I'd never heard of 'em so went and looked at the various games. Sims bore me to tears, no worries about me pirating those! But "Wonderful End of the World" is a little different in concept and looks like it might be fun... *ONCE*, twice at most. And there's the problem. What will I pay for something that's only fun ONCE, that I'll never look at again? well, consider movies. The vast majority are one-shot entertainment, and $8 for a first-run ticket is pushing it. $5 is probably more like it. So there's your price range, at least for the base unit.
Now, for folks who get addicted to a game -- extensibility is the key to continued interest. Fan-made add-ons available at no charge, or a whole CD full of 'em for a nominal charge -- that creates a revenue stream for games. Look at DOOM, the most extensible game of all time. 14 years later people are still making mods for it. In its early years, CDs full of mods sold pretty durn well. The mods themselves were free, but it was worth a few bucks to have someone else collect 'em all up for us.
The problem is that most places this is now legally "used" product, which you cannot sell again as "new", tho I know a lot of stores just re-shrinkwrap it and the customer is none the wiser, unless they notice scratches on the disk. But if the store is being honest, now they have used product that winds up being returned to the manufacturer, and everyone takes a loss on it.
However, the obvious workaround for this is rentals. It works a treat for the movie industry; I know it's been tried with games but not being a gamer, I don't know how well it worked there. Still... Occurs to me that these store returns could become the rental library rather than being returned to mfgrs.
Yeah, customers could pirate it off the rental disk, but (just like with movies) if it's a game most people will play once and never again, that's no big loss -- and the customer doesn't feel ripped off by spending $50 for a crappy game -- $5 as a rental tho, that feels reasonable and no one feels like they wasted a lot of money (which usually translates as "all your future games will suck too!")
I suggest that EVERYONE planning a flight on Ryanair do so via a 3rd party. That way ALL the bookings will be cancelled, their planes will be empty, and they'll either change their ways or go out of busines.
Indeed, that would work, but I wanted a solution that doesn't require internet access for the customer, and in fact requires nothing but a basic PC with a USB port. [pedant] And an operating system. [/pedant] Presumably a smart setup could autodetect Win, Mac, or linux and behave accordingly.
And if it weren't for the content owners' fears of OMG YOU MIGHT KEEP A COPY, I think libraries and rental outfits would already be more than happy to offer content on cheap, almost-indestructable flash drives, rather than via pricey, easily-damaged original media.
And a B&M video rental store could operate out of a kiosk, with downloads direct from the content owner's distribution network. No more need to keep hardcopy inventory on hand at all -- just an internet connection, a boxful of flash drives, and a PC with some big hard drives. Put up a digital picture frame to display movie posters for advertising, and your store is complete and ready to serve the public -- with exactly what the public WANTS TO SPEND MONEY FOR.
And if a few people keep a copy, so what? they're no pinch on your sales base.
If you're that afraid of the odd pirated copy -- develop an app that runs directly off the flash drive (with NO installed ANYthing on the user's machine) and have it play the movie from an otherwise read-protected flash drive.
Geez, if I can think of this, it can't be rocket science.
I was astonished to get an email from Alaska Airlines telling me that the fuel surcharge on cargo had gone DOWN due to the drop in fuel prices. Is the surcharge tied to fuel costs by regulation, or is Alaska Airlines just being honest??
As to Southwest, goes to show what a no-frills, no-nonsense, fly-when/where-people-want-to-fly approach can do for an airline's finances.
Got no argument with any of that. It's just nuts. We're starting at shadows and planning for monsters that MIGHT be under the bed. Fine, have plans in a drawer in case monsters really ARE under the bed, but stop disrupting our sleep in the meantime!
It's like the Emperor's New Clothes -- it's all so ridiculous that they can't admit it's ridiculous, lest they look... uh, ridiculous.
Just gimme back my gun and let me on the plane. If there's a terrorist onboard, I'll shoot him myself. Problem solved!!
Nice to know! Of course, it stands to reason they'd show sense, since AB is really northern Montana [gd&rlh]
I've also heard that AB's provincial leader, whatever the heck your equivalent of a governor is called, has told Ottawa to FOAD (in literally those terms) when they've tried to enforce various stupid federal regs that were sheer nonsense for life in AB. One has to wonder if this attitude ("we'll do what's right for *AB*, not what some remote gov't, with no demonstrable talents except going in debt, demands we do") has a great deal to do with it.
(Not coincidentally, MT's governor has much the same attitude. And yeah, I grew up there!)
I do hope SK has figured it out -- as you say politics is a bore, but we all have to live with its consequences.... and what's good for Canada is ultimately good for the U.S.
That's what's so ridiculous. A box cutter? come on, that barely qualifies as a knife, let alone as a weapon. Aunt Mamie's spiked heels or loaded purse are a lot more deadly. Being whammed in the face with the heel of a drinking glass is more deadly. But we're supposed to be terrified of half an inch of razor blade?? What manner of spineless wimps ARE we, anyway??
While I don't think it's all a grand conspiracy to turn us into sheep, the effect is the same: We become accustomed to behaaaaaving like sheep. They become accustomed to us behaaaaaaving like sheep. Anyone who steps out of line, stands out as a "wolf" to be shot "for the protection of the sheep". So the incentive on both sides becomes "be a live sheep, or a dead wolf. You decide."
The road to totalitarianism doesn't have to be intentional. It just has to be the course of least resistance.
I'd be inclined to move as slowly as possible, and if we (me and everyone behind me) miss our plane because the TSA had to examine my shoelaces and underwear, oh well!! maybe if enough people get not only inconvenienced but outright prevented from travelling at all, they'll put a bit more effort into protesting this security theatre bullshit.
That's true, and I've noticed the same problem. Sometimes you can identify the better product, tho.
Frex, Fiskars (maker of fine scissors, garden implements, etc) has two product lines: the original, made in Finland, which are still great, and the cheapo model, made in China with typical Chinese-grade steel (ie. terrible). An experienced eye can tell them apart by examining the blade, but most people couldn't tell without reading the label.
I happened to notice that Costco's Fiskars garden tools were "Made in Finland" at $17, while Walmart's Fiskars garden tools were "Made in China", at $8. Having had all the experience with Chinese-made tools that I care to (often having to replace them within *days* of purchase), I bought the Finnish-made tools.
That is in fact one of my own primary arguments against this trend toward cheap-cheaper-cheapest. Yeah, whatevers may cost less up front, but I had to buy the fucking whatevers four times over the same timeframe that I used to buy one, and how much did I save? Well, here's a realworld example, using the SAME company (Brinkman metals) before and after they moved their operation to Mexico:
American-made galvanized bucket, $6. Average lifespan, 5 years. (Manufacturing defects were rare.)
Mexican-made galvanized bucket, $5. Average lifespan, 1 year. (Many less than that due to various manufacturing defects.)
So instead of spending $6 in 5 years, now I spend $30 in 5 years, for the SAME working lifespan. Oh, but the shelf price is a buck less, so we must be saving money! And ya know what?? The price has actually gone back up and is now $8 for the same bucket (rather more than the increase in the price of the scrap metal they're made from) -- still with Heche en Mexico "quality". I'm sure the manufacturer is happy because their profits are higher, but I'm looking for an alternative product, and meanwhile I'll badmouth them every chance I get.
And as you note, it's that way for just about everything. And with many products, the "better" alternatives no longer exist.
"Everything is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it used to be." -- Andy Rooney (ca. 1985)
Which can be accomplished with common household chemicals, and the classic cigarette-and-matchbook slow fuse. No need for even Iron Age tech.
Place your bombs near a mall's exits, so people wind up largely trapped inside (only store employees are likely to know where the emergency exits are) and you could easily kill several thousand at a crack, with no clues left as to how it was accomplished or who did it.
So now what -- does the Walmart door greeter get to double as a strip-search security agent??
Bah, I refuse to be afraid of hypothetical and highly-unlikely threats.
You trust your fellow man. In fact, you trust him with your very life.
Don't think so?? You drive on two-lane roads, don't you??
Same thing, really. In general, we trust other people not to be suicidally stupid, which coincidentally preserves our OWN lives too. How fast someone drives usually fits this (barring DUI etc.) Terrorists don't fit the self-preservation norm, so we don't know how to react to them. Hence the unreasoning fear.
"The type of attack used on 9/11 is not the move of a power, its the move of the weak. Its a move of desperation by a small group looking to make big headlines the only way they can. It was in their power to plan 1 of these attacks and execute it."
Shit, at first I thought you were talking about the TSA. Seriously, I did. It took a second reading to realise you were talking about the 9/11 gang. Goes to show how very right you are.:(
One of the threats being leveled against states that refused to implement RealID is that these states' citizens won't be allowed to fly.
Um... okay, what if citizens working in those states refuse to implement the prohibition against flying without RealID? what if those states get together with a private airline and contract for local service among these several states??
And you're right about flying... during my lifetime it has gone from a novelty that only the rich got to experience, to a convenience for the common man, to an ordeal no one wants to do if they can avoid it.
Probably not detected because it's been assumed all along that desert chemistry is fairly static, due to the general lack of "input" from the usual reactives, ie. water and biomass. So... I'd guess no one ever actually LOOKED.
Ooops... now, what other assumptions about climate, and climate change, might be completely broken??
To attribute your quote, it's from President Reagan, a much wiser man than most give him credit for.
As to TFA... I wonder if this accounts for some of the subsurface crusts that form in desert areas, without benefit of mineral leeching from water.
And it just goes to show that we really don't know enough about climate to try fucking with it (such as fixing our alleged influence on global warming... or cooling, as the craze was a few decades back)... we could conceivably BREAK it beyond repair.
"shutter to think of the consequences if it were the case that people had a free pass to inflict deliberate and arbitrary "torts" on other people they saw violating a rule..."
That's exactly what California's proposed AB1634 does -- makes everyone a vigilante allowed to inflict punishment on anyone for even hearsay violation of a rule.
I'm reminded that in Montana (at least in the 1970s) thru a quirk of the state income tax code, if you made $1 for the year, your income tax owed was $1.
Seriously... I have to agree that term limits produce more problems than they solve -- "how the heck does this thing work?" and "where do I go from here?" being the term-limited official's primary concerns, rather than the office he was elected to serve... either way, he won't be around to suffer from the fallout if he screws up. Sounds a lot like corporate managers, eh? Maybe it's a bigger issue, a cultural issue, as Old Boy Network vs. shiny new business degrees but no experience seems to be an issue everywhere you look.
I don't think this is much of a solution either, but since it came to mind -- an alternative might be "only one elected term in your entire lifetime" (or an equal time gap between terms might work much the same).
Hmmm... one therefore wonders if it's actually an excuse to avoid cutting pay to the workers who can least afford it.
Conversely, we have a whole House, Senate, and all their associates who might be better public servants if all they got paid was minimum wage... with no special retirement benefits, either.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd never heard of 'em so went and looked at the various games. Sims bore me to tears, no worries about me pirating those! But "Wonderful End of the World" is a little different in concept and looks like it might be fun... *ONCE*, twice at most. And there's the problem. What will I pay for something that's only fun ONCE, that I'll never look at again? well, consider movies. The vast majority are one-shot entertainment, and $8 for a first-run ticket is pushing it. $5 is probably more like it. So there's your price range, at least for the base unit.
Now, for folks who get addicted to a game -- extensibility is the key to continued interest. Fan-made add-ons available at no charge, or a whole CD full of 'em for a nominal charge -- that creates a revenue stream for games. Look at DOOM, the most extensible game of all time. 14 years later people are still making mods for it. In its early years, CDs full of mods sold pretty durn well. The mods themselves were free, but it was worth a few bucks to have someone else collect 'em all up for us.
The problem is that most places this is now legally "used" product, which you cannot sell again as "new", tho I know a lot of stores just re-shrinkwrap it and the customer is none the wiser, unless they notice scratches on the disk. But if the store is being honest, now they have used product that winds up being returned to the manufacturer, and everyone takes a loss on it.
However, the obvious workaround for this is rentals. It works a treat for the movie industry; I know it's been tried with games but not being a gamer, I don't know how well it worked there. Still... Occurs to me that these store returns could become the rental library rather than being returned to mfgrs.
Yeah, customers could pirate it off the rental disk, but (just like with movies) if it's a game most people will play once and never again, that's no big loss -- and the customer doesn't feel ripped off by spending $50 for a crappy game -- $5 as a rental tho, that feels reasonable and no one feels like they wasted a lot of money (which usually translates as "all your future games will suck too!")
I suggest that EVERYONE planning a flight on Ryanair do so via a 3rd party. That way ALL the bookings will be cancelled, their planes will be empty, and they'll either change their ways or go out of busines.
Indeed, that would work, but I wanted a solution that doesn't require internet access for the customer, and in fact requires nothing but a basic PC with a USB port. [pedant] And an operating system. [/pedant] Presumably a smart setup could autodetect Win, Mac, or linux and behave accordingly.
I'd guess because the profit margin is higher on Blu-Ray than on standard DVDs.
And if it weren't for the content owners' fears of OMG YOU MIGHT KEEP A COPY, I think libraries and rental outfits would already be more than happy to offer content on cheap, almost-indestructable flash drives, rather than via pricey, easily-damaged original media.
And a B&M video rental store could operate out of a kiosk, with downloads direct from the content owner's distribution network. No more need to keep hardcopy inventory on hand at all -- just an internet connection, a boxful of flash drives, and a PC with some big hard drives. Put up a digital picture frame to display movie posters for advertising, and your store is complete and ready to serve the public -- with exactly what the public WANTS TO SPEND MONEY FOR.
And if a few people keep a copy, so what? they're no pinch on your sales base.
If you're that afraid of the odd pirated copy -- develop an app that runs directly off the flash drive (with NO installed ANYthing on the user's machine) and have it play the movie from an otherwise read-protected flash drive.
Geez, if I can think of this, it can't be rocket science.
I was astonished to get an email from Alaska Airlines telling me that the fuel surcharge on cargo had gone DOWN due to the drop in fuel prices. Is the surcharge tied to fuel costs by regulation, or is Alaska Airlines just being honest??
As to Southwest, goes to show what a no-frills, no-nonsense, fly-when/where-people-want-to-fly approach can do for an airline's finances.
Got no argument with any of that. It's just nuts. We're starting at shadows and planning for monsters that MIGHT be under the bed. Fine, have plans in a drawer in case monsters really ARE under the bed, but stop disrupting our sleep in the meantime!
It's like the Emperor's New Clothes -- it's all so ridiculous that they can't admit it's ridiculous, lest they look... uh, ridiculous.
Just gimme back my gun and let me on the plane. If there's a terrorist onboard, I'll shoot him myself. Problem solved!!
Nice to know! Of course, it stands to reason they'd show sense, since AB is really northern Montana [gd&rlh]
I've also heard that AB's provincial leader, whatever the heck your equivalent of a governor is called, has told Ottawa to FOAD (in literally those terms) when they've tried to enforce various stupid federal regs that were sheer nonsense for life in AB. One has to wonder if this attitude ("we'll do what's right for *AB*, not what some remote gov't, with no demonstrable talents except going in debt, demands we do") has a great deal to do with it.
(Not coincidentally, MT's governor has much the same attitude. And yeah, I grew up there!)
I do hope SK has figured it out -- as you say politics is a bore, but we all have to live with its consequences.... and what's good for Canada is ultimately good for the U.S.
That's what's so ridiculous. A box cutter? come on, that barely qualifies as a knife, let alone as a weapon. Aunt Mamie's spiked heels or loaded purse are a lot more deadly. Being whammed in the face with the heel of a drinking glass is more deadly. But we're supposed to be terrified of half an inch of razor blade?? What manner of spineless wimps ARE we, anyway??
While I don't think it's all a grand conspiracy to turn us into sheep, the effect is the same: We become accustomed to behaaaaaving like sheep. They become accustomed to us behaaaaaaving like sheep. Anyone who steps out of line, stands out as a "wolf" to be shot "for the protection of the sheep". So the incentive on both sides becomes "be a live sheep, or a dead wolf. You decide."
The road to totalitarianism doesn't have to be intentional. It just has to be the course of least resistance.
I'd be inclined to move as slowly as possible, and if we (me and everyone behind me) miss our plane because the TSA had to examine my shoelaces and underwear, oh well!! maybe if enough people get not only inconvenienced but outright prevented from travelling at all, they'll put a bit more effort into protesting this security theatre bullshit.
That's true, and I've noticed the same problem. Sometimes you can identify the better product, tho.
Frex, Fiskars (maker of fine scissors, garden implements, etc) has two product lines: the original, made in Finland, which are still great, and the cheapo model, made in China with typical Chinese-grade steel (ie. terrible). An experienced eye can tell them apart by examining the blade, but most people couldn't tell without reading the label.
I happened to notice that Costco's Fiskars garden tools were "Made in Finland" at $17, while Walmart's Fiskars garden tools were "Made in China", at $8. Having had all the experience with Chinese-made tools that I care to (often having to replace them within *days* of purchase), I bought the Finnish-made tools.
That is in fact one of my own primary arguments against this trend toward cheap-cheaper-cheapest. Yeah, whatevers may cost less up front, but I had to buy the fucking whatevers four times over the same timeframe that I used to buy one, and how much did I save? Well, here's a realworld example, using the SAME company (Brinkman metals) before and after they moved their operation to Mexico:
American-made galvanized bucket, $6. Average lifespan, 5 years. (Manufacturing defects were rare.)
Mexican-made galvanized bucket, $5. Average lifespan, 1 year. (Many less than that due to various manufacturing defects.)
So instead of spending $6 in 5 years, now I spend $30 in 5 years, for the SAME working lifespan. Oh, but the shelf price is a buck less, so we must be saving money! And ya know what?? The price has actually gone back up and is now $8 for the same bucket (rather more than the increase in the price of the scrap metal they're made from) -- still with Heche en Mexico "quality". I'm sure the manufacturer is happy because their profits are higher, but I'm looking for an alternative product, and meanwhile I'll badmouth them every chance I get.
And as you note, it's that way for just about everything. And with many products, the "better" alternatives no longer exist.
"Everything is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it used to be." -- Andy Rooney (ca. 1985)
Or one guy with a dozen grenades and slow fuses.
Which can be accomplished with common household chemicals, and the classic cigarette-and-matchbook slow fuse. No need for even Iron Age tech.
Place your bombs near a mall's exits, so people wind up largely trapped inside (only store employees are likely to know where the emergency exits are) and you could easily kill several thousand at a crack, with no clues left as to how it was accomplished or who did it.
So now what -- does the Walmart door greeter get to double as a strip-search security agent??
Bah, I refuse to be afraid of hypothetical and highly-unlikely threats.
I'd realise I was the director of a really bad movie, and I'd yell "CUT! That's a wrap!"
You trust your fellow man. In fact, you trust him with your very life.
Don't think so?? You drive on two-lane roads, don't you??
Same thing, really. In general, we trust other people not to be suicidally stupid, which coincidentally preserves our OWN lives too. How fast someone drives usually fits this (barring DUI etc.) Terrorists don't fit the self-preservation norm, so we don't know how to react to them. Hence the unreasoning fear.
"The type of attack used on 9/11 is not the move of a power, its the move of the weak. Its a move of desperation by a small group looking to make big headlines the only way they can. It was in their power to plan 1 of these attacks and execute it."
Shit, at first I thought you were talking about the TSA. Seriously, I did. It took a second reading to realise you were talking about the 9/11 gang. Goes to show how very right you are. :(
One of the threats being leveled against states that refused to implement RealID is that these states' citizens won't be allowed to fly.
Um... okay, what if citizens working in those states refuse to implement the prohibition against flying without RealID? what if those states get together with a private airline and contract for local service among these several states??
And you're right about flying... during my lifetime it has gone from a novelty that only the rich got to experience, to a convenience for the common man, to an ordeal no one wants to do if they can avoid it.
Oil or winter? ;)
Probably not detected because it's been assumed all along that desert chemistry is fairly static, due to the general lack of "input" from the usual reactives, ie. water and biomass. So... I'd guess no one ever actually LOOKED.
Ooops... now, what other assumptions about climate, and climate change, might be completely broken??
To attribute your quote, it's from President Reagan, a much wiser man than most give him credit for.
As to TFA... I wonder if this accounts for some of the subsurface crusts that form in desert areas, without benefit of mineral leeching from water.
And it just goes to show that we really don't know enough about climate to try fucking with it (such as fixing our alleged influence on global warming... or cooling, as the craze was a few decades back) ... we could conceivably BREAK it beyond repair.
That's exactly what California's proposed AB1634 does -- makes everyone a vigilante allowed to inflict punishment on anyone for even hearsay violation of a rule.
I'm reminded that in Montana (at least in the 1970s) thru a quirk of the state income tax code, if you made $1 for the year, your income tax owed was $1.
George Runner, is that you??
Seriously... I have to agree that term limits produce more problems than they solve -- "how the heck does this thing work?" and "where do I go from here?" being the term-limited official's primary concerns, rather than the office he was elected to serve... either way, he won't be around to suffer from the fallout if he screws up. Sounds a lot like corporate managers, eh? Maybe it's a bigger issue, a cultural issue, as Old Boy Network vs. shiny new business degrees but no experience seems to be an issue everywhere you look.
I don't think this is much of a solution either, but since it came to mind -- an alternative might be "only one elected term in your entire lifetime" (or an equal time gap between terms might work much the same).
Hmmm... one therefore wonders if it's actually an excuse to avoid cutting pay to the workers who can least afford it.
Conversely, we have a whole House, Senate, and all their associates who might be better public servants if all they got paid was minimum wage... with no special retirement benefits, either.