The Odyssey was one of the most popular gaming systems for 5 years, until Atari released its VCS.
It was also the very first home gaming system, so no matter how many units it sold, it launched an entire industry - kinda hard to call that a failure. Comparing it to the Betamax implies that there was any real competition when it was on the market - which there wasn't.
I'm afraid I don't see what this has to do with Leaves - this is just Gibson's write up of a DDoS. He doesn't mention the FBI at all.
Movies are cheaper today
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Maybe this is a local phenomemon, but it costs $8 to see first-run movies here (Winnipeg, Canada). This is in large, staduim seating, THDoblySurroundWhatchamajigger theatres. In 1991 I paid about $7 to see T2 in what amounts to a small box - what we used to think of as mall multiplexes. Shitty sound, shitty screen size, 3 inches of leg room.
12 years of inflation, a theatre so much better that it makes the old ones look like watching my 14" tv in the subway, and it's a whopping $1 more.
Maybe it's just me, but movies in the theatre are one hell of a good deal these days (assuming you actually like anything that's playing). I've heard tickets go for as much as $15 usd (could be higher for all I know), but that still seems a lot cheaper than any major (or even minor) leaque sporting event, concerts, plays, clubs, dinner excluding McDonalds, you name it.
Again, some people seem to hate every movie released, so YMMV.
So, do the companies buy insurance to guard against the chance that their predictions are wrong?
Actually, yes. Insurance is essentially a business based on probability, and there are many examples of this:
On the smaller end of the scale are things like Hole-in-One insurance - basically, an insurance company will pay, say, $20,000, if someone gets a hole-in-one during your corporate golf tournament, but you only pay $500 for this coverage. Odds of someone getting a hole-in-one = just slightly less than $500/$20,000, so the insurance company makes a small profit overall, and you get a really neat prize if you're lucky enough.
Numbers completely contrived, it's been a couple of years since I sold insurance.
Anybody that would willingly buy insurance is at least half-nuts.
Yeah, next time my house burns down I'll keep that in mind.
Remember, insurance isn't about protecting the stupid. It's about protecting you in case of ACCIDENTS. And yes, they do happen, even to the best of us.
A lot of ex-smokers start up again because they just plain miss having a smoke. Not SMOKING, but having *a* smoke. If it was the nicotine they wanted, there's gum/lozenges/patches/chew. Yet most ex-smokers end up lighting up.
I know I'd kill for a 'safe' smoke - one that I can have, without the danger of becoming hooked again - just to see if it's as bad as it seems now (smell, taste, etc). And just to safely re-live that wonderful 5 minute ritual.
Odd that you should mention this.. one thing I've pleasantly noticed as I move from VHS to DVD is the complete lack (so far) of trailers and ads on DVDs. Sometimes there's the annoying FBI warnings (ironic considering that I live in Canada), but that's it so far.
VHS tapes typically had a lot of trailers in them, even purchased from say, Wal-Mart (ie: not previously viewed). It was always fun to watch one from 5-10 years ago and see "coming soon" for movies that were long since history:) I understand Disney DVDs have a lot of trailers in them - thankfully I'll never buy anything with the word 'Disney' on it, for both ethical and taste reasons.
Another very nice thing with DVDs is, sure, they cost $20+, but you get an awful lot of bonus material with them - not just the same movie you already paid $10 to see in the theatre. The Spider-man DVD alone was several hours of extra stuff. All good in my books. Too bad more releases aren't done this way.
these shitty applications which do all kinds of non-standard things are forcing people to run stupid pieces of software like ZoneAlarm which block packets based on the name of the software package which sends them!
No, ZoneAlarm doesn't block packets based on the application sending them.
It ALLOWS packets based on the application sending them. It blocks everything else.
Big difference, and for 99.9% of the population, ZoneAlarm is one hell of a good firewall solution. Not too intrusive (try setting up any port filtered firewall and see how long it takes for the user to complain that IRC doesn't work), but still pretty damn secure (compare to XP's ICF, which doesn't monitor outgoing at all).
Games never really needed to be rated before because they were never really violent before. With a few exceptions, the rise of real violence in games is only about five years old.
I was beheading people in Barbarian sometime around 1985.
I was raping an Indian woman in Custer's Revenge years before that.
Before the sixties movies didn't have ratings. They weren't needed because before that, it would have been almost unheard of to put graphic violence or sex in a movie.
Yes, because things like spousal abuse were *funny* back then, and not considered violent. Ever watch the Honeymooners? Ok, so that's TV and was broadcast live into people's living rooms (read: more kids could see it).
If anything, movies and television were a lot worse before the 60's, if only because no one realized just how sick some of it was.
I've always found it highly paradoxial that the United States (and Canada several decades ago) will force young men to die for their country, but won't allow them to have a beer the night before they die.
You've apparently never used any of Nintendo's consoles.
The NES is legendary for slowdown within games, the cpu just couldn't keep up with what was thrown at it. The SNES also suffered from some pretty wicked slowdown, and the N64 continued this fine tradition.
(In all fairness, Sega and NEC had problems with their 16-bit entries as well.)
As for load times, both the original Playstation and the Dreamcast had some pretty insane waits (more noticable on the former), and even now I find myself waiting for 10-20 seconds for Animal Crossing to access my memory card on the Gamecube.
Refresh rate has little to do with how fast a game actually runs, if the underlying program just can't run fast enough to begin with.
If this is the case, I'd like to know just how they accquired the rights to any of Nintendo's roms. Seeing as how Nintendo charges upwards of $5(usd) a piece for old NES games being distributed on pieces of cardboard, I'd hate to see what you pay for any newer system.
Unsure with other companies, the only legal rom/emulator usage of late has been Sega's Sonic colleciton on Gamecube, and that was only 7 games.
I've never seen a desk that stopped functioning when someone pasted a photograph to it.
I have, however, seen applications that refuse to run when users change their Windows appearance too much. Tell me it's a bad application or bad OS all you want, but when the boss wants this installed and running yesterday, I can't go all OSS-rabid on him.
And remember, a computer is just *slightly* more complicated than a desk or a chair.
On March 19, 1998, new federal copyright legislation came into force. Among other things, the legislation provides for a levy to be collected on blank audio recording media. It is called a levy (and not a tax) because it is not collected by any level of government, it is collected by a group representing the recording industry.
If you buy any blank recording media outside Canada and use it yourself they will not be subject to the levy. Why? Because YOU are the importer and you are not selling blank media. It is the sale of blank media by the importer or manufacturer that triggers the levy.
Some retailers mistakenly believe that they need to raise their prices to collect the levy. However, the levy is not applied at the retail level, it is applied to importers and manufacturers.
Odds are you purchase from wholesalers or importers, and therefore, have never seen this levy - it's already built into the price.
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The Odyssey was one of the most popular gaming systems for 5 years, until Atari released its VCS.
It was also the very first home gaming system, so no matter how many units it sold, it launched an entire industry - kinda hard to call that a failure. Comparing it to the Betamax implies that there was any real competition when it was on the market - which there wasn't.
I'm afraid I don't see what this has to do with Leaves - this is just Gibson's write up of a DDoS. He doesn't mention the FBI at all.
Maybe this is a local phenomemon, but it costs $8 to see first-run movies here (Winnipeg, Canada). This is in large, staduim seating, THDoblySurroundWhatchamajigger theatres. In 1991 I paid about $7 to see T2 in what amounts to a small box - what we used to think of as mall multiplexes. Shitty sound, shitty screen size, 3 inches of leg room.
12 years of inflation, a theatre so much better that it makes the old ones look like watching my 14" tv in the subway, and it's a whopping $1 more.
Maybe it's just me, but movies in the theatre are one hell of a good deal these days (assuming you actually like anything that's playing). I've heard tickets go for as much as $15 usd (could be higher for all I know), but that still seems a lot cheaper than any major (or even minor) leaque sporting event, concerts, plays, clubs, dinner excluding McDonalds, you name it.
Again, some people seem to hate every movie released, so YMMV.
So, do the companies buy insurance to guard against the chance that their predictions are wrong?
Actually, yes. Insurance is essentially a business based on probability, and there are many examples of this:
On the smaller end of the scale are things like Hole-in-One insurance - basically, an insurance company will pay, say, $20,000, if someone gets a hole-in-one during your corporate golf tournament, but you only pay $500 for this coverage. Odds of someone getting a hole-in-one = just slightly less than $500/$20,000, so the insurance company makes a small profit overall, and you get a really neat prize if you're lucky enough.
Numbers completely contrived, it's been a couple of years since I sold insurance.
Anybody that would willingly buy insurance is at least half-nuts.
Yeah, next time my house burns down I'll keep that in mind.
Remember, insurance isn't about protecting the stupid. It's about protecting you in case of ACCIDENTS. And yes, they do happen, even to the best of us.
A lot of ex-smokers start up again because they just plain miss having a smoke. Not SMOKING, but having *a* smoke. If it was the nicotine they wanted, there's gum/lozenges/patches/chew. Yet most ex-smokers end up lighting up.
I know I'd kill for a 'safe' smoke - one that I can have, without the danger of becoming hooked again - just to see if it's as bad as it seems now (smell, taste, etc). And just to safely re-live that wonderful 5 minute ritual.
So open up a smoke-free club.
After all, that's the whole point of a free market - you can run your business however you like, within the law.
If there are so many non-smokers wanting this (75% of the Canadian population, last time I checked), why don't we see more of these?
I didn't even know that there were 142 software programs out there worth stealing...
:)
I dunno, it took at least that many hotfixes to rid myself of that damn Slammer infection..
(yes, I realize that these are already free, so sue me for making a bad joke after 72 hours of hell
Odd that you should mention this.. one thing I've pleasantly noticed as I move from VHS to DVD is the complete lack (so far) of trailers and ads on DVDs. Sometimes there's the annoying FBI warnings (ironic considering that I live in Canada), but that's it so far.
:) I understand Disney DVDs have a lot of trailers in them - thankfully I'll never buy anything with the word 'Disney' on it, for both ethical and taste reasons.
VHS tapes typically had a lot of trailers in them, even purchased from say, Wal-Mart (ie: not previously viewed). It was always fun to watch one from 5-10 years ago and see "coming soon" for movies that were long since history
Another very nice thing with DVDs is, sure, they cost $20+, but you get an awful lot of bonus material with them - not just the same movie you already paid $10 to see in the theatre. The Spider-man DVD alone was several hours of extra stuff. All good in my books. Too bad more releases aren't done this way.
these shitty applications which do all kinds of non-standard things are forcing people to run stupid pieces of software like ZoneAlarm which block packets based on the name of the software package which sends them!
No, ZoneAlarm doesn't block packets based on the application sending them.
It ALLOWS packets based on the application sending them. It blocks everything else.
Big difference, and for 99.9% of the population, ZoneAlarm is one hell of a good firewall solution. Not too intrusive (try setting up any port filtered firewall and see how long it takes for the user to complain that IRC doesn't work), but still pretty damn secure (compare to XP's ICF, which doesn't monitor outgoing at all).
Happy customer, not corporate shill.
I bought a Gamecube when Starfox(moan) came out a few moths ago, and got Metroid(yippy!)
:)
Dear god, I thought we had edited you OUT of reality!
Ah, I guess that whole draft thing (and draft dodging as a result) is just a myth.
Doesn't Microsoft still produce the MS Office suite for Mac? And IE/OE? And a load of other products?
Games never really needed to be rated before because they were never really violent before. With a few exceptions, the rise of real violence in games is only about five years old.
I was beheading people in Barbarian sometime around 1985.
I was raping an Indian woman in Custer's Revenge years before that.
Before the sixties movies didn't have ratings. They weren't needed because before that, it would have been almost unheard of to put graphic violence or sex in a movie.
Yes, because things like spousal abuse were *funny* back then, and not considered violent. Ever watch the Honeymooners? Ok, so that's TV and was broadcast live into people's living rooms (read: more kids could see it).
If anything, movies and television were a lot worse before the 60's, if only because no one realized just how sick some of it was.
I've always found it highly paradoxial that the United States (and Canada several decades ago) will force young men to die for their country, but won't allow them to have a beer the night before they die.
You mean like laws supporting the rights of minorities? The disabled? Women?
What about the entire concept of social security? How does that help the rich, again?
You've apparently never used any of Nintendo's consoles.
The NES is legendary for slowdown within games, the cpu just couldn't keep up with what was thrown at it. The SNES also suffered from some pretty wicked slowdown, and the N64 continued this fine tradition.
(In all fairness, Sega and NEC had problems with their 16-bit entries as well.)
As for load times, both the original Playstation and the Dreamcast had some pretty insane waits (more noticable on the former), and even now I find myself waiting for 10-20 seconds for Animal Crossing to access my memory card on the Gamecube.
Refresh rate has little to do with how fast a game actually runs, if the underlying program just can't run fast enough to begin with.
If this is the case, I'd like to know just how they accquired the rights to any of Nintendo's roms. Seeing as how Nintendo charges upwards of $5(usd) a piece for old NES games being distributed on pieces of cardboard, I'd hate to see what you pay for any newer system.
Unsure with other companies, the only legal rom/emulator usage of late has been Sega's Sonic colleciton on Gamecube, and that was only 7 games.
Unfortunately, they're 99% emulated from other platforms.
212 was (still is, for all I know) the area code for Manhattan, arguably the most recognized part of New York. Bad joke, I know :)
Yeah, but I'm sure the folks in Olde Springfield get to keep the old 212 area code.
I've never seen a desk that stopped functioning when someone pasted a photograph to it.
I have, however, seen applications that refuse to run when users change their Windows appearance too much. Tell me it's a bad application or bad OS all you want, but when the boss wants this installed and running yesterday, I can't go all OSS-rabid on him.
And remember, a computer is just *slightly* more complicated than a desk or a chair.
So are almost all of James Cameron's movies.
Fear of the unknown is a strong literary theme, it's not surprising at all that people in the 20th and 21st centuries eat it up.
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml
Some things to note:
Odds are you purchase from wholesalers or importers, and therefore, have never seen this levy - it's already built into the price.
And this is precisely why government should keep it's damn hands out of business.