Atari 2600 - $199 in 1977 - $707 today (in 2010 dollars, anyway)
Intellivision - $299 in 1979 - $886 today
NES - $199 in 1985 (US release) - $398 today
PC Engine/TG-16 - $249 in 1989 - $432 today
Games were also pretty expensive. I didn't actually buy my own games until the NES-era (and I'm having a hard time finding historical retail prices on video game cartridges), but even then, a new game was somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 back then, which would translate to $100 today. And look at how little you got for it in the case of a lot of games! I paid the equivalent of $100 for Mario Bros. 2 and beat it in a day. Ditto Mega Man 2 and 3. Ditto a lot of games.
I think many of us are more cognizant of how much were paying for games today because we're not using birthday money and allowance to buy them anymore, coupled with the fact that it's harder and harder to justify the expense with the economy being rough like it is. But in truth, we used to get charged a hell of a lot more.
That's not to say that I don't have my own misgivings, particularly related to the abuse of DLC as a concept. It seems like more and more games are coming out with 2/3 of the content they used to, with the intention of selling the remaining 1/3 in a few $10 increments down the road. The DLC on disc bullshit is even more ridiculous and unforgivable in my opinion.
While unappealing to me, I think it would be a smart move for Microsoft. There's a ton of money to be made on cheap apps, as the rise of the smartphone/tablet as a gaming platform illustrates easily...
You can criticize someone's point of view while still insisting that civility be maintained.
How about when someone's point of view is racist, or bigoted, or just repulsive in general? Are disgusting opinions worthy of that respect? Should I really just say "Oh well, that's just his point of view" when I hear someone on TV screaming about how all Muslims are terrorists hell-bent on "destroying America"? How about when I hear people (not even exaggerating here) telling me "Trayvon Martin should have known better than to walk around by himself in a hoodie in the dark like a damned thief"? Or what about people that tell me that we should just let the poor die because "it's not anyone else's fault they're poor"? Or "women just want birth control so they can have sex all the time"?
I mean, at some point civility goes out the fucking window. Some behavior or opinions are so repugnant that to treat them with civility legitimizes them in itself. I think that's a big part of the problem in the GOP right now. A lunatic like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann or even Rick Santorum is in the driver's seat, the sane half of the party are the people in the back seat, looking at each other nervously, buckling their seat-belts, but too afraid to actually tell the idiot driving to pull the fuck over and let someone that wants to survive the trip drive the damn car. You can't have a logical argument with a crazy person. You can't have a logical argument with a racist or a bigot, because racism and bigotry have no logical components, nor does the vehemence and lack of humanity so many have for people that they don't even fucking know, i.e., the poor. So what is left? Smile and nod and pretend those attitudes are okay?
No, we have enough of that shit now and we can't afford it anymore.
For every person actively cheering this shit on, there are 10 people sitting there watching them do it and not saying a fucking word.
Look at how much power the ultra-religious whackjobs wield in the modern-day GOP right now. They're busily working on rolling back abortion, worker's rights, sex-ed, and the moderate conservatives are just sitting there happily going along, too afraid of the evangelicals to dare standing against them. Shit is fucked up at almost level of government in this country, even down to the municipal level, and our legislators are more worried about making sure that a woman has to go through "counseling" to make sure she wasn't "coerced" into getting an abortion. Planned Parenthood offices are now getting firebombed right here in Wisconsin. Where are all the moderate Republicans going on record decrying this shit? Where are all the moderates saying "Hey, crazy religious nuts, knock it the fuck off!"
Few and far between. Better to tacitly support this idiocy and "beat that 'Muslim' Barack HUSSEIN Obama!!" than to have the courage to actually call out the fucking crazies, right? Why the hell else is someone like Rick Santorum even still in the race? The guy thinks women should be grateful for a pregnancy, even if it is the result of a rape. Where is all the outrage on the right for that bullshit? In the right-wing media? Yeah, nowhere, because again, better to stand united with the crazies than be branded a "soshulist" or "librul" , God Forbid, a "Dumbocrat"...
Exactly. Plus, given the "good ol' boy's club" nature of many of these police organizations, it's hard to imagine that for every officer caught, there isn't a handful that never get found out.
If you'd rather be 'noble' and stay with the sinking ship, that's your business, but don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by making it seem that regular Joe Schmoes can do a fucking thing to change shit right now, because that's pretty obviously untrue.
We're getting ready to head into a presidential election where the "left" is actually center and the "right" is actually "holy fucking shit I didn't know the scale went this far". Unless you're one of those sick fucking people that worship the dollar, cheer on the death of the uninsured, and/or pray to God for the death of all the gays, the United States is quickly becoming quite inhospitable. I know people that have been spit on here in Wisconsin...why? Because they're in a fucking union. That's all it takes for someone to hate your guts these days...and God Forbid you signed a recall petition against our current Governor Scott Walker, because the witch hunts are in full fucking effect, up here. To quote one particular comment on an article I read a while back (reporting the fact that the recall signatures were going to be made public in a searchable database, what a great fucking idea that was) "Now all of us employers and landlords will be able to see who the parasites are." We have to fight tooth and nail to find out who is donating to campaigns here in this state, we don't know where half of the legislation that gets voted on in our legislature originates, but dammit, we need to make sure those signatures go public so everyone can find out where we live and harass us over it.
How much more money should us 'little people' take out of our dwindling bank accounts to throw at this corrupt two-party system? How many hours volunteering and being involved politically should we tack on to our 80-hour work week? How long do we keep pretending that there's still something salvageable here?
Because it is simply impossible to get an education without email or other tech gadgets.
No wonder people in other countries are testing so much better than us. We've become so fucking lazy about our own responsibilities as regards the education of our children. Is the paper assignment too much of an inconvenience, or what?
Which obviously ignores the fact that people were capable of getting excellent educations for thousands of years without any of this electronic gadgetry.
Perhaps you could fill the gaps? Shocking, I know...
This is especially true with services that have such a high barrier to entry, like mobile.
How long is it going to be before everything has a high barrier to entry? That's what I'm wondering. I mean, we're already at the point now where companies like Apple are able to severely weaken, if not outright kill off, their competition just because they can basically use the insane amount of capital they have to corner the market on necessary raw materials and force out competitors at the manufacturing stage.
As these companies get larger and larger and larger, it seems like no matter what market we're talking about, eventually it's just going to be impossible for anyone to compete unless they're sitting on the enormous capital that the established players are, and how will they ever get that enormous amount of capital in the first place if they can't even enter the market?
That's true, but it still must be investigated and prosecuted to prove it, and it sure doesn't seem like it's a high priority to the DOJ right now.
I mean, would you trust this Supreme Court with a case like this? They've gone full retard with their adulation of any major corporation these days, and for all we know, we could end up with another travesty like the AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion ruling.
I don't consider file-sharing the life or death situation that most reasonable people would consider a valid exception to the rule.
Besides, is speeding in itself a crime? From what I've always been told, minor parking and traffic violations (to include non-insane levels of speeding) are not technically crimes but civil infractions, which is why things like speeding tickets don't generally show up on your criminal record.
Besides, some studies have shown that increasing speed limits by a small amount actually decreased accidents, whereas lowering them a small amount increased their frequency. Also, the lowered speed limit was ignored by more than half of the motorists, but so was the higher speed, as well...people generally drove at the speed they were comfortable with regardless.
The speed limits being lower sure does increase the number of people they can ticket, though, doesn't it? I suspect this may be the higher motivation in some places.
Agreed. If a permanent copy is needed it can always be scanned/transcribed later.
I may be a geek that loves tech toys, but it's hard to beat the utility of a dumb ass pen and a big notepad. You want to get fancy? Get a few different color pens.
Yeah that was my initial thought as well. Pulsars as navigation beacons in space is nothing new at all. I'd have just modded you informative if I had points, but I don't...
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, also, historically speaking, we're paying much less for a new game than we used to be. Ditto consoles.
According to The Inflation Calculator:
Atari 2600 - $199 in 1977 - $707 today (in 2010 dollars, anyway)
Intellivision - $299 in 1979 - $886 today
NES - $199 in 1985 (US release) - $398 today
PC Engine/TG-16 - $249 in 1989 - $432 today
Games were also pretty expensive. I didn't actually buy my own games until the NES-era (and I'm having a hard time finding historical retail prices on video game cartridges), but even then, a new game was somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 back then, which would translate to $100 today. And look at how little you got for it in the case of a lot of games! I paid the equivalent of $100 for Mario Bros. 2 and beat it in a day. Ditto Mega Man 2 and 3. Ditto a lot of games.
I think many of us are more cognizant of how much were paying for games today because we're not using birthday money and allowance to buy them anymore, coupled with the fact that it's harder and harder to justify the expense with the economy being rough like it is. But in truth, we used to get charged a hell of a lot more.
That's not to say that I don't have my own misgivings, particularly related to the abuse of DLC as a concept. It seems like more and more games are coming out with 2/3 of the content they used to, with the intention of selling the remaining 1/3 in a few $10 increments down the road. The DLC on disc bullshit is even more ridiculous and unforgivable in my opinion.
Hence why they're rumored to be developing an ARM-based Xbox Lite console.
While unappealing to me, I think it would be a smart move for Microsoft. There's a ton of money to be made on cheap apps, as the rise of the smartphone/tablet as a gaming platform illustrates easily...
Or child porn...
Ever hear the phrase "don't judge a book by it's cover"?
Did you actually watch the videos or just write them off? I'm guessing the latter. Keep your head buried in the sand at all costs there, guy.
You can criticize someone's point of view while still insisting that civility be maintained.
How about when someone's point of view is racist, or bigoted, or just repulsive in general? Are disgusting opinions worthy of that respect? Should I really just say "Oh well, that's just his point of view" when I hear someone on TV screaming about how all Muslims are terrorists hell-bent on "destroying America"? How about when I hear people (not even exaggerating here) telling me "Trayvon Martin should have known better than to walk around by himself in a hoodie in the dark like a damned thief"? Or what about people that tell me that we should just let the poor die because "it's not anyone else's fault they're poor"? Or "women just want birth control so they can have sex all the time"?
I mean, at some point civility goes out the fucking window. Some behavior or opinions are so repugnant that to treat them with civility legitimizes them in itself. I think that's a big part of the problem in the GOP right now. A lunatic like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann or even Rick Santorum is in the driver's seat, the sane half of the party are the people in the back seat, looking at each other nervously, buckling their seat-belts, but too afraid to actually tell the idiot driving to pull the fuck over and let someone that wants to survive the trip drive the damn car. You can't have a logical argument with a crazy person. You can't have a logical argument with a racist or a bigot, because racism and bigotry have no logical components, nor does the vehemence and lack of humanity so many have for people that they don't even fucking know, i.e., the poor. So what is left? Smile and nod and pretend those attitudes are okay?
No, we have enough of that shit now and we can't afford it anymore.
Did you watch it? The vast majority of it is dash cam video...
Yeah, I know, that's all lies, too; everyone with a video camera has a secret vendetta against policemen...even their own dash cams. When they're not mysteriously "broken", all seven that is.
For every person actively cheering this shit on, there are 10 people sitting there watching them do it and not saying a fucking word.
Look at how much power the ultra-religious whackjobs wield in the modern-day GOP right now. They're busily working on rolling back abortion, worker's rights, sex-ed, and the moderate conservatives are just sitting there happily going along, too afraid of the evangelicals to dare standing against them. Shit is fucked up at almost level of government in this country, even down to the municipal level, and our legislators are more worried about making sure that a woman has to go through "counseling" to make sure she wasn't "coerced" into getting an abortion. Planned Parenthood offices are now getting firebombed right here in Wisconsin. Where are all the moderate Republicans going on record decrying this shit? Where are all the moderates saying "Hey, crazy religious nuts, knock it the fuck off!"
Few and far between. Better to tacitly support this idiocy and "beat that 'Muslim' Barack HUSSEIN Obama!!" than to have the courage to actually call out the fucking crazies, right? Why the hell else is someone like Rick Santorum even still in the race? The guy thinks women should be grateful for a pregnancy, even if it is the result of a rape. Where is all the outrage on the right for that bullshit? In the right-wing media? Yeah, nowhere, because again, better to stand united with the crazies than be branded a "soshulist" or "librul" , God Forbid, a "Dumbocrat"...
Pretty much. Then the rich will just hop on a plane to play their games elsewhere while the rest of us eat each other.
America! Fuck Yeah!!
Exactly. Plus, given the "good ol' boy's club" nature of many of these police organizations, it's hard to imagine that for every officer caught, there isn't a handful that never get found out.
The shooting of Trayvon Martin
Watch this series of youtube videos, and tell me how much hyperbole you see...
The Largest Street Gang in America
It seems to me there's no such thing as a "not arrestable offense" anymore.
Simply requesting a complaint form at your local police station can result in an arrest these days, as fucked up and horrifying that is.
How about instead of fleeing, you contribute?
If you'd rather be 'noble' and stay with the sinking ship, that's your business, but don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by making it seem that regular Joe Schmoes can do a fucking thing to change shit right now, because that's pretty obviously untrue.
We're getting ready to head into a presidential election where the "left" is actually center and the "right" is actually "holy fucking shit I didn't know the scale went this far". Unless you're one of those sick fucking people that worship the dollar, cheer on the death of the uninsured, and/or pray to God for the death of all the gays, the United States is quickly becoming quite inhospitable. I know people that have been spit on here in Wisconsin...why? Because they're in a fucking union. That's all it takes for someone to hate your guts these days...and God Forbid you signed a recall petition against our current Governor Scott Walker, because the witch hunts are in full fucking effect, up here. To quote one particular comment on an article I read a while back (reporting the fact that the recall signatures were going to be made public in a searchable database, what a great fucking idea that was) "Now all of us employers and landlords will be able to see who the parasites are." We have to fight tooth and nail to find out who is donating to campaigns here in this state, we don't know where half of the legislation that gets voted on in our legislature originates, but dammit, we need to make sure those signatures go public so everyone can find out where we live and harass us over it.
How much more money should us 'little people' take out of our dwindling bank accounts to throw at this corrupt two-party system? How many hours volunteering and being involved politically should we tack on to our 80-hour work week? How long do we keep pretending that there's still something salvageable here?
Because it is simply impossible to get an education without email or other tech gadgets.
No wonder people in other countries are testing so much better than us. We've become so fucking lazy about our own responsibilities as regards the education of our children. Is the paper assignment too much of an inconvenience, or what?
Which obviously ignores the fact that people were capable of getting excellent educations for thousands of years without any of this electronic gadgetry.
Perhaps you could fill the gaps? Shocking, I know...
This is especially true with services that have such a high barrier to entry, like mobile.
How long is it going to be before everything has a high barrier to entry? That's what I'm wondering. I mean, we're already at the point now where companies like Apple are able to severely weaken, if not outright kill off, their competition just because they can basically use the insane amount of capital they have to corner the market on necessary raw materials and force out competitors at the manufacturing stage.
As these companies get larger and larger and larger, it seems like no matter what market we're talking about, eventually it's just going to be impossible for anyone to compete unless they're sitting on the enormous capital that the established players are, and how will they ever get that enormous amount of capital in the first place if they can't even enter the market?
Collusion is illegal.
That's true, but it still must be investigated and prosecuted to prove it, and it sure doesn't seem like it's a high priority to the DOJ right now.
I mean, would you trust this Supreme Court with a case like this? They've gone full retard with their adulation of any major corporation these days, and for all we know, we could end up with another travesty like the AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion ruling.
Nanites = BAD NEWS.
And if this was the USA, there would be a class-action lawsuit
If this was the USA, the ToS likely prohibits the customer from bringing a class-action lawsuit in the first place.
I don't know for sure, though, as I don't have the time to read 56 pages worth of legalese.
I don't consider file-sharing the life or death situation that most reasonable people would consider a valid exception to the rule.
Besides, is speeding in itself a crime? From what I've always been told, minor parking and traffic violations (to include non-insane levels of speeding) are not technically crimes but civil infractions, which is why things like speeding tickets don't generally show up on your criminal record.
Besides, some studies have shown that increasing speed limits by a small amount actually decreased accidents, whereas lowering them a small amount increased their frequency. Also, the lowered speed limit was ignored by more than half of the motorists, but so was the higher speed, as well...people generally drove at the speed they were comfortable with regardless.
The speed limits being lower sure does increase the number of people they can ticket, though, doesn't it? I suspect this may be the higher motivation in some places.
Agreed. If a permanent copy is needed it can always be scanned/transcribed later.
I may be a geek that loves tech toys, but it's hard to beat the utility of a dumb ass pen and a big notepad. You want to get fancy? Get a few different color pens.
And from my understanding the kid who was shot lived in this neighborhood with his father, so Zimmerman shot someone he was suppose to be protecting.
Actually, he was with his father who was visiting his fiance. She lived in the neighborhood.
Still doesn't discount what you're saying, though. Even though they didn't live there themselves, they were guests of someone that did.
Yeah that was my initial thought as well. Pulsars as navigation beacons in space is nothing new at all. I'd have just modded you informative if I had points, but I don't...
What if your hobby is accruing a large collection of adult material?
People still use Yahoo? Did I just pass through a wormhole to 2003?