Yes... odometers can be reset. It is not an easy thing to do that results in prison time if you are caught doing it. I'm guessing people who roll back their odometers don't get a lot of repeat customers seeing as how the quality of cars aren't a priority to those dealers.
And hey... forget about the whole sticker thing. There's an easier solution. Don't buy new games at Gamestop. Problem solved. Granted, I don't have problems buying a used game there although I still find their prices way overpriced (Fable 1 for the Xbox was going 15 bucks used -- wtf???). Personally, I like getting my used games from gamefly. Most of the discs are in great condition and the box doesn't require latex gloves to handle it.
And that $35,000 new car you just bought (that isn't really new) is way more than the $35 disk you just bought. And when it comes down to it, you can usually tell if you didn't get all the bits you paid for on a CD, but it's more difficult to tell if your new car has been abused.
A video game is not a car. When a consumer buys a car, he has different expectations than buying a video game. The other neat item that destroys your equation is a little thing called an odometer that tells the user precisely how much wear and tear is on the vehicle. And if the odometer reads a high mileage, you can negotiate a lower rate. When a consumer buys a "new" video game from gamestop, the price is always 59.99 even if the box has been opened.
In some ways, it's probably better to be played. At least you know there are no immediate catastrophic errors on the disk.
So you are saying it is better to buy a used copy of a game, seeing as how the early adopter has already tested the game for you? Sure, I have no problem with that. That's why I buy a used copy of the game. I don't need a "food taster" for my crap when I buy it new.
Look... when I buy a product, I expect it to come in its original packaging straight from the factory. When its out of its packaging, I have no idea where the product has been. Sure, it could have been safely stowed in drawer, but seeing the assholes who work at my local gamestop, I can only assume the game has been used as a coaster for a cigarette stuffed bottle of stale miller light. How am I to know otherwise?
And I still haven't reached you... hey, if you are looking for new games to buy, I got a bunch of them at my house. Give me a buzz sometime and I'll warm up my shrink wrap machine.
I'm not sure I fully understand the reason for Groovy? I've read a lot of the documentation, but it doesn't answer the fundamental question... as a java developer, why would I learn this language when I can just use java? Is it just for the new language features? Can someone illuminate?
I love my mac book pro and as a first time OS X user, I am more than pleased with the entire experience. That being said, I would not buy any other apple product no matter what the price. Apple does some crazy shit that would Microsoft envious.
You've obviously never been to Hollywood. When I first arrived in 1999, I wondered why everyone paused a couple of seconds when a light went green. In New England, it's like the races. When the light goes green, everyone takes off. I soon discovered that the reason why everyone pauses was that tons of people run the reds. You see, downtown Hollywood has yet to discover the green arrow and with every other street being a four way intersection, the only way to take a left is to wait until the light goes yellow, then you make your turn since traffic has somewhat abated. It's no shocker to see at least three cars blow through the red because there would be no other way to cross.
Protect their revenue? They've already been payed. There's nothing to protect. Here's my little nugget... if the just lowered the prices of their games, they might actually make more money in volume. Sixty bucks is a lot of money. Even before I was married and had a lot of disposable income, I still balked at that price point. It's way beyond an impulse purchase. Buying a new game is like an investment requiring a lot of research. So these days I wait until the game price that I want drop like a rock, and then I scoop them up without any thought. If I don't like the game, it doesn't matter... after all what's twenty bucks?
You have no idea the IE6 memory leaks that our team dev deals with on a daily basis. It's pure madness. Nevermind the hell it takes to get a page to render proper. Once IE6 marketshare drops to insignificant proportions, you will start seeing its ugly face surface since devs won't be catering to its craptacular bugs. I'm sure you are already seeing the results of its drunken css renderer.
It's funny... I used to be a diehard Mozilla supporter from.70 days. These days, I can't go a day without wanting to toss firefox out the window with it's "fat guy at the buffet" attitude towards my system resources. If it weren't for a couple of extensions, I would either be in Opera-land or swimming with chrome.
It's funny... I was listening to an interview with Billy Collins (famous poet) and the topic wandered into the use of obscurity as a device. His take on it was that a lot of bad poets used obscurity because the meaning of their work was really just banal. I felt Braid was the same way. It was interesting trying to put the pieces together of the story until the very end whereby Blow vomited all over everything. It seems like he was bending backwards to dazzle the player instead of imparting something of interest. Mind you, I'm not against using obscurity... I love reading stories whereby each layer is peeled off like the skin of an onion with something deeper and meaningful underneath. Blow was all smoke and mirrors. Mind you, I enjoyed the trip, but it was like eating the perfect pizza... it may look great and taste wonderful, but when I was done eating it, I was none the different as if it never happened. In other words, a typical video game. Mind you, the music was wonderful and the artwork was great, but Blow only gets credit for his good taste with his selection of artists.
Why don't you make things interesting and cite some of the things that make your hair turn white? People here might be able to provide context or insight regarding those choices, or maybe they'll justify your fears. Either way, there's no point repeating talking points (Democratic or Republican). They waste everyone's time.
As you know ethnic cleansing was going pretty strong under the Taliban (ie, executions and rape for those Muslims and non-Muslim who did not practice strict Islamic law) before we invaded. The true tragedy is that while we focused on Iraq, those human right abuses continue in Afghanistan under our watchful eyes and the Taliban once routed into the borderlands of Pakistan have reorganized to the point where Karzai (the top Afghan CIA liason in the 80's... ie, a Bush Buddy)is currently negotiating with them to bring about a cease fire. And they still tried to assassinate him. If you want to get a ground's eye view of the Afghanistan situation, check out rawa.org and check out the latest news. You'll want to vomit.
You claim that ethnic cleansing will restart once Bush leaves office, but you'll be shocked to know that ethnic cleansing has continued under his watch with troops on the ground. Oh, and the reason the hate us so much is because we tend to kill friend and foe alike as well as kidnap and torture in off-the-books prisons.
News flash... the party is over... if McCain won he would have to raise taxes as well. That's just a cold hard fact. My hope, as a very liberal democrat is that Obama significantly cuts spending in all areas so we can balance the budget, but that's a pie in the sky dream. At the end of the day, I'd rather we tax and spend opposed to tax-cut and spend. I can't cite this fact, but I read that the Iraq war was the only American war where taxes were not raised to pay for the bloody thing. Think of it. We put it on the god damn credit card. Foreign debt is just as serious to national security as terrorism. If I ran my finances like the government, I'd be in the clink by now.
Is anyone else getting sick of all the marketing this game is getting? Mind you, I intend to pick it up and play with some buds, but these days, I can't go anywhere in the tubes without seeing that half chewed green hand in my face. And sorry Valve, you guys kick ass and all, but I do not get excited about intros. Or cut scenes.
From this article:
Pad 39B, meanwhile, is due to be turned over to NASA's Constellation program to be modified to launch the agency's new Ares 1 rockets. The launch vehicle is being designed to loft the agency's Orion shuttle successor into orbit by 2014 and on to the moon by 2020. The first Ares 1 test flight is set for June 2009.
Calling Firefox lean is like referring to Chris Farely as an athlete. My new new "lean" memory optimized firefox 3 consumes just about three hundred megs of memory with a handful of tabs open. It's crazy. The only reason I use it is because it's a great development platform with some kick-ass extensions, but don't think for a moment I like the fact that my freakin web browser dominates my hardware. Is there a way of decreasing this footprint? Seriously... was the Mozilla Suite ever this bad?
This review was pathetic. It wouldn't make it through a high school English class, never mind a competent editor. I would be ashamed to have my name associated to it. Seriously Samzenpus, you need to take classes. You need to improve your craft. You will never survive by your writing outside of Slashdot. By taking the time to craft well written sentences, you impart respect to your audience. It shows that you have invested your own time to say something important (no matter how silly) and it is that effort... that commitment to the written word... that makes people listen to you and ultimately, respect you. Whether they disagree with you or not.
The primary purpose of this rocket is to launch the orion capsule into low earth orbit, not to be substituted as a heavy lifter (such as the ares-5). In such perspective, adding additional weight is inconsequential to the mission objectives. You can read about it here
Wow... I'm speechless. The crappy design. The pretentious asshole of a reviewer. This idle section is the worst thing happened to slashdot since the days of Jon Katz.... and by the way... speaking to the reviewer for just a sec... letting your employee fail once or twice is once thing, but watching her fail six times for your enjoyment is a sign of a true douche bag. Is it any surprise that you are writing crappy reviews of shitty books that no one wants to read?
If you write open source software to make a stand against Microsoft, all the power to you. But what happens, when the giant falls? Does your ambition fall with it? Does your software become neglected? I say let Microsoft worry about Microsoft, and you should write the best software that you can.
Microsoft cannot extinguish a methodology no matter how much they want to. Sure, they can manipulate the governing systems, they can sue people for "patent infringement" and other garbage, but at the end of the day, open source will continue to proceed unabated.
i just watched the documentary "For all Mankind" which was a brief history in video of the Apollo program. At one point during a moonwalk, a mission control dude remarked that the temperature of the light on the moon's surface was around 135 degrees fahrenheit, whereas the shade of the lunar module was -150 degrees. Seems like an easy way to solve the heat problem. Just errect a simple shade, and viola, heat be gone. Kind of blew me away, though, that two extreme temperatures exist side by side.
hahahaha... great quote... My wife and I just watched Conan the other day. She rolled her eyes when I popped it into the dvd player, but after the first ten minutes she was hooked. At the end of the movie, she said she was surprised that she liked it. Besides the T&A elements and the horrific lines ("Two or three years ago, there were just another snake cult, but now, they're everywhere") and Arnold's wooden stares, it's a great fantasy flick with a great soundtrack. I mean, how many Hollywood fantasy films hold a philosophical question at the heart (what is the riddle of steel). And James Earl Jones was a kick ass villain, using his charisma as a weapon. Check it out again if you have some time to kill.
From a business standpoint, it was a total wash. They didn't make a single dime off the xbox. MS had no experience in the console arena. They knew the xbox would tank. They expected it. If they didn't expect it, the loss of capital would not have been tolerated and the 360 would not exist. The first generation was all about establishing a brand, laying down the infrastructure, and learning the ropes. In such light, Microsoft achieved their goals. This current generation is all about owning the market and now, they will not tolerate failure (a la red ring = Peter Moore ba bye). if this current generation loses money like the last, then it will be the last xbox (which doesn't look to be the case with gaming division making a profit for the first time thanks to Halo).
As for supreme technology, again, it was a rush to the market with x86 components. Look at the nVidia screwup. Look at the manufacturing screwup (technology not going down in price). They needed to get something out before the PS2 could totally dominate (which they did anyway). By rushing it to the market a year late -- they *thought* they at least put up a fight. I'm sure MS would have specialized the console components to enable cheap manufacturing, but they didn't have the time nor experience in the market, so they screwed themselves. You know they old saying, Cheap - fast - quality, now choose two.
I've always understood the first iteration of the xbox to be a wash. Microsoft was making a beachhead in a new market, and it seems to me that they were willing to suffer the initial losses so that they could build the foundation for the current generation (a la 360). The quality issues seemed to be a result of a rush to market without adequate testing and had not the specter of rapid development haunted them, it would have appeared to be a rather successful strategy.
As for console redesigning, Microsoft can integrate the HD-DVD for movie viewing, but I can't imagine them being dumb enough to balkanize their own user base. To make such a move would in essence, shift the current generation to a new generation (a la xbox version 3). The last thing Microsoft wants to do is to split both their user and developer base into two different versions of the same product (core, premium, and elite are really the same product with different accessories bundled).
I love my 360 and I hope it sticks around for awhile. And when they add new features, I don't thank Microsoft, I thank Sony and Nintendo for giving them the heat. Let's face it, the true victor in this current generation (pet peeve - it's no longer next gen) is the consumer (and, well, IBM). Competition keeps the players honest, and we all reap the benefits from it.
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Yes ... odometers can be reset. It is not an easy thing to do that results in prison time if you are caught doing it. I'm guessing people who roll back their odometers don't get a lot of repeat customers seeing as how the quality of cars aren't a priority to those dealers.
... forget about the whole sticker thing. There's an easier solution. Don't buy new games at Gamestop. Problem solved. Granted, I don't have problems buying a used game there although I still find their prices way overpriced (Fable 1 for the Xbox was going 15 bucks used -- wtf???). Personally, I like getting my used games from gamefly. Most of the discs are in great condition and the box doesn't require latex gloves to handle it.
And hey
And that $35,000 new car you just bought (that isn't really new) is way more than the $35 disk you just bought. And when it comes down to it, you can usually tell if you didn't get all the bits you paid for on a CD, but it's more difficult to tell if your new car has been abused.
... when I buy a product, I expect it to come in its original packaging straight from the factory. When its out of its packaging, I have no idea where the product has been. Sure, it could have been safely stowed in drawer, but seeing the assholes who work at my local gamestop, I can only assume the game has been used as a coaster for a cigarette stuffed bottle of stale miller light. How am I to know otherwise?
... hey, if you are looking for new games to buy, I got a bunch of them at my house. Give me a buzz sometime and I'll warm up my shrink wrap machine.
A video game is not a car. When a consumer buys a car, he has different expectations than buying a video game. The other neat item that destroys your equation is a little thing called an odometer that tells the user precisely how much wear and tear is on the vehicle. And if the odometer reads a high mileage, you can negotiate a lower rate. When a consumer buys a "new" video game from gamestop, the price is always 59.99 even if the box has been opened.
In some ways, it's probably better to be played. At least you know there are no immediate catastrophic errors on the disk.
So you are saying it is better to buy a used copy of a game, seeing as how the early adopter has already tested the game for you? Sure, I have no problem with that. That's why I buy a used copy of the game. I don't need a "food taster" for my crap when I buy it new.
Look
And I still haven't reached you
I'm not sure I fully understand the reason for Groovy? I've read a lot of the documentation, but it doesn't answer the fundamental question ... as a java developer, why would I learn this language when I can just use java? Is it just for the new language features? Can someone illuminate?
I love my mac book pro and as a first time OS X user, I am more than pleased with the entire experience. That being said, I would not buy any other apple product no matter what the price. Apple does some crazy shit that would Microsoft envious.
You've obviously never been to Hollywood. When I first arrived in 1999, I wondered why everyone paused a couple of seconds when a light went green. In New England, it's like the races. When the light goes green, everyone takes off. I soon discovered that the reason why everyone pauses was that tons of people run the reds. You see, downtown Hollywood has yet to discover the green arrow and with every other street being a four way intersection, the only way to take a left is to wait until the light goes yellow, then you make your turn since traffic has somewhat abated. It's no shocker to see at least three cars blow through the red because there would be no other way to cross.
Protect their revenue? They've already been payed. There's nothing to protect. Here's my little nugget ... if the just lowered the prices of their games, they might actually make more money in volume. Sixty bucks is a lot of money. Even before I was married and had a lot of disposable income, I still balked at that price point. It's way beyond an impulse purchase. Buying a new game is like an investment requiring a lot of research. So these days I wait until the game price that I want drop like a rock, and then I scoop them up without any thought. If I don't like the game, it doesn't matter ... after all what's twenty bucks?
You have no idea the IE6 memory leaks that our team dev deals with on a daily basis. It's pure madness. Nevermind the hell it takes to get a page to render proper. Once IE6 marketshare drops to insignificant proportions, you will start seeing its ugly face surface since devs won't be catering to its craptacular bugs. I'm sure you are already seeing the results of its drunken css renderer.
... I used to be a diehard Mozilla supporter from .70 days. These days, I can't go a day without wanting to toss firefox out the window with it's "fat guy at the buffet" attitude towards my system resources. If it weren't for a couple of extensions, I would either be in Opera-land or swimming with chrome.
It's funny
It's funny ... I was listening to an interview with Billy Collins (famous poet) and the topic wandered into the use of obscurity as a device. His take on it was that a lot of bad poets used obscurity because the meaning of their work was really just banal. I felt Braid was the same way. It was interesting trying to put the pieces together of the story until the very end whereby Blow vomited all over everything. It seems like he was bending backwards to dazzle the player instead of imparting something of interest. Mind you, I'm not against using obscurity ... I love reading stories whereby each layer is peeled off like the skin of an onion with something deeper and meaningful underneath. Blow was all smoke and mirrors. Mind you, I enjoyed the trip, but it was like eating the perfect pizza ... it may look great and taste wonderful, but when I was done eating it, I was none the different as if it never happened. In other words, a typical video game. Mind you, the music was wonderful and the artwork was great, but Blow only gets credit for his good taste with his selection of artists.
64 bit intel machines only. If you happen to be a poor shmoe like myself with an older ppc based mac, you're stuck with Java 1.5
Why don't you make things interesting and cite some of the things that make your hair turn white? People here might be able to provide context or insight regarding those choices, or maybe they'll justify your fears. Either way, there's no point repeating talking points (Democratic or Republican). They waste everyone's time.
As you know ethnic cleansing was going pretty strong under the Taliban (ie, executions and rape for those Muslims and non-Muslim who did not practice strict Islamic law) before we invaded. The true tragedy is that while we focused on Iraq, those human right abuses continue in Afghanistan under our watchful eyes and the Taliban once routed into the borderlands of Pakistan have reorganized to the point where Karzai (the top Afghan CIA liason in the 80's ... ie, a Bush Buddy)is currently negotiating with them to bring about a cease fire. And they still tried to assassinate him. If you want to get a ground's eye view of the Afghanistan situation, check out rawa.org and check out the latest news. You'll want to vomit.
You claim that ethnic cleansing will restart once Bush leaves office, but you'll be shocked to know that ethnic cleansing has continued under his watch with troops on the ground. Oh, and the reason the hate us so much is because we tend to kill friend and foe alike as well as kidnap and torture in off-the-books prisons.
News flash ... the party is over ... if McCain won he would have to raise taxes as well. That's just a cold hard fact. My hope, as a very liberal democrat is that Obama significantly cuts spending in all areas so we can balance the budget, but that's a pie in the sky dream. At the end of the day, I'd rather we tax and spend opposed to tax-cut and spend. I can't cite this fact, but I read that the Iraq war was the only American war where taxes were not raised to pay for the bloody thing. Think of it. We put it on the god damn credit card. Foreign debt is just as serious to national security as terrorism. If I ran my finances like the government, I'd be in the clink by now.
Is anyone else getting sick of all the marketing this game is getting? Mind you, I intend to pick it up and play with some buds, but these days, I can't go anywhere in the tubes without seeing that half chewed green hand in my face. And sorry Valve, you guys kick ass and all, but I do not get excited about intros. Or cut scenes.
From this article: Pad 39B, meanwhile, is due to be turned over to NASA's Constellation program to be modified to launch the agency's new Ares 1 rockets. The launch vehicle is being designed to loft the agency's Orion shuttle successor into orbit by 2014 and on to the moon by 2020. The first Ares 1 test flight is set for June 2009.
Reminds of that old joke ... In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it's just the other way around.
Calling Firefox lean is like referring to Chris Farely as an athlete. My new new "lean" memory optimized firefox 3 consumes just about three hundred megs of memory with a handful of tabs open. It's crazy. The only reason I use it is because it's a great development platform with some kick-ass extensions, but don't think for a moment I like the fact that my freakin web browser dominates my hardware. Is there a way of decreasing this footprint? Seriously ... was the Mozilla Suite ever this bad?
This review was pathetic. It wouldn't make it through a high school English class, never mind a competent editor. I would be ashamed to have my name associated to it. Seriously Samzenpus, you need to take classes. You need to improve your craft. You will never survive by your writing outside of Slashdot. By taking the time to craft well written sentences, you impart respect to your audience. It shows that you have invested your own time to say something important (no matter how silly) and it is that effort ... that commitment to the written word ... that makes people listen to you and ultimately, respect you. Whether they disagree with you or not.
The primary purpose of this rocket is to launch the orion capsule into low earth orbit, not to be substituted as a heavy lifter (such as the ares-5). In such perspective, adding additional weight is inconsequential to the mission objectives. You can read about it here
Wow ... I'm speechless. The crappy design. The pretentious asshole of a reviewer. This idle section is the worst thing happened to slashdot since the days of Jon Katz. ... and by the way ... speaking to the reviewer for just a sec ... letting your employee fail once or twice is once thing, but watching her fail six times for your enjoyment is a sign of a true douche bag. Is it any surprise that you are writing crappy reviews of shitty books that no one wants to read?
If you write open source software to make a stand against Microsoft, all the power to you. But what happens, when the giant falls? Does your ambition fall with it? Does your software become neglected? I say let Microsoft worry about Microsoft, and you should write the best software that you can.
Microsoft cannot extinguish a methodology no matter how much they want to. Sure, they can manipulate the governing systems, they can sue people for "patent infringement" and other garbage, but at the end of the day, open source will continue to proceed unabated.
i just watched the documentary "For all Mankind" which was a brief history in video of the Apollo program. At one point during a moonwalk, a mission control dude remarked that the temperature of the light on the moon's surface was around 135 degrees fahrenheit, whereas the shade of the lunar module was -150 degrees. Seems like an easy way to solve the heat problem. Just errect a simple shade, and viola, heat be gone. Kind of blew me away, though, that two extreme temperatures exist side by side.
hahahaha ... great quote ... My wife and I just watched Conan the other day. She rolled her eyes when I popped it into the dvd player, but after the first ten minutes she was hooked. At the end of the movie, she said she was surprised that she liked it. Besides the T&A elements and the horrific lines ("Two or three years ago, there were just another snake cult, but now, they're everywhere") and Arnold's wooden stares, it's a great fantasy flick with a great soundtrack. I mean, how many Hollywood fantasy films hold a philosophical question at the heart (what is the riddle of steel). And James Earl Jones was a kick ass villain, using his charisma as a weapon. Check it out again if you have some time to kill.
From a business standpoint, it was a total wash. They didn't make a single dime off the xbox. MS had no experience in the console arena. They knew the xbox would tank. They expected it. If they didn't expect it, the loss of capital would not have been tolerated and the 360 would not exist. The first generation was all about establishing a brand, laying down the infrastructure, and learning the ropes. In such light, Microsoft achieved their goals. This current generation is all about owning the market and now, they will not tolerate failure (a la red ring = Peter Moore ba bye). if this current generation loses money like the last, then it will be the last xbox (which doesn't look to be the case with gaming division making a profit for the first time thanks to Halo).
As for supreme technology, again, it was a rush to the market with x86 components. Look at the nVidia screwup. Look at the manufacturing screwup (technology not going down in price). They needed to get something out before the PS2 could totally dominate (which they did anyway). By rushing it to the market a year late -- they *thought* they at least put up a fight. I'm sure MS would have specialized the console components to enable cheap manufacturing, but they didn't have the time nor experience in the market, so they screwed themselves. You know they old saying, Cheap - fast - quality, now choose two.
I've always understood the first iteration of the xbox to be a wash. Microsoft was making a beachhead in a new market, and it seems to me that they were willing to suffer the initial losses so that they could build the foundation for the current generation (a la 360). The quality issues seemed to be a result of a rush to market without adequate testing and had not the specter of rapid development haunted them, it would have appeared to be a rather successful strategy.
As for console redesigning, Microsoft can integrate the HD-DVD for movie viewing, but I can't imagine them being dumb enough to balkanize their own user base. To make such a move would in essence, shift the current generation to a new generation (a la xbox version 3). The last thing Microsoft wants to do is to split both their user and developer base into two different versions of the same product (core, premium, and elite are really the same product with different accessories bundled).
I love my 360 and I hope it sticks around for awhile. And when they add new features, I don't thank Microsoft, I thank Sony and Nintendo for giving them the heat. Let's face it, the true victor in this current generation (pet peeve - it's no longer next gen) is the consumer (and, well, IBM). Competition keeps the players honest, and we all reap the benefits from it.