Meanwhile Comedy Central welcomed people to its material and freely let them host, download or share pretty much anything they wanted.
I certainly know that South Park's popularity was due greatly in part to it's availabilty on the internet. My freshman year in college I learned about it from friends who were downloading it. I don't think it was available on our cable channels yet. The free sharing of South Park certainly doesn't seem to have hurt it as a revenue stream.
Explain to me exactly how this works. The CEOs get together in a room with cigars blazing and give each other money??
Yup, only it's a giant room and they can't be bothered to go there themselves so they send representatives to do it for them. We call it the stock market.
I should let this go too, but I'm bored at work. Yes, I may have exagerated slightly to emphasize the point. Yes, some of the money is invested and creates jobs.
My real point is, when you are poor, or even most of the way up to the middle class, 90-100% of your earnings are immediately put back into the economy, and it circulates around down here quite quickly. Whatever percent of Gate's Earnings get used to pay for consumables and charities and whatnot I can gauruntee is not 90-100% of his earnings. A vast majority just gets plowed into stocks or his bank or whatever. He's not spending as much as he's earning, so the flow of money slows when it gets to him. He does have quite a lot of influence on the economy, but he would have more of an effect if he spent 100% of his earnings.
Where you do think this mythical CEO puts his money, in a mattress?
No, you are right. He invests it in other companies so it gets passed around between CEOs. So it never makes it down to us regular people.
The Bum may buy liquor, but that pays the salary of the guy behind the liquor cabinet, who then spends it on a video game, or a cheese burger, or whatever. The money circulates down here, passing between a lot of hands quickly.
Sure, Gates takes some of his money and puts it to good use. But his net worth keeps going up. He doesn't spend nearly as fast as he gets it. Sure, 1% of his monthly income may go back out to helping the poor, but wealth accumulates at the top and stays there. It may circle around slowly amongst the super rich, but that doesn't help the economy nearly as much as a million guys buying a bottle of booze.
The whole idea of a convention for an industry is to inform the public, through the media, of what's good and upcoming.
I think what you meant to say was:
The whole idea of a convention for an industry is to inform the public of what's good and upcoming.
A convention is: an assembly of persons met for a common purpose. (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law)
The point of a convention like E3 is to let as many people as possible know about your product. The most effective way to do this is to let as many people as possible come and see it. Sure, you want the media there so they can report to people who are interested but can't make it. But letting every blogger or gamer comic come and look around at E3 helps increase the exposure of products. While yes, the big companies like Nintendo and Microsoft inevitably fight an advertising war of gigantic proportions, the small companies are the ones that are helped the most. In a closed "Media only" event, the guys I saw with a smaller MMO would never be seen by the public as the media fawned over the industry giants. But if a random guy who makes a web comic, even a smaller one, sees it and then comments about it on his site, that can be incredible exposure for a little company. So while E3 became a giant circus, the bigger it gets the more powerful it becomes.
I don't think the industry needs a closed door industry back patting session. That won't help at all. I knew that Nintendo and Sony were making next generation consoles before E3, and any details they want to release to the press at any time will filter over here to slashdot and a zillion other sites. Games should be fun. A giant convention about games should let as many people see as many games as possible.
Then again, I'm thinking of heading to the Penny Arcade one if I can make it next time. A game convention should be about playing games, not video clips I can download from the internet anyway.
But everyone acts as if poor people burn their money in little bonfires, forgetting that a dollar spent by a bum is just as good at creating jobs as a dollar spent by a CEO.
I'd like to emphasize that while the dollar spent by a bum is just as valuable to the economy as a dollar spent by a CEO, a dollar given to a bum has a 100% probability of being spent while that CEO is quite likely to hoard a good portion of it.
In any case, take care not to equate 'invasion' with 'immoral'. An invasion can be moral, depending on who the target is and what the invader's goals and methods are.
I must tactfully disagree. The only wars I believe have moral justification were nations coming to the defense of another nation being invaded. Example, liberating France during WWII. If only we'd started earlier before they got to France, but that's another matter.
In every case I can think of, an invading army is just a misuse of power.
However, the term "spam" is still strongly associated with both unsolicited email and the ham product in most English speaking person's minds.
The point of Trademark is that they are for specific contexts. Like it wasn't a problem for Apple to sell computers and that other Apple company to sell Beatles records until Apple started selling music.
So the judgement is reasonable in that they correctly ruled that a software package that claims to "prevent spam" is not going to make consumers think it will prevent them from eating a spicy ham product. The context of "spam" (food vs computers) is clear enough to consumers that Hormel cannot use their trademark to prevent computer companies from using the term.
What a concept, a judge ruling correctly in an IP related case. Oh wait, this was in Europe. Why don't I live there? Ah right, my ancestors migrated to the Americas to avoid persecution in the old world. Maybe it's time to migrate back...
Sounds like it's time for Earthlink users to check out OpenDNS.com... they make it easy to turn off the bad-URL behavior.
Strange, it sounds to me like it's time for Earthlink users to find a new provider. I know sometimes there are very few options for broadband in an area, but last I checked there were plenty of dialup companies still competing and about.
Right, but isn't that the point of the long tail? If Dan Brown sells a bazillion copies of "Da Vinci Code" and I sell 500 copies of PMD Applied, we're both happy
No, Apple is the one that is happy. The point of the 'Long Tail' is really that a lot of money can be made from large stocks of low volume items. Particularly with digital merchandise where no product needs to be stocked or with things like print-on-demand where the product is produced quickly to meet actual orders. You may only sell 500 copies, but when Apple sells 500 copies of 100,000 different less-known artists songs they make a hefty amount of money.
and not going the cheap route. They are developing drivers.
If I recall, at least for Nvidia, the binary driver blob is almost exactly the same for linux as for windows. It's only the wrapper they have to re-write for linux. So while I agree that they should just go ahead and give out specs, I don't imagine it is a very expensive process to maintain the linux blobs they have. Especially now that they already have the pipeline and ground work for the linux wrapper.
I apologize for not citing sources for the HD-DVD over Blu-Ray debate. I figured it was common knowledge at this point
Not meaning to pick on you, but far too often people are surrounded by others with the same interest. So while the forums and people you hang out with might be closely watching the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle, not everyone has time for it. I personally haven't paid attention to it at all, as I know getting an HD TV is fairly far on my horizon. By the time I get around to it, the war will have been decided.
You also have to remember a place like slashdot can give a misleading feel for what is 'common knowledge'. There are a lot of people with varied amounts of techincal knowledge, so the chances of someone who does know about something any specific topic will likely respond.
I myself have been following the info on new consoles. It affects me directly because I'm likely to buy at least 2. I do think that eventually I will get a PS3. But most likely, long after it is out and the price drops below $300. I'll be content with a Wii until then.
Where are lines faster -- the grocery store or the DMV?
So what, if we privatized the DMV we'd get faster lines? We have slow lines because nobody wants to pay more taxes/DMV fees which would be required to hire more staff. A private company running the DMV would either cost the citizens more (because they'd pay their workers the same but charge a little bit more for their own profit) or have even worse service (hire less workers so they can charge the rates you are used to and still have some profit.)
Service costs money. When was the last time you went to a large warehouse style store and got speedy service?
once you get to 60 your options as a casual gamer become more limited
Last I checked, you couldn't even *get* to 60 as a casual gamer.
I play CoV/CoH, and I'd have to consider myself casual when it comes to it. I play maybe once a week for a few hours at a time. In the 9 months I've had it, my highest level character is only level 35. Each level in these games takes more and more time to accomplish. So when I sit down to play, I often play a lower level character because it's a lot more fun. That level 35 takes a couple hours of playing just to get a tenth of the xp required for the next level. My level 14 can get a level or two in that time.
The amount of dedication it takes to max out a character in these games is beyond that of a casual gamer. Then again, it doesn't take them that long to get to the middle levels where you can do interesting things, yet still are rewarded for relatively small investments of time.
1. About tyranny, monarchy and non-representative rule: While they do make for some emotional arguments, let's remember that England was a parliamentary monarchy at the time. Maybe not in the same sense of the word as today, but let's remember that that parliament _did_ repel some taxes (e.g., the stamp act) when the colonists protested them. So how much more representation _do_ you want, if even being able to repel laws and taxes isn't enough for you?
Primarily, the fact that we didn't get our own seats in parliament.
::Alternatively a blind auction where the winner is the one who offers the highest price and pays the price of the second + a bid increment.
Isn't this how eBay already works?
No, it isn't. He was talking about a blind bidding system, where you can't see what anyone has bid until the end of the auction.
Ebay is never going to do this. Why? Because visibly bidding does inflate the price of the item. The larger the price, the more profit for Ebay. Ebay doesn't want to give you stuff for a cheap price, it wants to make money.
games are progressively becoming shorter, more expensive, and less replayable
Funny, I watch my roommate play Mega Man or Super Mario World in less than an hour and I think, huh, games really were shorter back then.
Different types of games have different play times. RPGs tend to have many, many hours involved. Action and shooters tend to be much shorter in comparison. Stuff that is based on multi-player tends to last as long as you have people wanting to play them.
Myself personally, I'd rather have a shorter game that is all *fun* than a longer game that has some fun moments dragged out by a lot of boring stuff in between.
(some scientists have hypothesized a relationship between warming and hurricane intensity---not frequency---but even that is highly speculative and not generally accepted).
And here I thought that tropical storms happen all the time, and it's only very intense storms that become hurricanes. Thus, warmer temperatures indicate that more storms develop into hurricanes. Strangely, that allows for the number of storms to remain near constant, and yet have the frequency of hurricanes increase.
At least that way if your public number is stolen they can only affect your credit rating and not your income taxes.
Um, isn't that where the problem lies? I don't think anyone is stealing people's SSN and then filing fake income taxes under them.... People are stealing SSN's to get credit cards/car loans/bank accounts, swiping as much money as they can, which destroys your credit rating. Often for a very long time.
Have you ever had a poor credit rating? Coming out of college mine didn't look too good. I'm better now, but I can tell you from experience that it can be near impossible to get stuff off your records. This can make it difficult to get a bank account, rent an apartment, buy a car, or get a credit card. Have you ever tried to live without a bank account? I had to for 6 months while I cleared something up, and it is a pain. When cashing a check costs an extra fee (most banks do this if you don't have an account with them) then getting a paycheck can be a nightmare.
I can only imagine how hard it might be if someone had stolen my SSN and some truly bad stuff had been on my records.
One person is hardly a statistically valid sample of general sentiment, but if my view of the 360 has changed, I might not be the only one who feels the same way.
You are right. And I didn't particularly meant to rant really at you specifically. It's just so often I see posts where someone has decided that Console A is the best because it has X, Y, and Z on it, and they forget that there is a wide variety in taste out there. I like that there is such a variety of games for all platforms, even if many don't catch my interest for too long.
So what's the problem? Is it bad habits, or is it really that bad out there?
You don't know what the problem is, but you take a lot of steps to prevent them.
You have a firewall. That protects you already from a lot of worms or other things that are out there.
You don't use IE. You may not be a security expert, but you are still better off that 80% of users out there. A lot of spyware comes from questionable sites with ActiveX content. Too many users click on any old pop up claiming to have a useful tool or widget or whatever and get a trojan installed instead.
You don't use Outlook. You don't have an e-mail client that will execute macros or executables.
You learned not to click on things from questionable sources. This the major difference between you and the "average" user. Most people just click OK to any random window that pops up, they want to get to whatever site they are trying to get to.
So yes, if we are talking spyware/virus infection, it really is just bad habits. Not knowing what it looks like when a website or e-mail is trying to install something.
Now, if we are talking corporate security, that is another story. If you are a company running a website that allows people to log in and stores sensitive data about those users, you should have a security expert dealing with the code and server security. That's where you need the experts. Home network behind a firewall? Just a few safe habits is all you need. Mostly a distrust of any executable you don't know for sure is legit.
Slashdot Mirror
Meanwhile Comedy Central welcomed people to its material and freely let them host, download or share pretty much anything they wanted.
I certainly know that South Park's popularity was due greatly in part to it's availabilty on the internet. My freshman year in college I learned about it from friends who were downloading it. I don't think it was available on our cable channels yet. The free sharing of South Park certainly doesn't seem to have hurt it as a revenue stream.
Explain to me exactly how this works. The CEOs get together in a room with cigars blazing and give each other money??
Yup, only it's a giant room and they can't be bothered to go there themselves so they send representatives to do it for them. We call it the stock market.
I should let this go too, but I'm bored at work. Yes, I may have exagerated slightly to emphasize the point. Yes, some of the money is invested and creates jobs.
My real point is, when you are poor, or even most of the way up to the middle class, 90-100% of your earnings are immediately put back into the economy, and it circulates around down here quite quickly. Whatever percent of Gate's Earnings get used to pay for consumables and charities and whatnot I can gauruntee is not 90-100% of his earnings. A vast majority just gets plowed into stocks or his bank or whatever. He's not spending as much as he's earning, so the flow of money slows when it gets to him. He does have quite a lot of influence on the economy, but he would have more of an effect if he spent 100% of his earnings.
Where you do think this mythical CEO puts his money, in a mattress?
No, you are right. He invests it in other companies so it gets passed around between CEOs. So it never makes it down to us regular people.
The Bum may buy liquor, but that pays the salary of the guy behind the liquor cabinet, who then spends it on a video game, or a cheese burger, or whatever. The money circulates down here, passing between a lot of hands quickly.
Sure, Gates takes some of his money and puts it to good use. But his net worth keeps going up. He doesn't spend nearly as fast as he gets it. Sure, 1% of his monthly income may go back out to helping the poor, but wealth accumulates at the top and stays there. It may circle around slowly amongst the super rich, but that doesn't help the economy nearly as much as a million guys buying a bottle of booze.
The whole idea of a convention for an industry is to inform the public, through the media, of what's good and upcoming.
I think what you meant to say was:
The whole idea of a convention for an industry is to inform the public of what's good and upcoming.
A convention is: an assembly of persons met for a common purpose. (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law)
The point of a convention like E3 is to let as many people as possible know about your product. The most effective way to do this is to let as many people as possible come and see it. Sure, you want the media there so they can report to people who are interested but can't make it. But letting every blogger or gamer comic come and look around at E3 helps increase the exposure of products. While yes, the big companies like Nintendo and Microsoft inevitably fight an advertising war of gigantic proportions, the small companies are the ones that are helped the most. In a closed "Media only" event, the guys I saw with a smaller MMO would never be seen by the public as the media fawned over the industry giants. But if a random guy who makes a web comic, even a smaller one, sees it and then comments about it on his site, that can be incredible exposure for a little company. So while E3 became a giant circus, the bigger it gets the more powerful it becomes.
I don't think the industry needs a closed door industry back patting session. That won't help at all. I knew that Nintendo and Sony were making next generation consoles before E3, and any details they want to release to the press at any time will filter over here to slashdot and a zillion other sites. Games should be fun. A giant convention about games should let as many people see as many games as possible.
Then again, I'm thinking of heading to the Penny Arcade one if I can make it next time. A game convention should be about playing games, not video clips I can download from the internet anyway.
But everyone acts as if poor people burn their money in little bonfires, forgetting that a dollar spent by a bum is just as good at creating jobs as a dollar spent by a CEO.
I'd like to emphasize that while the dollar spent by a bum is just as valuable to the economy as a dollar spent by a CEO, a dollar given to a bum has a 100% probability of being spent while that CEO is quite likely to hoard a good portion of it.
In any case, take care not to equate 'invasion' with 'immoral'. An invasion can be moral, depending on who the target is and what the invader's goals and methods are.
I must tactfully disagree. The only wars I believe have moral justification were nations coming to the defense of another nation being invaded. Example, liberating France during WWII. If only we'd started earlier before they got to France, but that's another matter.
In every case I can think of, an invading army is just a misuse of power.
Wasn't Apple, like, actually doomed in '97?
/me ducks and hides
Google Trends confirms it, Apple is Dying!
I must apologize to Netcraft, but Netcraft is dying.
However, the term "spam" is still strongly associated with both unsolicited email and the ham product in most English speaking person's minds.
The point of Trademark is that they are for specific contexts. Like it wasn't a problem for Apple to sell computers and that other Apple company to sell Beatles records until Apple started selling music.
So the judgement is reasonable in that they correctly ruled that a software package that claims to "prevent spam" is not going to make consumers think it will prevent them from eating a spicy ham product. The context of "spam" (food vs computers) is clear enough to consumers that Hormel cannot use their trademark to prevent computer companies from using the term.
What a concept, a judge ruling correctly in an IP related case. Oh wait, this was in Europe. Why don't I live there? Ah right, my ancestors migrated to the Americas to avoid persecution in the old world. Maybe it's time to migrate back...
So, this one again proves that you must always RTFA.
Nah, it just proves that you must read the informative comment from somebody that bothers to RTFA.
Sounds like it's time for Earthlink users to check out OpenDNS.com... they make it easy to turn off the bad-URL behavior.
Strange, it sounds to me like it's time for Earthlink users to find a new provider. I know sometimes there are very few options for broadband in an area, but last I checked there were plenty of dialup companies still competing and about.
Right, but isn't that the point of the long tail? If Dan Brown sells a bazillion copies of "Da Vinci Code" and I sell 500 copies of PMD Applied, we're both happy
No, Apple is the one that is happy. The point of the 'Long Tail' is really that a lot of money can be made from large stocks of low volume items. Particularly with digital merchandise where no product needs to be stocked or with things like print-on-demand where the product is produced quickly to meet actual orders. You may only sell 500 copies, but when Apple sells 500 copies of 100,000 different less-known artists songs they make a hefty amount of money.
and not going the cheap route. They are developing drivers.
If I recall, at least for Nvidia, the binary driver blob is almost exactly the same for linux as for windows. It's only the wrapper they have to re-write for linux. So while I agree that they should just go ahead and give out specs, I don't imagine it is a very expensive process to maintain the linux blobs they have. Especially now that they already have the pipeline and ground work for the linux wrapper.
I apologize for not citing sources for the HD-DVD over Blu-Ray debate. I figured it was common knowledge at this point
Not meaning to pick on you, but far too often people are surrounded by others with the same interest. So while the forums and people you hang out with might be closely watching the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle, not everyone has time for it. I personally haven't paid attention to it at all, as I know getting an HD TV is fairly far on my horizon. By the time I get around to it, the war will have been decided.
You also have to remember a place like slashdot can give a misleading feel for what is 'common knowledge'. There are a lot of people with varied amounts of techincal knowledge, so the chances of someone who does know about something any specific topic will likely respond.
I myself have been following the info on new consoles. It affects me directly because I'm likely to buy at least 2. I do think that eventually I will get a PS3. But most likely, long after it is out and the price drops below $300. I'll be content with a Wii until then.
the newest xpack added new areas with restructured noobs.
Ok, that's not what he said. But that's what I read. I have this image in my head:
DarkKngt1: Hey, invite B0B.
FearedPaldinX11: No way, he's a noob.
DarkKngt1: It's cool, he's one of those new restructured noobs.
Where are lines faster -- the grocery store or the DMV?
So what, if we privatized the DMV we'd get faster lines? We have slow lines because nobody wants to pay more taxes/DMV fees which would be required to hire more staff. A private company running the DMV would either cost the citizens more (because they'd pay their workers the same but charge a little bit more for their own profit) or have even worse service (hire less workers so they can charge the rates you are used to and still have some profit.)
Service costs money. When was the last time you went to a large warehouse style store and got speedy service?
Besides, how many people aren't going to buy a PSP because they're offended by this?
Quite true. I'm not going to buy a PSP because I'm offended by the price!
BTW, I'm pretty sure they think people will buy the white one to match their iPod.
Most informative grammer post I've seen on /.
Someone mod parent up, I'm out of points for the day.
once you get to 60 your options as a casual gamer become more limited
Last I checked, you couldn't even *get* to 60 as a casual gamer.
I play CoV/CoH, and I'd have to consider myself casual when it comes to it. I play maybe once a week for a few hours at a time. In the 9 months I've had it, my highest level character is only level 35. Each level in these games takes more and more time to accomplish. So when I sit down to play, I often play a lower level character because it's a lot more fun. That level 35 takes a couple hours of playing just to get a tenth of the xp required for the next level. My level 14 can get a level or two in that time.
The amount of dedication it takes to max out a character in these games is beyond that of a casual gamer. Then again, it doesn't take them that long to get to the middle levels where you can do interesting things, yet still are rewarded for relatively small investments of time.
1. About tyranny, monarchy and non-representative rule: While they do make for some emotional arguments, let's remember that England was a parliamentary monarchy at the time. Maybe not in the same sense of the word as today, but let's remember that that parliament _did_ repel some taxes (e.g., the stamp act) when the colonists protested them. So how much more representation _do_ you want, if even being able to repel laws and taxes isn't enough for you?
Primarily, the fact that we didn't get our own seats in parliament.
::Alternatively a blind auction where the winner is the one who offers the highest price and pays the price of the second + a bid increment.
Isn't this how eBay already works?
No, it isn't. He was talking about a blind bidding system, where you can't see what anyone has bid until the end of the auction.
Ebay is never going to do this. Why? Because visibly bidding does inflate the price of the item. The larger the price, the more profit for Ebay. Ebay doesn't want to give you stuff for a cheap price, it wants to make money.
games are progressively becoming shorter, more expensive, and less replayable
Funny, I watch my roommate play Mega Man or Super Mario World in less than an hour and I think, huh, games really were shorter back then.
Different types of games have different play times. RPGs tend to have many, many hours involved. Action and shooters tend to be much shorter in comparison. Stuff that is based on multi-player tends to last as long as you have people wanting to play them.
Myself personally, I'd rather have a shorter game that is all *fun* than a longer game that has some fun moments dragged out by a lot of boring stuff in between.
(some scientists have hypothesized a relationship between warming and hurricane intensity---not frequency---but even that is highly speculative and not generally accepted).
And here I thought that tropical storms happen all the time, and it's only very intense storms that become hurricanes. Thus, warmer temperatures indicate that more storms develop into hurricanes. Strangely, that allows for the number of storms to remain near constant, and yet have the frequency of hurricanes increase.
At least that way if your public number is stolen they can only affect your credit rating and not your income taxes.
Um, isn't that where the problem lies? I don't think anyone is stealing people's SSN and then filing fake income taxes under them.... People are stealing SSN's to get credit cards/car loans/bank accounts, swiping as much money as they can, which destroys your credit rating. Often for a very long time.
Have you ever had a poor credit rating? Coming out of college mine didn't look too good. I'm better now, but I can tell you from experience that it can be near impossible to get stuff off your records. This can make it difficult to get a bank account, rent an apartment, buy a car, or get a credit card. Have you ever tried to live without a bank account? I had to for 6 months while I cleared something up, and it is a pain. When cashing a check costs an extra fee (most banks do this if you don't have an account with them) then getting a paycheck can be a nightmare.
I can only imagine how hard it might be if someone had stolen my SSN and some truly bad stuff had been on my records.
One person is hardly a statistically valid sample of general sentiment, but if my view of the 360 has changed, I might not be the only one who feels the same way.
You are right. And I didn't particularly meant to rant really at you specifically. It's just so often I see posts where someone has decided that Console A is the best because it has X, Y, and Z on it, and they forget that there is a wide variety in taste out there. I like that there is such a variety of games for all platforms, even if many don't catch my interest for too long.
My own $0.02.
So what's the problem? Is it bad habits, or is it really that bad out there?
You don't know what the problem is, but you take a lot of steps to prevent them.
You have a firewall. That protects you already from a lot of worms or other things that are out there.
You don't use IE. You may not be a security expert, but you are still better off that 80% of users out there. A lot of spyware comes from questionable sites with ActiveX content. Too many users click on any old pop up claiming to have a useful tool or widget or whatever and get a trojan installed instead.
You don't use Outlook. You don't have an e-mail client that will execute macros or executables.
You learned not to click on things from questionable sources. This the major difference between you and the "average" user. Most people just click OK to any random window that pops up, they want to get to whatever site they are trying to get to.
So yes, if we are talking spyware/virus infection, it really is just bad habits. Not knowing what it looks like when a website or e-mail is trying to install something.
Now, if we are talking corporate security, that is another story. If you are a company running a website that allows people to log in and stores sensitive data about those users, you should have a security expert dealing with the code and server security. That's where you need the experts. Home network behind a firewall? Just a few safe habits is all you need. Mostly a distrust of any executable you don't know for sure is legit.