Yes, absolutely correct. Either TFA is confused, or there is some very peculiar Microsoft-math at work here.
If the US Dollar is weak -- which it absolutely is these days! -- then products exported from the US to other markets should be LESS expensive than they are in the US. If a copy of Windows costs $200 and $1 = â1, it should in theory cost â200 in Europe. If the dollar then fell to half a â, Windows should cost only â100. But that's a bit simplistic and will only be true if the worldwide prices are, in fact, derived directly from the US price. That may not be the case.
More than likely, what happened is that Microsoft has locked in the prices worldwide based either on historical exchange rates or on their local branches' opinion about what Windows "should" cost in each market. So someone in Microsoft UK decided more or less arbitrarily that Windows should cost £189.99 in that market. And since the dollar has dropped since that decision was made, UK customers are "paying more" in US$ terms -- but really, the UK price probably hasn't been changed.
So it's a combination of TFA being overly sensationalist AND Microsoft being Microsoft.
Actually, I don't think this guy is on the same page as Murdoch at all. Murdoch's argument is, essentially: "I think the content I own is better than the free stuff by a large enough margin that people will pay money to get it." And this Sony CEO is saying "Nobody will pay for my stuff as long as they can get free stuff somewhere else."
If Murdoch can provide material that appeals to enough people, he may be able to sell it. It certainly doesn't offend me that he's trying. I personally think he'll have a hard time with it, because "news" is really just another word for "information" -- and the newspaper doesn't generally own the information it writes about, just the specific wording and layout of their particular rendition. IMO, he should forget about charging for content, and instead come up with a way to charge for the *distribution* of it. You know, an automatic, personalized news "push" based on your specific interests, sent to your Blackberry or iPhone in just the format you want -- without you having to know about things like RSS feeds and such. I think a substantial number of technophobic business folks would pay for that.
But this Sony CEO is laying all the blame of his failing media business on the bad habits and impatience of their customers -- when he SHOULD be doing like Stardock and say "Our customers are the guys who BUY our stuff, not the ones who steal it. So let's make products that appeal to the people who are likely to pay for it, and not worry so much about the pirates, because they probably wouldn't have paid for it anyway."
Sony really needs to hurry up and finish getting rid of the "old guard" like this guy, and put more power in the hands of people who were born after, say 1960.
Hehe. Well, I don't think the idea has really made it into the general public awareness yet -- so if you hurry, you might still be able to go on Oprah with it...:-)
So perhaps it's time for geneticists to consider human technology as being a part of evolution just like our genes are, because it's those genes which produced our technological capability
This makes sense, and is not a new idea. See e.g. Dawkins' "The Extended Phenotype" where he convincingly makes the argument that beehives, bird nests, and beaver dams are just as much the result of genetics as are the bodies of bees, birds, and beavers -- and that, logically, the same argument could and should be applied to human.
I have "300" on Blu-Ray, and it is awesome in HD. I think it was worth $30 for the movie -- but I don't think any single movie can be worth the price of a Blu-Ray player.
If there's not at least a dozen or so movies that (a) look great in HD, and (b) you plan on watching more than once or twice, there's probably no point in investing in an upgrade.
In my case, I have a PS3 that I use for gaming and to watch all my ripped DVD movies, so I didn't have to upgrade any h/w just to get the Blu-Ray version of a few movies.
Agreed -- I don't know what is in your Emergency Repair Kit, but I imagine that it consists of lots of things that you would rather not have disappear into Luggage Limbo. If you check it as luggage, you *will* eventually find yourself getting off a plane in someplace like Tokyo only to find that your Repair Kit is in Buenos Aires.
Ideally, ship it to the customer/destination early enough that you can verify delivery before you get on the plane. It's more up-front paperwork, but it saves a lot of problems on the back end.
A few years ago I had a fairly lenghty discussion with a nice Customs Person in the Beijing airport who did not appreciate me trying to carry a fairly expensive network analyzer with me without having a receipt to show it belonged to me. Even though (a) it belonged to my employer, and (b) I had carried it with me INTO the country two weeks earlier. Much easier just to ship it in advance, and arrange for the customer to ship it back -- they'll know the local rules for "exporting" things.
It's not less expensive to keep a fairly heavy empty box in LEO on the off chance you might find a use for it later.
Is that something you actually know, or just something that you think sounds reasonable? Having just launched one, we ought to have a pretty good idea now of what it would cost to build-and-launch one of these. Has there been any analysis done of what it would cost to keep one operational in-orbit?
You sound very sure of yourself, saying that you know the former to cost less than the latter -- what is your source for this information?
I agree there aren't many reasons to move around up there today -- but there may be in the future. I'm just thinking that, given the presence of maneuverable ships in orbit, keeping at least one or two of them up there would give us a capability we would not otherwise have.
Maybe they could be dire-emergency lifeboats, giving the ISS crew an in-orbit shelter where they could wait for a rescue shuttle? Maybe they could take astronauts out on satellite repair missions? Maybe they could be used to to move cargo orbiting structures we haven't even thought of yet?
Again, I'm not so much thinking of what we'd do with them now -- but it costs a lot money to get 'em into orbit, and keeping them there would most likely be less expensive than launching something else if/when we need an orbital taxi for something.
But why not just leave it in orbit? Wouldn't it potentially be useful if we had a few crafts in orbit that could be used by the ISS crew (or the crew from other, future stations) to move around up there?
Yes, it's tragicomically wasteful.
I don't understand why they can't design a cargo/supply ship that STAYS IN ORBIT. I mean, sure, let's go ahead and de-orbit the ISS trash in some kind of disposable carrying module -- but leave the ship itself in orbit, and design it so it can potentially be refueled from the station later.
Then just "park" it in orbit a few miles from the Station, and leave it there. At some point in time, we could probably think of something useful to do in space with a handful of these -- and we would finally have the "pickup truck in space" that NASA wanted a few years ago.
The whole concept of multi-million-dollar disposable rockets is just ludicrous!
I respectfully submit that the author being quoted by TFA is an idiot. Linus is absolutely right, the OS is not, and should not, be important at all to users. It should be invisble. In fact, it mostly IS invisible.
People rarely interact directly with the operating system; they interact with shells and applications. The Ubuntu GUI isn't the operating system, nor is it PART of the operating system -- it's an application that lets you manage the operating system and run other applications. That may be the stuff that most users associate with the term "operating system", but that doesn't make it true. I'm certain that when Linus speaks about Linux, he's not referring to anything except the core OS itself. The minute you install a GUI on Linus, you're no longer interacting with "linux", but with whatever GUI you've installed.
They already made a game console that'd be perfect for you. It's called a Sega Genesis...:-)
OK, I say that jokingly -- although... I recently went on a retro-trip and picked one up on eBay for like $30, and spent almost an entire day playing the original Sonic in glorious 16-bit color. I haven't had that much *fun* with a video game for a long time.
I disagree with your point about story lines, however. Sure, there's little point in re-playing a story-based game once you've finished it once -- but if finishing it that first time was fun, rewarding, and kept you entertained for maybe 30-40 hours, then I think that's pretty good. I mean, most movies are story-driven, so the same logic applies: Once you've seen it once, there's no point in doing so again, so why would anyone ever buy a movie? Answer: Because that first viewing or two is rewarding enough that they think it's worth the expense. Ditto with games.
All from me now -- Gotta go replay Master of Magic again!:-)
Yes, and you're DEFINITELY going to Hell for having used your VCR or Tivo to avoid watching commercials.
This kind of logic is insane. If I pick up a newspaper and cut out all the ads before reading it, have I stolen revenue from the publisher?
Oh no! Yesterday I turned down the volume on my car radio when an obnoxious commercial came on. I wonder if the radio station is going to sue me for theft?!
How, exactly, do the Men In Black install this uber-spyware on a target system?
Do they get a warrant, sneak into your home in the dead of night, and install software on your computer?
Do they mail it to you as a virus, perhaps cleverly disguised as a Nigerian spam scam?
Do they use the back door that Microsoft agreed to put in all their software in return for being granted Most-Favored Monopoly status by the government?
Or something else? "You are a suspected pedophile. To clear your name, please click here to install the FBI's internet spyware on your computer"?
Suppose I was an artist capable of creating a painting which, considered by itself, would generally be considered high art. The kind of artwork that, if displayed in a New York gallery, would attract critical attention from people whose career revolves around critiquing art.
Now suppose that I had created this amazing piece of art because I had been commissioned to produce background imagery for a game. It is never exhibited or shown outside of the context of the game for which I created it.
Is it possible for such a work to be considered high art? Remember, we're postulating that the work itself is one that WOULD be considered high art if it had been shared with the Art World. Does being included in a game actually detract from the "standalone" artistic value of the game's component pieces?
Within Ebert's definition of "high art", it is not unreasonable to state that games do not pass muster. The way he defines high art, it precludes the kind of interactivity that is in most games. Nothing wrong wit that.
But what about the individual elements that go into a game -- like the textures, or background images, or cutscenes, or level designs, or soundtrack -- can those be "high art", even if the game as a whole is not?
The Mona Lisa is, unquestionably, High Art. Would it still be High Art if I used it as a texture for my "Louvre Deathmatch" game mod?
What if I made an original painting of equal artistic merit as the Mona Lisa, but instead of exhibiting it in a hoighty-toighty gallery I used it in a game -- would my choice of context instantly make my painting become Not Art?
If a famous composer wrote a symphonic work specifically for a game, would it still be High Art? Why (not)?
I think you misunderstand. The law says that you CAN do this -- and the court has now struck down the law, saying that a warrant is needed before your email can be searched, just like any other kind of mail search or wiretap. This is a Good Thing, even if the original law was stupid to begin with.
But Sony creating and using their own images of a cathedral is not at all similar to the case you describe, with me using actual scenes taken from a copyrighted work such as the Spidey movie.
Sony did not use anyone else's images -- they made a 3D model of a building that has been open to the public for hundreds of years. If I use a 3D modelling tool to make a model of the Washington Monument, or the Eiffel Tower, or some other famous landmark building and then use that as part of a game I'm making, have I violated anyone's copyright or intellectual property? If so, how?
I haven't played R:FoM, but it's a FPS game, yes? In which you run around a virtual world shooting various critters and such, yes? The key word here is "virtual" -- Unless Sony went through the Cathedral with a camcorder and actually used real footage of the real cathedral in the game, I don't see how they're "using" the cathedral for anything at all.
Would it be illegal if I drew a picture of the inside of the cathedral and posted it online? How 'bout if I carefully modelled in in 3D? And did an animated walkthrough?
The Church of England may own the Cathedral, but do they own the rights to the *appearance* of the Cathedral?
I was going to make that same suggestion. It's still true that you can move from support into a lot of other technical roles, but this is definitely made more difficult by companies outsourcing their support to others.
If you want to leverage your support background into something else, I would start looking closely at your current client companies, and see if you can find a way to move into their in-house 3rd-tier support organization. Once you're there, depending on the company and what they do, you'll have a lot of options -- gradually moving closer to the customers (i.e. sales engineering), the product (i.e. development), or corporate operations (i.e. IT/sysadmin).
LOL, pretty funny how all three of your fanbois misspelled "definitely" in the same way!:-)
Joking aside, I think you're absolutely right -- the only people who are making bold predictions now are either (a) fans of one of the platforms, or (b) paid by the creators of the platforms, or (c) clueless idiots.
Personally, I think Sony will win in the long term, precisely because Sony is thinking in the long term. I bet the Sony execs don't give a damn how much they're losing on each PS3 unit, while the PS2 is continuing to outsell the 360. When was the last time anyone bought a brand-new last-gen Xbox? Or a last-gen Gamecube?
D'oh! sbrown123 beat me to the punch with three of my four suggestions. In that case, I'm changing my vote to AppleTalk. Oh, wait...
Maybe they should name it after different kinds of apples. Then the Japanese market could see the FujiPhone, and the US retirement homes would be flooded with GrannySmithPhones...
Maybe iTalk or iTel?
Or how about something straightforward like "iPod Phone" or "Phone iPod"?
Or, similarly to their new streaming TV gadget, they could go with phone.
PhonePod?
Man, those SCO guys must be idiots. I've just *glanced* at the source code once or twice over the last five years, and I see TONS of obvious infringements. I mean, just look at all those identical lines of code! Like,
#include <stdio.h>
and
#endif
and
return 0;
and
else {
They're all over the place; there must be thousands of them! How could everyone have missed this? I must be a programming genius! Maybe I can help SCO write their next expert opinion...
Thank for your recent letter. Regretfully, we must decline your offer of your special edition software and its license.
Apparently you are not aware of our country's recent legislation addressing software license rules. In order for a software company to legally sell ANY software in our country, it will now be required to provide, free of charge, a number of fully licensed copies of said software to the government, that number to be determined by the government and revised at the government's discretion.
(Having a monopoly sure sounds like fun. But writing your own laws is even more fun, we think!)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, absolutely correct. Either TFA is confused, or there is some very peculiar Microsoft-math at work here.
If the US Dollar is weak -- which it absolutely is these days! -- then products exported from the US to other markets should be LESS expensive than they are in the US. If a copy of Windows costs $200 and $1 = â1, it should in theory cost â200 in Europe. If the dollar then fell to half a â, Windows should cost only â100. But that's a bit simplistic and will only be true if the worldwide prices are, in fact, derived directly from the US price. That may not be the case.
More than likely, what happened is that Microsoft has locked in the prices worldwide based either on historical exchange rates or on their local branches' opinion about what Windows "should" cost in each market. So someone in Microsoft UK decided more or less arbitrarily that Windows should cost £189.99 in that market. And since the dollar has dropped since that decision was made, UK customers are "paying more" in US$ terms -- but really, the UK price probably hasn't been changed. So it's a combination of TFA being overly sensationalist AND Microsoft being Microsoft.
Actually, I don't think this guy is on the same page as Murdoch at all. Murdoch's argument is, essentially: "I think the content I own is better than the free stuff by a large enough margin that people will pay money to get it." And this Sony CEO is saying "Nobody will pay for my stuff as long as they can get free stuff somewhere else."
If Murdoch can provide material that appeals to enough people, he may be able to sell it. It certainly doesn't offend me that he's trying. I personally think he'll have a hard time with it, because "news" is really just another word for "information" -- and the newspaper doesn't generally own the information it writes about, just the specific wording and layout of their particular rendition. IMO, he should forget about charging for content, and instead come up with a way to charge for the *distribution* of it. You know, an automatic, personalized news "push" based on your specific interests, sent to your Blackberry or iPhone in just the format you want -- without you having to know about things like RSS feeds and such. I think a substantial number of technophobic business folks would pay for that.
But this Sony CEO is laying all the blame of his failing media business on the bad habits and impatience of their customers -- when he SHOULD be doing like Stardock and say "Our customers are the guys who BUY our stuff, not the ones who steal it. So let's make products that appeal to the people who are likely to pay for it, and not worry so much about the pirates, because they probably wouldn't have paid for it anyway."
Sony really needs to hurry up and finish getting rid of the "old guard" like this guy, and put more power in the hands of people who were born after, say 1960.
Hehe. Well, I don't think the idea has really made it into the general public awareness yet -- so if you hurry, you might still be able to go on Oprah with it... :-)
So perhaps it's time for geneticists to consider human technology as being a part of evolution just like our genes are, because it's those genes which produced our technological capability
This makes sense, and is not a new idea. See e.g. Dawkins' "The Extended Phenotype" where he convincingly makes the argument that beehives, bird nests, and beaver dams are just as much the result of genetics as are the bodies of bees, birds, and beavers -- and that, logically, the same argument could and should be applied to human.
I have "300" on Blu-Ray, and it is awesome in HD. I think it was worth $30 for the movie -- but I don't think any single movie can be worth the price of a Blu-Ray player.
If there's not at least a dozen or so movies that (a) look great in HD, and (b) you plan on watching more than once or twice, there's probably no point in investing in an upgrade.
In my case, I have a PS3 that I use for gaming and to watch all my ripped DVD movies, so I didn't have to upgrade any h/w just to get the Blu-Ray version of a few movies.
Agreed -- I don't know what is in your Emergency Repair Kit, but I imagine that it consists of lots of things that you would rather not have disappear into Luggage Limbo. If you check it as luggage, you *will* eventually find yourself getting off a plane in someplace like Tokyo only to find that your Repair Kit is in Buenos Aires. Ideally, ship it to the customer/destination early enough that you can verify delivery before you get on the plane. It's more up-front paperwork, but it saves a lot of problems on the back end. A few years ago I had a fairly lenghty discussion with a nice Customs Person in the Beijing airport who did not appreciate me trying to carry a fairly expensive network analyzer with me without having a receipt to show it belonged to me. Even though (a) it belonged to my employer, and (b) I had carried it with me INTO the country two weeks earlier. Much easier just to ship it in advance, and arrange for the customer to ship it back -- they'll know the local rules for "exporting" things.
You sound very sure of yourself, saying that you know the former to cost less than the latter -- what is your source for this information?
I agree there aren't many reasons to move around up there today -- but there may be in the future. I'm just thinking that, given the presence of maneuverable ships in orbit, keeping at least one or two of them up there would give us a capability we would not otherwise have.
Maybe they could be dire-emergency lifeboats, giving the ISS crew an in-orbit shelter where they could wait for a rescue shuttle? Maybe they could take astronauts out on satellite repair missions? Maybe they could be used to to move cargo orbiting structures we haven't even thought of yet?
Again, I'm not so much thinking of what we'd do with them now -- but it costs a lot money to get 'em into orbit, and keeping them there would most likely be less expensive than launching something else if/when we need an orbital taxi for something.
But why not just leave it in orbit? Wouldn't it potentially be useful if we had a few crafts in orbit that could be used by the ISS crew (or the crew from other, future stations) to move around up there?
Yes, it's tragicomically wasteful. I don't understand why they can't design a cargo/supply ship that STAYS IN ORBIT. I mean, sure, let's go ahead and de-orbit the ISS trash in some kind of disposable carrying module -- but leave the ship itself in orbit, and design it so it can potentially be refueled from the station later. Then just "park" it in orbit a few miles from the Station, and leave it there. At some point in time, we could probably think of something useful to do in space with a handful of these -- and we would finally have the "pickup truck in space" that NASA wanted a few years ago. The whole concept of multi-million-dollar disposable rockets is just ludicrous!
People rarely interact directly with the operating system; they interact with shells and applications. The Ubuntu GUI isn't the operating system, nor is it PART of the operating system -- it's an application that lets you manage the operating system and run other applications. That may be the stuff that most users associate with the term "operating system", but that doesn't make it true. I'm certain that when Linus speaks about Linux, he's not referring to anything except the core OS itself. The minute you install a GUI on Linus, you're no longer interacting with "linux", but with whatever GUI you've installed.
They already made a game console that'd be perfect for you. It's called a Sega Genesis... :-)
:-)
OK, I say that jokingly -- although... I recently went on a retro-trip and picked one up on eBay for like $30, and spent almost an entire day playing the original Sonic in glorious 16-bit color. I haven't had that much *fun* with a video game for a long time.
I disagree with your point about story lines, however. Sure, there's little point in re-playing a story-based game once you've finished it once -- but if finishing it that first time was fun, rewarding, and kept you entertained for maybe 30-40 hours, then I think that's pretty good. I mean, most movies are story-driven, so the same logic applies: Once you've seen it once, there's no point in doing so again, so why would anyone ever buy a movie? Answer: Because that first viewing or two is rewarding enough that they think it's worth the expense. Ditto with games.
All from me now -- Gotta go replay Master of Magic again!
Yes, and you're DEFINITELY going to Hell for having used your VCR or Tivo to avoid watching commercials.
This kind of logic is insane. If I pick up a newspaper and cut out all the ads before reading it, have I stolen revenue from the publisher?
Oh no! Yesterday I turned down the volume on my car radio when an obnoxious commercial came on. I wonder if the radio station is going to sue me for theft?!
Whatever!
Do they get a warrant, sneak into your home in the dead of night, and install software on your computer?
Do they mail it to you as a virus, perhaps cleverly disguised as a Nigerian spam scam?
Do they use the back door that Microsoft agreed to put in all their software in return for being granted Most-Favored Monopoly status by the government?
Or something else? "You are a suspected pedophile. To clear your name, please click here to install the FBI's internet spyware on your computer"?
Anyone know?
Well, what I'm really asking is this:
Suppose I was an artist capable of creating a painting which, considered by itself, would generally be considered high art. The kind of artwork that, if displayed in a New York gallery, would attract critical attention from people whose career revolves around critiquing art.
Now suppose that I had created this amazing piece of art because I had been commissioned to produce background imagery for a game. It is never exhibited or shown outside of the context of the game for which I created it.
Is it possible for such a work to be considered high art? Remember, we're postulating that the work itself is one that WOULD be considered high art if it had been shared with the Art World. Does being included in a game actually detract from the "standalone" artistic value of the game's component pieces?
Within Ebert's definition of "high art", it is not unreasonable to state that games do not pass muster. The way he defines high art, it precludes the kind of interactivity that is in most games. Nothing wrong wit that.
But what about the individual elements that go into a game -- like the textures, or background images, or cutscenes, or level designs, or soundtrack -- can those be "high art", even if the game as a whole is not?
The Mona Lisa is, unquestionably, High Art. Would it still be High Art if I used it as a texture for my "Louvre Deathmatch" game mod?
What if I made an original painting of equal artistic merit as the Mona Lisa, but instead of exhibiting it in a hoighty-toighty gallery I used it in a game -- would my choice of context instantly make my painting become Not Art?
If a famous composer wrote a symphonic work specifically for a game, would it still be High Art? Why (not)?
I think you misunderstand. The law says that you CAN do this -- and the court has now struck down the law, saying that a warrant is needed before your email can be searched, just like any other kind of mail search or wiretap. This is a Good Thing, even if the original law was stupid to begin with.
But Sony creating and using their own images of a cathedral is not at all similar to the case you describe, with me using actual scenes taken from a copyrighted work such as the Spidey movie.
Sony did not use anyone else's images -- they made a 3D model of a building that has been open to the public for hundreds of years. If I use a 3D modelling tool to make a model of the Washington Monument, or the Eiffel Tower, or some other famous landmark building and then use that as part of a game I'm making, have I violated anyone's copyright or intellectual property? If so, how?
I haven't played R:FoM, but it's a FPS game, yes? In which you run around a virtual world shooting various critters and such, yes? The key word here is "virtual" -- Unless Sony went through the Cathedral with a camcorder and actually used real footage of the real cathedral in the game, I don't see how they're "using" the cathedral for anything at all.
Would it be illegal if I drew a picture of the inside of the cathedral and posted it online? How 'bout if I carefully modelled in in 3D? And did an animated walkthrough?
The Church of England may own the Cathedral, but do they own the rights to the *appearance* of the Cathedral?
I was going to make that same suggestion. It's still true that you can move from support into a lot of other technical roles, but this is definitely made more difficult by companies outsourcing their support to others.
If you want to leverage your support background into something else, I would start looking closely at your current client companies, and see if you can find a way to move into their in-house 3rd-tier support organization. Once you're there, depending on the company and what they do, you'll have a lot of options -- gradually moving closer to the customers (i.e. sales engineering), the product (i.e. development), or corporate operations (i.e. IT/sysadmin).
Good luck!
LOL, pretty funny how all three of your fanbois misspelled "definitely" in the same way! :-)
Joking aside, I think you're absolutely right -- the only people who are making bold predictions now are either (a) fans of one of the platforms, or (b) paid by the creators of the platforms, or (c) clueless idiots.
Personally, I think Sony will win in the long term, precisely because Sony is thinking in the long term. I bet the Sony execs don't give a damn how much they're losing on each PS3 unit, while the PS2 is continuing to outsell the 360. When was the last time anyone bought a brand-new last-gen Xbox? Or a last-gen Gamecube?
D'oh! sbrown123 beat me to the punch with three of my four suggestions. In that case, I'm changing my vote to AppleTalk. Oh, wait...
Maybe they should name it after different kinds of apples. Then the Japanese market could see the FujiPhone, and the US retirement homes would be flooded with GrannySmithPhones...
Maybe iTalk or iTel? Or how about something straightforward like "iPod Phone" or "Phone iPod"? Or, similarly to their new streaming TV gadget, they could go with phone. PhonePod?
and
and
and
They're all over the place; there must be thousands of them! How could everyone have missed this? I must be a programming genius! Maybe I can help SCO write their next expert opinion...
Thank for your recent letter. Regretfully, we must decline your offer of your special edition software and its license.
Apparently you are not aware of our country's recent legislation addressing software license rules. In order for a software company to legally sell ANY software in our country, it will now be required to provide, free of charge, a number of fully licensed copies of said software to the government, that number to be determined by the government and revised at the government's discretion.
(Having a monopoly sure sounds like fun. But writing your own laws is even more fun, we think!)