It was much easier in the old Atari and Nintendo days to publish a game you wrote in your garage
Where in the world did you ever get that idea? The companies that made 2600 and NES games had quite a bit of cash behind them. (Not to mention some nice offices.) I think you're confusing games for computers like the Commodore 64. Those were sometimes made by one guy in his garage, but the quality generally suffered as a result.
Here's the information on how much your caloric intake needs to increase:
If you start out at a healthy weight, you need to gain only a few pounds in the first few months of pregnancy. You can do this with an extra 150 to 200 calories a day, about the amount in 12 ounces of calcium-fortified orange juice or a serving of low-fat yogurt. A normal appetite will typically provide these calories.
Steady weight gain is more important in the second and third trimesters -- especially if you start out at a healthy weight or you're underweight. This often means 3 to 4 pounds a month until delivery. An extra 300 calories a day might be enough to help you meet this goal.
Emphasis is mine.
The expectation is that once the baby is born, the remaining weight will disappear on its own through a normal diet. Much of the extra fat put on supports breast feeding of the child. Once weened, many women actually find themselves slightly lighter than they were before, even if they were not overweight. (Which is also what happened to my wife.;-)) I've heard some women refer to pregnancy as a good way to shed the pounds. I don't recommend it, but it does seem to work.
Only if you count the baby. This idea that women gain ten pounds during pregnancy is a fallacy that was propogated, in part, by an early belief in the medical establishment that women needed to gain weight for a healthy pregnancy. Once that idea was disproven, fewer women forced themselves to gain weight during pregnancy.
In fact, most women only experience a mild increase in food intake while pregnant. My understanding is that it's more important to pay attention to sudden food cravings, as those are often signs of missing minerals and vitamins. (e.g. my wife wanted bananas while she was pregnant)
VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) is a variation on the Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (MPDT) that has been in development for a decade or two. These thrusters are coveted for their rare combination of high specific impulse (i.e. efficiency) and thrust to weight ratio (power). Such a combination makes them ideal for manned missions, as they allow space craft to fly under constant, high powered thrust. This is the "holy grail" of space travel because it cuts down the TIME in flight significantly. Thus the summary's mention of a 90 day flight time to Mars. (Normal flight time using a minimal Hohmann Transfer is ~1.5 years.)
Obviously, the exact thrust numbers depend upon the rocket. However, the VASIMR rockets have a range of specific impulses from 3,000 to 30,000 seconds. You can see how that compares to Ion Thrusters here. Chemical rockets tend to top out at 500 seconds and thus don't even place when compared to VASIMR or Ion thrusters. The only reason why we want to keep using chemical rockets once we have better thruster technology is that all these new technologies lack the thrust to weight ratio to get a rocket off the ground. i.e. They are only good for space travel. Atmospheric flight need not apply.
You're right. Thanks for pointing that out. I was confusing titanium dioxide with titanic acid. In which case, this compound should make for some rather gleaming streets!:-)
Plants need Nitrates to grow. (Nitrates == Nitrogen based chemicals.) So it should actually be positive for the soil rather than negative. I stress *should* because without knowing the exact chemical composition, it's hard to understand if there are any hidden problems with this technique.
One thing I am worried about, though, is the color of these sidewalks. If they're using titanium dioxide, shouldn't they be a nice brown color? (Think: Coffee, cola, and other brown liquids.) I don't know about anyone else, but a brown sidewalk or street is not my idea of "attractive". (I presume the "green" bricks used in this trial have been painted or stained with an even more powerful pigment.) Of course, given the natural color of titanium dioxide, perhaps this technique is intended for use with blacktop rather than concrete as suggested by the article? In which case the brown would be unnoticeable. That would also jive with the replacement time for these roadways as any passive chemical solution is going to become less effective after a few years of use.
It would be nice if the article had more of these details.
No, AAA titles still cost more than ever. What has changed is that the market has become more willing to accept "retro" titles. These titles are not much more sophisticated than, say, a SuperNES title, but they still get to take advantage of technological advancements. Hand drawn art, sampled compositions, and relatively complex physics engines can all be done on a budget these days. If you're willing to spend a little extra on a pre-fabbed 3D engine, you can even use off-the-shelf 3D models to throw your game together.
That's why a few guys can go from making Flash Games to making one of the most popular downloadable titles today. They already had team members or contractors able to make the assets. All they needed to do was use the Wii's technology to step up to their A game and make it happen.
Is there a larger investment involved in a console title? Yes. But that's all part of the risk/reward aspect of running a small business.
Video game consoles have multiple controllers and a large monitor. But the consoles sold in English-speaking countries have a lockout chip and historically anti-indie policies.
Historically != Modern Approach
* WiiWare * XBox Live * PlayStation Network
These are all services that Indies are able to break into these days. For a small investment (free - $600 for XBLA, $2000 for a WiiWare dev kit) you can make your game for one of these consoles, then offer it for download for a small fee.
Case in Point: Defend Your Castle went from a single-player flash game to a local multiplayer title that happens to be the third most popular game on the WiiWare service.
Now if you mean "Indie" to mean "Homebrew", you're barking up the wrong tree. Go get a copy of DevkitPro + a copy of Twilight Princess for the Wii. That will allow you to develop local multiplayer for a console. Another option is to support XBox 360 controllers on Windows PCs. They are designed as USB devices intended for plugging into either a computer or a console. You can then encourage players to purchase these controllers.
Assuming your homebrew title is good enough, that is...
You can be the greatest programmer in the world, but until the realities of the market are well understood, you're going to be starving.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree a bit here. History is chock full of studios founded by programmers, artists, and designers that broke off from their employer to do something interesting. In many cases, it was to escape the employer's risk aversion. i.e. It's not that games other than First Person Shooters don't sell. It's that large companies know that FPSes sell, so they don't want to take a risk on anything else.
The smaller studios, OTOH, have an opportunity to pursue new gaming styles and lines of games that don't have to align with what the big executives THINK will sell. Sometimes they make it big. More often, they manage to prove out the market before being folded back into a larger company. That larger company then sees "hot new opportunities" that didn't exist before. Could the large company have opened up the market to begin with? Sure. But why take the risk when someone else will do it for you?
The end result is that these smaller studios (these days often referred to as "Indies" partly due to the low investment capital needed to start making modern games) make their money in a tried and true business fashion: An exit strategy.
The fact of the matter is that very few independent programmers make it big.
The fact of the matter is that very few small business owners make it big. (Investors like to tout the "90% of small businesses fail" number.) There's nothing inherently different about the gaming sector.
"It's water JIM, but not as we know it". Yeash. If you're going to make pop culture references, at least get them right!
In other news, I vote we go to war against California. They are obviously attempting a scorched earth policy against the world's oil supply. Once we've secured the area, we can bring John Wayne in to take care of the problem.
Perhaps I'm not explaining myself very clearly. When Wing Commander was around, technological advancements were used to give us bigger cap-ships, more weapons fire, cool shield glow, better stardust, etc. Little things that really improved the experience. At no point did they make a change to the engine just to make it "pretty" or "realistic" at the expense of playability.
Modern space sims, however, seem to be enthralled with the idea of having "pretty" nebulae, bright lights, and realistic shading everywhere. Right down to the point where I can't see a damn thing. Especially not what I'm shooting at. Throw in "realistic" physics and distances and you have a recipe for mind-numbing boredom.
That's why I refer to the Wing Commander engine(s) as "simple". The engines are designed around fighters in a constrained area of space, with small distances between them. (Despite the sensors exaggerating the "number of [k|c]licks" between you and the enemy.) Keeping the space constrained like that makes the game more interesting and intense. Plus, the straight-forward graphics ensure that you're not going to suddenly be blinded by an unexpected bright light, or be unable to see an enemy because he happens to fall in your shadow.
In addition to T-Bone's point, the "wings" were often not wings. They were weapon mounts and pods. When you are carrying several tons of highly explosive ordinance, having that ordinance hanging off side pods is a Good Idea(TM). If those pods get damaged in combat (which they often did in Wing Commander), you were less likely to lose the entire ship.
Of course, some of the craft DID have actual wings because they were capable of atmospheric flight. (The Dralthi I mentioned were a good example.) So your comment is a bit like looking at a seaplane and saying, "It's stupid to have pontoons on a plane! It's like having boats in the air!"
You're in space, there's no air to make you turn using aerodynamic methods, and conversely there's no air to stop you from making a 90 deg turn across the normal axis nor smash your craft to pieces if you tilt it 90 deg across its lateral axis.
Actually, there's a very good reason for the seeming "banking" combat in many space sims. (At least in Wing Commander, anyway.) It's not that you aren't able to spin on your axis, but the problem comes down to the ducting of the ship. Since you have your missile loadouts hanging off the sides of the ship, many of the craft have a low yaw rate.
The solution is to use a combination of roll and pitch to turn your craft toward the enemy. (i.e. spin about your Z axis until your Y axis places the enemy "above" you. Then pull up to rotate around the X axis toward the enemy.) This maneuver ends up being significantly faster than relying on the yaw rate alone.
In fact, there was a bit of Intel in the original Wing Commander that Dralthi never bank left or right. Because their large wings make yaw difficult, they always broke up or down. (Usually up.) If you took advantage of that fact, you could blast them to smithereens when they tried to evade.
Of course, that was the same game that gave detailed specs on the effective range of weapons. Despite Paladin's warnings, I used to love playing chicken with the enemies because I'd lock on to the nearest one, slam the afterburners, and count down the clicks. As soon as I was at maximum effective range, I'd open up with all guns and drain the batteries. Once my guns were depleted, I'd dive and come around back. That little maneuver usually netted me one or two enemies dead right off the bat. If I did it right, they didn't even have chance to return fire!
I know I don't have much to go on at the moment, but the game looks more like the X series than the Wing Commander and Privateer series. While X was cool, it simply didn't manage to impress the same... aliveness? of the Wing Commander universe.
Case in point: WCNews did a first look piece on the game, but it didn't get much enthusiasm from the crowd. While one can HOPE that the game revives the Wing Commander genre, I think too many space sim developers focus too much on realism and/or pretty graphics to truly understand why the simplistic Wing Commander engine was so popular.
*ponders composition of said bird droppings for a moment*
So wait. You mean that when Kirk built a cannon out of the stuff he found lying around on a deserted planet, that was realistic?!? Next you're going to be telling me that 7 foot anthromorphic lizards are an everyday occurrence!
So small you will need a stylus the width of just a few carbon atoms in order to dial out.
Dude, next time you shrink yourself, make sure you hold on to the iPhone when you make yourself big again. After all, that instruction manual^W^W iPhone is irreplaceable!
Seems a mod does not understand what the "Troll" mod is for. Hint: It's not because you disagree with someone.
Further hint: It will hurt in meta-mod. Next time use overrated if you just can't restrain yourself. Better yet, try following the intended use of moderation sometime. i.e. Focus on modding up rather than down.
As I mentioned in another post, the original poster explicitly said: "Needless to say within 6 months of blowing through their saving is came down to deciding to sell the house or starve to death."
1. They didn't pay for the home so it wasn't theirs.
I haven't finished paying for my home either. Obviously it's not truly mine. It's the bank's by way of lien until I finish paying it off. However, I do get to live there as long as I continue to make good on my loan. Welcome to mortgage 101.
2. These are normally zero down loans, no savings invested.
The original poster explicitly said: "Needless to say within 6 months of blowing through their saving is came down to deciding to sell the house or starve to death."
Whether they got a zero down loan or not, they lost their savings in a futile attempt to be responsible after the fact.
3. Took on more debt... Huh? While probably true (if you can't handle credit in one situation, likely enough you can't handle it elsewhere) - it really isn't relevant to the free ride.
My presumption is based on the fact that they actually made a serious attempt to pay for that home. If they managed to blow through all their savings in an attempt to pay for it, I can practically guarantee they also took on further debt as a direct result. Whether it be from putting groceries and goods on credit cards that didn't get paid off, or from borrowing to pay off bills they couldn't afford, there's a good chance they are now saddled with additional debt.
5. Yep, goes with 4.
Well, I'm glad we can agree on something.:-P
6. Plans built on quicksand... still not relevant to the free ride.
Not necessarily. If they had gone through a better decision making process, there's a good chance they could have found a home that met their needs just as well and still be living in it today. i.e. The plan itself isn't always flawed. Sometimes it's just the execution. Which seems like a fairly likely situation if they foolishly obtained a house that had a $3500/mo mortgage on a $5000/mo income. As a home owner in a major city, I can tell you there are more affordable places to live.
Let's say they promised a dressmaker $50 per month for a year for a nice custom made dress. The dressmaker delivers the dress as promised. The buyer accepts delivery and has a nice time wearing the dress to parties and gets lots of great compliments. The buyer never makes the promised payments. After about 6 months the dressmaker repossesses the dress. Can you see how that would be a free ride? Can you see how it is the dressmaker who is the aggrieved party?
I can see that the dressmaker would be a moron. Dresses lose most of their value as soon as they're worn. They don't make very good collateral against a loan. A house, on the other hand, usually gains value rather than losing it. Which means that the bank can repossess the home and resell it for what is left on the loan. The bank ends up getting their money, plus whatever profits they made off the borrowers while they were borrowing. A win-win deal for banks.
The only reason why things have gotten bad is NOT because people are defaulting on their mortgages. The banks hedged their bets and thought they would be fine in any situation. The reason why things have gotten bad was that banks got greedy and lent a massive number of loans they knew were unreasonable. The result was that the market flooded with repossessed property and the banks starting taking a loss.
So I guess your analogy does work. The banks were as foolish as that dress maker!:-P
The AutoAdmit controversy began even before one of the women, identified in court documents as "Jane Doe I," started classes in the fall of 2005, the lawsuit alleges. Doe I was alerted in the summer to an AutoAdmit comment thread entitled "Stupid Bitch to Attend Law School." The thread included messages such as, "I think I will sodomize her. Repeatedly" and a reply claiming "she has herpes." The second woman, Jane Doe II, was similarly attacked beginning in January 2007.
They had six months living in a house they knew they couldn't afford.
You think that's a free ride? Let's go over this again:
1. They have no home. Back to apartments for them. 2. They lost their savings. 3. They probably took on more debt. 4. Their ability to get new credit or make large purchases (e.g. a vehicle) is now stunted. 5. They have no hope of seeing another house for several years into the future. 6. Any long term plans they made are probably shot.
So how exactly is that a free ride? It sounds to me like they'll be paying a hefty price for quite a long time!
Slashdot Mirror
Where in the world did you ever get that idea? The companies that made 2600 and NES games had quite a bit of cash behind them. (Not to mention some nice offices.) I think you're confusing games for computers like the Commodore 64. Those were sometimes made by one guy in his garage, but the quality generally suffered as a result.
No, I was responding to someone who was talking about people being fat after pregnancy. GP is correct.
Good catch. So 8.5 months for a one-way trip vs. 3 months. I'll take the VASIMR any day of the week. :-)
I'm counting that toward the baby weight as most of that stuff will be gone as soon as the baby is born.
Here's the Mayo Clinic page on weight gain during pregnancy.
Here's the breakdown:
* Baby: 7 to 8 pounds
* Larger breasts: 1 to 3 pounds
* Larger uterus: 2 pounds
* Placenta: 1 1/2 pounds
* Amniotic fluid: 2 pounds
* Increased blood volume: 3 to 4 pounds
* Increased fluid volume: 2 to 3 pounds
* Fat stores: 6 to 8 pounds
Here's the information on how much your caloric intake needs to increase:
Emphasis is mine.
The expectation is that once the baby is born, the remaining weight will disappear on its own through a normal diet. Much of the extra fat put on supports breast feeding of the child. Once weened, many women actually find themselves slightly lighter than they were before, even if they were not overweight. (Which is also what happened to my wife. ;-)) I've heard some women refer to pregnancy as a good way to shed the pounds. I don't recommend it, but it does seem to work.
Only if you count the baby. This idea that women gain ten pounds during pregnancy is a fallacy that was propogated, in part, by an early belief in the medical establishment that women needed to gain weight for a healthy pregnancy. Once that idea was disproven, fewer women forced themselves to gain weight during pregnancy.
In fact, most women only experience a mild increase in food intake while pregnant. My understanding is that it's more important to pay attention to sudden food cravings, as those are often signs of missing minerals and vitamins. (e.g. my wife wanted bananas while she was pregnant)
VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) is a variation on the Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (MPDT) that has been in development for a decade or two. These thrusters are coveted for their rare combination of high specific impulse (i.e. efficiency) and thrust to weight ratio (power). Such a combination makes them ideal for manned missions, as they allow space craft to fly under constant, high powered thrust. This is the "holy grail" of space travel because it cuts down the TIME in flight significantly. Thus the summary's mention of a 90 day flight time to Mars. (Normal flight time using a minimal Hohmann Transfer is ~1.5 years.)
Obviously, the exact thrust numbers depend upon the rocket. However, the VASIMR rockets have a range of specific impulses from 3,000 to 30,000 seconds. You can see how that compares to Ion Thrusters here. Chemical rockets tend to top out at 500 seconds and thus don't even place when compared to VASIMR or Ion thrusters. The only reason why we want to keep using chemical rockets once we have better thruster technology is that all these new technologies lack the thrust to weight ratio to get a rocket off the ground. i.e. They are only good for space travel. Atmospheric flight need not apply.
You're right. Thanks for pointing that out. I was confusing titanium dioxide with titanic acid. In which case, this compound should make for some rather gleaming streets! :-)
Plants need Nitrates to grow. (Nitrates == Nitrogen based chemicals.) So it should actually be positive for the soil rather than negative. I stress *should* because without knowing the exact chemical composition, it's hard to understand if there are any hidden problems with this technique.
One thing I am worried about, though, is the color of these sidewalks. If they're using titanium dioxide, shouldn't they be a nice brown color? (Think: Coffee, cola, and other brown liquids.) I don't know about anyone else, but a brown sidewalk or street is not my idea of "attractive". (I presume the "green" bricks used in this trial have been painted or stained with an even more powerful pigment.) Of course, given the natural color of titanium dioxide, perhaps this technique is intended for use with blacktop rather than concrete as suggested by the article? In which case the brown would be unnoticeable. That would also jive with the replacement time for these roadways as any passive chemical solution is going to become less effective after a few years of use.
It would be nice if the article had more of these details.
No, AAA titles still cost more than ever. What has changed is that the market has become more willing to accept "retro" titles. These titles are not much more sophisticated than, say, a SuperNES title, but they still get to take advantage of technological advancements. Hand drawn art, sampled compositions, and relatively complex physics engines can all be done on a budget these days. If you're willing to spend a little extra on a pre-fabbed 3D engine, you can even use off-the-shelf 3D models to throw your game together.
That's why a few guys can go from making Flash Games to making one of the most popular downloadable titles today. They already had team members or contractors able to make the assets. All they needed to do was use the Wii's technology to step up to their A game and make it happen.
Is there a larger investment involved in a console title? Yes. But that's all part of the risk/reward aspect of running a small business.
Historically != Modern Approach
* WiiWare
* XBox Live
* PlayStation Network
These are all services that Indies are able to break into these days. For a small investment (free - $600 for XBLA, $2000 for a WiiWare dev kit) you can make your game for one of these consoles, then offer it for download for a small fee.
Case in Point: Defend Your Castle went from a single-player flash game to a local multiplayer title that happens to be the third most popular game on the WiiWare service.
Now if you mean "Indie" to mean "Homebrew", you're barking up the wrong tree. Go get a copy of DevkitPro + a copy of Twilight Princess for the Wii. That will allow you to develop local multiplayer for a console. Another option is to support XBox 360 controllers on Windows PCs. They are designed as USB devices intended for plugging into either a computer or a console. You can then encourage players to purchase these controllers.
Assuming your homebrew title is good enough, that is...
I think you're barking up the wrong tree a bit here. History is chock full of studios founded by programmers, artists, and designers that broke off from their employer to do something interesting. In many cases, it was to escape the employer's risk aversion. i.e. It's not that games other than First Person Shooters don't sell. It's that large companies know that FPSes sell, so they don't want to take a risk on anything else.
The smaller studios, OTOH, have an opportunity to pursue new gaming styles and lines of games that don't have to align with what the big executives THINK will sell. Sometimes they make it big. More often, they manage to prove out the market before being folded back into a larger company. That larger company then sees "hot new opportunities" that didn't exist before. Could the large company have opened up the market to begin with? Sure. But why take the risk when someone else will do it for you?
The end result is that these smaller studios (these days often referred to as "Indies" partly due to the low investment capital needed to start making modern games) make their money in a tried and true business fashion: An exit strategy.
The fact of the matter is that very few small business owners make it big. (Investors like to tout the "90% of small businesses fail" number.) There's nothing inherently different about the gaming sector.
"It's water JIM, but not as we know it". Yeash. If you're going to make pop culture references, at least get them right!
In other news, I vote we go to war against California. They are obviously attempting a scorched earth policy against the world's oil supply. Once we've secured the area, we can bring John Wayne in to take care of the problem.
Perhaps I'm not explaining myself very clearly. When Wing Commander was around, technological advancements were used to give us bigger cap-ships, more weapons fire, cool shield glow, better stardust, etc. Little things that really improved the experience. At no point did they make a change to the engine just to make it "pretty" or "realistic" at the expense of playability.
Modern space sims, however, seem to be enthralled with the idea of having "pretty" nebulae, bright lights, and realistic shading everywhere. Right down to the point where I can't see a damn thing. Especially not what I'm shooting at. Throw in "realistic" physics and distances and you have a recipe for mind-numbing boredom.
That's why I refer to the Wing Commander engine(s) as "simple". The engines are designed around fighters in a constrained area of space, with small distances between them. (Despite the sensors exaggerating the "number of [k|c]licks" between you and the enemy.) Keeping the space constrained like that makes the game more interesting and intense. Plus, the straight-forward graphics ensure that you're not going to suddenly be blinded by an unexpected bright light, or be unable to see an enemy because he happens to fall in your shadow.
In addition to T-Bone's point, the "wings" were often not wings. They were weapon mounts and pods. When you are carrying several tons of highly explosive ordinance, having that ordinance hanging off side pods is a Good Idea(TM). If those pods get damaged in combat (which they often did in Wing Commander), you were less likely to lose the entire ship.
Of course, some of the craft DID have actual wings because they were capable of atmospheric flight. (The Dralthi I mentioned were a good example.) So your comment is a bit like looking at a seaplane and saying, "It's stupid to have pontoons on a plane! It's like having boats in the air!"
Actually, there's a very good reason for the seeming "banking" combat in many space sims. (At least in Wing Commander, anyway.) It's not that you aren't able to spin on your axis, but the problem comes down to the ducting of the ship. Since you have your missile loadouts hanging off the sides of the ship, many of the craft have a low yaw rate.
The solution is to use a combination of roll and pitch to turn your craft toward the enemy. (i.e. spin about your Z axis until your Y axis places the enemy "above" you. Then pull up to rotate around the X axis toward the enemy.) This maneuver ends up being significantly faster than relying on the yaw rate alone.
In fact, there was a bit of Intel in the original Wing Commander that Dralthi never bank left or right. Because their large wings make yaw difficult, they always broke up or down. (Usually up.) If you took advantage of that fact, you could blast them to smithereens when they tried to evade.
Of course, that was the same game that gave detailed specs on the effective range of weapons. Despite Paladin's warnings, I used to love playing chicken with the enemies because I'd lock on to the nearest one, slam the afterburners, and count down the clicks. As soon as I was at maximum effective range, I'd open up with all guns and drain the batteries. Once my guns were depleted, I'd dive and come around back. That little maneuver usually netted me one or two enemies dead right off the bat. If I did it right, they didn't even have chance to return fire!
*sigh* God I miss those games.
I know I don't have much to go on at the moment, but the game looks more like the X series than the Wing Commander and Privateer series. While X was cool, it simply didn't manage to impress the same... aliveness? of the Wing Commander universe.
Case in point: WCNews did a first look piece on the game, but it didn't get much enthusiasm from the crowd. While one can HOPE that the game revives the Wing Commander genre, I think too many space sim developers focus too much on realism and/or pretty graphics to truly understand why the simplistic Wing Commander engine was so popular.
*scratches head*
*ponders composition of said bird droppings for a moment*
So wait. You mean that when Kirk built a cannon out of the stuff he found lying around on a deserted planet, that was realistic?!? Next you're going to be telling me that 7 foot anthromorphic lizards are an everyday occurrence!
Dude, next time you shrink yourself, make sure you hold on to the iPhone when you make yourself big again. After all, that instruction manual^W^W iPhone is irreplaceable!
Now go put your red suit away.
Mayor Daley? Is that you?
Seems a mod does not understand what the "Troll" mod is for. Hint: It's not because you disagree with someone.
Further hint: It will hurt in meta-mod. Next time use overrated if you just can't restrain yourself. Better yet, try following the intended use of moderation sometime. i.e. Focus on modding up rather than down.
As I mentioned in another post, the original poster explicitly said: "Needless to say within 6 months of blowing through their saving is came down to deciding to sell the house or starve to death."
It seems likely that they were not anonymous. The first line of the article was this quote:
Even if they used the forums anonymously (or didn't use the forums at all!), someone drug their non-anonymous reputations through the mud.
No, I am not a lawyer or a student. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once! :-P
I haven't finished paying for my home either. Obviously it's not truly mine. It's the bank's by way of lien until I finish paying it off. However, I do get to live there as long as I continue to make good on my loan. Welcome to mortgage 101.
The original poster explicitly said: "Needless to say within 6 months of blowing through their saving is came down to deciding to sell the house or starve to death."
Whether they got a zero down loan or not, they lost their savings in a futile attempt to be responsible after the fact.
My presumption is based on the fact that they actually made a serious attempt to pay for that home. If they managed to blow through all their savings in an attempt to pay for it, I can practically guarantee they also took on further debt as a direct result. Whether it be from putting groceries and goods on credit cards that didn't get paid off, or from borrowing to pay off bills they couldn't afford, there's a good chance they are now saddled with additional debt.
Well, I'm glad we can agree on something. :-P
Not necessarily. If they had gone through a better decision making process, there's a good chance they could have found a home that met their needs just as well and still be living in it today. i.e. The plan itself isn't always flawed. Sometimes it's just the execution. Which seems like a fairly likely situation if they foolishly obtained a house that had a $3500/mo mortgage on a $5000/mo income. As a home owner in a major city, I can tell you there are more affordable places to live.
I can see that the dressmaker would be a moron. Dresses lose most of their value as soon as they're worn. They don't make very good collateral against a loan. A house, on the other hand, usually gains value rather than losing it. Which means that the bank can repossess the home and resell it for what is left on the loan. The bank ends up getting their money, plus whatever profits they made off the borrowers while they were borrowing. A win-win deal for banks.
The only reason why things have gotten bad is NOT because people are defaulting on their mortgages. The banks hedged their bets and thought they would be fine in any situation. The reason why things have gotten bad was that banks got greedy and lent a massive number of loans they knew were unreasonable. The result was that the market flooded with repossessed property and the banks starting taking a loss.
So I guess your analogy does work. The banks were as foolish as that dress maker! :-P
Keep reading. It gets worse:
I'd say they have a reasonable case here.
You think that's a free ride? Let's go over this again:
1. They have no home. Back to apartments for them.
2. They lost their savings.
3. They probably took on more debt.
4. Their ability to get new credit or make large purchases (e.g. a vehicle) is now stunted.
5. They have no hope of seeing another house for several years into the future.
6. Any long term plans they made are probably shot.
So how exactly is that a free ride? It sounds to me like they'll be paying a hefty price for quite a long time!