"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again." --The Decider, 2002
Ostensibly the "One Laptop Per Child" thing was meant to provide computing access to underprivileged youths. Now there's competition in the same market and somehow that's bad? If Intel strong-arms the OLPC project into oblivion but continues to provide the same "philanthropic", so to speak, service, don't the children still benefit?
The more I read from and about Negroponte the more his true colors show through.
I agree that Nintendo does repackage a lot of stuff but it is usually for a different platform (say SNES games on the GBA) and with how many people buy it can you blame them? Exactly! I know the idea of double-dipping is distasteful to a lot of people, but this isn't like a movie studio holding back content on a DVD only to release a special edition one 6-months later. Why not do this? I never owned a Gamecube and though I was thinking of buying this game to utilize the Wii's backward's compatibility, I'd certainly rather an updated version.
Honestly, I fail to see the problem here. It's not like dev teams are kept from working on new games, this should be pretty straightforward. To GP: Cheap money grab? Please. You already own the game, you state your intent to buy the new one, but you complain about the game's existence? You're making my head hurt.
The thing about movies is that just like any other business venture, Hollywood corporations just do not want to risk millions of dollars unless they can see a reasonably probable return.
I took a corporate finance class with a professor very much into movies, so we spent some time looking at how a movie project is "valued"; that is, after x dollars pumped into filming, y dollars into distribution, z dollars into marketing, etc, producers are x+y+z dollars in the hole before the first ticket is even sold. Now you have to value the movie's expected box office returns, DVD sales, peripheral sales (toys, posters, whatever), discount them to Net Present Value, and the numbers had better be much higher than the cost of the flick, or else why even bother? The Medici family does not produce movies, so the whole commissioning art for art's sake rarely if ever happens.
As you can imagine the whole valuation thing is imprecise and mostly voodoo economics, thus it's pretty hard to get producers to throw money at any movie, let alone a (typically expensive) Sci-Fi one. So it sure helps to convince the guys and gals that supply the money that your movie has elements of other successful films that audiences tend to go for.
If I remember correctly, Miramax had first crack at the LOTR trilogy, but paying for a whole trilogy up front, with relatively few trilogy and/or fantasy successes in the past to compare it to, never mind the enormous budget, made them pass on it and consequently made New Line and Peter Jackson quite rich. Of course that looks dumb now but it was a reasonable conclusion at the time.
I'm not saying this is ideal, but sometimes it's the way things go. Just like other genres, if one or two Sci-Fi flicks become big hits, look for many more coming down the pipe in the following few years. Case in point: they just made a friggin' Ghost Rider movie. Think that would have happened before the X-Men and Spider-Man movies hit big? Remember the comic book movie stigma ten years ago? It's pretty different today.
I don't know about everyone else, but does owning a handheld even impact playing games at home? I own a PSP and, quality of titles notwithstanding, never play it unless I'm commuting or traveling somewhere. When I'm home, I have no desire to play a portable system since I can play a more powerful, more immersive game on my TV.
So, my point: Is installed user-base all there is to care about? Don't Sony/MS/Nintendo make the bulk of their profits on the games? I'd be more interested in seeing the ratio of portable to non-portable games sold. Maybe they are in fact on to something here, but hardware sales numbers don't really tell the whole story.
Also I'm getting tired of these articles that claim to forecast "the answer" after one holiday season of incredible hardware droughts for several systems which forced many buyers to go to their plan B or C anyway.
Is he joking or is he serious? Good question. It's quite difficult to tell when Hawking is being sarcastic. Maybe he should start using <sarcasm> tags during speeches like this.
Yeah that's what drives me crazy about all the so-called "studies" posted here. There's a reason you won't see anything about this anywhere else: this is not a real study, it's an opinion piece with targeted results masquerading as "proof". Lame-o.
Thank you for your exciting commentary. Now how exactly does this contribute to the discussion about the difficulty of integrating Linux into a business environment?
I can't imagine that the episode which premiered on TV in primetime on January 14th was released on DVD the following Tuesday. Everything about this article is saying that is was a fully-prepped episode, not yet aired on TV, and not a tester or in post production. What the hell's wrong with you? The GP makes an insightful post that probably hits the nail on the head and you say it's wrong because you can't imagine something that happened happened?
From Wikipedia:"FOX released a Season 6 Premiere DVD on January 16. This DVD contains the first 4 episodes of 24 season 6, and a preview of episode 5. The DVD leaked on Saturday, January 6, eight days before the season premiere, to BitTorrent and other P2P networks. Come on, don't refute someone's argument with a "hunch".
You're splitting hairs. Sony makes the same per unit whether a retailer sells it for 200% MSRP or 50%, or throws it out the window.
Not that the Japanese store discounts are insignificant. It costs money (albeit indirectly) to maintain inventory, especially in smaller retail stores, so they're just trying to get rid of the excess; i.e. it's probably a temporary thing given the initial "let's stock as many as we can in anticipation of non-stop sellouts!" But if this keeps up, it indicates retailers aren't shifting units and will thus stop ordering from Sony. That's when the shit will really hit the fan.
So what would you say is the appropriate metaphorical color of the ebay resale market? Would you be happy with calling ebay sales "off-white"? Beige? Light green for that tinge of capitalism? When I think of eBay scalpers the color brown comes to mind. Big, steaming piles of it. So I'm going with "Brown Market". With bits of corn.
Isn't the game rated M anyway? So what's the problem with restricting access to minors? Is this the first you're hearing of this guy? His idea of "restricting access" is to ban all sales and destroy any existing copies. Last I checked there's already a system in place, run by the ESRB, that takes care of "restricting access". Yes, some minors will get their hands on the game. Some will also manage to sneak into an R-rated movie or buy some smokes or beer. Does this mean all movie theaters and delis should be closed forever? In Jack Thompson's diseased, rotting mind, yes apparently.
[...]announced his intention to launch a "Week of Oracle Database Bugs" project during the first week of December. The researcher abruptly canceled the project shortly after the initial announcement, without offering any explanation. This sort of thing seems like a win-win, it's like legal extortion. Either you publish your findings and get lots of attention (sell ads on your site, gain notoriety, etc) or get paid hush money by a big corporation.
Too bad MS doesn't seem to care that much about their rep, or Vista could be a goldmine!
Yes I'm well aware. It was mostly a joke with a little bit of commentary on how in this case only an integer average should have been used, since the length of a password can't possibly include a fraction.
Slashdot Mirror
That was awesome. You know, I'm not even going to read any further down the page, I think you've said all there is to be said.
"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again."
--The Decider, 2002
I'm all over this. Why bother working out when I can just select the "6-pack abs" design on my tele-shirt?
Ostensibly the "One Laptop Per Child" thing was meant to provide computing access to underprivileged youths. Now there's competition in the same market and somehow that's bad? If Intel strong-arms the OLPC project into oblivion but continues to provide the same "philanthropic", so to speak, service, don't the children still benefit?
The more I read from and about Negroponte the more his true colors show through.
You forgot Arrested Development.
Honestly, these crotchety articles looking at the past with rose-colored glasses are really getting old.
Honestly, I fail to see the problem here. It's not like dev teams are kept from working on new games, this should be pretty straightforward. To GP: Cheap money grab? Please. You already own the game, you state your intent to buy the new one, but you complain about the game's existence? You're making my head hurt.
The thing about movies is that just like any other business venture, Hollywood corporations just do not want to risk millions of dollars unless they can see a reasonably probable return.
I took a corporate finance class with a professor very much into movies, so we spent some time looking at how a movie project is "valued"; that is, after x dollars pumped into filming, y dollars into distribution, z dollars into marketing, etc, producers are x+y+z dollars in the hole before the first ticket is even sold. Now you have to value the movie's expected box office returns, DVD sales, peripheral sales (toys, posters, whatever), discount them to Net Present Value, and the numbers had better be much higher than the cost of the flick, or else why even bother? The Medici family does not produce movies, so the whole commissioning art for art's sake rarely if ever happens.
As you can imagine the whole valuation thing is imprecise and mostly voodoo economics, thus it's pretty hard to get producers to throw money at any movie, let alone a (typically expensive) Sci-Fi one. So it sure helps to convince the guys and gals that supply the money that your movie has elements of other successful films that audiences tend to go for.
If I remember correctly, Miramax had first crack at the LOTR trilogy, but paying for a whole trilogy up front, with relatively few trilogy and/or fantasy successes in the past to compare it to, never mind the enormous budget, made them pass on it and consequently made New Line and Peter Jackson quite rich. Of course that looks dumb now but it was a reasonable conclusion at the time.
I'm not saying this is ideal, but sometimes it's the way things go. Just like other genres, if one or two Sci-Fi flicks become big hits, look for many more coming down the pipe in the following few years. Case in point: they just made a friggin' Ghost Rider movie. Think that would have happened before the X-Men and Spider-Man movies hit big? Remember the comic book movie stigma ten years ago? It's pretty different today.
I don't know about everyone else, but does owning a handheld even impact playing games at home? I own a PSP and, quality of titles notwithstanding, never play it unless I'm commuting or traveling somewhere. When I'm home, I have no desire to play a portable system since I can play a more powerful, more immersive game on my TV.
So, my point: Is installed user-base all there is to care about? Don't Sony/MS/Nintendo make the bulk of their profits on the games? I'd be more interested in seeing the ratio of portable to non-portable games sold. Maybe they are in fact on to something here, but hardware sales numbers don't really tell the whole story.
Also I'm getting tired of these articles that claim to forecast "the answer" after one holiday season of incredible hardware droughts for several systems which forced many buyers to go to their plan B or C anyway.
Exactly. This guy's statements are like saying a Honda Civic is a piece of shit because it doesn't have the same engine as a Ferrari.
The cops won't arrest people, they'll hand out $100 tickets. NYC loves making money by screwing over its citizens.
Yeah that's what drives me crazy about all the so-called "studies" posted here. There's a reason you won't see anything about this anywhere else: this is not a real study, it's an opinion piece with targeted results masquerading as "proof". Lame-o.
Thank you for your exciting commentary. Now how exactly does this contribute to the discussion about the difficulty of integrating Linux into a business environment?
Sure! And how about the Alien and Sedition Acts too while we're at it?
Relevance? What's that?
Another two words: blow jobs
You're splitting hairs. Sony makes the same per unit whether a retailer sells it for 200% MSRP or 50%, or throws it out the window.
Not that the Japanese store discounts are insignificant. It costs money (albeit indirectly) to maintain inventory, especially in smaller retail stores, so they're just trying to get rid of the excess; i.e. it's probably a temporary thing given the initial "let's stock as many as we can in anticipation of non-stop sellouts!" But if this keeps up, it indicates retailers aren't shifting units and will thus stop ordering from Sony. That's when the shit will really hit the fan.
Aha! No you want Room 12A, next door.
I'm pretty sure you meant to say "Ozzy Osbourne's 'Suicide Solution'"
Mod parent up. Well put.
Too bad MS doesn't seem to care that much about their rep, or Vista could be a goldmine!
Yes I'm well aware. It was mostly a joke with a little bit of commentary on how in this case only an integer average should have been used, since the length of a password can't possibly include a fraction.