chopping his own leg off while he's out doing something useful? He's supposed to have enough sense to not accidentally kill himself? HOW DARE YOU!"
Even as such most of the lethal/nontrivial STDs seem to be relatively recent in comparison to the dogma... that could be just the discovery of it but there should be some mention of them in some writings somewhere if they existed before then... HIV is thought to be fairly new for example.
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To be honest, for my part, the Wii simply doesn't have any games worth pirating. I mentioned I have one, and I have 2 games for it and am never likely to get more... the reason isn't because its too difficult, its because the Wii doesn't have any games that I want.
I've been tempted to get a DS, but I would have to pirate certain games for it. I'd like to have Breath of Fire II and Final Fantasy VI on a new handheld system sure, but I already bought those games once(twice already in the case of FF VI) I'm not spending another $40 now just to get them again.
Actually, I'd be really happy if they had a $5 service or something to swap in your old copy for a new one for the new system should you choose to do so.
As another point I think another part of the reason that the DS piracy is so rampant is that the DS is made for portability... all those cards flopping around isn't exactly very portable. You need a good case so you don't lose any, and then you've got to swap them out to swap between games all the time... a lot of people (and some have already mentioned this) are going to be attracted to the pirate cards simply for convenience. Once they've gone through the trouble of getting what they needed to pirate games anyways for a different reason... more of them would be inclined to pirate than if this wasn't a factor.
Yes, the Wii was simply a more convenient example for me to use.
The DS suffers from some of the same problems in that it also targets a more casual gaming audience. Its the old 80/20 rule of thumb for many things like that. 80% of your sales come from 20% of your target group. In the land of Video games at least the top 10% would be your hardcore gamers, which aren't all that terribly interested in the Wii/DS. People that spend upwards of $1000/year on video games(I'm in this bracket) rather than the $100-$150 average. Though with the rising price of video games (I was marking that at 20+ games vs 2-3 games) it could be more like $150-200 vs $1200+
Very true, however the DS game sales have been doing much better than the Wii from what I understand.
Also: Yes, you're correct about the Gamecube. It was a bit more powerful in raw hardware but in the end not as much could be pushed from it(I think it had something to do with vector units iirc) I know I've seen PS2 games that blow anything on the Gamecube out of the water... then again that may not be a symptom of the game system itself but more a cause of Nintendo not attracting the kind of developers that will go to those lengths to push a system to its max.
No, I agree, thats not the case with the Wii et al, however it is affecting the mentality of a lot of people in regards to all software.
Heres a fun fact: One of the most massive reasons for many becoming tolerant of it is the (accurate) perception that many have no choice but to pirate some software to begin with because the legal version doesn't work on their platform with the DRM installed...
I also think the president is using piracy as a cop out to explain why there aren't more games being produced for the Wii by third party developers. In reality it has more to do with the fact that the gamecube was low in horsepower for its generation and the Wii is not much of an improvement in that regard... developing for the Wii along with the PS3, Xbox360 + PC adds an entire new development line thats much much further removed from the other 3 than any of those 3 are removed from each other. I mean, the Wii is so much lower in power that you're talking new textures, new models, new physics engine... the works. This is the reason you're not seeing the big titles for it even though technically its market penetration is greater. It also doesn't help that its market penetration is almost entirely the very casual gamer... people that may buy 2-3 games a year at birthday/christmas and not buy any others. Theres outstanding sales for the Wii itself and the mario/wii fit games but the other titles that come to the platform have mostly languished despite the overall console ownership numbers.
Case in point: I own a wii, I have Wii sports and Wii fit, and likely will never buy another game for the thing. I know at least 4 other people that are in the same boat.
and trees prevent me from having satellite.
I have a solution for you. Its new and cutting edge. People have been raving about it. Its called a "chain saw".
It drives me mad but in real life I am the one who leaves stuff all over the floor and walls.
Thats just natural. Don't beat yourself up about it. Everyone has one of those "whoops" occasions now and then don't they?
Who knows how many important people might not exist without a few of those whoopsies? XD
Cheap means that it should be approximately divided up as a figure based on how much the average person pays for cable right now. If the average cable subscriber pays $90/month for cable and watches we'll say... 100 hours of TV per month, which is perfectly reasonable given that thats $90 per household and I wouldn't be surprised to know that it was actually much higher... that means an episode of House should cost me $1 MAX. They can even throw a minute of ads into it at the beginning as long as they charge me $1. When pricing becomes realistic and makes it to that level, then I'll stop bit torrenting. While legal services are charging me $5-6 PLUS per episode, hells no.
Of course, they aren't going to do that, because in reality they're looking at this as a way to make more money(and not a little more money no, a LOT more money), not simply keep existing market share. In the end they're losing market share to bit torrent et al and gaining a whole lot of bad press.
With a minute of ads on something like House(which gets over 2 million viewers average, on first showing, which means at the very least those 2 million are watching it). They'll be sitting at 2 million an episode at $1 plus the few ads which for something as popular as house would probably hit another million easy even on a minute(less air time for commercials makes that air time more valuable too). These are very conservative estimates since I know that NTV alone(a station local to myself) used to get between 500,000 and 1 million viewers for house on average, and thats totally outside of the ratings lists for the show. Theres another 500k-1m right there. Add up CTV which also carries it and has a much larger market... and all the other networks that carry it and suddenly theres a LOT of cash flowing in, are you telling me that this isn't going to make about the same as what they're making off of it now? As it stands they would also get some revenue from me, as currently they get none. I only watch maybe 3 shows, house is one of them. I'm not paying $60+ per month for whats probably 6 episodes on average of the 3 shows I actually watch.
Um? Right. Get at least one or two facts straight before claiming to know something about the industry.
So #1 amd has reached the top end of the quad core, the new x6 matches them for most everything.
#2 AMD does and has had higher yields than almost every other single manufacturer in the business, not just Intel, everyone. Coupled with this the fact that their current manufacturing deal means they don't pay a single dime for wasted silicon and who the hell do you think is going to win the price war again? Intel was taking losses on certain chips not so long ago just to compete with *AMD* in the price war, not the other way around. AMD for almost 2 years with the Athlon 64 series was winning both performance and pricing. Intel was selling more expensive chips that didn't perform as well.
Oh, and heres a recent source for most of that. I thought I was going to have to go back a little ways, maybe into 09 to get something, but apparently AMDs manufacturers are outdoing themselves yet again so we don't need to worry about that.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/3/17/globalfoundries-produces-zero-defect-wafers2c-10025-yield.aspx
Just... Awesome.
I am interested in your opinions and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Not necessarily true. The liberals refused a few attempts at this sort of thing outright under the Chretien government.
Unfortunately I'd like to vote the NDP into power, but I have a fear of a very very real possibility that once in they would sacrifice everything but their particular special interests just to stay in power. So they still don't get my vote for now. The greens aren't a real option. They're mostly PETA-like lunatics. I did see one very promising green a little while back... he was even reasonable, it was astonishing. I think hes NDP now. Which while not much better is still slightly better.
I'm far enough away from this whole thing that I *almost* want the failure analysis engineering team to deem it necessary to either seal it or burn the reserves via nuke.
Am I the only one left that hasn't been eaten by the "If we force it and make them look at it often enough they'll eventually like it, no matter how bad" syndrome that seems to be affecting everyone with regards to that stupid ribbon?
and twice in one day!
While I do in large part agree with this assessment... ADHD does exist. I have a sister thats living proof. Countless hours were spent trying to make her sit still and focus for more than 10 minutes but all attempts failed. She only somewhat gained control of it when she got older and mature enough to want to control it herself. Even now she still has problems though.
Obligatory Einstein quote:
Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
The unfortunate thing here is that when it comes to google, they really don't have much else.
I've had this done with 3 monitors for a couple of months now. Its actually pretty easy to do and I got the bezel down to about 1/8th of an inch which is barely noticeable at all. They were Lenovo 22" monitors to begin with and only had a little more than 1/2" of bezel between two monitors regardless. Sadly I actually LIKED the bezel for separating things I was working on multiple desktops with, I noticed this after the mod was done of course.
YMMV.
They've also started doing this "Learning how to learn" thing in schools that my little sister went to.
The major problem here is, university(supposedly the most "qualified") professors are the ones that designed this garbage. The students learn at an even slower pace due to this. Kids are sponges, literally. They learn by observing and doing, at the age that you're trying to force structured thinking onto most of these kids they still haven't absorbed enough information to begin to structure it.
As an aside trying to teach them HOW to learn is a waste of time regardless. Let them find their own ways, they'll likely do better for it. I know I did.
Screw invading Iraq, next time do India. Don't forget the nachos though!
This is the same in Canada. If they show the other leading brand they have to remove as many recognizable designs etc as they are able as well.
Modded off topic, too bad theres not a -1 Wrong moderation.
Back on topic: There are SOME decent provisions in the ACTA, however on the whole the entire thing needs to be torn up and burned. Start over with something reasonable and above board rather than having all this secrecy surrounding it. Even with leaks we can't trust our governments to continue in this despicable fashion.
Its about time the national pastime became criticizing the government. The number of people in your country that vote based on "Oh, I recognize that name *check*" or "Hmm, this name looks friendly" is disturbing.
Aye, this is very true as well.
Kids are kept from doing anything dangerous at all, and kept out of anything remotely linked to responsibility. No, school grades do NOT count.
I'm glad I grew up somewhere thats considered more backwards. I was given work to do, and that work mattered. I felt better when it was accomplished, and it taught me responsibility. When I was 12 I was given an axe and told to go split wood. People most places would be HUNG for that.
"What? You gave your child the responsibility of not chopping his own leg off while he's out doing something useful? He's supposed to have enough sense to not accidentally kill himself? HOW DARE YOU!"
Even as such most of the lethal/nontrivial STDs seem to be relatively recent in comparison to the dogma... that could be just the discovery of it but there should be some mention of them in some writings somewhere if they existed before then... HIV is thought to be fairly new for example.