I think you're missing the point. It's not that Microsoft is or is not stupid, it's that self-destructing DVDs have been made before, and flopped each time. They allowed the consumer to chose WHEN they watched it, but still only worked for a very short period of time, and were to be disposable as well. It didn't work not because it wasn't Microsoft, it didn't work becaus epeople didn't WANT it. The market said "no thanks". And frankly, MS is not the world's smartest company. They have good PR, and deep pockets with which they can engage in a war of attrition against their competitors to win with inferior products. The issue here is that if people don't buy disposable DVDs to start with, there's no market for MS to take over.
And I'll go ahead and be redundant here too. This is just ANOTHER case of MS taking someone else's idea, slapping the word "innovation" on it, and thrusting it out the door, and a few people think it'll fly THIS time because MS is behind it.
No, they don't sell it for a huge loss, but they're still sold for a marginal loss that is recouped on game sales. Even if they sold it AT cost, that's still zero profit, which amounts to a loss when you add incustomer service and warranty repairs. No business sells products at zero cost with no chance of making a profit. The fact remains that the profit is in the after-market, post purchase of the initial unit. They have zero incentive to let you just buy a unit and do anything you like with it, and plenty of incentive to force you into their company store.
Besides, look at all you get in the extra-$100 bundle, way more than $100 worth of kit over the base model. They make money of Live subs, gane sales, extra addons, etc. Even the original NES made Nintendo's riches with game sales, not unit sales.
Because like any console, they don't make money of the console sales, they make money on the game sales of which they get a slice. If one can mod their XBox, like you have, and it is no longer a closed system, then they have no lever to force you to buy new content that they profit from. That blows a giant hole in their business plan. The honestly couldn't care less if you EVER use it, they just want you to keep buying new games for it.
Because in closed-service systems, they want to be able to separately license the software to the service providers, liek MS or content providers. If they allowed YOU to put it there, then those content providers will skip the fee.
Back in high school, '92 I think, a friend and I created a serial toaster. I did the hardware and he did up the controlling software that even had a door for our BBS. From ToasTerm, with pretty ANSI graphics and everything, you could select the toast level, "push" the lever to turn it on, see a little timer for how much longer was left, and then "see" the toast pop up. The toaster hooked to a serial port, the brown-o-meter was controlled with a stepper motor froma floppy drive, and the up/down lever was a pair of servo motors.
If you looked carefully in the door program, there was an easter egg that would launch the toast out of the toaster. I rigged a solenoid to fire against the handle, and the toast would fly a good 5 feet. When this eventually shattered the plastic handle, so we replaced that with a steel bolt so it wouldn't break.
Eventually the controller board did manage to catch fire. But ToasTerm was still a hit on the BBS so we left it on without the Serial Toaster still connected.
Just because I'm lapping clam doesn't mean that I'm at home where pillows are plentiful. Maybe we ducked into a side room at an realtor's Open House, a museum, or what have you. And frankly, it's usually worth the pain.
THIS is why God gave us mod points. Thank you very much good sir.
Re:Why is this even a question anymore?
on
RockStar Speaks
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· Score: 1
Yeah, see, that's what I thought. So no, it's not Rockstar's fault. They locked it up, someone found a way to "break" in. So people bitching about this are dead wrong. Maybe I'll go break into their houses and complain that I found and blame them when I find the riding crop and pony-boy outfit.
Why is this even a question anymore?
on
RockStar Speaks
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Why can't someone merely analyse the patch to see exactly what it contains? I mean, if it's got extra content in it despite what the author says, that should be easily detectable (such as size of the patch, the inclusion of new graphics and/or sounds). If it's nothing but a code patch with no new content, than it's definitively something unlocked from within the game. Unless of course San Andreas has OTHER areas in which the dialog spoken (and moaned) in this scene is also used. This is an honest question, as I don't have nor care to play the game.
And frankly, even if it is in the game, Rockstar purposefully locked it away. They can't be hend responsible for someone else breaking in anymore than a gun onwer can't be held liable if someone blasted their way into a locked gunsafe. If some 14 year old kid breaks into a porn shop by smashing open a door or wall, it's the intruder's fault he was exposed to porn, not the store's.
from a programming perspective, sure, it is correct. From a human perspective, it's sorely lacking. Most coders and/org *nix fans fail to recognize that the wider world of people think in human terms, not programming terms. This is another reason why the standard *nix method will not "take over the world". Maybe it's time the metaphor evolved. Yes, it's not an actual container, but it is a metaphorical container, therefore the directory term fails in the metaphor sense despite being technically correct from the programmatical metaphor.
I used to be all militant about that too. Then I realized it didn't really make any difference at all. MacOS always called them folders. With Windows 95, the MS world changed to that term too (albeit slowly). Frankly, it's a more accurate term for the metaphor, as a directory is a list, rather than a container. And it's faster and easier to say and type. The world changes. I decided to quit yelling at the tide.
Hi, my name's Bob S. Arrow. You can call me BSA for short. I can help you out of your situation! Just give me a call at home, my number is 1-888-667-4722 (It's pure coincidence that my phone number spells NO-PIRACY) and give me your name, place of employment, their phone number, address, and what software they're asking you to copy and I'll help you out in not time! Pay no attention to the swarm of lawyerbots and accountants swooping through your office windows...
So what's your view on Star Wars conventions? instead of Klingons, you have Wookieees. Instead of Borg, you have Storm Troopers. Instead of Starfleet uniforms, you have folks dressed like Jedi in robes. Now, I'm a big Trek fan, I enjoy arguing minutiae from time to time, but I don't put on Vulcan ears and go scoping for chicks dressed like the Duras sisters. But I'd like to know if Slashdotdom has a similarly dim view of the folks who drank too much of the Star Wars koolaid (since/. has always biased toawrds SW and away from ST).
I think it's that we have a hope, a faith, a wish maybe, that people will become better than we are now, regardless of if we're flying aroundat thousands of times the speed of light. We look around and see a dirtball with 6.3 billion dirty little people looking for new ways to kill each other because they have the wrong religion, the wrong color skin, the wrong land, the wrong language, the wrong whatever. We're not pleased at seeing this. We see CEOs of megacorporations worth billions of dollars, and not too far away we see thousands of people starving to death because local warlords hijack the sacks of grain good hearted people send to try to feed them. We'd like to believe that in just a few hundred years, humanity will finally have dragged itself out of the stone age. It's a nice dream.
1. In Soviet Russia, 4GPU Overlord jokes are very tired of Beowulf clusters of YOU!
2. ???
3. Profit!
Save $50 and buy the original...
on
Blank Keyboard
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· Score: 1
This is just a black/charcoal grey Keytronic E03601. I know because I'm using one now, and have for 12 years, and would recognize it from a black away.
" Now shipping with Ergo Technology. Most keyboards use a standard 55 grams of force required to register every key, Ergo Technology has 5 different levels of force. From 35 grams to 80 grams - that correspond to the strength of the finger that touches the keys. The result is more comfort for your hands."
Just ignore the etched letters... You can find them online elsewhere than Keytronic-direct for even less.
This is not a troll. I don't carry a cell phone (don't want one), etc. But how hard is it to let it charge overnight while you sleep? You say you can't get 24 hours out of it, but do you regularly use it for more than 18 straight hours? Or does it take forever to charge?
Next week on NBC's "Law & Order: OSS": Ripped from the headlines! Investigators Robert M. Stallward and partner Erica S. Raymone find a small company in tropical Hawaii is stealing source code to several OSS programs and reselling it as proprietary code, to fund their human-smuggling operations!
The only part I disagree on is the "inferior" part. Mot ALL MS tech is inferior. They use thos tactics to ensure _their_ tech prospers, regardless of which is inferior/superior. Example, WMA and WMV are great codecs, but they're super-closed and proprietary. Were they open/GPL, I guarantee you Linux users would be flocking to them.
I'm actually one of those folks who wants handgun control too, but I still want my army to have the biggest and best guns around. I want my police force to have them too. And if I ever get trapped in a high-rise building being taken over by german terrorists, or wind up in a scientific lab on Mars being invaded by demons from Hell, I want a gun then, too.
I probably should have use a different noun there, but the point still stands.
I am SO sick of hearing this. The time you spent posting this to slashdot could have been spent handing out one more dinner at a soup kitchen. How's that?
People have lives OTHER than charity, as your presence here proves. As for this being less than honorable, that's the eye of the beholder. It's like the VCR, guns, or deep fryers. They can all be used for good or for evil. Just because they can be used for evil doesn't obviate they're good potential, nor should we ban them because of their potential for abuse.
This is just pathetic. To make some completely sexist remarks, the boothbabes are eye candy to draw visitors to your booth to look at your content. They get attention and drive traffic from people who otherwise might not bother with your booth. And you know what? We do it with almost every product in almost every industry.
Ford's commercial for the Mercury version of the 500 has a chick in a tight shirt, tight capri pants, and sexy little shoes jumping around the car talking about how great it is. And a little birdie told me she wasn't hired for her detailed knowledge of her automobile enthusiasm. Same with vacations and cruises, McDonald's salads, investment banks, cable news, clothing department stores, etc. Sex sells. And it's not just women. Men are used to sell romance novels, "romantic comedy" films (chick flicks), country music, etc.
I think it's time we grew up and just recognized that sex is a part of our lives, a part we like, and stop trying to live like Puritans. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play Wolfenstein with the Elite Guard, read FHM, and stop by an auto show to pick up some flyers from the competent ladies at the Yugo booth.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're missing the point. It's not that Microsoft is or is not stupid, it's that self-destructing DVDs have been made before, and flopped each time. They allowed the consumer to chose WHEN they watched it, but still only worked for a very short period of time, and were to be disposable as well. It didn't work not because it wasn't Microsoft, it didn't work becaus epeople didn't WANT it. The market said "no thanks". And frankly, MS is not the world's smartest company. They have good PR, and deep pockets with which they can engage in a war of attrition against their competitors to win with inferior products. The issue here is that if people don't buy disposable DVDs to start with, there's no market for MS to take over.
And I'll go ahead and be redundant here too. This is just ANOTHER case of MS taking someone else's idea, slapping the word "innovation" on it, and thrusting it out the door, and a few people think it'll fly THIS time because MS is behind it.
Besides, look at all you get in the extra-$100 bundle, way more than $100 worth of kit over the base model. They make money of Live subs, gane sales, extra addons, etc. Even the original NES made Nintendo's riches with game sales, not unit sales.
Because like any console, they don't make money of the console sales, they make money on the game sales of which they get a slice. If one can mod their XBox, like you have, and it is no longer a closed system, then they have no lever to force you to buy new content that they profit from. That blows a giant hole in their business plan. The honestly couldn't care less if you EVER use it, they just want you to keep buying new games for it.
Because in closed-service systems, they want to be able to separately license the software to the service providers, liek MS or content providers. If they allowed YOU to put it there, then those content providers will skip the fee.
Back in high school, '92 I think, a friend and I created a serial toaster. I did the hardware and he did up the controlling software that even had a door for our BBS. From ToasTerm, with pretty ANSI graphics and everything, you could select the toast level, "push" the lever to turn it on, see a little timer for how much longer was left, and then "see" the toast pop up. The toaster hooked to a serial port, the brown-o-meter was controlled with a stepper motor froma floppy drive, and the up/down lever was a pair of servo motors.
If you looked carefully in the door program, there was an easter egg that would launch the toast out of the toaster. I rigged a solenoid to fire against the handle, and the toast would fly a good 5 feet. When this eventually shattered the plastic handle, so we replaced that with a steel bolt so it wouldn't break.
Eventually the controller board did manage to catch fire. But ToasTerm was still a hit on the BBS so we left it on without the Serial Toaster still connected.
This beats the shit out of our toaster.
Just because I'm lapping clam doesn't mean that I'm at home where pillows are plentiful. Maybe we ducked into a side room at an realtor's Open House, a museum, or what have you. And frankly, it's usually worth the pain.
THIS is why God gave us mod points. Thank you very much good sir.
Yeah, see, that's what I thought. So no, it's not Rockstar's fault. They locked it up, someone found a way to "break" in. So people bitching about this are dead wrong. Maybe I'll go break into their houses and complain that I found and blame them when I find the riding crop and pony-boy outfit.
Why can't someone merely analyse the patch to see exactly what it contains? I mean, if it's got extra content in it despite what the author says, that should be easily detectable (such as size of the patch, the inclusion of new graphics and/or sounds). If it's nothing but a code patch with no new content, than it's definitively something unlocked from within the game. Unless of course San Andreas has OTHER areas in which the dialog spoken (and moaned) in this scene is also used. This is an honest question, as I don't have nor care to play the game.
And frankly, even if it is in the game, Rockstar purposefully locked it away. They can't be hend responsible for someone else breaking in anymore than a gun onwer can't be held liable if someone blasted their way into a locked gunsafe. If some 14 year old kid breaks into a porn shop by smashing open a door or wall, it's the intruder's fault he was exposed to porn, not the store's.
We evolve. Join the club.
I used to be all militant about that too. Then I realized it didn't really make any difference at all. MacOS always called them folders. With Windows 95, the MS world changed to that term too (albeit slowly). Frankly, it's a more accurate term for the metaphor, as a directory is a list, rather than a container. And it's faster and easier to say and type. The world changes. I decided to quit yelling at the tide.
Hi, my name's Bob S. Arrow. You can call me BSA for short. I can help you out of your situation! Just give me a call at home, my number is 1-888-667-4722 (It's pure coincidence that my phone number spells NO-PIRACY) and give me your name, place of employment, their phone number, address, and what software they're asking you to copy and I'll help you out in not time! Pay no attention to the swarm of lawyerbots and accountants swooping through your office windows...
Photos have no mass, but they DO posess energy. They do exist, trust me, I've seen them.
Wait until you grasp M-theory before you bash those who "spout off".
So what's your view on Star Wars conventions? instead of Klingons, you have Wookieees. Instead of Borg, you have Storm Troopers. Instead of Starfleet uniforms, you have folks dressed like Jedi in robes. Now, I'm a big Trek fan, I enjoy arguing minutiae from time to time, but I don't put on Vulcan ears and go scoping for chicks dressed like the Duras sisters. But I'd like to know if Slashdotdom has a similarly dim view of the folks who drank too much of the Star Wars koolaid (since /. has always biased toawrds SW and away from ST).
I think it's that we have a hope, a faith, a wish maybe, that people will become better than we are now, regardless of if we're flying aroundat thousands of times the speed of light. We look around and see a dirtball with 6.3 billion dirty little people looking for new ways to kill each other because they have the wrong religion, the wrong color skin, the wrong land, the wrong language, the wrong whatever. We're not pleased at seeing this. We see CEOs of megacorporations worth billions of dollars, and not too far away we see thousands of people starving to death because local warlords hijack the sacks of grain good hearted people send to try to feed them. We'd like to believe that in just a few hundred years, humanity will finally have dragged itself out of the stone age. It's a nice dream.
1. In Soviet Russia, 4GPU Overlord jokes are very tired of Beowulf clusters of YOU! 2. ??? 3. Profit!
This is not a troll. I don't carry a cell phone (don't want one), etc. But how hard is it to let it charge overnight while you sleep? You say you can't get 24 hours out of it, but do you regularly use it for more than 18 straight hours? Or does it take forever to charge?
Next week on NBC's "Law & Order: OSS": Ripped from the headlines! Investigators Robert M. Stallward and partner Erica S. Raymone find a small company in tropical Hawaii is stealing source code to several OSS programs and reselling it as proprietary code, to fund their human-smuggling operations!
The only part I disagree on is the "inferior" part. Mot ALL MS tech is inferior. They use thos tactics to ensure _their_ tech prospers, regardless of which is inferior/superior. Example, WMA and WMV are great codecs, but they're super-closed and proprietary. Were they open/GPL, I guarantee you Linux users would be flocking to them.
I probably should have use a different noun there, but the point still stands.
People have lives OTHER than charity, as your presence here proves. As for this being less than honorable, that's the eye of the beholder. It's like the VCR, guns, or deep fryers. They can all be used for good or for evil. Just because they can be used for evil doesn't obviate they're good potential, nor should we ban them because of their potential for abuse.
Ford's commercial for the Mercury version of the 500 has a chick in a tight shirt, tight capri pants, and sexy little shoes jumping around the car talking about how great it is. And a little birdie told me she wasn't hired for her detailed knowledge of her automobile enthusiasm. Same with vacations and cruises, McDonald's salads, investment banks, cable news, clothing department stores, etc. Sex sells. And it's not just women. Men are used to sell romance novels, "romantic comedy" films (chick flicks), country music, etc.
I think it's time we grew up and just recognized that sex is a part of our lives, a part we like, and stop trying to live like Puritans. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play Wolfenstein with the Elite Guard, read FHM, and stop by an auto show to pick up some flyers from the competent ladies at the Yugo booth.
Yeah, well, at least Maps doesn't use it. Er, rats...
Well, we could always replace it with VBscript!