Re:Videogame revenue is far less than movie revenu
on
Review: Tomb Raider
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· Score: 2
All true, but what is still THE defining statistic in (and from) Hollywood? Box-Office sales. If a movie bombs on the screen, but does record sales on the VHS/DVD release, does anyone even hear about it? Hollywood themselves promote their idiotic numbers more than anyone, it's no surprise that this is what the videogame industry uses as comparison.
It's actually rather impressive to think that Pong sales could even APPROACH the money spent in the theatres, let alone surpass it.
I'm just imagining the many times where I have a machine that just refuses to restart itself, and the reset switch is unresponsive. With bloody soft-off ATX, the odd time it can be necessary to physically UNPLUG the box from the wall.
Now extend this to hard-wired equipment on an airplane:
Attention ladies and gentlemen, this is you captain speaking. We may be experiencing a few bumps, as our support tech needs to turn off all electrical power to the airplane for just a few moments. Don't worry, at least half of all power failures DON'T result in crashes.
But I suppose I'll get flamed now for trying to act cool by saying "I could be in Mensa, but I'm not".
Actually, it's funny. The majority of people I know who could qualify for mensa AREN'T in mensa at all. Big reason? Anyone with an IQ hovering around the 98th might find the organization something to boost themselves with (think self-esteem problems), but for the most part, once you get past that level, IQ tests (especially for adults) become less and less meaningful. Anyone who can score over 150 on DECENT tests (as opposed to 25 pages of 'a fox is like cheese as religion is like______') usually has no interest limiting their social group to only one type of person.
On a personal note, what finally convinced me that being a geek may be cool, but sometimes it can be taken to extremes, was going to my first mensa-related social gathering. No lie, these people were sitting around, sipping wine, nibbling cheese, listening to Opera on an incredibly expensive sound system, and discussing the legitimacy of Star Trek. I felt like I had walked into a stereotype. When I pointed this out to them, no one really seemed to understand what I found funny about the whole thing.
I guess having a higher than average IQ doesn't always make you 'smart':)
Actually, I'd wager the theory has been around for a fair bit longer than that. When I was in school, this WAS the accepted theory as to why the mammoths, sloths, etc. had been wiped out.
A good couple of decades of trying to convince people that native americans lived in harmony with nature and were happy bunches of vegans pretty much forced teachers to stop even considering it.
My personal thinking is that climate change, combined with (hu)man's effects, still seems to be a bit more plausible, but one thing archaeology never fails to teach us is, what goes around, comes around.
Someone refresh my memory: are dinosaurs warm-blooded or cold-blooded this year?
A change caused by the sea: "Of his bones are coral made:/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a sea change" (Shakespeare).
A marked transformation: "The script suffered considerable sea changes, particularly in structure" (Harold Pinter).
Recall back in the 70's it was determined that the world had 40-50 years petroleum remaining, at current rate of consumption. Even with more efficient vehicles, more are in use that ever and the draw on petroleum reserves is still very high. Many gulf states will run out of petroleum in the next 10 years. Iraq, because of the embargo, and Saudi Arabia will be among the last, 20 years tops, at current rate (BTW this is why OPEC has cut production and raised prices.)
Actually, in the 70's the warnings were for a LOT less than 40-50 years. In some cases, as little as 10. Once the panic calmed down, and OPEC made a few more billions, suddenly there seemed to be a lot of extra oil. New reserves were discovered, and things like the Alberta Tar Sands suddenly got a lot more viable. The sands have been estimated to have anywhere from 10, to as much as several HUNDRED years worth of the world's current oil use, it all hinges on being able to extract it for a reasonable cost.
After 20 years of cheap oil prices, the shieks and dictators in the middle east are a lot poorer than they want to be (20 years of near-constant warfare in a 3rd world country doesn't help many economies). Suddenly, OPEC cuts production - they don't even lie about it, claiming it's due to supplies getting low. Their official statements basically add up to 'we feel the prices are too low, so we're raising them', ie: WE WANT MORE MONEY AND THERE'S SWEET FUCK ALL THAT ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT. That's why they're called a 'cartel'.
This degree of targeting is really no different from targeted internet advertising and the like. The end result is simply that we get advertising we might actually be interested in. Is that really a bad thing?
Not bad, exactly, but I must say the concept boggles my mind. How precisely do they expect to know what *I* like to purchase? I watch Friends, so I must be an airheaded blonde and will buy lots of hair dye?
Every time I hear the phrase 'targetted advertising' I'm reminded of people who think that just because I like the Doors, I'd also like Led Zepplin. Unfortunately, if it were anywhere CLOSE to that simple, we'd be a pretty homogenous society...
I still say retailers would have much more success just letting ME pick what I want. Trust me, Mr. Salesman. I'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions. I research things directly myself. Thanks to the internet, I no longer give a rat's ass just what brand of chewing gum 4 out of 5 dentists use. Oh wait, that'd mean I could use my own BRAIN - guess this won't work for society as a whole:)
Maybe I'm just slow today, but it took me a REALLY long time to catch on to the author's joke here. The first several paragraphs, I was thinking 'damn lazy writer, she's just describing what links she wants put in there, and probably has some tech guy insert them later'. Not until she started talking about Winer did I catch on.
If an otherwise reasonably intelligent person (who spends 8 hours a day surfing the internet) can get suckered in like this, the affects on Joe Lunchpail really REALLY scare me:(
this is a state where swearing in front of children is not only illegal -- it's occasionally enforced.
You know, when I first heard of this case, I honestly thought it was a joke. Like an April fools thing. Maybe I've grown up in a more enlightened setting, or maybe I'm just an ignorant crude redneck, but I honestly don't get it. Why do otherwise intelligent adults (yes, this is often debatable:) get so worked up over a couple of words? Think the TBS version of The Breakfast Club. They must say 'flip you' a hundred times. I know what they mean, 8-year old kids know what they mean, hell.. my 92-year old Grandmother knows what they mean. And yet... putting the letters F U C K together as a word would do... what exactly?
I've never in my life found a compelling argument over why 'we' label some words as 'bad', and not others. Beyond 'I was raised to think the f-word is bad', or religious reasons, I've never once heard of why.
Let's face it - we eventually realize that our parents aren't the supreme authority on the universe, and most people beyond the staunchest zealot tend to question at least some of the established religious dogma. Why precisely do we still have this fixation with our language?
"We are approaching 2003, which is the centennial for flight," says Bellur Nagabhushan, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at St. Louis University. "And I'm really hoping the CargoLifter will be a reality by then.
The centennial for POWERED flight, perhaps, but airships (or at least their ancestors) were around long before the Wright brothers got off the ground. Sometimes corporate hype astonishes even me:)
Post after post, I keep seeing the same thing repeated: 250-1000ms ping times. I'm assuming this is due to the sheer distance between the ground and these satellites? Just how far up are they orbiting anyway?
He never gave me an upload range but its got to be much much lower, and their system calculates things on a per-day (or maybe even per-hour) basis, so if you dont upload a thing all month and then blow your entire gig in one day, they might bug you (thats basically what I did.. except I did it two days in a row;)..
This is precisely what I see happening with them. Long, steady upstreams for more than a few hours tend to fire off alarm bells (especially on weekends:).
As for usenet, I think we all know just how crappy @home tends to be re: retention. And don't get me started with DSL speeds....:P
Didn't realize Videon was still active in Edmonton; figured Rogers ate all that up ages ago:)
Shaw gave me a Terayon Terapro in the beginning, the reboot trick was suggested to me by one of their former techs. I've never seen anywhere online where I can check my usage stats.
As for checking bandwidth, I've personally found DUmeter (sorry, no URL handy) to be one of the more accurate tcp/ip loggers. Nothing fancy, but damn precise speed measurements, and it keeps track of total transferred nicely.
I've had shaw for 3 years now. Their TOS says nothing about bandwidth limits, beyond 'excessive use will have consequences' or something to that effect. For the record, I generally average about 30GB down, maybe 4-5GB up per month.
I've never been cut off, however when the upload becomes excessive they will give me a 5-minute timeout, then the connection resumes:)
Someone suggested 're-booting' the cable modem, as apparently this is where Shaw gets their figures from, and guess what? IT WORKS! I haven't been kiced off in months, including the 5GB upload I did one day:)
The tax actually doesn't amount to much (I can still get blank CD-R's for under 50 cents CDN$ if bought in bulk), but effectively, Canada's laws DO allow for legal mp3 sharing. Section 80 of our copyright act states (note this isn't verbatim):
Canadians can copy music they own to a blank medium, like an audiocassette or videocassette. So long as it's for personal enjoyment, copying is legal. Copyright owners - the record companies - receive a portion of the proceeds from blank media sales.
As someone who collects older computers/game consoles, I'd absolutely love to see the Canadian government bring in laws to make it costly for the consumer to dispose of old electronics.
$13 disposal fee for that old CBM Pet? I'll give ya $5 for it, and pick it up from your door!
The board I had in mind actually comes with tv-out (not exactly a big ticket option these days). And I don't recall the PS2 coming with a free monitor/tv either;)
Up here in the Great White North(tm), the PS2 runs at $450.00cdn. No monitor, keyboard, mouse, or hard drive (or any network connectivity out of the box, iirc).
I can buy, for much cheaper than that, a bare-bones computer. All I need is a $50 case/power supply, $100 mainboard, $100 cpu, $20 worth of RAM (let's assume the board has onboard sound/video, not unreasonable for the lower end manufacturers). The PS2 is by no means competative to this, at least not yet.
Very possible, as it's well documented that fiction can cause an emotional response in people. It's called 'empathy'. People cry over books, too.
Whether we should be concerned about it, well, just ask the folks at the Cartoon Network, who have the habit of censoring classic Warner Brothers cartoons, just on the off chance that they will turn a kid racist. Or, for that matter, television networks not being able to air certain words or body parts...
It's a MOVIE. By most people's definition, movies are classified as ENTERTAINMENT. If you want accuracy, watch a bloody documentary.
If Hollywood was accurate, all of my female friends would have boob jobs, and be sleeping with me every other day. And I'd be a Jedi warrior, in daily car chases, and doing a hell of a lot of cocaine.
Open up a machine that's been running in even a slightly dusty office building for a few years, and you'll find plenty of dust. Certainly enough to grow a nice colony of fungus on. As for moisture, there is an awful lot in the air, you know. Many microorganisms can survive, and thrive, with just this as a resource.
Slashdot Mirror
It's actually rather impressive to think that Pong sales could even APPROACH the money spent in the theatres, let alone surpass it.
Now extend this to hard-wired equipment on an airplane:
Attention ladies and gentlemen, this is you captain speaking. We may be experiencing a few bumps, as our support tech needs to turn off all electrical power to the airplane for just a few moments. Don't worry, at least half of all power failures DON'T result in crashes.
Actually, it's funny. The majority of people I know who could qualify for mensa AREN'T in mensa at all. Big reason? Anyone with an IQ hovering around the 98th might find the organization something to boost themselves with (think self-esteem problems), but for the most part, once you get past that level, IQ tests (especially for adults) become less and less meaningful. Anyone who can score over 150 on DECENT tests (as opposed to 25 pages of 'a fox is like cheese as religion is like______') usually has no interest limiting their social group to only one type of person.
On a personal note, what finally convinced me that being a geek may be cool, but sometimes it can be taken to extremes, was going to my first mensa-related social gathering. No lie, these people were sitting around, sipping wine, nibbling cheese, listening to Opera on an incredibly expensive sound system, and discussing the legitimacy of Star Trek. I felt like I had walked into a stereotype. When I pointed this out to them, no one really seemed to understand what I found funny about the whole thing.
I guess having a higher than average IQ doesn't always make you 'smart' :)
A good couple of decades of trying to convince people that native americans lived in harmony with nature and were happy bunches of vegans pretty much forced teachers to stop even considering it.
My personal thinking is that climate change, combined with (hu)man's effects, still seems to be a bit more plausible, but one thing archaeology never fails to teach us is, what goes around, comes around.
Someone refresh my memory: are dinosaurs warm-blooded or cold-blooded this year?
n.
A change caused by the sea: "Of his bones are coral made:/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a sea change" (Shakespeare).
A marked transformation: "The script suffered considerable sea changes, particularly in structure" (Harold Pinter).
Let me introduce you to a wonderful site: www.dictionary.com
Actually, in the 70's the warnings were for a LOT less than 40-50 years. In some cases, as little as 10. Once the panic calmed down, and OPEC made a few more billions, suddenly there seemed to be a lot of extra oil. New reserves were discovered, and things like the Alberta Tar Sands suddenly got a lot more viable. The sands have been estimated to have anywhere from 10, to as much as several HUNDRED years worth of the world's current oil use, it all hinges on being able to extract it for a reasonable cost.
After 20 years of cheap oil prices, the shieks and dictators in the middle east are a lot poorer than they want to be (20 years of near-constant warfare in a 3rd world country doesn't help many economies). Suddenly, OPEC cuts production - they don't even lie about it, claiming it's due to supplies getting low. Their official statements basically add up to 'we feel the prices are too low, so we're raising them', ie: WE WANT MORE MONEY AND THERE'S SWEET FUCK ALL THAT ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT. That's why they're called a 'cartel'.
Not bad, exactly, but I must say the concept boggles my mind. How precisely do they expect to know what *I* like to purchase? I watch Friends, so I must be an airheaded blonde and will buy lots of hair dye?
Every time I hear the phrase 'targetted advertising' I'm reminded of people who think that just because I like the Doors, I'd also like Led Zepplin. Unfortunately, if it were anywhere CLOSE to that simple, we'd be a pretty homogenous society...
I still say retailers would have much more success just letting ME pick what I want. Trust me, Mr. Salesman. I'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions. I research things directly myself. Thanks to the internet, I no longer give a rat's ass just what brand of chewing gum 4 out of 5 dentists use. Oh wait, that'd mean I could use my own BRAIN - guess this won't work for society as a whole :)
At 12 inches away, all the pr0n stars seem to be life-sized, and it feels like you're finally getting that lesbian orgy you've always wanted.
If an otherwise reasonably intelligent person (who spends 8 hours a day surfing the internet) can get suckered in like this, the affects on Joe Lunchpail really REALLY scare me :(
You know, when I first heard of this case, I honestly thought it was a joke. Like an April fools thing. Maybe I've grown up in a more enlightened setting, or maybe I'm just an ignorant crude redneck, but I honestly don't get it. Why do otherwise intelligent adults (yes, this is often debatable :) get so worked up over a couple of words? Think the TBS version of The Breakfast Club. They must say 'flip you' a hundred times. I know what they mean, 8-year old kids know what they mean, hell.. my 92-year old Grandmother knows what they mean. And yet... putting the letters F U C K together as a word would do ... what exactly?
I've never in my life found a compelling argument over why 'we' label some words as 'bad', and not others. Beyond 'I was raised to think the f-word is bad', or religious reasons, I've never once heard of why.
Let's face it - we eventually realize that our parents aren't the supreme authority on the universe, and most people beyond the staunchest zealot tend to question at least some of the established religious dogma. Why precisely do we still have this fixation with our language?
The centennial for POWERED flight, perhaps, but airships (or at least their ancestors) were around long before the Wright brothers got off the ground. Sometimes corporate hype astonishes even me :)
I can get
This is precisely what I see happening with them. Long, steady upstreams for more than a few hours tend to fire off alarm bells (especially on weekends :).
As for usenet, I think we all know just how crappy @home tends to be re: retention. And don't get me started with DSL speeds.... :P
Shaw gave me a Terayon Terapro in the beginning, the reboot trick was suggested to me by one of their former techs. I've never seen anywhere online where I can check my usage stats.
As for checking bandwidth, I've personally found DUmeter (sorry, no URL handy) to be one of the more accurate tcp/ip loggers. Nothing fancy, but damn precise speed measurements, and it keeps track of total transferred nicely.
I've had shaw for 3 years now. Their TOS says nothing about bandwidth limits, beyond 'excessive use will have consequences' or something to that effect. For the record, I generally average about 30GB down, maybe 4-5GB up per month.
I've never been cut off, however when the upload becomes excessive they will give me a 5-minute timeout, then the connection resumes :)
Someone suggested 're-booting' the cable modem, as apparently this is where Shaw gets their figures from, and guess what? IT WORKS! I haven't been kiced off in months, including the 5GB upload I did one day :)
Canadians can copy music they own to a blank medium, like an audiocassette or videocassette. So long as it's for personal enjoyment, copying is legal. Copyright owners - the record companies - receive a portion of the proceeds from blank media sales.
$13 disposal fee for that old CBM Pet? I'll give ya $5 for it, and pick it up from your door!
A bit selfish perhaps :)
I can buy, for much cheaper than that, a bare-bones computer. All I need is a $50 case/power supply, $100 mainboard, $100 cpu, $20 worth of RAM (let's assume the board has onboard sound/video, not unreasonable for the lower end manufacturers). The PS2 is by no means competative to this, at least not yet.
Whether we should be concerned about it, well, just ask the folks at the Cartoon Network, who have the habit of censoring classic Warner Brothers cartoons, just on the off chance that they will turn a kid racist. Or, for that matter, television networks not being able to air certain words or body parts...
If Hollywood was accurate, all of my female friends would have boob jobs, and be sleeping with me every other day. And I'd be a Jedi warrior, in daily car chases, and doing a hell of a lot of cocaine.
Open up a machine that's been running in even a slightly dusty office building for a few years, and you'll find plenty of dust. Certainly enough to grow a nice colony of fungus on. As for moisture, there is an awful lot in the air, you know. Many microorganisms can survive, and thrive, with just this as a resource.