To put it yet another way, why buy "new" games? Especially console games.
Brand new games cost roughly $60 here in the US. If you are looking to buy used, a store like GameStop will often re-sell a used copy for just under whatever the new price is, thus a customer can potentially save 5-10 dollars on the used version vs the new version. GameStop (last I checked) also has a decent return policy on their used games, it can be returned up to a week after purchase for a full refund.
First scenario, a friend of mine will simply buy the game used, play it, beat it, and if he really enjoys it he keeps it. If not, he returns it for a full refund. Awesome. I'm sure that loophole will be closed at some point, but whatever.
Second scenario, is that games always get cheaper over time. I rarely play console games, but a game came out last year I had my eye on. It wasn't a great game, and the reviews clearly pointed out that it wasn't worth the $60 price tag. I agreed, and waited the price down to $30, and I actually wanted to own the game (hence I didn't go with scenario one).
In other words, people are flocking to used games because the time/fun to money ratio just isn't working for most people. $60 per game gets expensive, especially with some of the games being of poor quality/time versus other options. I have no problem paying more for a truly in-depth game, but these days many games are "copy-paste" jobs that end up being sequels or knock-offs of other games trying to charge full price when it really isn't worth it. You would think by the third time a company is about to release, effectively, the same game for the third time they would figure that out.
If you re-read your post, you do not feel any cognitive dissonance at all here?
The police raided the owners of the wireless device. By your own analogous example, they would also raid you, using said video of your car as evidence that you committed hit and run (just as they would want to use IP addresses as stronger evidence than a license plate).
It is far more reasonable to interview or request access to the router/car (whichever example we are referring to here), but that is clearly not what is going on.
It is the ever so popular release train model. It sounds really good on paper, and management usually jumps on the bandwagon, however this type of release model is suited towards web deployments, NOT desktop applications. The scheduling looks very slick, doesn't it? It does until you realize you are just doing costly releases at regular intervals while the big ticket items usually end up getting delayed to future versions, and what you release is of low quality because everyone is in a hurry to "make the train" so they can jump to the next iteration. The pretty charts and graphs have schedules, but no features on them, and that's the issue. A release should be planned to deliver a set of features, not planned to release on day X regardless of what is in it (maybe nothing!).
For a web app, it works fairly well. For desktop software (which all browsers are), it is a bad idea.
Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource.
Except bandwidth is not a resource. Water, electricity, and gasoline are examples of resources paid for by consumption, because once the resource is expended it is gone. Hence the reason why those are paid for by the amount used.
Bandwidth is similar to renting. You pay your rent whether you are there or not and this ensures that it is there when you want it. "Renting" does not use up the residence for the next guy who rents the place after you (under most circumstances). So, the parallels to other utilities are pointless comparisons. The comparison to current cable TV is valid, except your post ignores any "resource" argument, instead citing advertisers. There are many other valid comparisons as well, such as monthly subscriptions to newspapers, gaming services (MMOs, others), and entertainment such as NetFlix.
I do not think the idea of pay per MB/GB (or whatever) is a good idea in the slightest. The average technical savvy of an end user is simply not sufficient enough to handle it, and there were examples of this pay-per-usage already for mobile phones with data plans (some of the early iPhones always accessing the internet, racking up a bill in a month of 1000+ dollars unknown to the phone owner). I do not dispute that those who abuse bandwidth, (un)knowingly or not, should not be limited in some fashion, but monetarily is the wrong way to go here.
I attended a college where the most popular professor of CS there taught part time and ran his own software business on the side. Of course, it helped that he taught some of the advance courses and was able to cherry pick the better students for part time positions. As a result, his classes and teaching style was real world oriented in terms of producing quality code, but the soft skills of a) delving into an existing code base b) using a SCCS (source code control system) or c) bug tracking systems were completely lacking in all my time spent doing CS.
I ended up learning the topics in this article on the job, and various companies are going to approach these systems differently. How an organization deals with some of these issues can reveal what the mindset and culture are handled in a company. While I think the lessons here are valuable, as far as the "practical student" goes, the vast majority of assignments are one-time throw-away. So it is no surprise to me that while interesting, the skills learned may be quickly lost as the day to day college student doing CS work will write one program for one assignment before moving on to write another program for a completely different assignment.
What I am most curious about, and what I did not see covered in interviews (or maybe I missed it), is how difficult it was to get SC2 to be "done". From my perspective, SC2 is an SC1 remake, with the WC3/TFT engine + lots of extra customization via the map/unit editor. I even attended Blizzcon years ago when they were showing it off, and even then I looked at it and said "yeah, Starcraft on the Warcraft 3 RTS engine, ship it next year?" in 2007 IIRC. From what I understand the big hold up was the "new" battle.net system, and that ended up holding up the game longer than it may have otherwise.
A comment I read above regarding the UI, having played the various Blizzard RTS games, I was really thinking they would put in some kind of HUD overlay on the game so that the mini-map, which is SO important, would be more prominent than a little box in the corner of the screen. Blizzard usually has a theme of making a game more casual friendly, easier to pick up and see what is going on, but sticking with the SC1 interface a decade+ later seems like a failing to me.
Anyone else read the description and instantly remember that Calculus was invented by Newton/Leibniz around the same time? Replace "technology" with "math" or "any scientific discipline" and it pretty much can hold true in a fair handful of instances throughout history.
It is a serious question. Take a look at the things you buy. Why isn't that item "Made in America"? Can you find a class of goods that are primarily "Made in America" anymore? I would have a tough time doing so, "software" (if we could call it a good) would probably be one of our biggest "Made in America" products, but most of the items on my person or in my home will not be made in this country.
American businesses will just make their factories in other countries as long as it is vastly cheaper to do so. And since there are exceedingly few American manufacturers, even if you or I wanted to consider and give preference to American made items, we just simply don't have that option most of the time.
All things being equal, I can't really blame the guys who open up the factories in foreign countries for cheap labor. There's simply no downside. They can get away with paying their workers crap wages and dealing with fewer laws. What is the incentive for such people to open a plant/factory/shop here in the US instead of somewhere else? Is there any? How could we give them one?
I'm really asking out of ignorance. I do not know the answers to the above.
I'll briefly mention that I was gifted an iPod nano, but I was well aware of the clumsiness of iTunes and I have always avoided it like the plague after using it years ago. I found an open source python script which would allow me to just drag whatever mp3s on the device I wished and it randomized them for me. I would highly suggest it.
Anyway, about rewrites of software. They hardly ever happen and in the vast majority of cases they do not work out for the better. OS X was an exception, but lets face it, OS 9 was a piece of absolute crap compared to other modern day operating systems and Apple has an entire team devoted to their OS which was aware of this. They even saved themselves some work by using some OSS *nix code (the guts of OS X runs on a BSD variant and a Mach kernel, but my memory is fuzzy).
That brings me to my over-arching theme, such that, a rewrite of a "successful" application is a very difficult sell. OS 9 was not what anyone would call successful. iTunes could be described as successful given its usage. Sure, those of us here are going to scoff at it, I think we expect more, but until Apple sees some sort of sales hit or massive negative backlash about it, the management will likely stay the course.
This brings me to my next point, the rewrite of any application will likely have an equivalent and/or reduced feature set. In some cases that is good (for cleaner, crisper software), however if you take this proposal to non-tech-savvy management, they will interpret the request along the lines of: spend X man years, Y million dollars, and end up with the same product that only works slightly better. The obvious follow up question from management then comes in: "well, can we fix what we have for cheaper?" In doing the trade-off analysis, nearly any sane management will take the significantly reduced cost for a minor improvement in a trouble feature as opposed to a rewrite.
And to go to the car analogy, say you are management. Your car currently makes you a lot of money because people use it, but they complain about how old/clunky it is. To completely re-invigorate your car, the mechanic wants $25K to completely re-tune/paint/upholster/everything your vehicle. The end result will be basically the exact same car, just in mint condition. OR you think to yourself, you can do the bare minimum maintenance, and take that 25K and buy a new car, and have two cars that can make money. Even if your customers simply use the new car over the old one, at least now you can buy a different car from the old one and attract more customers! Management generally prefers the latter option here, while consumers might prefer the former. Then again, its management's money, hence the tough sell.
So the key here is, if you were someone who could talk to the Apple Management, how could you make a convincing enough case to do a rewrite of iTunes such that the ROI (return on investment) is worth it for management? A true answer to that takes more than just a/. post.
This is true. A friend of mine did cancel his cable TV and watches his television from his AppleTV, either buying individual episodes or entire seasons so he can watch what he likes.
What I am a little surprised about is the AppleTV move to no purchasing (only rentals). If true, that seems like a step backwards in how my friend is currently using his AppleTV. I would have to question why he would keep using the device if the service no longer offered individual episodes or seasons for purchase.
2 parts here, first is a repeat, 2nd is new question I haven't seen in this thread.
1) Itemization. The current trend is that melee/weapon based characters are getting incredible increases in damage via weaponry upgrades, yet there is no equivalent for casters in terms of a) ability to dish equal damage or b) ability to take the damage of the 'epic' empowered melee classes even with epic items found in the same instance. I think there will be a large problem in the near future given this current trend: melee will do more damage have more hitpoints than caster types to the point of absurdity. How do you feel about these observations?
2) Melee Based UI: If I'm a warrior or a rogue, I can look on my character screen, know what my attack power is, my DPS, my chance to dodge/crit/block/parry, and a wealth of information just by simply clicking a button. If I'm a caster type, I have no access to this information. I can't find out what my total +to spell damage is, what my crit percentage is, what the chance is that my spells will be resisted (or even how likely I am to resist a spell). From these observations I conclude the UI is fundamentally designed with melee taken into account and completely ignores the information relevant to caster types. Do you see this problem as I do and if so do you plan to address it at some point in the future?
While I have heard of aim bots for pc games, I've never heard of someone moding an xbox to install 'cheat' software. Sure, it might happen, but the impression I get is that xboxes are modded in order to run emulators and download/play games.
I think the concern MS has centers more around xbox game pirating, not online cheating.
Pretty easy to refute him. I've even done a study involving DRM and music. If the cost were significantly reduced and the choices were available, people would just buy software/music. Instead, it's easier to pirate it.
The real trick is to find an acceptable price point where most people opt to buy instead of pirate. There will always be some pirates, but if it is easier to buy than DL, most will pick to buy.
I've got one good example: iTunes. Buck a song. Seems to do quite well and consumers can just buy what they want, not have to buy the entire, overpriced album.
While MS software quality may be improving over versions, that does nothing to fix/address the current software currently in use.
Ironically, the "secure" initiative will only end up helping MS, as 'crappy security' in previous versions will influence upgraders. "Gee, that version of Windows is actually full of security problems, but if you buy the latest/greatest version, it will be more secure!"
Problem is, IE does not generate money, so appears to be getting very little MS attention. Enter Firefox and Browser War II. I say use IE to download Firefox/Mozilla and do nothing else with it!!! I tried using someone's machine that was only using IE, and it was so spy/adware laden that I could hardly control the OS and had to kill many many spy processes.
The real irony is the problem only stems from using IE, has created a 'market' for removal programs, and users should have never had this problem in the first place.
Why is there a C# advertisement on /.?
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Seriously, this looks like an ad for C#, a bunch of claims with very little support/evidence for those claims.
I've worked on C# and Java projects. As far as I'm concerned, C# = MS Java. MS could not control Java, so they abandoned support for it and built thier own "version." It's really a rinse & repeat cycle for MS: see successful software, build own version of said software to try to take over that market as well.
I do read reviews, but on at least a few occaisions I disagree with the review(s). While I take these into consideration, I prefer to form my own opinions based on first hand experience. Just because "everyone" says "it's bad" doesn't mean you won't like it.
Goes with the old saying "if your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?"
Software programs have demos. Cars have test drives. Even video games (consoles) have store displays. All these allow a consumer to 'try before you buy'. Music can be heard on the radio or in the store (but has other issues, such as a lack of selecting particul tracks from an album).
Point is, movies don't have 'free trials.' Some might argue previews, but that is such a condensed version and has very little meaning.
The crap that the MPAA/RIAA put out in the last couple of years. I'm all for rewarding good film-making, but I want my money back for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I'd like my time back too, but since no one has found a way to re-imburse time...
Seriously, I've been taken in by too many 'previews' of movies, thought 'this looks good', gone to see it, then wished I had not. Feels like I'm getting conned half the time. I'll buy DVDs, I'll pay to see good movies, but since I can't actually see a movie before I pay for it (unless I 'aquire it') what choice do I have?
None, and that's exactly what the MPAA wants. Text message that.
I really wish someone would ask that question. Seriously, the 'crime' is copying data. The punishment is a 150K fine per instance (max). Seems *very* steep for an act that could be done accidentally.
Take this a step further, who made those laws? Content providers, naturally. So, of course it's illegal, they made it that way as well as the steep penalty! Now they attempt to apply this to Joe Consumer and we are seeing the reults.
As far as theft vs. infringement, the distinction is justified. Theft displaces wealth. While P2P may hurt record sales, it does not 'displace' money from the RIAA.
Good works will generate revenue. Crap will not. Unfortunately, there is very little to preview. To watch a movie, you have to pay. The movie might be really bad, and not worth the money. However, you have to pay money just to find that out. Pirate the movie and pay a tremendous fine or go to jail. Talk about a trap.
I'm getting really sick and tired of BS like this. There is such a big business push about respecting copyright laws, yet very little showing the flipside of the coin.
For instance, I recently saw LXG. Paid $9.50 at 2:30pm on a Saturday and saw the show. I didn't care for the movie. It wasn't worth my money. While I could 'pirate' it, I won't because it is simply not worth the space.
I'm all for movies making money. I love the great work some artists do and people should respect that. However, respect is a two way street. Coming out of an over priced movie feeling ripped off shows a lack of respect for movie patrons.
Also, colleges are out for the summer. Unless college students have broadband at home as well (not overly likely), they will not be using file sharing networks...
So, college students who download the most are out for the summer, hence lower traffic!:-)
Along the same lines, for software there is only one choice, overall, for software development.
- Cheap
- Fast
- Good
You can pick 2 of the 3, but not all 3. Cheap and fast is not good. Fast and good costs $$$. Good and cheap is never fast. You get the idea. It's just a fact about the software business.
Seriously, if this is no different from a PC, but has some added DRM features, what makes this different from an X-Box?
PC hardware, custom DRM, proprietary APIs (most likely), that sums up to X-Box. At least PS and Gamecubes aren't as blatant with the PC hardware (I'm sure there is some, but those units are designed for games, not just PCs configured for games).
In all honesty, do we really need another console?
The news items suggests there are several software initiatives underway to develop an open source replacement for Exchange. Has there been any collaboration between these teams or perhaps the possibly of merging the talent that is currently spread around the various projects? I'm not advocating we consolidate into one project, but it just seems like there are so many...
As a programmer, I really like Java's "write once, run everywhere" motto (while it may not always work out that way in practice). From what I understand, did not have a fully compatible VM, so Sun develops one for download. While I don't think MS should be forced to ship Java, they should be disallowed from trying to hijack Java (hence they went out and made C#).
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To put it yet another way, why buy "new" games? Especially console games.
Brand new games cost roughly $60 here in the US. If you are looking to buy used, a store like GameStop will often re-sell a used copy for just under whatever the new price is, thus a customer can potentially save 5-10 dollars on the used version vs the new version. GameStop (last I checked) also has a decent return policy on their used games, it can be returned up to a week after purchase for a full refund.
First scenario, a friend of mine will simply buy the game used, play it, beat it, and if he really enjoys it he keeps it. If not, he returns it for a full refund. Awesome. I'm sure that loophole will be closed at some point, but whatever.
Second scenario, is that games always get cheaper over time. I rarely play console games, but a game came out last year I had my eye on. It wasn't a great game, and the reviews clearly pointed out that it wasn't worth the $60 price tag. I agreed, and waited the price down to $30, and I actually wanted to own the game (hence I didn't go with scenario one).
In other words, people are flocking to used games because the time/fun to money ratio just isn't working for most people. $60 per game gets expensive, especially with some of the games being of poor quality/time versus other options. I have no problem paying more for a truly in-depth game, but these days many games are "copy-paste" jobs that end up being sequels or knock-offs of other games trying to charge full price when it really isn't worth it. You would think by the third time a company is about to release, effectively, the same game for the third time they would figure that out.
If you re-read your post, you do not feel any cognitive dissonance at all here?
The police raided the owners of the wireless device. By your own analogous example, they would also raid you, using said video of your car as evidence that you committed hit and run (just as they would want to use IP addresses as stronger evidence than a license plate).
It is far more reasonable to interview or request access to the router/car (whichever example we are referring to here), but that is clearly not what is going on.
It is the ever so popular release train model. It sounds really good on paper, and management usually jumps on the bandwagon, however this type of release model is suited towards web deployments, NOT desktop applications. The scheduling looks very slick, doesn't it? It does until you realize you are just doing costly releases at regular intervals while the big ticket items usually end up getting delayed to future versions, and what you release is of low quality because everyone is in a hurry to "make the train" so they can jump to the next iteration. The pretty charts and graphs have schedules, but no features on them, and that's the issue. A release should be planned to deliver a set of features, not planned to release on day X regardless of what is in it (maybe nothing!).
For a web app, it works fairly well. For desktop software (which all browsers are), it is a bad idea.
Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource.
Except bandwidth is not a resource. Water, electricity, and gasoline are examples of resources paid for by consumption, because once the resource is expended it is gone. Hence the reason why those are paid for by the amount used.
Bandwidth is similar to renting. You pay your rent whether you are there or not and this ensures that it is there when you want it. "Renting" does not use up the residence for the next guy who rents the place after you (under most circumstances). So, the parallels to other utilities are pointless comparisons. The comparison to current cable TV is valid, except your post ignores any "resource" argument, instead citing advertisers. There are many other valid comparisons as well, such as monthly subscriptions to newspapers, gaming services (MMOs, others), and entertainment such as NetFlix.
I do not think the idea of pay per MB/GB (or whatever) is a good idea in the slightest. The average technical savvy of an end user is simply not sufficient enough to handle it, and there were examples of this pay-per-usage already for mobile phones with data plans (some of the early iPhones always accessing the internet, racking up a bill in a month of 1000+ dollars unknown to the phone owner). I do not dispute that those who abuse bandwidth, (un)knowingly or not, should not be limited in some fashion, but monetarily is the wrong way to go here.
I attended a college where the most popular professor of CS there taught part time and ran his own software business on the side. Of course, it helped that he taught some of the advance courses and was able to cherry pick the better students for part time positions. As a result, his classes and teaching style was real world oriented in terms of producing quality code, but the soft skills of a) delving into an existing code base b) using a SCCS (source code control system) or c) bug tracking systems were completely lacking in all my time spent doing CS.
I ended up learning the topics in this article on the job, and various companies are going to approach these systems differently. How an organization deals with some of these issues can reveal what the mindset and culture are handled in a company. While I think the lessons here are valuable, as far as the "practical student" goes, the vast majority of assignments are one-time throw-away. So it is no surprise to me that while interesting, the skills learned may be quickly lost as the day to day college student doing CS work will write one program for one assignment before moving on to write another program for a completely different assignment.
What I am most curious about, and what I did not see covered in interviews (or maybe I missed it), is how difficult it was to get SC2 to be "done". From my perspective, SC2 is an SC1 remake, with the WC3/TFT engine + lots of extra customization via the map/unit editor. I even attended Blizzcon years ago when they were showing it off, and even then I looked at it and said "yeah, Starcraft on the Warcraft 3 RTS engine, ship it next year?" in 2007 IIRC. From what I understand the big hold up was the "new" battle.net system, and that ended up holding up the game longer than it may have otherwise.
A comment I read above regarding the UI, having played the various Blizzard RTS games, I was really thinking they would put in some kind of HUD overlay on the game so that the mini-map, which is SO important, would be more prominent than a little box in the corner of the screen. Blizzard usually has a theme of making a game more casual friendly, easier to pick up and see what is going on, but sticking with the SC1 interface a decade+ later seems like a failing to me.
Anyone else read the description and instantly remember that Calculus was invented by Newton/Leibniz around the same time? Replace "technology" with "math" or "any scientific discipline" and it pretty much can hold true in a fair handful of instances throughout history.
It is a serious question. Take a look at the things you buy. Why isn't that item "Made in America"? Can you find a class of goods that are primarily "Made in America" anymore? I would have a tough time doing so, "software" (if we could call it a good) would probably be one of our biggest "Made in America" products, but most of the items on my person or in my home will not be made in this country.
American businesses will just make their factories in other countries as long as it is vastly cheaper to do so. And since there are exceedingly few American manufacturers, even if you or I wanted to consider and give preference to American made items, we just simply don't have that option most of the time.
All things being equal, I can't really blame the guys who open up the factories in foreign countries for cheap labor. There's simply no downside. They can get away with paying their workers crap wages and dealing with fewer laws. What is the incentive for such people to open a plant/factory/shop here in the US instead of somewhere else? Is there any? How could we give them one?
I'm really asking out of ignorance. I do not know the answers to the above.
I'll briefly mention that I was gifted an iPod nano, but I was well aware of the clumsiness of iTunes and I have always avoided it like the plague after using it years ago. I found an open source python script which would allow me to just drag whatever mp3s on the device I wished and it randomized them for me. I would highly suggest it.
Anyway, about rewrites of software. They hardly ever happen and in the vast majority of cases they do not work out for the better. OS X was an exception, but lets face it, OS 9 was a piece of absolute crap compared to other modern day operating systems and Apple has an entire team devoted to their OS which was aware of this. They even saved themselves some work by using some OSS *nix code (the guts of OS X runs on a BSD variant and a Mach kernel, but my memory is fuzzy).
That brings me to my over-arching theme, such that, a rewrite of a "successful" application is a very difficult sell. OS 9 was not what anyone would call successful. iTunes could be described as successful given its usage. Sure, those of us here are going to scoff at it, I think we expect more, but until Apple sees some sort of sales hit or massive negative backlash about it, the management will likely stay the course.
This brings me to my next point, the rewrite of any application will likely have an equivalent and/or reduced feature set. In some cases that is good (for cleaner, crisper software), however if you take this proposal to non-tech-savvy management, they will interpret the request along the lines of: spend X man years, Y million dollars, and end up with the same product that only works slightly better. The obvious follow up question from management then comes in: "well, can we fix what we have for cheaper?" In doing the trade-off analysis, nearly any sane management will take the significantly reduced cost for a minor improvement in a trouble feature as opposed to a rewrite.
And to go to the car analogy, say you are management. Your car currently makes you a lot of money because people use it, but they complain about how old/clunky it is. To completely re-invigorate your car, the mechanic wants $25K to completely re-tune/paint/upholster/everything your vehicle. The end result will be basically the exact same car, just in mint condition. OR you think to yourself, you can do the bare minimum maintenance, and take that 25K and buy a new car, and have two cars that can make money. Even if your customers simply use the new car over the old one, at least now you can buy a different car from the old one and attract more customers! Management generally prefers the latter option here, while consumers might prefer the former. Then again, its management's money, hence the tough sell.
So the key here is, if you were someone who could talk to the Apple Management, how could you make a convincing enough case to do a rewrite of iTunes such that the ROI (return on investment) is worth it for management? A true answer to that takes more than just a /. post.
This is true. A friend of mine did cancel his cable TV and watches his television from his AppleTV, either buying individual episodes or entire seasons so he can watch what he likes.
What I am a little surprised about is the AppleTV move to no purchasing (only rentals). If true, that seems like a step backwards in how my friend is currently using his AppleTV. I would have to question why he would keep using the device if the service no longer offered individual episodes or seasons for purchase.
2 parts here, first is a repeat, 2nd is new question I haven't seen in this thread.
1) Itemization. The current trend is that melee/weapon based characters are getting incredible increases in damage via weaponry upgrades, yet there is no equivalent for casters in terms of a) ability to dish equal damage or b) ability to take the damage of the 'epic' empowered melee classes even with epic items found in the same instance. I think there will be a large problem in the near future given this current trend: melee will do more damage have more hitpoints than caster types to the point of absurdity. How do you feel about these observations?
2) Melee Based UI: If I'm a warrior or a rogue, I can look on my character screen, know what my attack power is, my DPS, my chance to dodge/crit/block/parry, and a wealth of information just by simply clicking a button. If I'm a caster type, I have no access to this information. I can't find out what my total +to spell damage is, what my crit percentage is, what the chance is that my spells will be resisted (or even how likely I am to resist a spell). From these observations I conclude the UI is fundamentally designed with melee taken into account and completely ignores the information relevant to caster types. Do you see this problem as I do and if so do you plan to address it at some point in the future?
Huh?
While I have heard of aim bots for pc games, I've never heard of someone moding an xbox to install 'cheat' software. Sure, it might happen, but the impression I get is that xboxes are modded in order to run emulators and download/play games.
I think the concern MS has centers more around xbox game pirating, not online cheating.
Pretty easy to refute him. I've even done a study involving DRM and music. If the cost were significantly reduced and the choices were available, people would just buy software/music. Instead, it's easier to pirate it.
The real trick is to find an acceptable price point where most people opt to buy instead of pirate. There will always be some pirates, but if it is easier to buy than DL, most will pick to buy.
I've got one good example: iTunes. Buck a song. Seems to do quite well and consumers can just buy what they want, not have to buy the entire, overpriced album.
While MS software quality may be improving over versions, that does nothing to fix/address the current software currently in use.
Ironically, the "secure" initiative will only end up helping MS, as 'crappy security' in previous versions will influence upgraders. "Gee, that version of Windows is actually full of security problems, but if you buy the latest/greatest version, it will be more secure!"
Problem is, IE does not generate money, so appears to be getting very little MS attention. Enter Firefox and Browser War II. I say use IE to download Firefox/Mozilla and do nothing else with it!!! I tried using someone's machine that was only using IE, and it was so spy/adware laden that I could hardly control the OS and had to kill many many spy processes.
The real irony is the problem only stems from using IE, has created a 'market' for removal programs, and users should have never had this problem in the first place.
Seriously, this looks like an ad for C#, a bunch of claims with very little support/evidence for those claims.
I've worked on C# and Java projects. As far as I'm concerned, C# = MS Java. MS could not control Java, so they abandoned support for it and built thier own "version." It's really a rinse & repeat cycle for MS: see successful software, build own version of said software to try to take over that market as well.
I do read reviews, but on at least a few occaisions I disagree with the review(s). While I take these into consideration, I prefer to form my own opinions based on first hand experience. Just because "everyone" says "it's bad" doesn't mean you won't like it.
Goes with the old saying "if your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?"
Software programs have demos. Cars have test drives. Even video games (consoles) have store displays. All these allow a consumer to 'try before you buy'. Music can be heard on the radio or in the store (but has other issues, such as a lack of selecting particul tracks from an album).
Point is, movies don't have 'free trials.' Some might argue previews, but that is such a condensed version and has very little meaning.
The crap that the MPAA/RIAA put out in the last couple of years. I'm all for rewarding good film-making, but I want my money back for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I'd like my time back too, but since no one has found a way to re-imburse time...
Seriously, I've been taken in by too many 'previews' of movies, thought 'this looks good', gone to see it, then wished I had not. Feels like I'm getting conned half the time. I'll buy DVDs, I'll pay to see good movies, but since I can't actually see a movie before I pay for it (unless I 'aquire it') what choice do I have?
None, and that's exactly what the MPAA wants. Text message that.
I really wish someone would ask that question. Seriously, the 'crime' is copying data. The punishment is a 150K fine per instance (max). Seems *very* steep for an act that could be done accidentally.
Take this a step further, who made those laws? Content providers, naturally. So, of course it's illegal, they made it that way as well as the steep penalty! Now they attempt to apply this to Joe Consumer and we are seeing the reults.
As far as theft vs. infringement, the distinction is justified. Theft displaces wealth. While P2P may hurt record sales, it does not 'displace' money from the RIAA.
Good works will generate revenue. Crap will not. Unfortunately, there is very little to preview. To watch a movie, you have to pay. The movie might be really bad, and not worth the money. However, you have to pay money just to find that out. Pirate the movie and pay a tremendous fine or go to jail. Talk about a trap.
I'm getting really sick and tired of BS like this. There is such a big business push about respecting copyright laws, yet very little showing the flipside of the coin.
For instance, I recently saw LXG. Paid $9.50 at 2:30pm on a Saturday and saw the show. I didn't care for the movie. It wasn't worth my money. While I could 'pirate' it, I won't because it is simply not worth the space.
I'm all for movies making money. I love the great work some artists do and people should respect that. However, respect is a two way street. Coming out of an over priced movie feeling ripped off shows a lack of respect for movie patrons.
Also, colleges are out for the summer. Unless college students have broadband at home as well (not overly likely), they will not be using file sharing networks...
:-)
So, college students who download the most are out for the summer, hence lower traffic!
All temporary solutions are permanent.
Along the same lines, for software there is only one choice, overall, for software development.
- Cheap
- Fast
- Good
You can pick 2 of the 3, but not all 3. Cheap and fast is not good. Fast and good costs $$$. Good and cheap is never fast. You get the idea. It's just a fact about the software business.
Seriously, if this is no different from a PC, but has some added DRM features, what makes this different from an X-Box?
PC hardware, custom DRM, proprietary APIs (most likely), that sums up to X-Box. At least PS and Gamecubes aren't as blatant with the PC hardware (I'm sure there is some, but those units are designed for games, not just PCs configured for games).
In all honesty, do we really need another console?
The news items suggests there are several software initiatives underway to develop an open source replacement for Exchange. Has there been any collaboration between these teams or perhaps the possibly of merging the talent that is currently spread around the various projects? I'm not advocating we consolidate into one project, but it just seems like there are so many...
As a programmer, I really like Java's "write once, run everywhere" motto (while it may not always work out that way in practice). From what I understand, did not have a fully compatible VM, so Sun develops one for download. While I don't think MS should be forced to ship Java, they should be disallowed from trying to hijack Java (hence they went out and made C#).