They will just have to have a very anti-cheating policy.
That and if it is a least reasonably popular, it will make a whole lot of money, and they will be able to hire alot of coders to stay ahead of the cheaters.
Blizzard, Everquest, and games of that type are at a disadvantage because they only get like $10 a month from their subscribers, MtG subscribers will pay much more as they pay $3 dollars per pack of cards. Adding the fact that the cards can be redeemed for real cards will really draw the MtG fans as well.
As long as WotC pumps a good portion of the revenue into coders to fend off the cheaters, I don't think that they will have much problem. Bandwidth wise WotC is looking at a much more attractive position then the MMORPG's as the ping times won't have to be nearly so low to have a good game.
So lets add up the points shall we?
1. Less Bandwidth required (Less cost) 2. Higher Subscriber Revenues (More revenue) 3. Tangible product extremely cheap to produce
= a large amount of profit to pay coders
Sure their will be bugs, I wouldn't recommend trading with people in the first 2 weeks, for example. But I believe that it won't be nearly as much of a problem as this article's author seems to believe.
You are wasting the companies bandwidth by d/l them from home.
Why not just reburn a couple of them and bring them in? CD's are only 10 to 20 cents right now. And it would be much nicer to the company network traffic.
IT workers say the same thing--that the songs are already out of the proverbial jewel box. Like universities, companies may have to learn to live with a certain amount of media on their networks.
For any but the biggest networks this is easy to stop. Institute a policy of NO filesharing programs and NO unauthorised MP3's and Movies's. Do random checks of company computers at night. If contraband is found write them up, and tell them that if found again, they will be fired. Check that employee's machine again after 2 weeks, and one month later. If they resumed doing it, they are an idiot and should be canned. I would imagine after the first employee got canned, this practice would have a tremendous effect. This isn't that hard of a problem to solve.
You are dealing with a limited environment, in which you have physical access to all the machines involved. Every company should do it, if only to save money on bandwidth.
joining the rest of the Western world in becoming a capitalist country.
What makes you think we are capitalist? In many ways our country is becoming Canada, and you know what, nobody seems to care. Our government has a wealth of socalist programs in force. You know that Huge new Farm bill? Very socalist. Social Security? Income Tax?
Before WW II we didn't need Income tax and we had a ok army ta boot. What changed? We decided as a country that we started to like big government. Its a shame really.
How would they get your retina on file? Hrmm, prolly let you show your drivers license and then scan your eye, and this would somehow stop a terriorist that had a fake Driver's license?
Some higher-up saw minority report and said to himself "Oh cool, retina scans look like a good idea...."
I for one agree that the greenback has a tremendously strong brand identity arond the world. Pick 20 countries at random and show people on the street a dollar, a euro, a pound, and a yen and see which one of those currencies gets recognised more then any other. My money's on the dollar.
Changing the US currency's color is a change so radical, it would be like Coke deciding to change the color of its 2-Liters Blue, 24-packs Green, 1-Liters Purple, and leaving the cans red.
Would it help out tourists? Of course it would. But last time I checked, foreign investors spend a hell of a lot more money then a german family that comes to see the statue of liberty for a week.
If it's a "lame little group of maps" I seriously doubt that it would be offered anywhere for money.
If, however, it is a packaged campaign that he used all his own textures, ideas, and insights on, then I would say who are you to take away his right to sell his work for a profit? He isn't selling your game, simple an addition to your game. And if it is a quality piece of work, it can only help the sales of your game, as it requires your game to run! As long as he isn't stealing your textures or ideas to sell his game, how can you say that you had a hand in his work?
Publishers print "unauthorised game guides" all the time I don't see how this would be any different.
Only in the software business does this perverse atitude exist.
Modifing an existing product and selling the modification is a true american princepal.
Examples: You buy a new car and figure out a way to increase its horsepower with $20 dollars worth of parts, and procede to sell the modification kits on ebay for $30 dollars. Not only is this very very legal, it is also quite widespread (car fanatics are everywhere;) )
You buy a portable gaming system that for reasons totally unknown has no backlight, and design one and sell it on your own website. Huh, never heard of this one, huh?
Wake up, no matter what some silly EULA says, aftermarket modifications that you spend your time on are yours. If you spend 80 hours on a modification, and its completly your own work, no judge would let a company steal those rights from you because of some contract you did not sign before the sale. If you sign a contract before the sale, now, thats entirely different.
6. Revocation of Rights. Infogrames and/or BioWare may at any time and in their sole discretion revoke your right to make your Variations publicly available (whether you are Distributing or Serving), provided that Infogrames and/or BioWare shall not revoke your right to Distribute a Variation if Infogrames and/or BioWare is, at the time of such revocation, using or distributing such Variation.
So they actually put in their EULA that if they sell a expansion pack with your mod in it, they won't take away your distribution rights of said mod just to bump their profits.:)
Well the article says that right now he is still getting his brain used to the input from the camera and is only having the camera on for one hour of the day.
So I suppose turning it on and off is not a problem.;)
Sure they still have a case, and I'll tell you why...
1. The warning is on the back of the CD, in small print, and very sparse with its information.
2. The recording industry has incouraged the retailers to intermengle these CD's with regular CD's, confusing cosumers in the process.
3. But most importantly, computer CD-ROM drives aren't the only thing these things don't work with. High-end CD players, DVD-players, MP3 CD Players all advertise the fact that they play CD's. The recording industry says on the label "This disc is not intended for use in computer CD-ROM drives" , which misleads the consumer into thinking that it might work in their DVD-Player and such.
These are the reasons the recording industry will lose.
This case is simple and I'm glad a huge law firm finally saw the opening to cause the RIAA and assc. companies some major pain.
Deal with facts people, this case is not going to deal with Fair-Use Rights. This case will likely be based on the simply premise that the recording companies are mislabeling the things they sell and furthurmore being secretive about it from the public.
Copy-Crippled PCC's (Polycarbonate Coated Circles.. note I didn't call them CD's) are not CD's, they will not work in a large array of CD capable player devices, and might actually harm some of those devices. This case will likely set out to prove that the Recording Industry did not make a good faith effort to explain the limitations and possible dangers of their product, which misleadingly looks like all of their older, but different products. The RIAA will likely loose this lawsuit. All that remains to be seen is how much the law firm makes them pay.
Somedays I wish this country wasn't so litigious in nature, but others I figure out that its the only thing holding back huge mega-corporations from totally screwing us.
That may have been the reason on record but it really isn't what they were thinking. The real reason they had that instituted was because they knew, same as now, that 90% of the public really has no idea who they are voting for. Most just vote down party lines, or on who "impresses them more on TV". Very few do the work required to actually vote knowing the candidates' track records on the issues. This combined with the fact that news traveled at the pace of a horse's gallop and thus it was hard to get everybody on the same page, was the real reason for the electoral college.
That argument you used about the larger states overpowering the smaller ones is about 100 years old and is not valid in the now. Back then people had an enormous amount of pride in their individual states and very little in the country. Anybody with eyes (who doesn't live in SC;) ) knows that that relationship has since flip flopped. If there is a war in Delaware on the coast am I going to dodge the draft so I can defend my home, Ohio? No, of course not, but thats what everybodys thinking was back then.
You are incorrect sir. Blockbuster does have an agreement for profit sharing in place for VHS tapes, but no such agreement exists for DVD's. As far as DVD's go they are exactly like you and me. They buy them, (or "rent" large quantities from distributors) and then use their "first-sale" doctrine rights to rent them. Legally you are allowed to rent movies you buy. If you have a large movie collection, you don't need to get "distribution" rights to the DVD's to rent them out. Ask any owner of a Blockbuster if you really want to know the whole story.
Ideally this is good. Wiretaps are a needed part of law-enforcement. You have evidence against a suspect, you go to a judge, show him the evidence and he makes a informed decison on the matter. Wiretaps, traditionally, were pretty hard to get.
The part where this breaks down is the recent Patriot act (damn I hate calling it that), where a FBI agent hands a judge a list of 5,000 names and says "I think that these people might be terrorists, gimme a wiretap."
"Do you have any evidence Mr. FBI agent?"
"What do you care Mr. Judge? US law says you have to let me spy on these people, even if I don't have any tangible evidence. Just don't mind my wife's name hidden in the list."
"Ok, here's your signature." (Thinking to himself: Man I wish my job was more than fulfilling the function of a rubber stamp.)
Without the aforementioned act, this would be semi-good news. With that act, more peoples privacy will now likely be senselessly violated. Oh, well.
Exactly no one will be paying less, once the new rates are introduced, the rate you are paying now will become the "Value" option. If you think the cable/phone companies will lower rates once the higher rates take effect you are deluding yourself.
Just think about it, so many more billions of dollars are pouring into R&D for IDE drives for one simple reason, its a much larger market. Now I don't know if SCSI is out of the race yet, but you must accept that for the last couple years, for the first time ver, the race is actually close.
SCSI is a limited use technology, its expensive and not many usual computers use it. Eventually, I think IDE will outpace it. Especially since motherboard manufactures now see the goodness in putting at least 4 channels of IDE on-board:).
I seriously can't remember having a good tech support experience. A tree fell on my phone line once, and they said (Ameritech) they couldn't come out to fix it for a week (this is after I was on hold for almost an hour). Ouch. Being Pissed of I did what any nerd would do, I claimed up the poll, got out some duct tape, taped the wire to the poll again (lots of tape) and spliced the wires back together. This little home remedy caused me nothing but trouble in the end though.
The tech guy came out in a week, tested the line, saw that it was ok, and left. I never saw him. Too bad he didn't see the tree that was still on the ground, or the fact that the pole (wooden) had a large amount of duct tape on it. Maybe thats how they fix things sometimes, *shrug*. So anyway long story short, I had to call them a multitude of times more, in the end 4 different guys came out all doin the same thing execpt the last because I camped out waiting for him. I gave him the story, he laughed, I sighed, and he fixed the line the right way.
Oh and I told the person on the other side how I fixed it every time, to let them know why I was complaining about a line that was down that was somehow calling them. One of them actually told me that I should rip down my home-fix and wait a week for them to come out and fix it. Sigh.
In the end it took about a month for Ameritech to fix my line. If you thought waits like that only happen in third world countries, think again.
P.S. The duct tape fix lasted all month! It even rained 2 or 3 times in there! Surprised the heck out of me, I have now a larger respect for the Gray Roll of Tape God:)
Use all have to recognise the difference between buying a subscription and a tangible product. With the subscription you have fun for that year or whatever and then thats it, games over. Buying a game for $40 gives you the pleasure of playing that game... forever. And don't give me crap about once you beat the game the fun's over, if you are selective the fun never stops. Good examples of old games still very playable would be Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, Diablo2, and others.
Heck, Diablo 1 is still a great game to pop on a zip disc to play on a Uni computer when all you have is a spare second, just install it on the zip, crack it and truck it around:). As a final point I just reinstalled X-Wing after like a year of not playing it. (This time I will beat it!)
Paying $40-$50 on a great game is not a problem when you know you will be enjoying it for years to come. Paying $24 to read reviews that you can read elsewhere? Unless you have a great income, and personally love Gamespot, I would say the answer is a hearty NO.
Slashdot Mirror
Terms and Conditions,
Paypal's are pretty draconian.
"All your money is belong to US!"
They will just have to have a very anti-cheating policy.
That and if it is a least reasonably popular, it will make a whole lot of money, and they will be able to hire alot of coders to stay ahead of the cheaters.
Blizzard, Everquest, and games of that type are at a disadvantage because they only get like $10 a month from their subscribers, MtG subscribers will pay much more as they pay $3 dollars per pack of cards. Adding the fact that the cards can be redeemed for real cards will really draw the MtG fans as well.
As long as WotC pumps a good portion of the revenue into coders to fend off the cheaters, I don't think that they will have much problem. Bandwidth wise WotC is looking at a much more attractive position then the MMORPG's as the ping times won't have to be nearly so low to have a good game.
So lets add up the points shall we?
1. Less Bandwidth required (Less cost)
2. Higher Subscriber Revenues (More revenue)
3. Tangible product extremely cheap to produce
= a large amount of profit to pay coders
Sure their will be bugs, I wouldn't recommend trading with people in the first 2 weeks, for example. But I believe that it won't be nearly as much of a problem as this article's author seems to believe.
lol, I apologise, Mr. English teacher... :) I was in the wrong.
You are wasting the companies bandwidth by d/l them from home.
Why not just reburn a couple of them and bring them in? CD's are only 10 to 20 cents right now. And it would be much nicer to the company network traffic.
IT workers say the same thing--that the songs are already out of the proverbial jewel box. Like universities, companies may have to learn to live with a certain amount of media on their networks.
For any but the biggest networks this is easy to stop. Institute a policy of NO filesharing programs and NO unauthorised MP3's and Movies's. Do random checks of company computers at night. If contraband is found write them up, and tell them that if found again, they will be fired. Check that employee's machine again after 2 weeks, and one month later. If they resumed doing it, they are an idiot and should be canned. I would imagine after the first employee got canned, this practice would have a tremendous effect. This isn't that hard of a problem to solve.
You are dealing with a limited environment, in which you have physical access to all the machines involved. Every company should do it, if only to save money on bandwidth.
Secondly, biometric equipment is still too expensive to put into use for lower level employees.
And nobody thought lots of web camera's put everywhere would be a problem either. But guess what, they are hella cheap now......
joining the rest of the Western world in becoming a capitalist country.
What makes you think we are capitalist? In many ways our country is becoming Canada, and you know what, nobody seems to care. Our government has a wealth of socalist programs in force. You know that Huge new Farm bill? Very socalist. Social Security? Income Tax?
Before WW II we didn't need Income tax and we had a ok army ta boot. What changed? We decided as a country that we started to like big government. Its a shame really.
How would they get your retina on file? Hrmm, prolly let you show your drivers license and then scan your eye, and this would somehow stop a terriorist that had a fake Driver's license?
Some higher-up saw minority report and said to himself "Oh cool, retina scans look like a good idea...."
I for one agree that the greenback has a tremendously strong brand identity arond the world. Pick 20 countries at random and show people on the street a dollar, a euro, a pound, and a yen and see which one of those currencies gets recognised more then any other. My money's on the dollar.
Changing the US currency's color is a change so radical, it would be like Coke deciding to change the color of its 2-Liters Blue, 24-packs Green, 1-Liters Purple, and leaving the cans red.
Would it help out tourists? Of course it would. But last time I checked, foreign investors spend a hell of a lot more money then a german family that comes to see the statue of liberty for a week.
I'm so happy I've soiled myself.
That's what I call "to much information".
If it's a "lame little group of maps" I seriously doubt that it would be offered anywhere for money.
If, however, it is a packaged campaign that he used all his own textures, ideas, and insights on, then I would say who are you to take away his right to sell his work for a profit? He isn't selling your game, simple an addition to your game. And if it is a quality piece of work, it can only help the sales of your game, as it requires your game to run! As long as he isn't stealing your textures or ideas to sell his game, how can you say that you had a hand in his work?
Publishers print "unauthorised game guides" all the time I don't see how this would be any different.
Only in the software business does this perverse atitude exist.
;) )
Modifing an existing product and selling the modification is a true american princepal.
Examples:
You buy a new car and figure out a way to increase its horsepower with $20 dollars worth of parts, and procede to sell the modification kits on ebay for $30 dollars. Not only is this very very legal, it is also quite widespread (car fanatics are everywhere
You buy a portable gaming system that for reasons totally unknown has no backlight, and design one and sell it on your own website. Huh, never heard of this one, huh?
Wake up, no matter what some silly EULA says, aftermarket modifications that you spend your time on are yours. If you spend 80 hours on a modification, and its completly your own work, no judge would let a company steal those rights from you because of some contract you did not sign before the sale. If you sign a contract before the sale, now, thats entirely different.
6. Revocation of Rights. Infogrames and/or BioWare may at any time and in their sole discretion revoke your right to make your Variations publicly available (whether you are Distributing or Serving), provided that Infogrames and/or BioWare shall not revoke your right to Distribute a Variation if Infogrames and/or BioWare is, at the time of such revocation, using or distributing such Variation.
:)
So they actually put in their EULA that if they sell a expansion pack with your mod in it, they won't take away your distribution rights of said mod just to bump their profits.
Well the article says that right now he is still getting his brain used to the input from the camera and is only having the camera on for one hour of the day.
;)
So I suppose turning it on and off is not a problem.
Come on, give credit where credit's due.
The Step 1,2,3 joke is from a Southpark episode. Specifically, "The Underpants Gnomes".
The original joke was that the gnnomes buisness method was:
Step 1: Steal Underpants
Step 2: ??? (None of the gnomes could remember)
Step 3: Profit!!
Sure they still have a case, and I'll tell you why...
1. The warning is on the back of the CD, in small print, and very sparse with its information.
2. The recording industry has incouraged the retailers to intermengle these CD's with regular CD's, confusing cosumers in the process.
3. But most importantly, computer CD-ROM drives aren't the only thing these things don't work with. High-end CD players, DVD-players, MP3 CD Players all advertise the fact that they play CD's. The recording industry says on the label "This disc is not intended for use in computer CD-ROM drives" , which misleads the consumer into thinking that it might work in their DVD-Player and such.
These are the reasons the recording industry will lose.
This case is simple and I'm glad a huge law firm finally saw the opening to cause the RIAA and assc. companies some major pain.
Deal with facts people, this case is not going to deal with Fair-Use Rights. This case will likely be based on the simply premise that the recording companies are mislabeling the things they sell and furthurmore being secretive about it from the public.
Copy-Crippled PCC's (Polycarbonate Coated Circles.. note I didn't call them CD's) are not CD's, they will not work in a large array of CD capable player devices, and might actually harm some of those devices. This case will likely set out to prove that the Recording Industry did not make a good faith effort to explain the limitations and possible dangers of their product, which misleadingly looks like all of their older, but different products. The RIAA will likely loose this lawsuit. All that remains to be seen is how much the law firm makes them pay.
Somedays I wish this country wasn't so litigious in nature, but others I figure out that its the only thing holding back huge mega-corporations from totally screwing us.
That may have been the reason on record but it really isn't what they were thinking. The real reason they had that instituted was because they knew, same as now, that 90% of the public really has no idea who they are voting for. Most just vote down party lines, or on who "impresses them more on TV". Very few do the work required to actually vote knowing the candidates' track records on the issues. This combined with the fact that news traveled at the pace of a horse's gallop and thus it was hard to get everybody on the same page, was the real reason for the electoral college.
;) ) knows that that relationship has since flip flopped. If there is a war in Delaware on the coast am I going to dodge the draft so I can defend my home, Ohio? No, of course not, but thats what everybodys thinking was back then.
That argument you used about the larger states overpowering the smaller ones is about 100 years old and is not valid in the now. Back then people had an enormous amount of pride in their individual states and very little in the country. Anybody with eyes (who doesn't live in SC
You are incorrect sir. Blockbuster does have an agreement for profit sharing in place for VHS tapes, but no such agreement exists for DVD's. As far as DVD's go they are exactly like you and me. They buy them, (or "rent" large quantities from distributors) and then use their "first-sale" doctrine rights to rent them. Legally you are allowed to rent movies you buy. If you have a large movie collection, you don't need to get "distribution" rights to the DVD's to rent them out. Ask any owner of a Blockbuster if you really want to know the whole story.
Ideally this is good. Wiretaps are a needed part of law-enforcement. You have evidence against a suspect, you go to a judge, show him the evidence and he makes a informed decison on the matter. Wiretaps, traditionally, were pretty hard to get.
The part where this breaks down is the recent Patriot act (damn I hate calling it that), where a FBI agent hands a judge a list of 5,000 names and says "I think that these people might be terrorists, gimme a wiretap."
"Do you have any evidence Mr. FBI agent?"
"What do you care Mr. Judge? US law says you have to let me spy on these people, even if I don't have any tangible evidence. Just don't mind my wife's name hidden in the list."
"Ok, here's your signature." (Thinking to himself: Man I wish my job was more than fulfilling the function of a rubber stamp.)
Without the aforementioned act, this would be semi-good news. With that act, more peoples privacy will now likely be senselessly violated. Oh, well.
Exactly no one will be paying less, once the new rates are introduced, the rate you are paying now will become the "Value" option. If you think the cable/phone companies will lower rates once the higher rates take effect you are deluding yourself.
Just think about it, so many more billions of dollars are pouring into R&D for IDE drives for one simple reason, its a much larger market. Now I don't know if SCSI is out of the race yet, but you must accept that for the last couple years, for the first time ver, the race is actually close.
:).
SCSI is a limited use technology, its expensive and not many usual computers use it. Eventually, I think IDE will outpace it. Especially since motherboard manufactures now see the goodness in putting at least 4 channels of IDE on-board
Just give me a new shiny optimus prime to buy. Not a new version mind you, just one that doesn't look like it's been played with for 20 years.
:)
I would buy it
I seriously can't remember having a good tech support experience. A tree fell on my phone line once, and they said (Ameritech) they couldn't come out to fix it for a week (this is after I was on hold for almost an hour). Ouch. Being Pissed of I did what any nerd would do, I claimed up the poll, got out some duct tape, taped the wire to the poll again (lots of tape) and spliced the wires back together. This little home remedy caused me nothing but trouble in the end though.
:)
The tech guy came out in a week, tested the line, saw that it was ok, and left. I never saw him. Too bad he didn't see the tree that was still on the ground, or the fact that the pole (wooden) had a large amount of duct tape on it. Maybe thats how they fix things sometimes, *shrug*. So anyway long story short, I had to call them a multitude of times more, in the end 4 different guys came out all doin the same thing execpt the last because I camped out waiting for him. I gave him the story, he laughed, I sighed, and he fixed the line the right way.
Oh and I told the person on the other side how I fixed it every time, to let them know why I was complaining about a line that was down that was somehow calling them. One of them actually told me that I should rip down my home-fix and wait a week for them to come out and fix it. Sigh.
In the end it took about a month for Ameritech to fix my line. If you thought waits like that only happen in third world countries, think again.
P.S. The duct tape fix lasted all month! It even rained 2 or 3 times in there! Surprised the heck out of me, I have now a larger respect for the Gray Roll of Tape God
Use all have to recognise the difference between buying a subscription and a tangible product. With the subscription you have fun for that year or whatever and then thats it, games over. Buying a game for $40 gives you the pleasure of playing that game ... forever. And don't give me crap about once you beat the game the fun's over, if you are selective the fun never stops. Good examples of old games still very playable would be Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, Diablo2, and others.
:). As a final point I just reinstalled X-Wing after like a year of not playing it. (This time I will beat it!)
Heck, Diablo 1 is still a great game to pop on a zip disc to play on a Uni computer when all you have is a spare second, just install it on the zip, crack it and truck it around
Paying $40-$50 on a great game is not a problem when you know you will be enjoying it for years to come. Paying $24 to read reviews that you can read elsewhere? Unless you have a great income, and personally love Gamespot, I would say the answer is a hearty NO.