If a company like say, Nintendo, isn't losing money on any systems and isn't losing money on games... Its hard to imagine how they'd be eventually forced out in a 'war of attrition'.
Now, if/when they start losing money it becomes a point. Until then keep enjoying MS paying you to take their Xbox.:)
There was an article a few weeks ago about how Microsoft can't find 8GB harddrives anymore and has to pack in larger drives. This is why they can't get the cost of the Xbox down over time and is also why they're looking at not including a harddrive for the Xbox 2.
This is because the harddrive industry increases size instead of lowering prices. Quite workable for the pc industry but not very good for the console industry, especially since the Xbox is designed around 'only' having 8GB available. Larger drives are just formatted to have 8GB available.
Please don't assume that just because Microsoft has taken the loss-leader approach that other game companies are as well....at least, not without citing proof. Thanks.
If you think the university isn't charging the students for the bandwidth they're being denied, think again. Have you seen those extra fees they're tacking on lately?
Regardless, my point was that you can discourage network abuse without stepping in and acting like a copyright vigilante. To illustrate this point further, here is an exaggerated example designed to draw ire: Do the universities hire people to walk around with baseball bats and beat rapists? No. Why? Because they would get in trouble for taking the law into their own hands.
Why would you want to premptively take on responsibility for a user? That goes against every point you just made. Its the job of the government to enforce laws, not yours.
If the university is going to targetted either way, why not adopt a policy that punishes the abusive users and gives you at least some ability to say 'We didn't know it was going on, but by golly we're gunna help you git these varmints!'. In the eyes of the law you're being very helpful and you're assuming none of the responsibility of the user. Let him go down on his own.
And on the topic of taxpayer dollars I'd suggest that they shouldn't be used to pay for the connection in the first place regardless of use, but... chances are it's just another hidden fee tacked onto the tuition for whatever shithole you've decided deserves your scorn. Worry not, brave citizen! Those dollars have been safely spent on the war on terror!
Speaking of lawsuits, are you sure you're not opening yourself up to liability by acting as an enforcer on the network? If a piece of copyrighted material slips by and the student gets caught, do you find yourself caught as well because you were watching and didn't stop it? Anything you do not specifically disallow could imply you allow it.
Perhaps a better solution would be to take the approach many broadband providers are using. Set a maximum percentage of the bandwidth any one user can abuse, say 10%. If this user hits this limit for over an hour, throttle the user back to a much slower speed for an hour. That gives the user time to burst and grab any large amount of needed data, lets them use games/email while they're throttled and stops excessive abuse of the network.
This way you can remain blissfully ignorant of any specific data being transfered and can point any lawsuits in the user's direction as needed.
You hit upon an important point, people who are casual players can look at cheating as a way of levelling the playing field. This is often overlooked in the knee-jerk reaction of 'CHEATING BAD!' we see so often.
For about a year I ran a Counterstrike server. My brother bought me a copy so I'd run it for him but I ended up getting hooked on it for a while. I saw my fair share of cheaters but I took a relaxed approach to it - if the player wasn't ruining the game for other people I let it slide. It added a challenge from an otherwise uninteresting opponent. On the other hand, if the cheater was putting the beats on everyone else I told him/her to knock it off but usually had to ban the player outright.
It took a few months of pruning out the griefing cheaters but eventually the server produced a regular group of good players, either by skill alone or augmented by a cheating program. Some of the cheating players even dropped the cheats as their skills grew. We had a lot of fun...
Sure, Quake 3 has a technically better engine. The problem I had with it was it offered nothing over Quake 2 in terms of gameplay. So, I looked around and found Unreal Tournament was a bucket of fun. I've looked back a couple of times since but I can't say I've missed anything by making the switch.
I even bought the Quake 3 teamplay addon and it still failed to grab me. Oh well...
BTW, I like how you threw in a little ego-building mention of your skills. I'm sure they're quite big and manly but I'm not interested. Thanks for the offer, though.
One could say that they were hired because they were able to show their ability. In fact, one could further say that was the purpose of doing stuff like this in the first place... Hmmm!
I'd say the true evil to watch out for is companies like EA. They tend to dump a bunch of money into a small company to produce a game. If the small company succeeds, EA moves in and absorbs the talent. If they fail, EA removes funding and they die off unable to sustain the staff they hired on to finish the EA game in the first place.
A great way to absorb all the good, and sue the bad for wasting their investment cash. In the end all we'll have is incremental sports game releases, Sims expansions, and the latest in boring-ass console FPS crap. Is it any wonder emulation is so popular now?
Sound can't exist in space because there isn't enough matter to carry the sound wave. The medium just isn't dense enough. However, it would be plenty dense at the big bang.
Also, a waveform diagram wouldn't have had the same news impact. People like science they can understand. This is very cool.:)
By looking at your Xbox list one could conclude that you enjoy rehashes and more of the same. Are you trying to say you're looking forward to the Gamecube lineup this year? Or are you putting it down?
1) Obviously these 3rd party clients are offering something that Yahoo/MS does not. Why not up the quality of the 1st party clients and attract people to use them? Get those advertising bucks!
2) The more people that use a IM network, the more use it is to everyone using it. If all your friends use AIM, you're going to use AIM. Chances are this will mean some of you will run the 1st party client. There's the benefit of letting people 'steal' your bandwidth.
Except that when you open a new steam account for the monthly fee, that $9.95 is all you need to start fresh. The idea is that you DO NOT have to buy a $50 box to play their games if you want to pay monthly.
Slashdot Mirror
If a company like say, Nintendo, isn't losing money on any systems and isn't losing money on games... Its hard to imagine how they'd be eventually forced out in a 'war of attrition'.
:)
Now, if/when they start losing money it becomes a point. Until then keep enjoying MS paying you to take their Xbox.
There was an article a few weeks ago about how Microsoft can't find 8GB harddrives anymore and has to pack in larger drives. This is why they can't get the cost of the Xbox down over time and is also why they're looking at not including a harddrive for the Xbox 2.
This is because the harddrive industry increases size instead of lowering prices. Quite workable for the pc industry but not very good for the console industry, especially since the Xbox is designed around 'only' having 8GB available. Larger drives are just formatted to have 8GB available.
Please don't assume that just because Microsoft has taken the loss-leader approach that other game companies are as well. ...at least, not without citing proof. Thanks.
The role of a publisher is to publish - not create.
This is non-news.
If a client has clients, what happens then?
If you think the university isn't charging the students for the bandwidth they're being denied, think again. Have you seen those extra fees they're tacking on lately?
Regardless, my point was that you can discourage network abuse without stepping in and acting like a copyright vigilante. To illustrate this point further, here is an exaggerated example designed to draw ire: Do the universities hire people to walk around with baseball bats and beat rapists? No. Why? Because they would get in trouble for taking the law into their own hands.
Get it?
Why would you want to premptively take on responsibility for a user? That goes against every point you just made. Its the job of the government to enforce laws, not yours.
If the university is going to targetted either way, why not adopt a policy that punishes the abusive users and gives you at least some ability to say 'We didn't know it was going on, but by golly we're gunna help you git these varmints!'. In the eyes of the law you're being very helpful and you're assuming none of the responsibility of the user. Let him go down on his own.
And on the topic of taxpayer dollars I'd suggest that they shouldn't be used to pay for the connection in the first place regardless of use, but... chances are it's just another hidden fee tacked onto the tuition for whatever shithole you've decided deserves your scorn. Worry not, brave citizen! Those dollars have been safely spent on the war on terror!
Speaking of lawsuits, are you sure you're not opening yourself up to liability by acting as an enforcer on the network? If a piece of copyrighted material slips by and the student gets caught, do you find yourself caught as well because you were watching and didn't stop it? Anything you do not specifically disallow could imply you allow it.
Perhaps a better solution would be to take the approach many broadband providers are using. Set a maximum percentage of the bandwidth any one user can abuse, say 10%. If this user hits this limit for over an hour, throttle the user back to a much slower speed for an hour. That gives the user time to burst and grab any large amount of needed data, lets them use games/email while they're throttled and stops excessive abuse of the network.
This way you can remain blissfully ignorant of any specific data being transfered and can point any lawsuits in the user's direction as needed.
You hit upon an important point, people who are casual players can look at cheating as a way of levelling the playing field. This is often overlooked in the knee-jerk reaction of 'CHEATING BAD!' we see so often.
For about a year I ran a Counterstrike server. My brother bought me a copy so I'd run it for him but I ended up getting hooked on it for a while. I saw my fair share of cheaters but I took a relaxed approach to it - if the player wasn't ruining the game for other people I let it slide. It added a challenge from an otherwise uninteresting opponent. On the other hand, if the cheater was putting the beats on everyone else I told him/her to knock it off but usually had to ban the player outright.
It took a few months of pruning out the griefing cheaters but eventually the server produced a regular group of good players, either by skill alone or augmented by a cheating program. Some of the cheating players even dropped the cheats as their skills grew. We had a lot of fun...
No, but then they released quality hardware with fun games with very little hype. Dropped in our laps like a fun, new toy... so sneaky.
It also helped that the only competition at the time was a disappointing Sega Saturn. By the time they got their act together it was too late.
You realize there's no actual 3d hardware in the ngage, right? That's all software rendering.
Sure, Quake 3 has a technically better engine. The problem I had with it was it offered nothing over Quake 2 in terms of gameplay. So, I looked around and found Unreal Tournament was a bucket of fun. I've looked back a couple of times since but I can't say I've missed anything by making the switch.
I even bought the Quake 3 teamplay addon and it still failed to grab me. Oh well...
BTW, I like how you threw in a little ego-building mention of your skills. I'm sure they're quite big and manly but I'm not interested. Thanks for the offer, though.
Quake? Doom? Weren't those ancient games people played before Unreal Tournament came out?
> Something ain't right about that.
The fact that you still do business with them?
One could say that they were hired because they were able to show their ability. In fact, one could further say that was the purpose of doing stuff like this in the first place... Hmmm!
*insert comment about the state of games since the playstation came out*
I'd say the true evil to watch out for is companies like EA. They tend to dump a bunch of money into a small company to produce a game. If the small company succeeds, EA moves in and absorbs the talent. If they fail, EA removes funding and they die off unable to sustain the staff they hired on to finish the EA game in the first place.
A great way to absorb all the good, and sue the bad for wasting their investment cash. In the end all we'll have is incremental sports game releases, Sims expansions, and the latest in boring-ass console FPS crap. Is it any wonder emulation is so popular now?
a) After a small bit of google searching, I can't seem to find what DVI-B is. Perhaps the B stands for Belkin?
b) Although unsupported, most monitors and videocards do support higher resolutions. However, there is still no standard for this.
c) A loose internal connection perhaps? At the very least, why haven't you returned this product already?
DVI only officially supports up to 1024x768.
It sounds to me that he doesn't want free access. He wants to pay. This kind of person is more valuable than those who just look past the ad.
Someone sell him something! Quick!
Sound can't exist in space because there isn't enough matter to carry the sound wave. The medium just isn't dense enough. However, it would be plenty dense at the big bang.
:)
Also, a waveform diagram wouldn't have had the same news impact. People like science they can understand. This is very cool.
By looking at your Xbox list one could conclude that you enjoy rehashes and more of the same. Are you trying to say you're looking forward to the Gamecube lineup this year? Or are you putting it down?
I just can't tell, sir.
Xbox Xmas List:
1) A FPS with guns.
2) Another FPS with guns.
3) A flying FPS! (such variety!)
4) A FPS RPG set in the future.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
It sounds like this guy doesn't like MMORPGs. Why does he keep playing them?
'Doctor! It hurts when I do this!'
'Well don't do that.'
Sheesh. Play something else.
Two points...
1) Obviously these 3rd party clients are offering something that Yahoo/MS does not. Why not up the quality of the 1st party clients and attract people to use them? Get those advertising bucks!
2) The more people that use a IM network, the more use it is to everyone using it. If all your friends use AIM, you're going to use AIM. Chances are this will mean some of you will run the 1st party client. There's the benefit of letting people 'steal' your bandwidth.
Except that when you open a new steam account for the monthly fee, that $9.95 is all you need to start fresh. The idea is that you DO NOT have to buy a $50 box to play their games if you want to pay monthly.