They have to pay rent, staff, and utilities to their various warehouses, plus the costs of maintaining their servers and their shipping infrastructure. Not saying that isn't part of it, but it's not like they have none of the costs brick and mortar places have. I was told (don't really care enough to verify) that part of Amazon's pricing comes from their enormous market influence, allowing them to demand below-wholesale prices. That seems more likely to me than "Their heating bill is less, so they can consistently sell things for 30%+ less than anyone else."
Also, might the unfair tax advantage of amazon have made it impossible for the local shops to compete? So if Amazon did NOT have its unfair tax advantage, you would still have a choice. But no, you saved a penny or two and now you got no choice.
Even pre-tax, Amazon is often much less than local retailers. $10 (Amazon now) $10 + 6% tax (Amazon with tax) $15 + 6% tax (Local store now). Somehow I don't think tax law is what's giving them their pricing edge.
No, they would spend the same development budget. They aren't producing more games, he's buying more games that they're already producing. And he said more than 3x as many, which means they are getting more than $60 from him.
You need a combination of both, though I believe that pure abstract would be superior to pure application. Teaching pure application leads to rote memorization. "This is how you solve this specific problem. This is how you solve this one." and so on and so forth. It leads to people who know precisely what they're told and nothing more, and when they encounter a problem that isn't within that scope, they dismiss it with any of a number of foolish reasons. By teaching abstract, you equip people to take what they know about one thing and apply it to something else. That said, abstract without application leaves many people (foolishly) assuming that there is no application. Focus on the abstract, make sure people understand it. Then show them how to apply that abstract to an application themselves. Hopefully then we can avoid the constant, insipid questions that have answers that should be obvious with just a single layer of abstraction from the previous concept. If not...well, the world still needs janitors and garbage men...
I could see it going either way. What seems to be undeniable, though, is that even if it is more expensive for the long distance, it's not the same "type" of expense. It's an expense that can be "fixed" by workers working "better." You know, the same way you can get more work done over here in the US by making people work 50-60+ hours a week, completely ignoring that doing so decreases the productivity of the worker over the course of all those hours, and that already lower productivity degrades even further from the exhaustion that sets in near the end of the 50-60 hour week. "We don't need more people, you guys just need to work more!" Bullcrap.
Both nooks do PDF as well, and to my understanding, the new Nook Touch has pinch and zoom making PDFs much more readable on the device. The review I saw said the feature still had a lot of room to improve, but that it was a huge step in the right direction.
So...it's exactly the same as before, except before you could say to the cop "Did you see that guy tailgating me? I'm pretty sure he would have hit me had I slammed on my breaks to stop for that light," and he might let you off. If he doesn't and you want to argue further, you can take it to court. But the default position is having a chance to talk with the one accusing you before having to pay. With a cop, my extenuating circumstances can leave me with just a few minutes lost. A camera means hours of time plus court fees, minimum. So, really, not at all the same.
Aren't you required to leave enough room to allow for such a situation? Not saying it'd be ALL your fault, but if I do something stupid and you are following too close to react when I do something stupid, it seems like fault would be shared. And being aware of what's behind you is exactly what I mentioned in the reply to the post above yours. If I'm aware that you are too close and cannot stop in time, it is my duty as a responsible driver to keep going, even if it means not quite making it before the red light. With cameras that cannot account for extenuating circumstances, I'm screwed whether I stop or go. That's what I mean by "responsible for the guy behind me." You driving irresponsibly could force me to deal with undesired consequences no matter what my choice, holding me "responsible" in some way for your actions.
What video? And why should I have to take time out of my schedule because of a mistake that never would have been made were a person watching? They certainly aren't going to pay me back for the missed hours of work.
If the guy behind me is following too close to stop if I slam on my brakes, and I have to hit my brakes hard for a light with a camera, I have to choose between a ticket or a smashed back end. And while the smashed back end will end up being paid for by the person who hit me, that doesn't fix the fact that I won't get to my destination on time, I may have to deal with a rental car, I have to fill out paperwork for the insurance company, among other things that the guy behind me cannot fix. Sounds to me like I get punished either way simply because the guy behind me was doing something I can't control.
Not a bad idea, except it differs for different vehicles and different road conditions. Big trucks take longer to stop that small cars, and here in Michigan, the weather is so varied that that line would only be accurate maybe 25-35% of the time. Down in Arizona or something, though, it might work.
How are you going to confront a picture of you running a red light?
That's kind of the point they're trying to make. You can't, despite having a right to do so.
If you were making passage for a ambulance or policy vehicle, there will be witnesses and incident logs.
So you get to take a day off work to go into a court room, demand that the GPS logs of the emergency vehicles in that area be retrieved (assuming they even exist), show that your ticket was at the same time the emergency vehicle was going through, hope that the judge believes you that you really were making room and not just taking advantage of all the stopped traffic, and even if you do get out of the ticket, possibly have to pay court fees. All of which could be avoided if it were a cop on the corner instead of a camera. Sounds like a plan to me!
Except you get taken to court for those crimes. Red light cameras just result in you getting a ticket mailed to you with the expectation you'll pay. You want to fight the decision? You get to pay anyway, both court fees and with your time. Imagine if those bank cameras had facial recognition software that compared to a database of citizens, and the computer claiming a "match" was all that was necessary to throw you in prison without a trial.
Sounds like a fantastic feature for them to remove a few years down the road when a security hole allowing all homebrew and custom firmware is discovered!
I haven't played any game since that felt as free and fun to play as WC and Descent. There was some close-to-fun stuff in one of the Startrek space combat games, but trying to use capships as space fighters isn't as fun (it's more strategy "target weapons, engines, etc.") Though I believe it could be done much better, the "StarTrek" name is detrimental since startrek doesn't use fighter craft in combat. (Star Wars on the other hand does, but Star Wars games are so pigeonholed to the "StarWars" universe that you don't get any 6DOF here either.)
Might I recommend Freespace and/or Freespace 2? Sounds like they might be exactly what you're looking for, and with the Freespace 2 Source Code Project the graphics have gotten a very nice upgrade (though both those games still looked good years after their initial release).
It comes down to this: new game came out, you can either buy $200 portable system and pay $40 for the game or buy a $200 iOS device that will get a newer revision three times before the next portable gaming system comes out and download it to your iOS device for $10. Guess what most people will do?
The scenario you describe is a little off since it isn't a PSA addressing something illegal like the NBC one was.
[...]
Overall I think the real issue (as others have stated) is that homeland security is involved in this at all.
My point was more about bias than legality, just because something is illegal doesn't mean we should trust any old person or company to talk about it, especially through our government and without disclosure that there is a conflict of interest. This one may have been fine, but I dislike the fact that it sets a precedent. I find it pretty easy to imagine future ones branding people who are for IP reform, or even removing IP laws altogether, but who respect the law as is, being defamed due to biased PSAs. If the government finds it ok to place seeds of distrust in the general populace toward groups of political activists who happen to want something big media (or big oil or big or small anything for that matter) doesn't...well, we're already too close to that for my comfort. I really don't want to see what things will look like if we go all the way.
But I do agree with your final point. That's a "WTF" that I think everyone can get behind.
I don't understand why this is such a big deal? A company that is hurt by stealing offers to make a PSA to help promote not stealing, seems like a pretty reasonable thing to happen. I especially love this quote from techdirt
Could you imagine how the press would react if, say, the FDA ran PSAs that were created and owned by McDonald's
Yeah, that would only apply if the PSA was about not stealing hamburgers, in which case I can't see how anyone could complain about that.
What if the PSA stated, or even implied, that "fast food" *flashes McD's sign* isn't that bad for you *flashes images of skinny people at line at McD's* and you should eat it more often *flashes image of McD's drive through*, would you have an issue? Note, I have not seen the PSA, but if it included the ludicrously inflated "financial damage due to piracy" statistics the media companies like to drop, could you see why some people would think that this is an issue?
Definitely for the best in my opinion, and not just because of writing quality, the new design, or anything like that. They've just lost their "oomph." Early on, they were terrifying, seeing them pop up suddenly made my heart sink, wondering how they would get through the situation. Now that the Doctor has plowed through them countless times, in increasingly absurd numbers, they just don't evoke that reaction anymore. "I am the last Dalek!" *dead* "We are the last of the Dalek fleet!" *dead* "We are the last five Daleks!" *dead* "We are all the Daleks ever!" *dead* "We are the last five Daleks! (again!)" *dead*
And, at least for me, the same is true of the cybermen. To be fair, I wasn't a huge fan of them as an enemy in the first place, but they definitely feel stale to me now. I'd love to see the return of some of the enemies used only a couple times, or something new and unique. The weeping angels were just fantastic. They were unique, dangerous without being pegged as "THE WORST THING THAT THE DOCTOR HAS EVER FACED!!!!11", and, perhaps most importantly, used sparingly. Maybe one more episode of them this season, perhaps with a nice twist on the theme, amidst some one-shot challenges, and perhaps even a brand new recurring foe.
If only there were a setting to allow sideloading. One that's disabled by default to protect unsavvy users, but is easily enabled by people who know what they're doing/willing to accept the risks. Oh, hey, look! There it is! "Unknown Sources: Allow installation of non-market applications."
Good to know that the iphone has a similar setting, that was a good move on Apple's part. Oh, wait, it doesn't? You have to exploit security holes to enable sideloading? Huh. How about that.
Then risk it. If people are only buying the games because they can't viably pirate them, then your games are crappy enough that the platform should die.
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They have to pay rent, staff, and utilities to their various warehouses, plus the costs of maintaining their servers and their shipping infrastructure. Not saying that isn't part of it, but it's not like they have none of the costs brick and mortar places have. I was told (don't really care enough to verify) that part of Amazon's pricing comes from their enormous market influence, allowing them to demand below-wholesale prices. That seems more likely to me than "Their heating bill is less, so they can consistently sell things for 30%+ less than anyone else."
Also, might the unfair tax advantage of amazon have made it impossible for the local shops to compete? So if Amazon did NOT have its unfair tax advantage, you would still have a choice. But no, you saved a penny or two and now you got no choice.
Even pre-tax, Amazon is often much less than local retailers. $10 (Amazon now) $10 + 6% tax (Amazon with tax) $15 + 6% tax (Local store now). Somehow I don't think tax law is what's giving them their pricing edge.
No, they would spend the same development budget. They aren't producing more games, he's buying more games that they're already producing. And he said more than 3x as many, which means they are getting more than $60 from him.
You need a combination of both, though I believe that pure abstract would be superior to pure application. Teaching pure application leads to rote memorization. "This is how you solve this specific problem. This is how you solve this one." and so on and so forth. It leads to people who know precisely what they're told and nothing more, and when they encounter a problem that isn't within that scope, they dismiss it with any of a number of foolish reasons. By teaching abstract, you equip people to take what they know about one thing and apply it to something else. That said, abstract without application leaves many people (foolishly) assuming that there is no application. Focus on the abstract, make sure people understand it. Then show them how to apply that abstract to an application themselves. Hopefully then we can avoid the constant, insipid questions that have answers that should be obvious with just a single layer of abstraction from the previous concept. If not...well, the world still needs janitors and garbage men...
I could see it going either way. What seems to be undeniable, though, is that even if it is more expensive for the long distance, it's not the same "type" of expense. It's an expense that can be "fixed" by workers working "better." You know, the same way you can get more work done over here in the US by making people work 50-60+ hours a week, completely ignoring that doing so decreases the productivity of the worker over the course of all those hours, and that already lower productivity degrades even further from the exhaustion that sets in near the end of the 50-60 hour week. "We don't need more people, you guys just need to work more!" Bullcrap.
Both nooks do PDF as well, and to my understanding, the new Nook Touch has pinch and zoom making PDFs much more readable on the device. The review I saw said the feature still had a lot of room to improve, but that it was a huge step in the right direction.
So...it's exactly the same as before, except before you could say to the cop "Did you see that guy tailgating me? I'm pretty sure he would have hit me had I slammed on my breaks to stop for that light," and he might let you off. If he doesn't and you want to argue further, you can take it to court. But the default position is having a chance to talk with the one accusing you before having to pay. With a cop, my extenuating circumstances can leave me with just a few minutes lost. A camera means hours of time plus court fees, minimum. So, really, not at all the same.
Aren't you required to leave enough room to allow for such a situation? Not saying it'd be ALL your fault, but if I do something stupid and you are following too close to react when I do something stupid, it seems like fault would be shared. And being aware of what's behind you is exactly what I mentioned in the reply to the post above yours. If I'm aware that you are too close and cannot stop in time, it is my duty as a responsible driver to keep going, even if it means not quite making it before the red light. With cameras that cannot account for extenuating circumstances, I'm screwed whether I stop or go. That's what I mean by "responsible for the guy behind me." You driving irresponsibly could force me to deal with undesired consequences no matter what my choice, holding me "responsible" in some way for your actions.
What video? And why should I have to take time out of my schedule because of a mistake that never would have been made were a person watching? They certainly aren't going to pay me back for the missed hours of work.
...regulated rates...
...free market...
That term...I don't think it means what you think it means. To be fair, though, it would be better than what we have now.
If the guy behind me is following too close to stop if I slam on my brakes, and I have to hit my brakes hard for a light with a camera, I have to choose between a ticket or a smashed back end. And while the smashed back end will end up being paid for by the person who hit me, that doesn't fix the fact that I won't get to my destination on time, I may have to deal with a rental car, I have to fill out paperwork for the insurance company, among other things that the guy behind me cannot fix. Sounds to me like I get punished either way simply because the guy behind me was doing something I can't control.
So now I'm responsible for what the guy behind me is doing as well? Great!
Not a bad idea, except it differs for different vehicles and different road conditions. Big trucks take longer to stop that small cars, and here in Michigan, the weather is so varied that that line would only be accurate maybe 25-35% of the time. Down in Arizona or something, though, it might work.
How are you going to confront a picture of you running a red light?
That's kind of the point they're trying to make. You can't, despite having a right to do so.
If you were making passage for a ambulance or policy vehicle, there will be witnesses and incident logs.
So you get to take a day off work to go into a court room, demand that the GPS logs of the emergency vehicles in that area be retrieved (assuming they even exist), show that your ticket was at the same time the emergency vehicle was going through, hope that the judge believes you that you really were making room and not just taking advantage of all the stopped traffic, and even if you do get out of the ticket, possibly have to pay court fees. All of which could be avoided if it were a cop on the corner instead of a camera. Sounds like a plan to me!
Except you get taken to court for those crimes. Red light cameras just result in you getting a ticket mailed to you with the expectation you'll pay. You want to fight the decision? You get to pay anyway, both court fees and with your time. Imagine if those bank cameras had facial recognition software that compared to a database of citizens, and the computer claiming a "match" was all that was necessary to throw you in prison without a trial.
Sounds like a fantastic feature for them to remove a few years down the road when a security hole allowing all homebrew and custom firmware is discovered!
I haven't played any game since that felt as free and fun to play as WC and Descent. There was some close-to-fun stuff in one of the Startrek space combat games, but trying to use capships as space fighters isn't as fun (it's more strategy "target weapons, engines, etc.") Though I believe it could be done much better, the "StarTrek" name is detrimental since startrek doesn't use fighter craft in combat. (Star Wars on the other hand does, but Star Wars games are so pigeonholed to the "StarWars" universe that you don't get any 6DOF here either.)
Might I recommend Freespace and/or Freespace 2? Sounds like they might be exactly what you're looking for, and with the Freespace 2 Source Code Project the graphics have gotten a very nice upgrade (though both those games still looked good years after their initial release).
It comes down to this: new game came out, you can either buy $200 portable system and pay $40 for the game or buy a $200 iOS device that will get a newer revision three times before the next portable gaming system comes out and download it to your iOS device for $10. Guess what most people will do?
Fixed for accuracy.
I like cargo shorts. Excellent way to carry around my iPod, my iPhone, and my iPad. If only apple made iShorts and iBoxers I'd be living the dream...
The scenario you describe is a little off since it isn't a PSA addressing something illegal like the NBC one was. [...] Overall I think the real issue (as others have stated) is that homeland security is involved in this at all.
My point was more about bias than legality, just because something is illegal doesn't mean we should trust any old person or company to talk about it, especially through our government and without disclosure that there is a conflict of interest. This one may have been fine, but I dislike the fact that it sets a precedent. I find it pretty easy to imagine future ones branding people who are for IP reform, or even removing IP laws altogether, but who respect the law as is, being defamed due to biased PSAs. If the government finds it ok to place seeds of distrust in the general populace toward groups of political activists who happen to want something big media (or big oil or big or small anything for that matter) doesn't...well, we're already too close to that for my comfort. I really don't want to see what things will look like if we go all the way.
But I do agree with your final point. That's a "WTF" that I think everyone can get behind.
Oh if I only had mod points to give you
I don't understand why this is such a big deal? A company that is hurt by stealing offers to make a PSA to help promote not stealing, seems like a pretty reasonable thing to happen. I especially love this quote from techdirt
Could you imagine how the press would react if, say, the FDA ran PSAs that were created and owned by McDonald's
Yeah, that would only apply if the PSA was about not stealing hamburgers, in which case I can't see how anyone could complain about that.
What if the PSA stated, or even implied, that "fast food" *flashes McD's sign* isn't that bad for you *flashes images of skinny people at line at McD's* and you should eat it more often *flashes image of McD's drive through*, would you have an issue? Note, I have not seen the PSA, but if it included the ludicrously inflated "financial damage due to piracy" statistics the media companies like to drop, could you see why some people would think that this is an issue?
Definitely for the best in my opinion, and not just because of writing quality, the new design, or anything like that. They've just lost their "oomph." Early on, they were terrifying, seeing them pop up suddenly made my heart sink, wondering how they would get through the situation. Now that the Doctor has plowed through them countless times, in increasingly absurd numbers, they just don't evoke that reaction anymore. "I am the last Dalek!" *dead* "We are the last of the Dalek fleet!" *dead* "We are the last five Daleks!" *dead* "We are all the Daleks ever!" *dead* "We are the last five Daleks! (again!)" *dead*
And, at least for me, the same is true of the cybermen. To be fair, I wasn't a huge fan of them as an enemy in the first place, but they definitely feel stale to me now. I'd love to see the return of some of the enemies used only a couple times, or something new and unique. The weeping angels were just fantastic. They were unique, dangerous without being pegged as "THE WORST THING THAT THE DOCTOR HAS EVER FACED!!!!11", and, perhaps most importantly, used sparingly. Maybe one more episode of them this season, perhaps with a nice twist on the theme, amidst some one-shot challenges, and perhaps even a brand new recurring foe.
You forgot Hannah Montana.
If only there were a setting to allow sideloading. One that's disabled by default to protect unsavvy users, but is easily enabled by people who know what they're doing/willing to accept the risks. Oh, hey, look! There it is! "Unknown Sources: Allow installation of non-market applications."
Good to know that the iphone has a similar setting, that was a good move on Apple's part. Oh, wait, it doesn't? You have to exploit security holes to enable sideloading? Huh. How about that.
Then risk it. If people are only buying the games because they can't viably pirate them, then your games are crappy enough that the platform should die.