dbIII is uninformed and spouting FUD. I mean, jeez, look at his rant on keeping things in 'geosynchronous low orbit'? Or where he says that the only parts of the cable in free fall are the endpoints?
dbIII clearly doesn't understand the theory that a space elevator is based on, or basic orbital physics for that matter...
You might be convinced that a reactor can withstand a 747 hitting it, but they reckoned the twin towers would cope too didnt they?
Nope, the WTC towers were only engineered to specs expected to withstand the impact of a 707, the largest airplane in widespread use at the time they were designed.
Also, it's much easier to build something impact-proof that isn't 1000 feet tall. The Empire State building withstood a B-25 bomber crash in 1945 without serious structural damage-- planes are inherently a lot more fragile than buildings.
Jupiter is the name of the lander......the actual landing site is in my backyard, and I assure you, it is indeed rocky. Noisy and tough on the garden, too.
I don't see any way to create an account yet.
on
Gmail Goes Public
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
2. How do I sign up? When can I get a Gmail account?
We're currently only offering Gmail as part of a preview release and limited test. We don't have details on when Gmail will be made more widely available, as that depends in part on the results of the test.
Uh. Without a way to create public accounts, this is just another form of beta. Looking on the main gmail page, it sure looks like there's no way to create an account for someone who doesn't have a google account yet.
Beta? Yes. Public? About as much as it was before.
On the other side, I've got about 50 invites left.
The patch for Bloodlines solved all of the major issues, I played through the entire game with no problems. Blame their publisher (Activision) for pushing the game out two months before it was ready.
Vampire: Bloodlines was one of the more innovative, immersive, and overall excellent games I have played in the last couple years. Definitely one of the best RPGs.
It's an impressive achievement to make a game where you actually care about what happens. I hope others follow their example.
I recommend Vampire: Bloodlines to anyone with even a passing interest in RPGs, vampires, or intrigue.
It's not like EA created the best selling game of all time, The Sims
Actually, it's nothing like that at all. Maxis was the developer of The Sims, EA was just the publisher. In fact, few of the original titles in the series you named were actually developed in-house at EA, as you might know if you had even rudimentary knowledge about how the game biz works nowadays. Here's a quick listing of some quality games and their original developers:
The Sims - Maxis (Purchased by EA during Sims development, project almost cancelled) Goldeneye - Rare (Now owned by Microsoft) Need For Speed - Black Box (Purchased by EA, 2002) Burnout - Criterion (Purchased by EA, 2004)
EA doesn't create. EA buys, strip-mines, and casts aside. They're significantly worse than Microsoft on almost any scale-- demonize Microsoft's monopolistic tactics if you will, but at least M$ still creates innovative products and don't treat their employees like shit. Compare that to EA-- worst working conditions in the gaming biz, and they do things like acquire exclusive rights to produce games from the NFL.
If you like good games, you should hate EA. They're the worst of the worst, a solely short-term-profit motivated corporation with no vision, integrity or class. EA is dedicated to mediocrity, and that's all there is to it.
That's the reason why I'm still a fan of Valve's Steam Content Distribution idea, despite all of the short-sighted bitching about minor issues that I see right here on Slashdot. The best way to ensure good games is to cut out out the middlemen and nuke the overhead, because the biggest obstacle to the release of quality games right now is the publisher. Reliable pay-to-play online distribution does just that.
I can't believe nobody has said this yet, but the absolute FIRST thing you should do if your system is running over-hot is check the airflow and direction of all of your fans.
Most ATX cases like to have a fan blowing in the front, and other fans blowing out the back, check your case documentation. If one of your fans isn't working well, or is actually facing the wrong way, the entire airflow scheme goes straight to hell. I've seen this happen several times, but now that cooling is so critical incorrect fan placement is often a show-stopper.
Today's story? My buddy builds a new system with a new P4 3.4HT. It exhibits classic signs of overheating-- the fan sounds like a 747 taking off all the time, odd beeping, memory errors, and when his brother who actually built it for him runs 3DMark, it scores something like 40% of what it should have on CPU. Everest says it's running at >80C. Much freaking out is done, and they order a hardcore Thermaltake fan to replace the standard/weak one that came bundled with the processor. That comes, and it helps somewhat, so the processor isn't stepping itself down to non-melting temperatures, hanging at 65-70C full-performance. Memory errors still a bit of an issue.
So I come over to look at it. Dumbass neighbor (Best Buy Geek Squad employee/Frat Boy) had put the front fan on facing backward while assisting with the assembly, so the front 80mm case fan was blowing OUT of the case.
I unscrewed the fan, flipped it around, and two minutes later the computer was playing Far Cry and humming along at 40C, by far the quietest computer in the room.
Moral of the story? If you have a misplaced or broken fan, your cooling power drops massively. It pays to actually look at your case documentation now. Oh, and buy Antec.
I have this vision of an infinite number of Roombas and an infinite number of word processors... and something about the complete, unabridged works of Shakespeare....written in clean spots on the world's largest rug, which should in turn not be confused with William Shatner's hairpiece.
This is on-topic, really! The hairpiece also displays emergent behavior!
Valve released a patch to remove the CD check about six weeks after the release. It was conveniently distributed via Steam, and reached the entire userbase the next time they played.
I can play HL2 on any computer I want. All I need to do is login on steam, and voila.
that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere
Negative. Satellite bandwidth is several orders of magnitude more expensive than wired bandwidth. Unless you're communicating with someone in an exceptionally remote area where satellite transmission is the only means of communication with the outside world-- Antarctica, other isolated research stations, ships more than 50km offshore, or *extremely* remote areas in 3rd world countries... well, you're talking over wires and fiber.
That said, pingtime to LEO isn't bad at all. Unfortunately, pingtime to higher orbits gets progressively worse... geosynch is more than a sixth of a light second out from Earth, and it makes sense to have communications satellites up at GEO because they don't move and avoid a lot of the space-junk in the crowded lower orbits.
Here are some rough estimates of what a satellite hop would add to your pingtimes.
Digital LEO satellite relay: +20ms Analog LEO satellite relay: +80ms Digital GEO satellite relay: +380ms Analog GEO satellite relay: +440ms
This particular field in the computing industry simply doesn't move at the same pace as other system components
Given that statement, I'm not sure I'd trust what the article defines as 'newsworthy'. Hard disk performance, cost, and capacity have been advancing significantly faster than any other major system component over the last 10 years, with the possible exception of consumer-level video cards.
Sure, people blather on about "Moore's Law" and 18-month doubling times for computing power. Very few people realize that magnetic drive performance has been advancing faster than that.
The sense of security coming from using a non-publicly-available product that is still in beta? Where the banner "Gmail by Google - Beta" is displayed at the top left of every page loaded? Where the 'Security' section of the user agreement is:
Security
You must promptly notify Google of any breach of security related to the Services, including but not limited to unauthorized use of your password or account. To help ensure the security of your password or account, please sign out from your account at the end of each session.
Oh yes, Google is certainly lulling us into a false sense of security.
MMORPG. It's of a contradiction in terms, because under the current paradigm, increasing the scope of a MMO game reduces the amount of game that is actually available to any given player. For several years I've watched new MMO releases with anticipation, hoping that someone will find a way to break the flawed mold. It hasn't happened, and I've given up hope that it will happen in the near future. Creating real game content in the current MMO paradigm just isn't cost-effective.
Give me a real RPG anytime, with actual story and some way to empathize with the characters in a meaningful way. A game where your decisions have some tangible effect other than "Ooh, this sword gives me +3 damage". The only recent RPG I've played that is worthy of the name is Vampire: Bloodlines, IMO one of the best games of 2004.
Powerleveling? Treadmills? My god, people! Those terms should not be complementary to anything pretending to be a real game. The only thing that current MMO games have going for them is social interaction, and even in that respect they fall somewhere under the quality of IRC.
How do I know this? My roommates play World of Warcraft. One of them has been playing since the release, and has levelled to the high forties. My other roommate just bought it. What do I hear when they're playing at the same time? "Goddamnit, this is so boring when you guys are all too high level to play with me!" Their screens look the same... usually a perspective of a couple orcs hacking at a large spider-like thing for a while until it dies. It's not a game, it's a screensaver with slightly complicated clicking patterns!
Get off the MMORPG treadmill. Buy some of the incredibly good single-player games that have recently been released, like Half-Life 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Rome: Total War if you're a strategy fan. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games.
The MMO genre is only a few years old, is based on incremental improvements, and has longer development cycles than conventional design. Worse, evolutionary considerations for MMO games favor the least common denominator of complexity and involvement. It should come as no surprise that they still suck, even though I keep hoping otherwise.
I'd say that's by far the most sensational article I could find on the subject, and the exaggeration in that article is exceeded only by the 'devastation reeked' by the author's command of grammar.
Even a non-technical journalist should be expected to do better than reporting outcomes involving waves several times higher than the worst-case scenario considered in the relevant research.
Admittedly, the prospect of the worst-case 20m tsunami hitting most of the East Coast is rather fearsome, but it also relies on a currently-inactive volcano triggering a ~500 cubic kilometer landslide.
The estimate of the potential size of the landslide is based on very limited information. I'd say they're trolling for grant money, and it's certainly not something that most people should be worried about at this point.
Also, I'm a firm believer that something is "worth" whatever you can sell it for. And you can't sell a manufactured diamond for anything close to the price of a natural diamond, given similar color, cut, clarity, and carat weight.
Of course, you couldn't sell your natural diamond for $6500 either. Appraised, yes. Actually sold, probably not more than $1200.
I suppose with a natural diamond you get the additional benefit of the blood money and terror that their production funds, but the value of human life is entirely subjective...
It actually popped up on mine despite the google toolbar after a hundred or so tries. Either that, or it happened while I was typing in another window and hit some hotkey to allow popups.
I think the grandparent just might be talking about guns colloquially. You know, biceps. So a mugger with small guns is less dangerous than a mugger with big guns, unless the first mugger knows karate....or not. If only he had posted more clearly!
Innocent people are still vulnerable to harassment, intimidation, and coercion from agents acting on behalf of the government.
When the watchers are the only ones with access to the results of a given surveillance technology, nobody can watch the watchers to see whether they're abusing it.
And if you're doing nothing illegal, the police and/or government won't care either, and they'll keep on listening for others.
Unfortunately, the police and/or government are also responsible for defining which activities are illegal, and are increasingly oriented toward keeping their own actions secret in the name of 'security'. There is quite literally no public accountability for much of the security apparatus closing into place right before our eyes, and when even a congresswoman is unable to obtain the federal regulations authorizing someone to search them, something is really fucking wrong.
Additionally, individual members of the police and/or government are uniquely vulnerable to corruption, hiding their betrayal behind the shield of 'security' and 'need to know'.
The tired old 'Law-abiding people have nothing to hide' argument needs to roll over and die already. The only workable safeguard against government hypersurveillance is ensuring that the system is constructed in a completely transparent and publicly-accountable manner.
Ahh, an advocate for paying CEO's $10M a year. What about the ones who run their companies into the ground? Or the ones who screw the shareholders? Or the ones who like to dump toxic waste in vacant lots in the night?
There isn't any market mechanism for reducing the pay of bad CEOs. There usually isn't even any mechanism for firing them. Why? Because they're not in it for the long-term good of the company, they're in it for the short-term profit forecasts. That's a good way to put all of the employees out of work, all right.
EA knows how to do something right.
Yeah. EA knows how to buy licenses at cut-rate prices, strip-mine them to create cookie-cutter games, and market the hell out of them so an ill-informed consumer culture will eat them up.
I'd have to say that your strategy makes excellent sense from a long-term perspective, depending on waves of incoming employees with no idea what's going on, and as long as consumers will buy incrementally-roster-changed cookie-cutter sports games.
So, about until another company makes better games, puts them out, and kills EA. Take a look at the history of the gaming industry, and you'll see that this business model tends to last about five years before collapsing. I'd say EA is about at the top of its arc... and it's going to pull an Atari pretty damn soon.
maybe reducing EA's profit will drive away stockholders, ultimately reducing EA's capacity to pay workers
Uh... 'drive away stockholders'? Are you insane? Companies pay royalties to their stockholders, not the other way around. The only people that a low stock price impacts are:
1. Stock owners 2. Pressured executives
nobody's business but those who own EA's how much workers get paid
I'd love to make games. I don't, because working in the industry isn't my thing. However, it is in my interest to ensure that other workers doing creative labor are adequately compensated for their labors, because if they aren't... other companies will take that as an example.
If you think it's acceptable to spend insane sums of money on marketing and executive compensation and then use 'profits' as an excuse to get stingy on actual product creation and development, you're out of your fucking mind.
Slashdot Mirror
How exactly did parent get flamebait?
dbIII is uninformed and spouting FUD. I mean, jeez, look at his rant on keeping things in 'geosynchronous low orbit'? Or where he says that the only parts of the cable in free fall are the endpoints?
dbIII clearly doesn't understand the theory that a space elevator is based on, or basic orbital physics for that matter...
You might be convinced that a reactor can withstand a 747 hitting it, but they reckoned the twin towers would cope too didnt they?
Nope, the WTC towers were only engineered to specs expected to withstand the impact of a 707, the largest airplane in widespread use at the time they were designed.
Also, it's much easier to build something impact-proof that isn't 1000 feet tall. The Empire State building withstood a B-25 bomber crash in 1945 without serious structural damage-- planes are inherently a lot more fragile than buildings.
Jupiter is the name of the lander... ...the actual landing site is in my backyard, and I assure you, it is indeed rocky. Noisy and tough on the garden, too.
2. How do I sign up? When can I get a Gmail account?
We're currently only offering Gmail as part of a preview release and limited test. We don't have details on when Gmail will be made more widely available, as that depends in part on the results of the test.
Uh. Without a way to create public accounts, this is just another form of beta. Looking on the main gmail page, it sure looks like there's no way to create an account for someone who doesn't have a google account yet.
Beta? Yes. Public? About as much as it was before.
On the other side, I've got about 50 invites left.
The patch for Bloodlines solved all of the major issues, I played through the entire game with no problems. Blame their publisher (Activision) for pushing the game out two months before it was ready.
Vampire: Bloodlines was one of the more innovative, immersive, and overall excellent games I have played in the last couple years. Definitely one of the best RPGs.
It's an impressive achievement to make a game where you actually care about what happens. I hope others follow their example.
I recommend Vampire: Bloodlines to anyone with even a passing interest in RPGs, vampires, or intrigue.
It's not like EA created the best selling game of all time, The Sims
Actually, it's nothing like that at all. Maxis was the developer of The Sims, EA was just the publisher. In fact, few of the original titles in the series you named were actually developed in-house at EA, as you might know if you had even rudimentary knowledge about how the game biz works nowadays. Here's a quick listing of some quality games and their original developers:
The Sims - Maxis (Purchased by EA during Sims development, project almost cancelled)
Goldeneye - Rare (Now owned by Microsoft)
Need For Speed - Black Box (Purchased by EA, 2002)
Burnout - Criterion (Purchased by EA, 2004)
EA doesn't create. EA buys, strip-mines, and casts aside. They're significantly worse than Microsoft on almost any scale-- demonize Microsoft's monopolistic tactics if you will, but at least M$ still creates innovative products and don't treat their employees like shit. Compare that to EA-- worst working conditions in the gaming biz, and they do things like acquire exclusive rights to produce games from the NFL.
If you like good games, you should hate EA. They're the worst of the worst, a solely short-term-profit motivated corporation with no vision, integrity or class. EA is dedicated to mediocrity, and that's all there is to it.
That's the reason why I'm still a fan of Valve's Steam Content Distribution idea, despite all of the short-sighted bitching about minor issues that I see right here on Slashdot. The best way to ensure good games is to cut out out the middlemen and nuke the overhead, because the biggest obstacle to the release of quality games right now is the publisher. Reliable pay-to-play online distribution does just that.
Biometrics can now tell if we had corned beef or roast beef for breakfast? Incredible.
How e-mail is killing the sales of postage stamps.
...recieving spam e-mail, free
...identity theft, $2574
...sending a parcel full of viagra via e-mail, priceless.
What? Is it priceless to send parcels full of viagra and other stuff avertiesed via email?
Oh, it's priceless alright...
I can't believe nobody has said this yet, but the absolute FIRST thing you should do if your system is running over-hot is check the airflow and direction of all of your fans.
Most ATX cases like to have a fan blowing in the front, and other fans blowing out the back, check your case documentation. If one of your fans isn't working well, or is actually facing the wrong way, the entire airflow scheme goes straight to hell. I've seen this happen several times, but now that cooling is so critical incorrect fan placement is often a show-stopper.
Today's story? My buddy builds a new system with a new P4 3.4HT. It exhibits classic signs of overheating-- the fan sounds like a 747 taking off all the time, odd beeping, memory errors, and when his brother who actually built it for him runs 3DMark, it scores something like 40% of what it should have on CPU. Everest says it's running at >80C. Much freaking out is done, and they order a hardcore Thermaltake fan to replace the standard/weak one that came bundled with the processor. That comes, and it helps somewhat, so the processor isn't stepping itself down to non-melting temperatures, hanging at 65-70C full-performance. Memory errors still a bit of an issue.
So I come over to look at it. Dumbass neighbor (Best Buy Geek Squad employee/Frat Boy) had put the front fan on facing backward while assisting with the assembly, so the front 80mm case fan was blowing OUT of the case.
I unscrewed the fan, flipped it around, and two minutes later the computer was playing Far Cry and humming along at 40C, by far the quietest computer in the room.
Moral of the story? If you have a misplaced or broken fan, your cooling power drops massively. It pays to actually look at your case documentation now. Oh, and buy Antec.
I have this vision of an infinite number of Roombas and an infinite number of word processors ... and something about the complete, unabridged works of Shakespeare. ...written in clean spots on the world's largest rug, which should in turn not be confused with William Shatner's hairpiece.
This is on-topic, really! The hairpiece also displays emergent behavior!
Valve released a patch to remove the CD check about six weeks after the release. It was conveniently distributed via Steam, and reached the entire userbase the next time they played.
I can play HL2 on any computer I want. All I need to do is login on steam, and voila.
that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere
Negative. Satellite bandwidth is several orders of magnitude more expensive than wired bandwidth. Unless you're communicating with someone in an exceptionally remote area where satellite transmission is the only means of communication with the outside world-- Antarctica, other isolated research stations, ships more than 50km offshore, or *extremely* remote areas in 3rd world countries... well, you're talking over wires and fiber.
That said, pingtime to LEO isn't bad at all. Unfortunately, pingtime to higher orbits gets progressively worse... geosynch is more than a sixth of a light second out from Earth, and it makes sense to have communications satellites up at GEO because they don't move and avoid a lot of the space-junk in the crowded lower orbits.
Here are some rough estimates of what a satellite hop would add to your pingtimes.
Digital LEO satellite relay: +20ms
Analog LEO satellite relay: +80ms
Digital GEO satellite relay: +380ms
Analog GEO satellite relay: +440ms
This particular field in the computing industry simply doesn't move at the same pace as other system components
Given that statement, I'm not sure I'd trust what the article defines as 'newsworthy'. Hard disk performance, cost, and capacity have been advancing significantly faster than any other major system component over the last 10 years, with the possible exception of consumer-level video cards.
Sure, people blather on about "Moore's Law" and 18-month doubling times for computing power. Very few people realize that magnetic drive performance has been advancing faster than that.
1980: 5MB HDD in doublesize, extreme cost.
1987: 40MB HDD
1995: 1GB HDD
2005: 500GB HDD
Doubling times:
1980-1987: ~21 months
1987-1995: ~20.6 months
1995-2005: 13.38 months
That's right. Hard drive capacity over the last 10 years has been doubled over an average time of less than 14 months.
Now that is impressive.
I'd prefer smart bullets, actually.
You know, the kind that aim themselves with little rocket thrusters and only hit unfriendlies, ideally several unfriendlies in a row.
Perhaps the proper term is 'small-caliber cruise missiles'
The sense of security coming from using a non-publicly-available product that is still in beta? Where the banner "Gmail by Google - Beta" is displayed at the top left of every page loaded? Where the 'Security' section of the user agreement is:
Security
You must promptly notify Google of any breach of security related to the Services, including but not limited to unauthorized use of your password or account. To help ensure the security of your password or account, please sign out from your account at the end of each session.
Oh yes, Google is certainly lulling us into a false sense of security.
MMORPG. It's of a contradiction in terms, because under the current paradigm, increasing the scope of a MMO game reduces the amount of game that is actually available to any given player. For several years I've watched new MMO releases with anticipation, hoping that someone will find a way to break the flawed mold. It hasn't happened, and I've given up hope that it will happen in the near future. Creating real game content in the current MMO paradigm just isn't cost-effective.
Give me a real RPG anytime, with actual story and some way to empathize with the characters in a meaningful way. A game where your decisions have some tangible effect other than "Ooh, this sword gives me +3 damage". The only recent RPG I've played that is worthy of the name is Vampire: Bloodlines, IMO one of the best games of 2004.
Powerleveling? Treadmills? My god, people! Those terms should not be complementary to anything pretending to be a real game. The only thing that current MMO games have going for them is social interaction, and even in that respect they fall somewhere under the quality of IRC.
How do I know this? My roommates play World of Warcraft. One of them has been playing since the release, and has levelled to the high forties. My other roommate just bought it. What do I hear when they're playing at the same time? "Goddamnit, this is so boring when you guys are all too high level to play with me!" Their screens look the same... usually a perspective of a couple orcs hacking at a large spider-like thing for a while until it dies. It's not a game, it's a screensaver with slightly complicated clicking patterns!
Get off the MMORPG treadmill. Buy some of the incredibly good single-player games that have recently been released, like Half-Life 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Rome: Total War if you're a strategy fan. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games.
The MMO genre is only a few years old, is based on incremental improvements, and has longer development cycles than conventional design. Worse, evolutionary considerations for MMO games favor the least common denominator of complexity and involvement. It should come as no surprise that they still suck, even though I keep hoping otherwise.
I'd say that's by far the most sensational article I could find on the subject, and the exaggeration in that article is exceeded only by the 'devastation reeked' by the author's command of grammar.
Even a non-technical journalist should be expected to do better than reporting outcomes involving waves several times higher than the worst-case scenario considered in the relevant research.
Admittedly, the prospect of the worst-case 20m tsunami hitting most of the East Coast is rather fearsome, but it also relies on a currently-inactive volcano triggering a ~500 cubic kilometer landslide.
The estimate of the potential size of the landslide is based on very limited information. I'd say they're trolling for grant money, and it's certainly not something that most people should be worried about at this point.
Also, I'm a firm believer that something is "worth" whatever you can sell it for. And you can't sell a manufactured diamond for anything close to the price of a natural diamond, given similar color, cut, clarity, and carat weight.
Of course, you couldn't sell your natural diamond for $6500 either. Appraised, yes. Actually sold, probably not more than $1200.
I suppose with a natural diamond you get the additional benefit of the blood money and terror that their production funds, but the value of human life is entirely subjective...
It actually popped up on mine despite the google toolbar after a hundred or so tries. Either that, or it happened while I was typing in another window and hit some hotkey to allow popups.
I think the grandparent just might be talking about guns colloquially. You know, biceps. So a mugger with small guns is less dangerous than a mugger with big guns, unless the first mugger knows karate. ...or not. If only he had posted more clearly!
Innocent people are still vulnerable to harassment, intimidation, and coercion from agents acting on behalf of the government.
When the watchers are the only ones with access to the results of a given surveillance technology, nobody can watch the watchers to see whether they're abusing it.
And if you're doing nothing illegal, the police and/or government won't care either, and they'll keep on listening for others.
Unfortunately, the police and/or government are also responsible for defining which activities are illegal, and are increasingly oriented toward keeping their own actions secret in the name of 'security'. There is quite literally no public accountability for much of the security apparatus closing into place right before our eyes, and when even a congresswoman is unable to obtain the federal regulations authorizing someone to search them, something is really fucking wrong.
Additionally, individual members of the police and/or government are uniquely vulnerable to corruption, hiding their betrayal behind the shield of 'security' and 'need to know'.
The tired old 'Law-abiding people have nothing to hide' argument needs to roll over and die already. The only workable safeguard against government hypersurveillance is ensuring that the system is constructed in a completely transparent and publicly-accountable manner.
At the time of this post, 82,542 users think that steam is working properly.
Ahh, an advocate for paying CEO's $10M a year. What about the ones who run their companies into the ground? Or the ones who screw the shareholders? Or the ones who like to dump toxic waste in vacant lots in the night?
There isn't any market mechanism for reducing the pay of bad CEOs. There usually isn't even any mechanism for firing them. Why? Because they're not in it for the long-term good of the company, they're in it for the short-term profit forecasts. That's a good way to put all of the employees out of work, all right.
EA knows how to do something right.
Yeah. EA knows how to buy licenses at cut-rate prices, strip-mine them to create cookie-cutter games, and market the hell out of them so an ill-informed consumer culture will eat them up.
I'd have to say that your strategy makes excellent sense from a long-term perspective, depending on waves of incoming employees with no idea what's going on, and as long as consumers will buy incrementally-roster-changed cookie-cutter sports games.
So, about until another company makes better games, puts them out, and kills EA. Take a look at the history of the gaming industry, and you'll see that this business model tends to last about five years before collapsing. I'd say EA is about at the top of its arc... and it's going to pull an Atari pretty damn soon.
maybe reducing EA's profit will drive away stockholders, ultimately reducing EA's capacity to pay workers
Uh... 'drive away stockholders'? Are you insane? Companies pay royalties to their stockholders, not the other way around. The only people that a low stock price impacts are:
1. Stock owners
2. Pressured executives
nobody's business but those who own EA's how much workers get paid
I'd love to make games. I don't, because working in the industry isn't my thing. However, it is in my interest to ensure that other workers doing creative labor are adequately compensated for their labors, because if they aren't... other companies will take that as an example.
If you think it's acceptable to spend insane sums of money on marketing and executive compensation and then use 'profits' as an excuse to get stingy on actual product creation and development, you're out of your fucking mind.