However, it should be a disinterested third party, not an advocacy group.
The problem with this idea is that the behavior of the Diebolds of the world tends to turn disinterested third parties INTO advocacy groups.
Black Box Voting didn't intend to be an "OMFG THEY ARE STEALING ELECTIONS" anti-electronic-voting advocacy group. They just want to ensure that if electronic voting is used, that it is done right. But after so many times being stymied at every turn, can you blame them if their stance ends up being more blatantly anti-Diebold?
An OS-X license would cost [Microsoft] a couple of billion at a minimum, plus a hefty ongoing royalty, but it would cheaper than what they're doing now. As a bonus, life improves drastically for their users
When has Microsoft's operating system strategy ever involved improving life drastically for the users?
The value of Windows to Microsoft is as a brand, not as an OS. It's the glue and duct tape that holds their entire sales strategy together. WMP, Xbox, Internet Explorer, Office, Media Center; it all ties in with Windows. Even if it's cheaper than continuing to apply layers of band-aids to the NT codebase, we won't see MS buy OS X unless it's renamed to "Windows X" and there are substantial interface changes. At which point, is it really OS X anymore?
For a business that uses OpenBSD code, it would just make good business sense to support the project at a fraction of what it would cost to develop the same code in-house.
It makes better business sense to spend zero dollars, and take the OpenBSD Group's code free of charge.
Sure, there's a risk that Theo will run out of money and shut down development of the code -- but that risk exists even if companies DO send him money.
optical media that gets scratched up to the point of data loss within weeks of normal use.
Where do you work, in a sandblasting shop? I've got data CD's that have survived 14+ years with no discernable data loss -- because I keep them safe in their jewelboxes when not in use.
I really wish we had gone with Zip style disks
About eight years ago, a Jaz cartridge cost $0.10/MB, and a CD-R cost under $0.01/MB. It's not hard to see why the latter won out.
Being someone who has spent hundreds if not thousands of hours using both Windows and Macintosh systems, I find it funny that most of the die hard Mac users I know are some of the most computer illiterate people I have ever met... Which helps me understand why they need to buy a 3000 dollar lava lamp that locks them in to only use hardware and software that apple approves of.
Congratulations! Your brilliant and insightful post has ended the Mac/Windows Advocacy Wars forever!!!
There's a vaccine for tuberculosis, though. That makes it just a logistical issue of getting the cure to the people who are at risk from it. The spectre of AIDS looms larger and more menacingly because there is no cure for it, even if more people die of TB. Not that that's true.
And the point of the song from "Rent" isn't that everybody literally has AIDS -- it's that most of us know someone who is affected by it, therefore we're affected by it too.
Somehow, people who personally hate George Bush manage to simultaneously believe his government is capable of staggering stupidity (didn't they see a hurricane coming?) and simultaneously amazing subtlety like this.
One: why not? Even an ideologically consistent group like the Bush administration is made up of individuals, each of whom is of their own mind. It's entirely possible (for example) that the individuals in charge of hurricane relief are morons, and those in charge of the War On Terror are geniuses. It's even possible that a single person can be a wise man about one thing and a fool about another, (again for example) maybe President Bush himself is wrong about funding of the sciences but right about border security.
Two: I hope you're not suggesting that the only reason anyone would oppose Bush's policies is because they "personally hate" the man. And if so, that they have good reason to hate him--because of something he did that affected them badly--and not just because it's fun to hate.
Some of that stuff may contain personal information. Such might end up backfiring worse than Abu Ghraib
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that to Joe American, it's worse to disclose the home address of some Iraqi dude that he doesn't know from Adam than it is to compel a dozen Iraqis to strip naked and form a human pyramid.
They won't be able to get away with charging 5-10 dollars for a 3k file of a 20 year old game.
And as a pre-emptive rebuttal to anyone about to cite the $15-20 sales prices of the "NES Classics" series for Gameboy Advance, the difference there was that physical distribution expenses were still involved. Producing a cartridge costs money, packaging costs money, shipping pallets full of game boxes around the country costs money.
For that matter, paying bitmap artists to subtly tweak the original graphics to look good when scaled down onto the GBA screen costs money, too. Compare an NES Classics cart to the same ROM running on a GBA via a flash cart -- the text will be more legible and the graphics less distorted.
None of those costs are present when classic games are downloaded unaltered over the Internet, to be played on a TV screen.
Nintendo has made millions of dollars selling the same games over and over and over again and the Revolution will be no different.
Whether or not this is true (and I don't think it is), it's not as if such behavior is unique to Nintendo in the current gaming industry. How many FPS sequels and "Sports Game $CURR_YEAR" titles are on the sales charts at any given time, for ALL consoles?
No GB support on the rev. That would encroach on the untouchable GB line.
The Gameboy line was superceded by the Gameboy Advance line years ago.
Neither the GB Micro nor the DS is capable of playing games for the original grayscale Gameboy, nor the Gameboy Color. I don't think it's unreasonable to beleive that some of those older Z80-ish-based games could show up on the Revo.
Retailers get mad when customers leave their store empty handed because they don't have access to the products that the customers want.
Retailers can console (no pun intended) themselves with the knowledge that since consumers can't get the products elsewhere in the market either, it's not a lost sale yet; more likely just a deferred one.
And if the three out of every ten customers who DO walk out with product in hand can be compelled to take x-hundred dollars' worth of add-on products with them as a condition of purchase, a product shortage isn't too bad for a retailer after all.
In the not-too-distant future, TVs are likely to reach a point where I won't be able to hook my NES up to them anymore.
Not directly -- but Radio Shack (should they still be in business) will still happily let you give them $40 for a box that takes your NES's RF signal and converts it into component or S-video so your new TV can accept it.
Nintendo can't just start selling old SNES Konami or EA games just because they feel like it, they'll need each other's permission.
Remember, back in the day, Nintendo required its licensees to give the games to Nintendo themselves for cartridge production.
It's possible, but surely not definite, that the contracts signed way back when still give Nintendo permission to "produce" copies of those games at their discretion.
I don't think The Big N would do that, though. For one thing, there would surely be a lengthy court case to determine whether the intent of the contract covered network downloads in addition to physical cartridge production. For another, they've still got a small fraction of the modern console market, and if they want to gain share they're going to want to stay on friendly terms with as many third-party publishers as possible.
So, if you've got cutting edge hardware, vista will take advantage of it. If you don't, it won't. Where's the problem?
The problem is that Microsoft is spending tens of thousands of developer-hours on features that I won't even be able to use, instead of improving security or auditing string libraries or refactoring old hacks out of the codebase or anything else that would benefit ALL users.
Then again, I guess this would only be considered a problem if I intend to purchase Vista...
games of today have much better special effects AND a much better story.
That's not universally true, unless maybe you consider more complex stories equivalent to "better".
Myself, I'd rather have the fairly straightforward storyline of the original NES Metal Gear, over the convoluted, puzzling mess of Metal Gear Solid 2. Your mileage may vary.
As for the issues of me-too copycat titles, yes, they've always existed and always will. What concerns me more about the current state of game publishing is the sequel hysteria -- once they find a property that sells, there seems to be an obligation to release a marginally improved sequel to the title each and every year.
Say what you will about Nintendo's reliance on their top franchises, but they've almost always excercised good restraint in how frequently their release new titles in any given series. In almost five years of GameCube sales, for example, there has only been one "Super Mario" game (two, if you count Luigi's Mansion). How many "Madden NFL 200n" games have come out during that same timeframe?
The Dewey Decimal system works well for "I have a general idea of the subject I want, so let me browse around and find a book that looks interesting", but if you're going to do all your searching at a computer instead of "in the stacks", and storage efficiency is a concern, the Library of Congress system may be a better choice.
What happens when my community issues a warrant for your arrest?
I better make sure not to set foot in your community. Though chances are, if you guys are so upset over what I do that you bring charges against me, I wouldn't want to visit your community anyway.
The cops in my community shouldn't be compelled to extradite me to your community, either.
In the 2008 presidential race, write Bill O'Reilly and Tammy Bruce on the ballot as the president and vice-president, respectively.
Haven't we had enough petulant, sophistic namecallers in the office of the President already?
As for Tommy Bruce as VP, I suppose I could support that. Though his work in writing the early web browser "Cello" has been largely forgotten, his leadership of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School has provided us with an invaluable civic resource....what? TAMMY Bruce? I don't know who that is.
All the high paid jobs that do NOT require physical presence to be possible to do are things like software development - which CAN be offshored
Yes, in a sense software development CAN be offshored. That doesn't mean it SHOULD be, though.
If I'm managing a software development project, I'd rather have the developers in the same building as me, where I can communicate with them in person, than to have a development model where I send the dev team on the other side of the globe an email in the evening, and hope that they interpreted it correctly when I wake up the next morning and look at their work.
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However, it should be a disinterested third party, not an advocacy group.
The problem with this idea is that the behavior of the Diebolds of the world tends to turn disinterested third parties INTO advocacy groups.
Black Box Voting didn't intend to be an "OMFG THEY ARE STEALING ELECTIONS" anti-electronic-voting advocacy group. They just want to ensure that if electronic voting is used, that it is done right. But after so many times being stymied at every turn, can you blame them if their stance ends up being more blatantly anti-Diebold?
An OS-X license would cost [Microsoft] a couple of billion at a minimum, plus a hefty ongoing royalty, but it would cheaper than what they're doing now. As a bonus, life improves drastically for their users
When has Microsoft's operating system strategy ever involved improving life drastically for the users?
The value of Windows to Microsoft is as a brand, not as an OS. It's the glue and duct tape that holds their entire sales strategy together. WMP, Xbox, Internet Explorer, Office, Media Center; it all ties in with Windows. Even if it's cheaper than continuing to apply layers of band-aids to the NT codebase, we won't see MS buy OS X unless it's renamed to "Windows X" and there are substantial interface changes. At which point, is it really OS X anymore?
For a business that uses OpenBSD code, it would just make good business sense to support the project at a fraction of what it would cost to develop the same code in-house.
It makes better business sense to spend zero dollars, and take the OpenBSD Group's code free of charge.
Sure, there's a risk that Theo will run out of money and shut down development of the code -- but that risk exists even if companies DO send him money.
optical media that gets scratched up to the point of data loss within weeks of normal use.
Where do you work, in a sandblasting shop? I've got data CD's that have survived 14+ years with no discernable data loss -- because I keep them safe in their jewelboxes when not in use.
I really wish we had gone with Zip style disks
About eight years ago, a Jaz cartridge cost $0.10/MB, and a CD-R cost under $0.01/MB. It's not hard to see why the latter won out.
Being someone who has spent hundreds if not thousands of hours using both Windows and Macintosh systems, I find it funny that most of the die hard Mac users I know are some of the most computer illiterate people I have ever met... Which helps me understand why they need to buy a 3000 dollar lava lamp that locks them in to only use hardware and software that apple approves of.
Congratulations! Your brilliant and insightful post has ended the Mac/Windows Advocacy Wars forever!!!
There's a vaccine for tuberculosis, though. That makes it just a logistical issue of getting the cure to the people who are at risk from it. The spectre of AIDS looms larger and more menacingly because there is no cure for it, even if more people die of TB. Not that that's true.
And the point of the song from "Rent" isn't that everybody literally has AIDS -- it's that most of us know someone who is affected by it, therefore we're affected by it too.
Somehow, people who personally hate George Bush manage to simultaneously believe his government is capable of staggering stupidity (didn't they see a hurricane coming?) and simultaneously amazing subtlety like this.
One: why not? Even an ideologically consistent group like the Bush administration is made up of individuals, each of whom is of their own mind. It's entirely possible (for example) that the individuals in charge of hurricane relief are morons, and those in charge of the War On Terror are geniuses. It's even possible that a single person can be a wise man about one thing and a fool about another, (again for example) maybe President Bush himself is wrong about funding of the sciences but right about border security.
Two: I hope you're not suggesting that the only reason anyone would oppose Bush's policies is because they "personally hate" the man. And if so, that they have good reason to hate him--because of something he did that affected them badly--and not just because it's fun to hate.
Some of that stuff may contain personal information. Such might end up backfiring worse than Abu Ghraib
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that to Joe American, it's worse to disclose the home address of some Iraqi dude that he doesn't know from Adam than it is to compel a dozen Iraqis to strip naked and form a human pyramid.
I can't understand why he is "best known for Solaris" when it is far from his best work.
Basically it's because "best known" and "best" don't always coincide.
Also, as far as I know "Cyberiad" never got turned into an Atari 2600 game.
Unless some of the exclusive right holders involved get residuals, as may likely be the case for sport-league-related and movie-related titles.
All the less incentive for Nintendo to include such titles of ephemeral interest in the downloadable game library.
I don't see why anyone whould be clamoring to play the SNES game John Madden Football '93 or Acclaim's NES adaptation of Total Recall today, anyway.
They won't be able to get away with charging 5-10 dollars for a 3k file of a 20 year old game.
And as a pre-emptive rebuttal to anyone about to cite the $15-20 sales prices of the "NES Classics" series for Gameboy Advance, the difference there was that physical distribution expenses were still involved. Producing a cartridge costs money, packaging costs money, shipping pallets full of game boxes around the country costs money.
For that matter, paying bitmap artists to subtly tweak the original graphics to look good when scaled down onto the GBA screen costs money, too. Compare an NES Classics cart to the same ROM running on a GBA via a flash cart -- the text will be more legible and the graphics less distorted.
None of those costs are present when classic games are downloaded unaltered over the Internet, to be played on a TV screen.
Nintendo has made millions of dollars selling the same games over and over and over again and the Revolution will be no different.
Whether or not this is true (and I don't think it is), it's not as if such behavior is unique to Nintendo in the current gaming industry.
How many FPS sequels and "Sports Game $CURR_YEAR" titles are on the sales charts at any given time, for ALL consoles?
No GB support on the rev. That would encroach on the untouchable GB line.
The Gameboy line was superceded by the Gameboy Advance line years ago.
Neither the GB Micro nor the DS is capable of playing games for the original grayscale Gameboy, nor the Gameboy Color. I don't think it's unreasonable to beleive that some of those older Z80-ish-based games could show up on the Revo.
Retailers get mad when customers leave their store empty handed because they don't have access to the products that the customers want.
Retailers can console (no pun intended) themselves with the knowledge that since consumers can't get the products elsewhere in the market either, it's not a lost sale yet; more likely just a deferred one.
And if the three out of every ten customers who DO walk out with product in hand can be compelled to take x-hundred dollars' worth of add-on products with them as a condition of purchase, a product shortage isn't too bad for a retailer after all.
"by definition, it is impossible for a majority of people to be above average."
No, it's not.
Depends on if "average" means mean, median, or mode.
Generally, the lay definition of "average" refers to mean.
In the not-too-distant future, TVs are likely to reach a point where I won't be able to hook my NES up to them anymore.
Not directly -- but Radio Shack (should they still be in business) will still happily let you give them $40 for a box that takes your NES's RF signal and converts it into component or S-video so your new TV can accept it.
Nintendo can't just start selling old SNES Konami or EA games just because they feel like it, they'll need each other's permission.
Remember, back in the day, Nintendo required its licensees to give the games to Nintendo themselves for cartridge production.
It's possible, but surely not definite, that the contracts signed way back when still give Nintendo permission to "produce" copies of those games at their discretion.
I don't think The Big N would do that, though. For one thing, there would surely be a lengthy court case to determine whether the intent of the contract covered network downloads in addition to physical cartridge production. For another, they've still got a small fraction of the modern console market, and if they want to gain share they're going to want to stay on friendly terms with as many third-party publishers as possible.
there's still a chance that someone release a PSONE emulator for it!
Sony would get very unhappy about that. Remember Bleem!?
So, if you've got cutting edge hardware, vista will take advantage of it. If you don't, it won't. Where's the problem?
The problem is that Microsoft is spending tens of thousands of developer-hours on features that I won't even be able to use, instead of improving security or auditing string libraries or refactoring old hacks out of the codebase or anything else that would benefit ALL users.
Then again, I guess this would only be considered a problem if I intend to purchase Vista...
One big thing we didn't have "back in the day" was ever-increasingly violent games.
I guess you never played Death Race 2000, Slaughterhouse, or Mortal Kombat???
games of today have much better special effects AND a much better story.
That's not universally true, unless maybe you consider more complex stories equivalent to "better".
Myself, I'd rather have the fairly straightforward storyline of the original NES Metal Gear, over the convoluted, puzzling mess of Metal Gear Solid 2. Your mileage may vary.
As for the issues of me-too copycat titles, yes, they've always existed and always will. What concerns me more about the current state of game publishing is the sequel hysteria -- once they find a property that sells, there seems to be an obligation to release a marginally improved sequel to the title each and every year.
Say what you will about Nintendo's reliance on their top franchises, but they've almost always excercised good restraint in how frequently their release new titles in any given series. In almost five years of GameCube sales, for example, there has only been one "Super Mario" game (two, if you count Luigi's Mansion). How many "Madden NFL 200n" games have come out during that same timeframe?
The Dewey Decimal system works well for "I have a general idea of the subject I want, so let me browse around and find a book that looks interesting", but if you're going to do all your searching at a computer instead of "in the stacks", and storage efficiency is a concern, the Library of Congress system may be a better choice.
What happens when my community issues a warrant for your arrest?
I better make sure not to set foot in your community. Though chances are, if you guys are so upset over what I do that you bring charges against me, I wouldn't want to visit your community anyway.
The cops in my community shouldn't be compelled to extradite me to your community, either.
In the 2008 presidential race, write Bill O'Reilly and Tammy Bruce on the ballot as the president and vice-president, respectively.
...what? TAMMY Bruce? I don't know who that is.
Haven't we had enough petulant, sophistic namecallers in the office of the President already?
As for Tommy Bruce as VP, I suppose I could support that. Though his work in writing the early web browser "Cello" has been largely forgotten, his leadership of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School has provided us with an invaluable civic resource.
All the high paid jobs that do NOT require physical presence to be possible to do are things like software development - which CAN be offshored
Yes, in a sense software development CAN be offshored. That doesn't mean it SHOULD be, though.
If I'm managing a software development project, I'd rather have the developers in the same building as me, where I can communicate with them in person, than to have a development model where I send the dev team on the other side of the globe an email in the evening, and hope that they interpreted it correctly when I wake up the next morning and look at their work.