"... when the "good" games were.50 to start and.25 to continue, and the really really good games were.75 to start. Nowadays games are.75 (average) and not really any different/more enjoyable than the run of the mill PC/console game."
And they're still stuck on quarters! Hell, I've seen vending machines that can take dollar coins! If I'm going to blow money at the arcade, don't force me to lug around fifty pounds of quarters or use those cheap-ass bill feeders. Hell, half-dollars would be something!
They still exist in Japan (think about where DDR came from... and I'm not talking RAM). And Microsoft really needs something to push sales of their console over there to something bigger than double digits.
"I'm just trying to antcipate what the excuses will be if and when they DO offer CD audio downloads."
If they offer CD audio tracks for $1.00 a pop, I'll buy it. If they offer lossy files for $0.25 to $0.50 or so a pop, I'll buy it. But I won't buy a lossy file for essentially the same price as a track on a real CD.
I used MP3 as a convenient example. Whatever format they're offering, it doesn't sound like it's a 16-bit digital sampling of the original analog waveform taken 44,100 times a second. If my 10-year-old CD player can't recognize the code natively, what's the point in paying a whole buck for it? You'd end up paying about the same amount of money for lower recording quality (and how much of a quality difference depends on the individual tracks).
Of course, that's probably the RIAA's plan to begin with...
"Artists will be pressured to have every song on thier album a hit to maximize downloads."
First off, if you're downloading and paying per-song, the entire concept of "album" gets thrown out the window. While the concept may still exist in the form of "the band thinks this particular mix of their songs works well," the word won't be something you'd see on recording contracts.
"If you think popular music is crap now, wait until this business model becomes successful."
It could be said that this will be a successful business model because of how crappy popular music is. The desire of listeners to find something other than just some Spears/M&M Frankenstein beast is one of the contributing factors of on-line music trading. How much of a factor is debatable, but it is a factor.
As long as listeners are able to strike out on their own to find what they like (as opposed to being stuck with 31 flavors of Clear Channel), recording companies pursuing the concept of the canned artist will end up shooting themselves in the foot. There isn't any FCC regulation that will allow payola to edge out the smaller names (yet) like we have in the FM spectrum.
"Now that there is an option to get CDs for $15, but with 15 songs you DO want on it. It's time to see who is making excuses for their piracy and who really just doesn't like the system."
That depends: does the customized CD have the original CD audio files, or CD audio recordings of a lossy-compressed format? If I'm going to be paying for it, I want CD-A, not MP3s.
"I thought I made my self pretty clear, but hell I'll try to say it a differnt way."
Your Malaysia comment still doesn't jive, though. Afternoon in Malaysia is several hours before sunrise in New York (just around print time), which to me sounds like that New York Times they get isn't 6 hours old but literally hot off the presses.
Re:Technically pointless
on
Server In A Fly
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Besides the fact that the chip is small, I see no point in sticking it in a dead fly."
Putting it on a dead fly is a guaranteed way to find out if the server can handle/.ing. Duh!
"That Australia filters all printed media. If you want a copy of the NY Times or internation herald tribune it takes an extra 48 hours for them read it and send it off."
Gee... they get yesterday's New York paper today... Could that possibly have something to do with, say, the International Date Line?
"In Malaysia they do sensor the information that is writen about Malaysia however it only takes them 6 hours after the paper is released. So you get the morning paper that afternoon."
New York's afternoon or Malaysia's afternoon? Hell, I don't think the sun is ever shining on both places at the same time...
You sure those numbers aren't for launching a pound of stuff from Earth? When last I checked, surface gravity on the moon is ridiculously low compared to here and even a V-2 could reach lunar escape velocity.
Also, if you're launching something every week, the price is going to go down from our current build-on-demand pricing.
This is a painting by Edouard Manet, who witnessed the battle between the USS Kearsarge and CSS Alabama off the coast of France. The Alabama is burning in the front, with the Kearsarge visible through the smoke behind it. Look carefully at the flag flying off of the stern of the Alabama. Look familiar?
Call me crazy, but I refuse to spend money on industry-crippled media and industry-crippled media writers, especially from Sony (maker of crippled media and member of the RIAA and MPAA). If that means I'll be recording video on S-VHS tapes for the forseeable future, so be it.
"Have anybody ever held a VHS tape and simply marvel at how much data it can (theoretically) hold? I mean, DVD is 4.7G (probably more) for a movie, compressed as much as 40:1. That means that each VHS tape can theoretically hold close to 1/5 of a TERABYTE."
According to JVC, digital VHS can hold up to 4 hours of HDTV resolution or 24 hours of SDTV.
"Magnetic tapes are a nuisance, and, worse, they don't last very long even if you store them well. Audio and video tapes have additional problems related to their consumer origins."
On the other hand, you're thinking about analog signals stored on magnetic tape. Digital signals aren't anywhere near as delicate as analog waveforms (since they can take degredation and still be perfectly readable), so they'll last much longer longer than those VHS tapes you're thinking of (especially the ones you recorded at EP speed).
"What's next, re-enacting the Battle of Gettysburg with QuakeC?"
I have the feeling that muzzle-loaders would take all the fun out of FPSes (one shot every 20 seconds or so sounds like you'd be getting a lot of use out of your bayonette). Wait until a little later in the war when they start churning out repeating rifles, or a little later when Dr. Gatling's idea catches on.
Slashdot Mirror
" ... when the "good" games were .50 to start and .25 to continue, and the really really good games were .75 to start. Nowadays games are .75 (average) and not really any different/more enjoyable than the run of the mill PC/console game."
And they're still stuck on quarters! Hell, I've seen vending machines that can take dollar coins! If I'm going to blow money at the arcade, don't force me to lug around fifty pounds of quarters or use those cheap-ass bill feeders. Hell, half-dollars would be something!
"What arcades?"
They still exist in Japan (think about where DDR came from... and I'm not talking RAM). And Microsoft really needs something to push sales of their console over there to something bigger than double digits.
Multilayer switching via IPv6, right?
" No.. a person with a lottery ticket has *one* more chance of winning than a person that has (n)one."
How many non-players would it take for the group of them to have the same chance of winning as a single ticket-holder? What does n/0 approach again?
"or do they just show your character with a $25,000 cheque and some text that says "You are the winner!" with some cheesy background music?"
Could be worse. Could be "Money Tree Money" that's only redeemable at certain "special" websites.
"A tax on people who suck at math."
A person with a lottery ticket has infinitely more chances of winning than a person that has none. So nyeah!
"I'm just trying to antcipate what the excuses will be if and when they DO offer CD audio downloads."
If they offer CD audio tracks for $1.00 a pop, I'll buy it. If they offer lossy files for $0.25 to $0.50 or so a pop, I'll buy it. But I won't buy a lossy file for essentially the same price as a track on a real CD.
I used MP3 as a convenient example. Whatever format they're offering, it doesn't sound like it's a 16-bit digital sampling of the original analog waveform taken 44,100 times a second. If my 10-year-old CD player can't recognize the code natively, what's the point in paying a whole buck for it? You'd end up paying about the same amount of money for lower recording quality (and how much of a quality difference depends on the individual tracks).
Of course, that's probably the RIAA's plan to begin with...
"Artists will be pressured to have every song on thier album a hit to maximize downloads."
First off, if you're downloading and paying per-song, the entire concept of "album" gets thrown out the window. While the concept may still exist in the form of "the band thinks this particular mix of their songs works well," the word won't be something you'd see on recording contracts.
"If you think popular music is crap now, wait until this business model becomes successful."
It could be said that this will be a successful business model because of how crappy popular music is. The desire of listeners to find something other than just some Spears/M&M Frankenstein beast is one of the contributing factors of on-line music trading. How much of a factor is debatable, but it is a factor.
As long as listeners are able to strike out on their own to find what they like (as opposed to being stuck with 31 flavors of Clear Channel), recording companies pursuing the concept of the canned artist will end up shooting themselves in the foot. There isn't any FCC regulation that will allow payola to edge out the smaller names (yet) like we have in the FM spectrum.
"Now that there is an option to get CDs for $15, but with 15 songs you DO want on it. It's time to see who is making excuses for their piracy and who really just doesn't like the system."
That depends: does the customized CD have the original CD audio files, or CD audio recordings of a lossy-compressed format? If I'm going to be paying for it, I want CD-A, not MP3s.
"I thought I made my self pretty clear, but hell I'll try to say it a differnt way."
Your Malaysia comment still doesn't jive, though. Afternoon in Malaysia is several hours before sunrise in New York (just around print time), which to me sounds like that New York Times they get isn't 6 hours old but literally hot off the presses.
"Besides the fact that the chip is small, I see no point in sticking it in a dead fly."
/.ing. Duh!
Putting it on a dead fly is a guaranteed way to find out if the server can handle
"That Australia filters all printed media. If you want a copy of the NY Times or internation herald tribune it takes an extra 48 hours for them read it and send it off."
Gee... they get yesterday's New York paper today... Could that possibly have something to do with, say, the International Date Line?
"In Malaysia they do sensor the information that is writen about Malaysia however it only takes them 6 hours after the paper is released. So you get the morning paper that afternoon."
New York's afternoon or Malaysia's afternoon? Hell, I don't think the sun is ever shining on both places at the same time...
But, hey, it got modded up so it must be true...
"This is an isotope of helium which, if available in abundance, would be a perfect fuel for clean fusion power generation."
Fusion power generation is "just around the corner" and has been for the past 50 years or so.
You sure those numbers aren't for launching a pound of stuff from Earth? When last I checked, surface gravity on the moon is ridiculously low compared to here and even a V-2 could reach lunar escape velocity.
Also, if you're launching something every week, the price is going to go down from our current build-on-demand pricing.
No flag, no country!
This is a painting by Edouard Manet, who witnessed the battle between the USS Kearsarge and CSS Alabama off the coast of France. The Alabama is burning in the front, with the Kearsarge visible through the smoke behind it. Look carefully at the flag flying off of the stern of the Alabama. Look familiar?
Pet peeve time.
This is the Confederate flag. This is the Confederate naval jack. Confusing the two is like confusing this and this.
I realize you're probably just using clip-art on the page, but if you're aiming for historical accuracy...
Call me crazy, but I refuse to spend money on industry-crippled media and industry-crippled media writers, especially from Sony (maker of crippled media and member of the RIAA and MPAA). If that means I'll be recording video on S-VHS tapes for the forseeable future, so be it.
"Have anybody ever held a VHS tape and simply marvel at how much data it can (theoretically) hold? I mean, DVD is 4.7G (probably more) for a movie, compressed as much as 40:1. That means that each VHS tape can theoretically hold close to 1/5 of a TERABYTE."
According to JVC, digital VHS can hold up to 4 hours of HDTV resolution or 24 hours of SDTV.
"Magnetic tapes are a nuisance, and, worse, they don't last very long even if you store them well. Audio and video tapes have additional problems related to their consumer origins."
On the other hand, you're thinking about analog signals stored on magnetic tape. Digital signals aren't anywhere near as delicate as analog waveforms (since they can take degredation and still be perfectly readable), so they'll last much longer longer than those VHS tapes you're thinking of (especially the ones you recorded at EP speed).
"What's next, re-enacting the Battle of Gettysburg with QuakeC?"
I have the feeling that muzzle-loaders would take all the fun out of FPSes (one shot every 20 seconds or so sounds like you'd be getting a lot of use out of your bayonette). Wait until a little later in the war when they start churning out repeating rifles, or a little later when Dr. Gatling's idea catches on.
"Specifically, he talked about the savings he claims in moving Dell's Oracle databases from Solaris to Red Hat."
To be honest, I was half-expecting him to talk about the savings in moving from Solaris to Win2k Datacenter.
"the joke is dead."
But... but... It's a One-Click Joke(R)!
"but will gladly hand the entire codebase to COMMUNIST CHINA."
How about a betting pool on how long it will take before MS code starts popping up in Red Flag Linux?