Re:Changes the dynamic of the business
on
Borrowing ROMs
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· Score: 2
I like your proposal much more than I like theirs. Why? Because your proposal takes piracy into account up front, whereas they pretend that this "borrowing" mechanism will function effectively as some sort of closed system. It won't, and not only that, but the companies that own the IP in question get absolutely nothing out of it.
What really bothers me here is how the general sentiment on this board is "man, what a great idea!" while in a discussion on music copy control it would be more like, "man, these guys are idiots, this will never work." I realize that Slashdot is not homogenous in its opinions, but it would seem that there ought to be more of a balance.
Re:Changes the dynamic of the business
on
Borrowing ROMs
·
· Score: 1
Either people are being insincere in responding to this topic, or it's moron day on Slashdot. When something like the RIAA's copy control scheme comes up for discussion, there are literally hundreds of posts saying, "It doesn't matter what they do, it'll be cracked in no time." Similarly, how long do you think that this whole "borrowing" thing will last? It, too, is just copy control, and it will only work as long as everybody plays along with it. It blows my feeble mind that so many slashdotters are ostensibly buying into this idea...
You might be right, but there should be a balance. I mean, are we really out to screw MS at all costs, here? Maybe you are, and that's fine by me, but I take a more measured approach in my hatred of Microsoft.
Let's look at it this way: say MS sells their console for $200, and loses $100 on every 'Box sold. Meanwhile, if they end up with a bunch of unmovable 'Boxes (which is really the dream here), they write the whole thing off as a loss. Without knowing a damn thing about the tax code, it seems to me from years of reading the business page that MS might be able to deduct, say, $50 from their taxes for every XBox that they've decided they can't sell. (This figure may well be inflated, but it also may be less than Microsoft's tax wizards could manage.) So in the case of a sale, MS loses $100, while in the case of a non-sale, MS loses $150. Am I willing to forgo making MS lose an extra $50 in order to play a ton of fine arcade games on my television? I (might) say yes. It's really an individual choice -- having agreed that Microsoft should suffer for its crimes, the question is how much good stuff we're willing to give up in order to screw 'em.
Yeah, but that doesn't really hold. If you don't buy the console, and they have a lot of unsold extras, they get to write it off on their taxes. As I'm no expert at tax law, I can't tell which is worse for MS, but it's just not that clear-cut.
Did you notice at all that he didn't refer to himself in his journal entry? He was referring to a general phenomenon that he had noticed, not with regards to his own sales, but other bands' sales, such as Weezer and, of course, Pearl Jam. He wasn't complaining about sluggish sales on his own album, he was discussing a rule which he believes to be in effect for all groups with tech-savvy audiences.
What the hell is wrong with you people? Moby didn't attack anyone in his journal entry. He didn't editorialize. He didn't whine or complain, or moan about lost sales. At no point did Moby even say that he minded this supposed effect. He put forth a reasonable theory with some empirical evidence to back it up, for the sake of discussion. Why is everyone attacking him? He's done nothing wrong. He hasn't even suggested that we've done something wrong. Why is everyone on this board acting like a total asshole, instead of reasonably debating the points that he made? I can't help but notice that very few people have mentioned Weezer at all to this point.
Ever played Para Para Paradise? I just saw that game the other day for the first time. Simply incredible. I'd like one of those sensor devices for use with my home computer, just to play pretend Johnny Mnmemonic.;-)
Yeah, but don't forget that FFX for the PS2 requires that you buy added peripherals, including an external hard drive. Altogether, the game will cost up to $150, ignoring monthly costs. The PC gamer can ignore that added cost.
I think that the game that started this trend (aside from Day of the Tentacle) was Shenmue and its sequel, both of which include an awesome collection of old arcade hits by the game's designer, Yu Suzuki. Games like Outrun, Hang-On, and Afterburner II really added some character (and some action) to the second game, for all the times when you got bored with the philosophy and mysticism.
How can you be so condescending when you know nothing?
First of all, it was Plato. We know virtually nothing about Socrates (or at least his philosophy) that didn't come from Plato, and while it was clear that he greatly admired his old master, it seems fairly likely that Plato put words into his mouth from time to time. The dialogues were not verbatim transcriptions of actual conversations that Socrates had with his followers. Rather, Plato used recollections of the teachings of Socrates (after his death, of course) to give form to arguments that were at least partially (if not almost entirely) his own.
Second, your relativistic take on the distinction between ethics and morals doesn't make any sense. Are you saying that if you were to observe a tribe of cannibals, you would describe them as immoral but not unethical? I don't care if your phi 101 professor said it; that doesn't make it so. It may be one definition, but I would not call it definitive.
In that case, you have no dark Jedi, but you still have guys running around with weapons with destructive power enough to destroy entire planets. It seems to me that the balance of power is radically in favor of the light-side Jedi. Force powers have only a marginal impact on one's ability to seize power, or destroy order. Drone armies and Death Stars are really a lot more useful than the ability to choke someone with your mind when you're trying to keep a galactic empire under your heel. On the other hand, true Jedis have an enormous impact, because without them to pull off miraculous stuff like hitting that exhaust port, the forces of evil would clobber the forces of good, because good is dumb.
The terrorism excuse is, obviously, mostly used in America. It's sort of puzzling to me that in a nation with no significant external threats, the people are still frightened enough to give up their liberties in exchange for some "temporary safety." But it was going that way in America before 9/11, too. Terrorism is really nothing more than an excuse -- that it simply boosted the case of those who were looking to make a power grab bombings or no. And as an excuse, it works almost as well in Australia as it does in America, insofar as it contributes to the average person's sense that a heightened state of security is a necessary condition for being alive in these days.
Yeah, and they're bastards for it. I'm not singling out Australia here -- things are going to hell across the Western world in this respect. And given that the excuse most commonly given for taking these sort of measures is terrorism, it almost feels as though we're destroying our liberties in order to save them.
That's not it at all. Yes, we're all aware that interested parties can intercept our Internet communications. The issue is whether it's ethical for them to do so, particularly when the interested party is the government of a democratic nation which, in theory at least, accepts the traditional Western notion of political liberty.
Would an IBM Microdrive work in one of these? Speaking of which, now that IBM is getting out of the hard drive business, will those things even continue to exist?
No, no, I stand by the original poster on that one, if only due to his own error. As he did not italicize The Elements of Style, only those of us with prior knowledge could really safely assume that it was a book to which he was referring. For all the average poster knows, it might be a technical whitepaper detailing rules for proper sentence structure in English. (Actually, with the authors' mutually sparse, concise style, it very nearly is a technical paper.)
The question isn't whether people will pay to play online; that question has been settled ever since UO became a success. The question is whether people will pay to play shooters, racers, sports sims, etc. online. Thus far, I can think of no online gaming network that has succeeded at finding customers willing to pay for that sort of thing.
OK, but that doesn't really explain how X was able to show up and hand Mulder a piece of paper with an address on it. Or was X supposed to be alive? I suppose that's possible; it seems that everyone who ever worked for the Syndicate has some sort of Lazarus syndrome. Still, it's kind of odd that one of the dead guys was alive, and the other four of them were actually dead.
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I like your proposal much more than I like theirs. Why? Because your proposal takes piracy into account up front, whereas they pretend that this "borrowing" mechanism will function effectively as some sort of closed system. It won't, and not only that, but the companies that own the IP in question get absolutely nothing out of it.
What really bothers me here is how the general sentiment on this board is "man, what a great idea!" while in a discussion on music copy control it would be more like, "man, these guys are idiots, this will never work." I realize that Slashdot is not homogenous in its opinions, but it would seem that there ought to be more of a balance.
Either people are being insincere in responding to this topic, or it's moron day on Slashdot. When something like the RIAA's copy control scheme comes up for discussion, there are literally hundreds of posts saying, "It doesn't matter what they do, it'll be cracked in no time." Similarly, how long do you think that this whole "borrowing" thing will last? It, too, is just copy control, and it will only work as long as everybody plays along with it. It blows my feeble mind that so many slashdotters are ostensibly buying into this idea...
Yeah! And, um, the disappearing lines represent the masses purged by ruthless commie dictators! Or, something. Seriously, what the hell?
Eh, but it's a DVD-ROM drive, and in a set-top box, that makes all the difference in the world.
No, see, because you said "let me introduce a proper list," you kinda forfeited the right to make it purely a matter of your own opinion.
You might be right, but there should be a balance. I mean, are we really out to screw MS at all costs, here? Maybe you are, and that's fine by me, but I take a more measured approach in my hatred of Microsoft.
Let's look at it this way: say MS sells their console for $200, and loses $100 on every 'Box sold. Meanwhile, if they end up with a bunch of unmovable 'Boxes (which is really the dream here), they write the whole thing off as a loss. Without knowing a damn thing about the tax code, it seems to me from years of reading the business page that MS might be able to deduct, say, $50 from their taxes for every XBox that they've decided they can't sell. (This figure may well be inflated, but it also may be less than Microsoft's tax wizards could manage.) So in the case of a sale, MS loses $100, while in the case of a non-sale, MS loses $150. Am I willing to forgo making MS lose an extra $50 in order to play a ton of fine arcade games on my television? I (might) say yes. It's really an individual choice -- having agreed that Microsoft should suffer for its crimes, the question is how much good stuff we're willing to give up in order to screw 'em.
Yeah, but that doesn't really hold. If you don't buy the console, and they have a lot of unsold extras, they get to write it off on their taxes. As I'm no expert at tax law, I can't tell which is worse for MS, but it's just not that clear-cut.
No, he's not. You have to read the actual journal entry (on moby.com) from whence this article was derived. The article itself is a piece of crap.
Did you notice at all that he didn't refer to himself in his journal entry? He was referring to a general phenomenon that he had noticed, not with regards to his own sales, but other bands' sales, such as Weezer and, of course, Pearl Jam. He wasn't complaining about sluggish sales on his own album, he was discussing a rule which he believes to be in effect for all groups with tech-savvy audiences.
What the hell is wrong with you people? Moby didn't attack anyone in his journal entry. He didn't editorialize. He didn't whine or complain, or moan about lost sales. At no point did Moby even say that he minded this supposed effect. He put forth a reasonable theory with some empirical evidence to back it up, for the sake of discussion. Why is everyone attacking him? He's done nothing wrong. He hasn't even suggested that we've done something wrong. Why is everyone on this board acting like a total asshole, instead of reasonably debating the points that he made? I can't help but notice that very few people have mentioned Weezer at all to this point.
Ever played Para Para Paradise? I just saw that game the other day for the first time. Simply incredible. I'd like one of those sensor devices for use with my home computer, just to play pretend Johnny Mnmemonic. ;-)
Sorry, I meant FFXI, that being the topic of the conversation. One little typo really changes everything, doesn't it?
Yeah, but don't forget that FFX for the PS2 requires that you buy added peripherals, including an external hard drive. Altogether, the game will cost up to $150, ignoring monthly costs. The PC gamer can ignore that added cost.
I think that the game that started this trend (aside from Day of the Tentacle) was Shenmue and its sequel, both of which include an awesome collection of old arcade hits by the game's designer, Yu Suzuki. Games like Outrun, Hang-On, and Afterburner II really added some character (and some action) to the second game, for all the times when you got bored with the philosophy and mysticism.
How can you be so condescending when you know nothing?
First of all, it was Plato. We know virtually nothing about Socrates (or at least his philosophy) that didn't come from Plato, and while it was clear that he greatly admired his old master, it seems fairly likely that Plato put words into his mouth from time to time. The dialogues were not verbatim transcriptions of actual conversations that Socrates had with his followers. Rather, Plato used recollections of the teachings of Socrates (after his death, of course) to give form to arguments that were at least partially (if not almost entirely) his own.
Second, your relativistic take on the distinction between ethics and morals doesn't make any sense. Are you saying that if you were to observe a tribe of cannibals, you would describe them as immoral but not unethical? I don't care if your phi 101 professor said it; that doesn't make it so. It may be one definition, but I would not call it definitive.
It's entirely possible. The games were rereleased as "Super Mario All-Stars" on the SNES, but they originally came out for the NES.
In that case, you have no dark Jedi, but you still have guys running around with weapons with destructive power enough to destroy entire planets. It seems to me that the balance of power is radically in favor of the light-side Jedi. Force powers have only a marginal impact on one's ability to seize power, or destroy order. Drone armies and Death Stars are really a lot more useful than the ability to choke someone with your mind when you're trying to keep a galactic empire under your heel. On the other hand, true Jedis have an enormous impact, because without them to pull off miraculous stuff like hitting that exhaust port, the forces of evil would clobber the forces of good, because good is dumb.
Yes, the journalist is stupid. Fine. But elsewhere in the article, it mentions 200 CDs of storage, which is 130GB. So there.
Yeah, but you can never be too careful. ;-)
The terrorism excuse is, obviously, mostly used in America. It's sort of puzzling to me that in a nation with no significant external threats, the people are still frightened enough to give up their liberties in exchange for some "temporary safety." But it was going that way in America before 9/11, too. Terrorism is really nothing more than an excuse -- that it simply boosted the case of those who were looking to make a power grab bombings or no. And as an excuse, it works almost as well in Australia as it does in America, insofar as it contributes to the average person's sense that a heightened state of security is a necessary condition for being alive in these days.
Yeah, and they're bastards for it. I'm not singling out Australia here -- things are going to hell across the Western world in this respect. And given that the excuse most commonly given for taking these sort of measures is terrorism, it almost feels as though we're destroying our liberties in order to save them.
That's not it at all. Yes, we're all aware that interested parties can intercept our Internet communications. The issue is whether it's ethical for them to do so, particularly when the interested party is the government of a democratic nation which, in theory at least, accepts the traditional Western notion of political liberty.
Would an IBM Microdrive work in one of these? Speaking of which, now that IBM is getting out of the hard drive business, will those things even continue to exist?
No, no, I stand by the original poster on that one, if only due to his own error. As he did not italicize The Elements of Style, only those of us with prior knowledge could really safely assume that it was a book to which he was referring. For all the average poster knows, it might be a technical whitepaper detailing rules for proper sentence structure in English. (Actually, with the authors' mutually sparse, concise style, it very nearly is a technical paper.)
The question isn't whether people will pay to play online; that question has been settled ever since UO became a success. The question is whether people will pay to play shooters, racers, sports sims, etc. online. Thus far, I can think of no online gaming network that has succeeded at finding customers willing to pay for that sort of thing.
OK, but that doesn't really explain how X was able to show up and hand Mulder a piece of paper with an address on it. Or was X supposed to be alive? I suppose that's possible; it seems that everyone who ever worked for the Syndicate has some sort of Lazarus syndrome. Still, it's kind of odd that one of the dead guys was alive, and the other four of them were actually dead.