It worked well for Hillary Clinton back in her 2000 Senate race. She had said she wouldn't take out of state campaign funds (or something to that effect) and during a debate, her opponent, Rick Lazio, crossed the stage to her podium to ask her to sign a pledge saying as much. She looked agog that he would dare come over to her.
The next morning, the news was all about how he violated her space and "abused" her by demanding she sign the pledge she verbally agreed to. From that point on, she got the sympathy vote and it was impossible for Lazio to even have a chance in the race.
For better or worse, Biden risks the same problem if he debates her as he would debate his typical male opponents. If he comes off as harsh or condescending, she's the victim and wins by default. If she actually outright beats him (either because he was too timid to aggressively debate or or she just flat out wows the audience more than he does at his best), then Biden is a weight dragging down the Obama ticket.
He's 71 years old. Its really really highly unlikely that somebody with the ammount of money he has (think nutrition, health care, etc.) is going to develop dimentia at his age.
Because, it's not like Reagan developed Alzheimer's or anything in his 80s... especially since he was such a poor, sedentary guy his entire adult life and couldn't afford the best health care during his senior years.
I have a 98 Ranger. When the tank is half full, I've actually gone about half as far as the tank will take me (roughly 200 miles), at 1/4 of a tank, I'm usually around 275 miles and on E, when the "check gauge" light flips on, I'm usually around 330 miles with another 60 or so miles I can drive until I'm totally out of gas. My 87 Escort GT worked almost the same way, with another 2-3 gallons left after I hit empty. I rather like it that way and after 13 years of driving those two vehicles, I've come to depend on it. I know when I hit empty, I've still got enough gas to get somewhere and don't care if I fill up 3 gallons shy of actually being empty.
That's not quite true of course. Anyone who had the choice of paying $1 or $100 dollars for the exact same product would pay the lower price.
Some people convince themselves that, by paying more, they're getting a better product even if it's the exact same thing. For example... the store brand cheerios are the exact same as the name brand cheerios, only stuck in a different box and cost half the price. Guess which one sells more? People pay for brands they're comfortable with even if it's the exact same manufacturer, just stuck in a different package.
It's been a couple years since I played EverCrack, but there were definitely tools that allowed you to do things because the server assumed the client was telling the truth. For example, you could instantly warp around to anywhere on a map, even if you couldn't run that fast, even if it was an inaccessible location, etc.
It also allowed you to see all the mobs in any given zone. Once upon a time, the server even told you what the monsters were carrying, so you knew exactly what to hit to maximize your farming. Even though they "fixed" that by not telling the client what the mob had until it dropped, SOE still never fixed the rest of the problem.
And, yeah, it was a problem. I've seen people leap deep into raid zones while we were raiding them to take out the top named mobs long before we could get to them. Nothing like being 4 hours into a 6 hour raid only to see a few hardcores come into the zone, warp ahead of you and take out your loot and progression mobs (think an Anguish equipped group (when that was the top zone) warping in while you're doing VT and taking out all the good loot mobs or warping around SRo's Tower to take down the named so you can't get people into the EPs).
These tools still worked as of spring 2006 when I quit playing, I don't know if they fixed them since. However, whether or not you want to classify EQ as modern seeing as it still sees development, despite being released a decade ago, is up to you.
If you want something very stable that still gets updated with bugfixes, you want 2.6.16.x. 2.6.x-RCy are like the old odd number releases but instead of taking 3 years to come out with an even number, it takes 3 months and then they begin merging the next development version while a stable team continues to update the last stable release (and Adrian Bunk keeps working on 2.6.16.x).
So, under the current versioning scheme, you can think of 2.6.17-RCx as 2.7, 2.6.17[.x] as 2.8.x, 2.6.18-RCx as 2.9, 2.7.18[.x] as 2.10, etc. Those RCs are a cycle shortened development kernel.
Embedded devs crop up from time to time on LKML complaining about things moving too fast and there not being enough feature stability between versions, but the general view is that most embedded developers stick with an older version and modify that to meet their needs anyway.
All that said, there are some real issues like the existing e1000 driver being silently deprecated for certain hardware that previously worked fine, which bit both Ingo and Linus. That sort of thing definitely shouldn't have happened.
Picture yourself on the way home from grandma's house after visiting the family for Christmas. It's 1:30 AM. It's snowing and the wind is whipping. Everyone's tired and your wife is bitching up a storm because your mom put her in a bad mood. Your batteries are running low and you're still 200 miles from home. And it's going to take 4 hours to charge them.
Not to mention the fact that you don't have a controlled explosion going on generating heat which can be pumped into the car as a benefit, so your wife is freezing her ass off, your windshield is covered in a block of ice and your headlights are getting dim. I hope the kids can entertain themselves and don't need a radio, tv, etc to placate them for the 4 hour wait in addition to the 4 hours of driving still left since that, too, is drawing down your stored fuel.
Not all viruses die in a dry environment. When my dad was in the hospital for 5 months back in 1998, he was colonized by VRE. When Infectious Disease came to talk to us about it, they said that it will stay alive on virtually any surface for an indefinite amount of time. I've also heard that MRSA acts the same way. The only way to kill it is by sterilization.
It is conceivable that there's a clause in copyright law that grants libraries special rights, though I'm not aware of any such clause.
Instead, libraries tend to work on first sale doctrine, AFAIK. They bought the book, so they can lend it, use it to prop up short table legs, or whatever they feel like doing with it. So long as they don't copy the book, there is no copyright infringement. IANAL, but...
17 US 109, (b)(1)(A):
Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a), unless authorized by the owners of copyright in the sound recording or the owner of copyright in a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), and in the case of a sound recording in the musical works embodied therein, neither the owner of a particular phonorecord nor any person in possession of a particular copy of a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending. Nothing in the preceding sentence shall apply to the rental, lease, or lending of a phonorecord for nonprofit purposes by a nonprofit library or nonprofit educational institution. The transfer of possession of a lawfully made copy of a computer program by a nonprofit educational institution to another nonprofit educational institution or to faculty, staff, and students does not constitute rental, lease, or lending for direct or indirect commercial purposes under this
I run it via a slightly different command than what they give there though
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/lib/Loki_Compat/"/usr/lib/Loki_Compat/ld-linux.so.2/usr/local/games/smac/smacx.dynamic
In my school in the US, the advanced programs were cut due to "funding" (despite budgets that grow 5-15% annually) but the slower kids programs can't be cut since the state mandates minimum education requirements for kids with disabilities. Also, the disabled kids were forced into regular classes since they can't be discriminated against, basically holding back the entire class to the lowest common denominator.
Nothing against the disabled kids, it's not like they asked to be that way... but the effect was a class full of bored kids who never progressed toward any kind of advanced curriculum. Thirteen years after I graduated, with the addition of calculators, teenage kids can't even do simple 3 digit math anymore. They're utterly reliant on calculators for all of their daily math needs (including making change for small purchases, forget about any higher math), their vocabulary is stunted, they fail to grasp basic science concepts and they have little knowledge of history.
Sure, some kids will excel anyway, but that's in spite of the system, not because of it... and most likely, that comes down to their parents involvement in their education rather than their school's involvement. I thought it was a scary thing that, in my Intro to Computer Engineering class in 1995 at college, only 2 out of 35 of us knew what binary numbers are. In retrospect, those kids were geniuses compared to the current crop of grads getting their high school diplomas in a couple weeks.
BTW, starting teacher pay fresh out of college is slightly above the median income for the residents of my town and about 15% above it after just 5 years. It's not like we're paying peanuts at $15k per student to get these results. Only 5.3% of residents under the poverty line as well, so that's not an excuse either.
You're right. So why would a 3rd party developer waste resources on a demographic that has shown that they don't want to play anything but Mario games and Wii Sports? For the same reason Nintendo is very profitable off the Wii while MS and Sony have been hemorrhaging money off this generation. It opens up an entirely new market for you.
Sure, if you're going to do the same old thing (with new graphics!), the new gamers in the Wii market might not be much of an opportunity for you, but if you think you can suck them in, you double your potential market. The Wii isn't some niche player, it's leading in sales this generation. Going only 360/PS3 and ignoring the Wii is like providing commercial Apple/Linux software while ignoring the Windows market because they're all "too stupid to grasp" your software. You can make a good living off the fanboys, but you can get rich if you also include the bigger market (even if a lower percentage of them buy the game). Of course, it also depends on the game... SuperGrindCore 27 probably wouldn't do so well on the Wii, since Wii users are looking more for a little entertainment than a way of life. A group fighting game? That just screams the Wii market... there's room for more than just Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Loki's demise couldn't have anything to do with a poor business plan, a terrible chief executive and a market that wasn't ready for such an entity, could it?
Certainly, the Wii's market has as little demand as Linux gaming did in 1998, right? Not to mention the fact that Nintendo is a brand new company that is hemorrhaging money and begging to put the payroll on employees' credit cards.
When it comes to gaming, I'll look at people who support my platform. If they do, great, I'll consider buying. If they don't, hey, I'm fine with that too... my life will go on if I don't get to play the latest over-hyped game for Windows/a console. Maybe, if a Windows game is really great, recommended by my friends and will run in Wine, I'll buy it... but I'm cool with missing out on 99.9% of the games out there. It's not like I'm choosing to go without water.
Which is fine... I'm completely ok with not getting a Street Fighter game, just as I was fine with not getting Metal Gear Solid, Halo, Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed, etc.
If a company wants my money, they have to give me what I want. If they don't want my money, that's fine too. It's their choice of what audience they want to cater to just as it's my choice of what games I want to buy.
Further, I'd bet I'm a lot more of an average user/gamer than you are. You may be in the top bracket of money spenders on gaming, but most people aren't buying 2 games a month.Your group is probably less common than the people who buy the Wii just for the packaged game. Most people don't have the time or desire to burn through games that fast since they're busy with their kids, job, spouse, etc. Games are a recreation for most people, not a way of life (and I say that as a reformed EQ junkie who played 80-100 hours a week)
As a Wii-only owner, I have no interest in buying another console. In fact, the Wii is the first console I've bought since the SNES. If game publishers don't want to publish for my machine, they don't want my sale. Nintendo has already made a fortune off me (3 wiimotes, 2 nunhucks, 1 classic controller, Wii Fit, Zapper + 4 first/second party games and the 3 bundled games) and I've bought 5 third party games. I'm still having fun with the games I already have and there are plenty more that I want sitting on the shelf in the store or on the way over the next few month.
If you want my dollars, make your game work on my console. Ditto if you want my computer game dollars - make a Linux version or chances are strong I'm not buying (I've bought about 5 Linux games for every Windows game over the last 10 years since Loki first came about). They're my dollars, earn them by giving me what I want or lose them if you think I'm not profitable enough, just don't expect me to fork out tons of cash to buy another system plus accessories to give you money.
Fade to Black, thought by many to be some type of suicide note, was really about James Hetfield mourning his favorite amp after it was stolen with some of Metallica's gear in Boston.
New York sales tax pays for schools. Amazon sells books. I'm sensing a connection here. Now, now... the lottery was supposed to pay for schools.
In my district in NY, About 54% of the school's budget is derived from property taxes, the other 46% comes from the state. Now supposedly, all of the lottery money is supposed to go to education (in reality, it just goes into the general fund and gets allocated wherever). 4% of the sales goes to the state general fund (and in my case, 4% goes to my county, which is used for county government functions. None of that goes to the school. Total 8% sales tax). Factor in all of the other taxes (such as income tax, vehicle and license registration fees, etc) that go into the general fund as well. At the end of the day, yes, some sales tax goes to education, but the bulk of it in my district will always be from real estate taxes. The share of our $14 million from the state that actually comes from sales tax is likely pretty small and is but a wee fraction of the overall $31 million school budget.
PS - at almost $20,000 per year per student for education, there is absolutely no room for schools to cut any fat, especially since the state isn't ranked anywhere near the top for all that expenditure. Maybe they should tighten their belts a bit rather than give us 7-10% school budget increases every year. I know my pay certainly isn't going up that fast.
There have been previous stories on slashdot about the problem before.
If you read through them, there are problems with using newing profiles, problems with the DRM on the discs, etc. Basically, the standard was rushed to market and the kinks didn't get worked out. If you're lucky, a firmware update will fix it. If you're not lucky or tech savvy enough to know about firmware updates, all you know is that your player doesn't work with newer discs.
Now granted, I'm still happy with DVD and have no desire to move to a new format (especially since I don't have any HDTVs) and most of my knowledge of the subject comes from Slashdot. But to blindly say that all Blu-Ray players will play all Blu-Ray discs perfectly (extras aside) seems to fly in the face of people's actual experiences.
I indeed have a DVD that I had to buy a new player for back around 1999 or 2000. I've never had any other DVD fail and my best friend has a collection of more than a thousand DVDs (half of them unopened... him and his wife will buy them just because they're on the shelf) and he's never had problems with any of them
When it comes to DVD, there is basically one standard and whether or not things work depend on how well the manufacturers followed the standard. With Blu-Ray, there are multiple standards, which are supposed to be mostly interoperable, but your mile may vary quite a bit. If you don't have a profile 2.0 player, you might not be able to play the latest discs at all and when studios start releasing a 2.1 or 3.0 profile disc, your 2.0 player may be worthless too.
DVDs at this point are future proof... all of the bugs are essentially gone. We can't say the same for Blu-Ray and that's my point, at this point Blu-Ray is not the choice for a future proof product, DVD is... especially since your DVDs can still be played in your Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) player.
All Blu-Ray players can play DVDs, so if you're buying a new player you might want to future-proof the hardware, as well I can play any DVD in my DVD player...
Some people are already complaining that their profile 1.0 Blu-Ray players can't play the latest discs. I'd say DVD is the better bet for future proofing at this point, especially as far as hardware goes. Who wants a $400 Blu-Ray player that won't play next month's discs?
It's all in how it is interpreted... the Commerce Clause has been interpreted to say that the federal government can pretty much usurp power from the states by means of refusing to grant highway funds and whatnot to states unless they comply with Congress' wishes. That's definitely not what the framers of the Constitution intended when they said that Congress had the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
That's the problem with judges (and other powerful politicians) who seek to bend the Constitution to their will rather than take what the Constitution says on face value and that's the problem when we seek to expand the role of the federal government in any new way rather than keep it a small, weak body with little power over our daily lives. Every time we allow the federal government to expand, we permanently lose a little freedom. Sooner or later, someone we'd rather not have a particular power over us will come into that power and only then with people regret what they so willingly gave up without a fight.
Of COURSE the US laws and points of view prevail IN THE US over anything else. We are a soverign nation. We have our own laws and our own courts. We aren't SUPPOSED to be controlled by every other country on the planet. Our SCOTUS isn't SUPPOSED to be considering other country's laws when they rule on laws we have passed here, they have a Constitution they are supposed to consider as supreme.
That Constitution says nothing about the WTO getting to change US laws they don't like. It says nothing about UN Resolutions. Our government tops out at the federal level.
There's a loophole in the Constitution however...
From Article VI:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Technically you don't need an amendment to change the Constitution and the supreme law of the US, all you need is 67 Senators and the President to concoct and agree to a treaty with a foreign power. That treaty then has the same weight as the Constitution.
Retired NJ Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano has written a couple of books which touch on the subject of how the federal government has been able to subvert the Constitution. Check out "Constitutional Chaos" and "The Constitution in Exile"
I haven't played the franchise in years, but back in the late 90s, EA's NHL9X games supported multiplayer sitting next to each other on one computer with a variety of inputs. A keyboard/mouse for one person, a joystick for the other, two gampads, etc. It definitely had support for 2 people and I want to say it supported 4 but I can't remember for sure.
It's not that those types of games can't be done on a computer, it's just that they've tended to sell better in the console market since that is where people are more likely to play in the same room at the same time. By the same token, since this is slashdot and all, a mower deck could be mounted to your car, but most people would prefer to have a mower on their garden tractor, so that's what most companies make them for.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole idea of soulbound items didn't exist prior to wow, and was a direct response to all the item trading that was going on in Diablo 2.
No Drop items existed in EQ before WoW came out... to help prevent a combination of item trading, farming for twinks, to make items more rare, etc.
It worked well for Hillary Clinton back in her 2000 Senate race. She had said she wouldn't take out of state campaign funds (or something to that effect) and during a debate, her opponent, Rick Lazio, crossed the stage to her podium to ask her to sign a pledge saying as much. She looked agog that he would dare come over to her.
The next morning, the news was all about how he violated her space and "abused" her by demanding she sign the pledge she verbally agreed to. From that point on, she got the sympathy vote and it was impossible for Lazio to even have a chance in the race.
For better or worse, Biden risks the same problem if he debates her as he would debate his typical male opponents. If he comes off as harsh or condescending, she's the victim and wins by default. If she actually outright beats him (either because he was too timid to aggressively debate or or she just flat out wows the audience more than he does at his best), then Biden is a weight dragging down the Obama ticket.
He's 71 years old. Its really really highly unlikely that somebody with the ammount of money he has (think nutrition, health care, etc.) is going to develop dimentia at his age.
Because, it's not like Reagan developed Alzheimer's or anything in his 80s... especially since he was such a poor, sedentary guy his entire adult life and couldn't afford the best health care during his senior years.
Totally preposterous idea...
I have a 98 Ranger. When the tank is half full, I've actually gone about half as far as the tank will take me (roughly 200 miles), at 1/4 of a tank, I'm usually around 275 miles and on E, when the "check gauge" light flips on, I'm usually around 330 miles with another 60 or so miles I can drive until I'm totally out of gas. My 87 Escort GT worked almost the same way, with another 2-3 gallons left after I hit empty. I rather like it that way and after 13 years of driving those two vehicles, I've come to depend on it. I know when I hit empty, I've still got enough gas to get somewhere and don't care if I fill up 3 gallons shy of actually being empty.
That's not quite true of course. Anyone who had the choice of paying $1 or $100 dollars for the exact same product would pay the lower price.
Some people convince themselves that, by paying more, they're getting a better product even if it's the exact same thing. For example... the store brand cheerios are the exact same as the name brand cheerios, only stuck in a different box and cost half the price. Guess which one sells more? People pay for brands they're comfortable with even if it's the exact same manufacturer, just stuck in a different package.
It's been a couple years since I played EverCrack, but there were definitely tools that allowed you to do things because the server assumed the client was telling the truth. For example, you could instantly warp around to anywhere on a map, even if you couldn't run that fast, even if it was an inaccessible location, etc.
It also allowed you to see all the mobs in any given zone. Once upon a time, the server even told you what the monsters were carrying, so you knew exactly what to hit to maximize your farming. Even though they "fixed" that by not telling the client what the mob had until it dropped, SOE still never fixed the rest of the problem.
And, yeah, it was a problem. I've seen people leap deep into raid zones while we were raiding them to take out the top named mobs long before we could get to them. Nothing like being 4 hours into a 6 hour raid only to see a few hardcores come into the zone, warp ahead of you and take out your loot and progression mobs (think an Anguish equipped group (when that was the top zone) warping in while you're doing VT and taking out all the good loot mobs or warping around SRo's Tower to take down the named so you can't get people into the EPs).
These tools still worked as of spring 2006 when I quit playing, I don't know if they fixed them since. However, whether or not you want to classify EQ as modern seeing as it still sees development, despite being released a decade ago, is up to you.
The last thing I'd want is fingerprints smudged all over my monitor. I'll still with my mouse, thanks.
If you want something very stable that still gets updated with bugfixes, you want 2.6.16.x. 2.6.x-RCy are like the old odd number releases but instead of taking 3 years to come out with an even number, it takes 3 months and then they begin merging the next development version while a stable team continues to update the last stable release (and Adrian Bunk keeps working on 2.6.16.x).
So, under the current versioning scheme, you can think of 2.6.17-RCx as 2.7, 2.6.17[.x] as 2.8.x, 2.6.18-RCx as 2.9, 2.7.18[.x] as 2.10, etc. Those RCs are a cycle shortened development kernel.
Embedded devs crop up from time to time on LKML complaining about things moving too fast and there not being enough feature stability between versions, but the general view is that most embedded developers stick with an older version and modify that to meet their needs anyway.
All that said, there are some real issues like the existing e1000 driver being silently deprecated for certain hardware that previously worked fine, which bit both Ingo and Linus. That sort of thing definitely shouldn't have happened.
Picture yourself on the way home from grandma's house after visiting the family for Christmas. It's 1:30 AM. It's snowing and the wind is whipping. Everyone's tired and your wife is bitching up a storm because your mom put her in a bad mood. Your batteries are running low and you're still 200 miles from home. And it's going to take 4 hours to charge them.
Not to mention the fact that you don't have a controlled explosion going on generating heat which can be pumped into the car as a benefit, so your wife is freezing her ass off, your windshield is covered in a block of ice and your headlights are getting dim. I hope the kids can entertain themselves and don't need a radio, tv, etc to placate them for the 4 hour wait in addition to the 4 hours of driving still left since that, too, is drawing down your stored fuel.
Not all viruses die in a dry environment. When my dad was in the hospital for 5 months back in 1998, he was colonized by VRE. When Infectious Disease came to talk to us about it, they said that it will stay alive on virtually any surface for an indefinite amount of time. I've also heard that MRSA acts the same way. The only way to kill it is by sterilization.
Instead, libraries tend to work on first sale doctrine, AFAIK. They bought the book, so they can lend it, use it to prop up short table legs, or whatever they feel like doing with it. So long as they don't copy the book, there is no copyright infringement. IANAL, but...
17 US 109, (b)(1)(A):
Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a), unless authorized by the owners of copyright in the sound recording or the owner of copyright in a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), and in the case of a sound recording in the musical works embodied therein, neither the owner of a particular phonorecord nor any person in possession of a particular copy of a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending. Nothing in the preceding sentence shall apply to the rental, lease, or lending of a phonorecord for nonprofit purposes by a nonprofit library or nonprofit educational institution. The transfer of possession of a lawfully made copy of a computer program by a nonprofit educational institution to another nonprofit educational institution or to faculty, staff, and students does not constitute rental, lease, or lending for direct or indirect commercial purposes under this
I'm running:
/usr/lib/Loki_Compat/ld-linux.so.2 /usr/local/games/smac/smacx.dynamic
$ uname -a
Linux death 2.6.25-gentoo-r4 #2 SMP Thu May 22 15:42:34 EDT 2008 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
SMAC and SMACX work fine here if you download the libraries and follow the instructions at http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Running_Old_Loki_Games
I run it via a slightly different command than what they give there though
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/lib/Loki_Compat/"
In my school in the US, the advanced programs were cut due to "funding" (despite budgets that grow 5-15% annually) but the slower kids programs can't be cut since the state mandates minimum education requirements for kids with disabilities. Also, the disabled kids were forced into regular classes since they can't be discriminated against, basically holding back the entire class to the lowest common denominator.
Nothing against the disabled kids, it's not like they asked to be that way... but the effect was a class full of bored kids who never progressed toward any kind of advanced curriculum. Thirteen years after I graduated, with the addition of calculators, teenage kids can't even do simple 3 digit math anymore. They're utterly reliant on calculators for all of their daily math needs (including making change for small purchases, forget about any higher math), their vocabulary is stunted, they fail to grasp basic science concepts and they have little knowledge of history.
Sure, some kids will excel anyway, but that's in spite of the system, not because of it... and most likely, that comes down to their parents involvement in their education rather than their school's involvement. I thought it was a scary thing that, in my Intro to Computer Engineering class in 1995 at college, only 2 out of 35 of us knew what binary numbers are. In retrospect, those kids were geniuses compared to the current crop of grads getting their high school diplomas in a couple weeks.
BTW, starting teacher pay fresh out of college is slightly above the median income for the residents of my town and about 15% above it after just 5 years. It's not like we're paying peanuts at $15k per student to get these results. Only 5.3% of residents under the poverty line as well, so that's not an excuse either.
Sure, if you're going to do the same old thing (with new graphics!), the new gamers in the Wii market might not be much of an opportunity for you, but if you think you can suck them in, you double your potential market. The Wii isn't some niche player, it's leading in sales this generation. Going only 360/PS3 and ignoring the Wii is like providing commercial Apple/Linux software while ignoring the Windows market because they're all "too stupid to grasp" your software. You can make a good living off the fanboys, but you can get rich if you also include the bigger market (even if a lower percentage of them buy the game). Of course, it also depends on the game... SuperGrindCore 27 probably wouldn't do so well on the Wii, since Wii users are looking more for a little entertainment than a way of life. A group fighting game? That just screams the Wii market... there's room for more than just Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Loki's demise couldn't have anything to do with a poor business plan, a terrible chief executive and a market that wasn't ready for such an entity, could it?
Certainly, the Wii's market has as little demand as Linux gaming did in 1998, right? Not to mention the fact that Nintendo is a brand new company that is hemorrhaging money and begging to put the payroll on employees' credit cards.
When it comes to gaming, I'll look at people who support my platform. If they do, great, I'll consider buying. If they don't, hey, I'm fine with that too... my life will go on if I don't get to play the latest over-hyped game for Windows/a console. Maybe, if a Windows game is really great, recommended by my friends and will run in Wine, I'll buy it... but I'm cool with missing out on 99.9% of the games out there. It's not like I'm choosing to go without water.
Which is fine... I'm completely ok with not getting a Street Fighter game, just as I was fine with not getting Metal Gear Solid, Halo, Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed, etc.
If a company wants my money, they have to give me what I want. If they don't want my money, that's fine too. It's their choice of what audience they want to cater to just as it's my choice of what games I want to buy.
Further, I'd bet I'm a lot more of an average user/gamer than you are. You may be in the top bracket of money spenders on gaming, but most people aren't buying 2 games a month.Your group is probably less common than the people who buy the Wii just for the packaged game. Most people don't have the time or desire to burn through games that fast since they're busy with their kids, job, spouse, etc. Games are a recreation for most people, not a way of life (and I say that as a reformed EQ junkie who played 80-100 hours a week)
As a Wii-only owner, I have no interest in buying another console. In fact, the Wii is the first console I've bought since the SNES. If game publishers don't want to publish for my machine, they don't want my sale. Nintendo has already made a fortune off me (3 wiimotes, 2 nunhucks, 1 classic controller, Wii Fit, Zapper + 4 first/second party games and the 3 bundled games) and I've bought 5 third party games. I'm still having fun with the games I already have and there are plenty more that I want sitting on the shelf in the store or on the way over the next few month.
If you want my dollars, make your game work on my console. Ditto if you want my computer game dollars - make a Linux version or chances are strong I'm not buying (I've bought about 5 Linux games for every Windows game over the last 10 years since Loki first came about). They're my dollars, earn them by giving me what I want or lose them if you think I'm not profitable enough, just don't expect me to fork out tons of cash to buy another system plus accessories to give you money.
Fade to Black, thought by many to be some type of suicide note, was really about James Hetfield mourning his favorite amp after it was stolen with some of Metallica's gear in Boston.
In my district in NY, About 54% of the school's budget is derived from property taxes, the other 46% comes from the state. Now supposedly, all of the lottery money is supposed to go to education (in reality, it just goes into the general fund and gets allocated wherever). 4% of the sales goes to the state general fund (and in my case, 4% goes to my county, which is used for county government functions. None of that goes to the school. Total 8% sales tax). Factor in all of the other taxes (such as income tax, vehicle and license registration fees, etc) that go into the general fund as well. At the end of the day, yes, some sales tax goes to education, but the bulk of it in my district will always be from real estate taxes. The share of our $14 million from the state that actually comes from sales tax is likely pretty small and is but a wee fraction of the overall $31 million school budget.
PS - at almost $20,000 per year per student for education, there is absolutely no room for schools to cut any fat, especially since the state isn't ranked anywhere near the top for all that expenditure. Maybe they should tighten their belts a bit rather than give us 7-10% school budget increases every year. I know my pay certainly isn't going up that fast.
There have been previous stories on slashdot about the problem before.
If you read through them, there are problems with using newing profiles, problems with the DRM on the discs, etc. Basically, the standard was rushed to market and the kinks didn't get worked out. If you're lucky, a firmware update will fix it. If you're not lucky or tech savvy enough to know about firmware updates, all you know is that your player doesn't work with newer discs.
Now granted, I'm still happy with DVD and have no desire to move to a new format (especially since I don't have any HDTVs) and most of my knowledge of the subject comes from Slashdot. But to blindly say that all Blu-Ray players will play all Blu-Ray discs perfectly (extras aside) seems to fly in the face of people's actual experiences.
I indeed have a DVD that I had to buy a new player for back around 1999 or 2000. I've never had any other DVD fail and my best friend has a collection of more than a thousand DVDs (half of them unopened... him and his wife will buy them just because they're on the shelf) and he's never had problems with any of them
When it comes to DVD, there is basically one standard and whether or not things work depend on how well the manufacturers followed the standard. With Blu-Ray, there are multiple standards, which are supposed to be mostly interoperable, but your mile may vary quite a bit. If you don't have a profile 2.0 player, you might not be able to play the latest discs at all and when studios start releasing a 2.1 or 3.0 profile disc, your 2.0 player may be worthless too.
DVDs at this point are future proof... all of the bugs are essentially gone. We can't say the same for Blu-Ray and that's my point, at this point Blu-Ray is not the choice for a future proof product, DVD is... especially since your DVDs can still be played in your Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) player.
Some people are already complaining that their profile 1.0 Blu-Ray players can't play the latest discs. I'd say DVD is the better bet for future proofing at this point, especially as far as hardware goes. Who wants a $400 Blu-Ray player that won't play next month's discs?
It's all in how it is interpreted... the Commerce Clause has been interpreted to say that the federal government can pretty much usurp power from the states by means of refusing to grant highway funds and whatnot to states unless they comply with Congress' wishes. That's definitely not what the framers of the Constitution intended when they said that Congress had the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
That's the problem with judges (and other powerful politicians) who seek to bend the Constitution to their will rather than take what the Constitution says on face value and that's the problem when we seek to expand the role of the federal government in any new way rather than keep it a small, weak body with little power over our daily lives. Every time we allow the federal government to expand, we permanently lose a little freedom. Sooner or later, someone we'd rather not have a particular power over us will come into that power and only then with people regret what they so willingly gave up without a fight.
From Article VI:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Technically you don't need an amendment to change the Constitution and the supreme law of the US, all you need is 67 Senators and the President to concoct and agree to a treaty with a foreign power. That treaty then has the same weight as the Constitution.
Retired NJ Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano has written a couple of books which touch on the subject of how the federal government has been able to subvert the Constitution. Check out "Constitutional Chaos" and "The Constitution in Exile"
I haven't played the franchise in years, but back in the late 90s, EA's NHL9X games supported multiplayer sitting next to each other on one computer with a variety of inputs. A keyboard/mouse for one person, a joystick for the other, two gampads, etc. It definitely had support for 2 people and I want to say it supported 4 but I can't remember for sure.
It's not that those types of games can't be done on a computer, it's just that they've tended to sell better in the console market since that is where people are more likely to play in the same room at the same time. By the same token, since this is slashdot and all, a mower deck could be mounted to your car, but most people would prefer to have a mower on their garden tractor, so that's what most companies make them for.