Re:The $60 price is the #1 reason for P2P piracy
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Why Games Cost $60
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· Score: 1
Actually the reason why most movies and video games fail is because they are crap. They aren't worth the money and the QA did a crappy job, the developers or actors did a crappy job, the script or analysis and design was crappy etc.
If they used the same process to develop a house it would catch on fire and then fall apart because the quality was so bad, it doesn't meet safety codes.
In the good old salad days, there was hardly any bugs or bloat to video games and they fit nicely within 12 megabytes of space, and ran fast without any bugs at all except for a select few that had no big effect on game play or performance. Usually color and sound bugs.
Most of the time the public or audience is not part of the QA process, which is why video games and movies fail. If they were they would point out plot problems, things that don't make the video game or movie enjoyable, things they want changed and what they expect from the movie and game. You see, instead of giving people what they want, they are instead telling people what they want. That is very bad for business.
For example: Wolverine: Origins, the fans wanted to see a movie true to the original origin of Wolverine. But instead it got Hollywoodized and changed around, Sabertooth is now Wolverine's brother and Wolverine is an American born in colonial times instead of born in Canada. Weapon-X is in the USA instead of Canada. Most of the story does not make sense when I saw it and paid my $10 to see it I was sadly dissapointed. Even this parody is more enjoyable than the original movie and it shows plot failures and things that don't make sense.
I am not sure but it seems like Hollywood and Video Game creators are on some type of illegal drugs or something that causes them to make crap this way, worse than ever before in the history of the USA. They cannot even come up with original ideas and have to borrow them from old TV shows or comic books or remakes of old Hollywood movies (sometimes remaking a Bollywood, or Thailand, or Foreign movie to a US version).
Re:The $60 price is the #1 reason for P2P piracy
on
Why Games Cost $60
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· Score: 1
Explain then the $10 rack at some discount stores that have old games that sell well, and have a profit for the discount store.
Explain to me how Wal Mart can be the most profitable retailer by selling things at a lower cost than other retailers and making record profits by bulk sales at a lower profit margin.
Explain to me how Fast Food stores make record profits by having a dollar menu and make record losses without one.
I do see $30 games right next to the $60 ones, the $60 games are in stock and hardly anyone wants to buy them, but the $30 games are in short stock or sold out because they are more affordable.
Actual fraud in any form or sense should not be tolerated.
Many people made decisions based on those polls, including politicians. If the results are not random samples but where cherry picked, it could influence those politicians to support bills and policies that they think the public wants (Patriot Act, Warrentless Wiretapping, Waterboarding, Wars, etc) but in reality they might not actually want as a majority.
This applies for anything using statistics including scientific theories, the same fraud detecting method can be used on scientific theories to weed out the problems and fraud in science.
The $60 price is the #1 reason for P2P piracy
on
Why Games Cost $60
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Most people could afford $30 or less for a game, but not $60. Which is why people pirate the games on P2P networks. They cannot afford it and the pirated version has the DRM removed. But the P2P version may cause lockups and might be malware infected, so people are taking a chance when they pirate a game from P2P networks.
But common sense says the #1 reason why people pirate the games is the cost of them. When the Atari 2600 came out games cost $15 to $30 each, but as the Atari 2600 got old they got sold at bargain bins for $5 to $1 each. Sometime in the 1980's the video game console market collapsed and then games got cheaper. Then in the 1990's they went to $30 again, then $40 or $45 by 2000. Then by 2005 they were almost $55, and now in 2009 they are $59.99. Yeah games did get bigger and more of a challenge to develop, but most of the work is offshored to the cheapest labor in third world nations and then the debuggers are in the USA. It is the same way with sneakers, they make them in third world nations but sell for $100 or more in the USA.
It is corporate greed and the companies conspire to all sell at the same retail price. Which is why sales are down, and companies cannot earn money. They keep raising the profit margin and that raises the retail price. If video games were reasonably priced, most people wouldn't pirate them, and video game companies will earn more money via the volume of sales. Back in the 1980's before they had DRM in games, after the crash, video game companies made millions and there wasn't as much piracy as there was now as games cost $20 or $30 each back then. Games like Bard's Tale made record sales and profits, but the Bard''s Tale remake for $60 wasn't anything like the original and was bloated and buggy and thus made record losses and couldn't sell very well.
Video Movie rental stores also rent console video games. You can rent the game for under $5 to see if you like it. Then in three or six months you can buy it used from the Video store or Game Stop for $30 or less when people who didn't like the game sell it to the used game stores. If you wait 1 or 2 years, you can get it for under $10 used.
But it still sells for $59.99 new, unless the store has a sale. Used games are the ones that get discounted. Just get Skip Dr. or some other DVD repair kit to repair the scratches, and even if you don't the Video rental stores will fix scratched disks for like $2 each.
Well Dr. Hawking it will take two years just on the test subjects to see if there is any progress. As a man of science you should know that these sort of things cannot be rushed and the scientific method has to be followed and the work peer reviewed.
You've made it this far, chances are you can make it until they find a cure for ALS. I am certain after the trials are done and the procedure is ready for the public, you'll be on the top of the list because of your scientific importance.
Some in your situation may resort to prayer, and I am not sure if you are a religious man, but being that you beat dying of ALS all these years, it may be certified as a miracle of some sort. I am a scientific and religious man, and I'll be praying for you to keep living until the stem cell cure for ALS is discovered. I mean that in the best way, and don't mean to be offensive.
So basically Marvel's Wolverine is a ripoff of DC's Lobo, but Marvel can get away with it because they changed the character enough.
The Sentry is different enough from Superman, Ant Man is different enough from The Atom, The Vision is different enough from the Red Tornado, and Hawkeye is different enough from Green Arrow?
I couldn't take a court case, I'd get so sick I'd die of a heart attack or stroke.
One company is a law firm in my area, another is a small business with under 15 employees. The law firm would keep my lawyers busy until I couldn't afford the legal fees and drop the case. The small business is immune to the employment laws for being so small.
Also if I sued, it would be the end of my career. Who'd want to hire me after I sued former employers, potential employers would fear that I would sue them as well and then not hire me and give a bogus reason that I didn't get hired.
First rename the characters or change the character to a different person being that character. Then drag the case on for years until a settlement is made.
Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and others.
Bruce Banner is no longer The Incredible Hulk, the Rulk or Red Hulk absorbed his gamma powers and Skar The Hulk's son will replace the Hulk.
The Mighty Thor, Thunderstrike or Beta Ray Bill will have to sub in for Thor.
Iron Man, Tony Stark got lobotomized in trying to erase the super hero registration list from his head, Pepper Potts has her own suit of armor and James Rhodes can take over as War Machine for Iron Man.
Spider-Man, Eddie Brock is now Anti-Venom, can sub for Spider-Man as Peter Parker quits or loses his powers again. Either that or another Ben Reilly Spider-Clone.
The Avengers have changed so much, right now the Dark Avengers are fighting the New Avengers, but they could easily change the group's name to the Challengers or Defenders like the other groups Kirby didn't invent.
Captain America, James "Bucky" Barnes is the new Captain America and was The Winter Soldier. Steve Rogers is dead, but they are trying to bring him back, doubts are in if he'd still be Captain America or let Bucky keep the uniform. Other men have been Captain America in the past. The 1950's Captain America is still alive with Steve Roger's face.
Most of those characters have been so radically changed that they don't resemble the Kirby versions anymore. Besides I thought Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did Spider-Man and not Jack Kirby.
sometimes you do nothing at all that gets you fired. Many times I was laid off because the company wasn't earning enough money and the companies I worked for would fire IT staff first. Usually with a 90% turn around in 4 years.
Last two programming jobs I had I got fired because I ran up health insurance rates and got sick too much. Turns out the stress of working too hard gave me high blood pressure and other illnesses and I even developed schizoaffective disorder. When management learned about my illnesses they tried to get me to quit, and failing that had fired me for being too sick and having too many sick days, etc. Even if I had doctor's notes and was in a hospital waiting for my blood pressure to go back to normal before they could release me, my sick days got counted against me. So I got fired for being too sick, and eventually ended up on disability being too sick to work. Had I continued working, I'd be dead or in a nursing home for being so sick.
Telecos usually have EULA's that say voice and data services cannot be used for illegal activities, and are suspect to monitoring for such activities. The Police, FBI, etc usually have a "reasonable cause" loophole that makes it so that they can bypass a warrant if they think someone is doing something illegal and there is no time for a warrant to get issued.
The problem is that when a warrant is served there is usually a leak in the government that tells the suspect that they are being monitored and they change their activity to avoid being arrested, this is corruption in our government.
I would like to see how this impacts the MPAA and RIAA cases where Telcos handed over IP ownership information from people who had IP addresses the MPAA and RIAA accused of piracy via file sharing. Maybe they won't be able to voluntarily hand that information out anymore without a warrant.
What needs to be done is the Patriot Act needs to be repealed and replaced with one that is Constitutional and keeps the suspect's rights and allows warrants to be issued faster to prevent them from being tipped off.
Right now the current system accesses voice call and Internet data and then does a keyword scan for trigger words and then logs the data. It isn't wiretapping everyone, but accesses the database and pulls up suspect data going to foreign telephones and IP addresses of known terrorist network ownership. I am sure there are false positives when people are joking around with bomb jokes and the like as well, so innocents are getting wiretapped as well as the guilty.
But getting back to the EULA, can an EULA violate the Constitution or any law? That is a good one, because if it cannot then any EULA can be found Unconstitutional and thus invalid. If someone breaks the Telco's EULA for voice or data does that give the Telco the right to have the government wiretap them or is a warrant still needed?
So far there haven't been any terrorist attacks on the USA main states since 9/11, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the warentless wiretappings have stopped it. There could be other factors like a better intelligence system, undercover agents, or people reporting suspicious activity leading to followups and investigations.
So you modders actually believe the Mac 128 upgraded to a Mac Plus has an internal hard drive?
Wikipedia Mac Plus entry "The Plus still did not include provision for an internal hard drive and it would be over 9 months before Apple would offer a SCSI drive replacement for the slow Hard Disk 20."
Thanks for the overrated mods, you all were wrong. I am Orion Blastar so I get used to being modded down for the wrong reasons or because someone with more mod points than brains thinks I am wrong.
Yeah maybe so but some of his stories like the The God Thing and other stories he couldn't finish or sell would be found. You will find that many authors get writer's block and if they have less than 50,000 words written on a book, they usually scrap it and start on a new different book. Writer's block is quite common, which I guess is why Roddenberry couldn't finish the God Thing story, but I guess he had enough of it written to keep it and try to pass it on to other writers to finish for him. So any deleted data would be books and movie scripts that got aborted due to writer's block and he had to quit them and give up and work on something different.
Oh yeah IIRC the Mac Plus didn't come with a hard drive, it used 3.5" floppy disks. It has a SCSI1 port to use an external hard drive and if it is not included with the auction you won't be recovering any data. The Mac Plus had no support for an internal hard drive like the Mac SE replacement had. I know as I have both a Mac Plus and Mac SE that I have worked on.
OSFree is an open source alternative to OS/2. As IBM could not open source OS/2 because of over 300 licensed code bases that went into developing it, they instead spund it off to Serenity systems to create an OEM version of OS/2 named eComStation. But OSFree is an attempt to build an open sourced OS/2 from scratch to work with MS-DOS, OS/2 1.X command, OS/2 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 (Warp and Merlin), and even some eComStation compatibility. I am not sure if they will try a WIN-OS2 substation or use ODIN to run 16 bit and 32 bit Windows applications. ODIN was the OS/2 version of WINE.
OSFree hasn't reached Alpha phase yet, but they are working on creating a LiveCD version that boots, and a version of OSFree that runs in Linux but runs OS/2 programs inside of Linux, like that Borg or Ferengi version of OS/2 ran under Windows to run OS/2 programs in a different OS.
Why has Slashdot almost ignored AROS Amiga Research OS? It has gone beyond what HaikuOS has and has had a LiveCD and VMWare image for a long time now. It is based on AmigaOS 3.1 APIs and written from scratch, IIRC AmigaOS 4.X was using AROS code to build it on. So while it is like an older AmigaOS 3.1 version it can run in a virtual machine or LiveCD or even a version that runs inside of Linux to run AROS programs. What Amiga Fan that runs Linux wouldn't want an AROS subsystem? All AROS lacks is decent applications, but that is being worked on with the AROS bounty system.
FreeDOS is a MS-DOS replacement. It can run the FreeGEM replacement GUI for Windows 3.X (basically a 16 bit GUI that runs GEM programs over DOS) or OpenGEM. But most think OpenGEM is the better of the 16 bit GUIS for DOS.
ReactOS is based on WINE to become a stand alone OS that is Windows XP/2003 compatible. It hasn't reached Beta stage yet, and lacks proper driver support, but it can be run via VmWare virtual machines or a LiveCD. The Virtual machine comes bundled with QEMU available from the downloads section and it is good to download and try out. It doesn't support modern 32 bit Windows programs but can be made to run the older ones that don't require.Net libraries or the BITS service. In about five years time it should become stable enough to reach the Beta stage and support most drivers and be able to be installed to an actual machine. By the time it reaches 1.0 status, Microsoft will have abandoned Windows XP and most likely have Windows 8 or 9 with a Virtual PC mode to run XP software like Windows 7 does. The Windows Legacy Software is not going away, and Microsoft proved that with the XP Virtual Machine for Windows 7 Pro and up users. Many software companies cannot afford to upgrade their software to work on Windows Vista or above and many small businesses have their old business software written for DOS, 16 bit Windows, or Windows XP or lower, and cannot afford to buy new machines that run Windows Vista or Windows 7 and lose compatibility with their legacy Windows software for business.
"We don't have very many for-profit fire departments in the United States any longer, although that was once the norm. Wonder why?"
We used to have for-profit police stations as well.
Turned out only the rich could afford them and the poor could not get coverage. So reform was needed and funded via a tax, and then everyone was covered rich or poor. Anyone remember the fire or police insurance collection to fund the for-profit days?
It is the same reason why coin operated bathroom doors got the coin boxes removed from them, discrimination against the poor that couldn't afford 10 cents to use the bathroom.
But in reforming the Police and Fire Stations so everyone can benefit from them, led to more corruption and controversies. Not only that but government budgets that couldn't be met to fund them when they went over budget.
Right now we have a federal government that is $11 trillion over budget, and we need at least another $1 or $2 trillion for health care.
Fact is we don't need a public option for health care, just reform it so pre-existing conditions are covered and put a cap on what the patient has to pay per procedure or co-pay, and then give Medicare to the poor who cannot afford insurance, then get rid of the Medicare doughnut hole so it covers name brands because not every drug will have a generic that works properly or even exists.
Yeah but Hollywood, TV networks, video games, music groups, sports groups, the RIAA and MPAA etc all produce our culture. It has nothing to do with the Republicans and their war on science. People don't want to learn science because they are distracted by many other things. As I said teenagers in my high school chemistry class would rather grow up to be a sports athlete than a scientist. That is because culture puts sports ahead of science and math and other subjects.
"My culture told me to like Greenday, watch MTV, and go to school to become a lawyer or a doctor. I'm glad I fought my culture to be myself. My culture is distracted by petty garbage."
US culture was radically changed in the 1960's to the "tune in, turn on, drop out" mentality. In my generation we were told to drop out of school, don't join the military, and become a working class person and the government would take care of us via social programs. That was the 1970's and 1980's after the 1960's and it still had a HIPPIE mentality. But I went on to college and excelled in math and science and computer science and other subjects. I almost joined the military but a friend talked me out of it. He died in 1999 of a self inflicted shotgun wound because he suffered the same culture and society and pressures that I do and maybe you as well. My generation is Generation-X the suicide generation.
But I rebelled against culture and society, as you have, and I agree that out culture and society is sick. Both the Democrats and Republicans are corrupt and we seem to suffer no matter who is in the White House or Congress.
Culture and society ought to put science and technology as priorities to learn. But instead they promote other things. So our students are suffering in science and math in public schools and our public schools are jokes to the rest of the world.
Children and teenagers today would rather play video games, play sports, listen to music and watch TV than learn science or math. I have to educate my own son at home to learn math and science and teach him the scientific method so he can do science fair projects. He usually gets third or second place, but at least he tries. Like many other children he rushes to try to get homework done faster, and I am trying to teach him to take his time and get it done right the first time instead of hurrying up and getting too many wrong answers.
Many adults hardly know how to use a computer, but culture and society has advanced to where everything is going digital and computerized. So I teach friends and family members how to use a computer, and fix any problems they have. Which ironically anyone can learn to do.
many just don't have an interest in it. I remember in one high school chemistry class it was hard but I earned a B, but a few of the other students didn't like it. I asked them why and they said it was a waste of time and not real work like sports like football, baseball, basketball, etc. At least those are real work they claimed, and can earn serious money, unlike a scientist who does nothing all day and gets paid for it. Their words not mine. Later in the Physics class I earned an A, and everyone else thought it was for nerds and too hard to learn.
Science needs to be made more appealing and fun to students. So they can gain an interest in it.
I could have become a scientist but I chose computer science and programming instead. That is because Science has become watered down and the scientific method is not always followed and one can get their buddies to sign off and peer review their own theory. Not all scientists do that, but if you did a margin of error calculation on their statistics you'll find some are high. There needs to be an open source program that can peer review papers to check for errors and the like to crack down on fraud and plagiarism.
I suppose the Republicans have a war on science as some of the science has been use to attack religion and religious people. It is not all creationism vs. evolution, in some public schools and colleges science is used to attack religion. When evolution was abused to say there is no God, then the Republicans got angry and tried to get it banned from schools. Evolution doesn't even mention a God or lack thereof, and science was never designed to prove religion wrong or right, in fact you cannot use the scientific method on religious things.
I think Wimax or something else will replace it and be backwards compatible with the Wifi B and G cards so that even legacy systems can get on it. But it will need Wifi repeaters with long range antennas to cover a wide range. I doubt such a system would be cheap to implement, and even if it is implemented it won't be free but pay only.
Then again the electric companies can offer broadband via the electrical outlets, and then you'd need an adapter to plug into any electrical outlet to get on their network. Since most places have outlets and electricity one can log in any place with an adapter. Not wireless, but an idea to get more people connected using the power lines.
Yeah I had to keep adding in random strangers as friends to get benefits in the Facebook games like Farmville, Knighthood, Battlestations, Mafia, etc before I decided to quit doing that. Then I found out Facebook doesn't like it when you drop a large group of your 'friends' and ban you for it. We used to be able to add in many friends, add them in the games, and then drop them and they'd still be in the games.
Thing is if people only added in their "real friends" to these Facebook games they'd only have like 16 friends playing with them and not the required 250 or whatever it is to get the bonuses enough to matter. There are also Facebook groups for "mass add" for the various games so random strangers can "mass add" other random strangers by bulk email addresses to get the hundreds of "friends" required for the Facebook video games.
But after creating a new account I decided to stop playing those Facebook games. Turns out they collect email addresses and other info and sell it like any other spammer, plus they assault you with advertising and spam.
It does not make sense to have video games on a social networking site, because it interferes with social networking and requires one to "micromanage" their virtual world in each game.
Yeah shoot 'em up games get boring after a while. Like you have the Nazi Zombie add on via DLC, and you spend over an hour killing Nazi Zombies. So what is the point, you just keep killing the Nazi Zombies and they keep throwing more at you. No thing to get around, no variation, no victims to try and save, no pause in the Nazi Zombies regenerating so you get to move out of the sniper spot to find a new one and advance on the Nazi Zombie castle or whatever.
I got old MS-DOS formatted floppy disks that have my old DOS games on it. I am finding new use with them via DOSBox.
Modern games, mostly Windows based DirectX memory eating and bloated but full of 3D graphics and surround sound audio aren't as good to play as the old DOS games. The old DOS games had a limited memory system and most were written in assembly or C and had to fit in under 12M of RAM using XMS or EMS etc RAM that extended over the 640K of DOS. They didn't have gigabyte hard drives back then and had to fit games on 120M hard drives or lower. They only had 640x480 VGA graphics and Sound Blaster 16 Pro audio.
How many remember Syndicate, XCOM, Dune II, Master of Orion 1 and 2, Master of Magic, Bard's Tale (EGA graphics and no sound card support but the Bard's Tale Construction set fixed that with VGA and Sound Blaster support), and other classic DOS games?
I heard a rumor that the classic DOS games are coming back via online services for $5 each because modern games don't have that enjoyability that the old 1990's DOS games had, plus people are learning how to run old games via DOSBOX or emulators that run DOS operating systems. The online services allows a DOSBox type DOS emulator/environment to run the DOS video game in it.
Almost every gaming company is trying to get the best graphics and sound effects, and it seems like they followed the Doom first person shooter model too closely with variations and modifications to it and forgot to make it entertaining and mean something via those social aspects of it. Not just chatting with other players, but the social aspects of going up against a computer controlled AI opponent(s). One of the few modern games that does that is Civilization IV, but it is basically the same game since Civilization II (or the original Civilization for DOS and the SNES) with more graphics and sounds added to it with movies and animation and then some bonus features but still plays the same as the original pretty much. Send settlers to build cities, take your civilization from the stone age to modern times without an enemy civilization taking yours out and develop technology for stronger military units and improvements to cities and world wonders. But in order to bring it to video game console units they had to dumb it down to Civilization Revolutions.
People want a game that is challenging, but they can set the level of difficulty. Sometimes the turns based game is better than the first person shooter realtime game that eats up lots of RAM and hard drive space for all of the animation and sound. Think of Tetris and other innovative games that did something different from all of the rest, and didn't need the animation graphics and sound effects to win over gamers. Just have an easy to use interface that doesn't require a user manual to be read in order to play it. Some of the best video games the player just clicked the start button and then just joined in the game learning as they went along. Which is what saved games are for, if you mess up, load a saved game before you messed up so you can avoid it.
Too bad there are no neutral or independent news sources. Sometimes I have to go outside of US web sites to discover another point of view on the news. But then since I am not local to the foreign web site, I cannot be sure it isn't biased as well.
Ever since Reagan got rid of the fairness doctrine, all news has been is spun to the left or right.
I miss the old Saturday Night Live that used to parody the two sides of the news with "Point Counter-Point" with Jane Curtain with the liberal side and Dan Aykroyd on the conservative side.
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Microsoft has been making crappy promotional videos for years and years.
Take a look at this MS-DOS 5 video promotion, YO MS Raps!
Ballmer tries to sell Windows 1.0
This is the Windows 386 launch video with the crazy female office worker turning from Mission Impossible later on into a punk rock and Madona combo?
Actually the reason why most movies and video games fail is because they are crap. They aren't worth the money and the QA did a crappy job, the developers or actors did a crappy job, the script or analysis and design was crappy etc.
If they used the same process to develop a house it would catch on fire and then fall apart because the quality was so bad, it doesn't meet safety codes.
In the good old salad days, there was hardly any bugs or bloat to video games and they fit nicely within 12 megabytes of space, and ran fast without any bugs at all except for a select few that had no big effect on game play or performance. Usually color and sound bugs.
Most of the time the public or audience is not part of the QA process, which is why video games and movies fail. If they were they would point out plot problems, things that don't make the video game or movie enjoyable, things they want changed and what they expect from the movie and game. You see, instead of giving people what they want, they are instead telling people what they want. That is very bad for business.
For example: Wolverine: Origins, the fans wanted to see a movie true to the original origin of Wolverine. But instead it got Hollywoodized and changed around, Sabertooth is now Wolverine's brother and Wolverine is an American born in colonial times instead of born in Canada. Weapon-X is in the USA instead of Canada. Most of the story does not make sense when I saw it and paid my $10 to see it I was sadly dissapointed. Even this parody is more enjoyable than the original movie and it shows plot failures and things that don't make sense.
I am not sure but it seems like Hollywood and Video Game creators are on some type of illegal drugs or something that causes them to make crap this way, worse than ever before in the history of the USA. They cannot even come up with original ideas and have to borrow them from old TV shows or comic books or remakes of old Hollywood movies (sometimes remaking a Bollywood, or Thailand, or Foreign movie to a US version).
Explain then the $10 rack at some discount stores that have old games that sell well, and have a profit for the discount store.
Explain to me how Wal Mart can be the most profitable retailer by selling things at a lower cost than other retailers and making record profits by bulk sales at a lower profit margin.
Explain to me how Fast Food stores make record profits by having a dollar menu and make record losses without one.
I do see $30 games right next to the $60 ones, the $60 games are in stock and hardly anyone wants to buy them, but the $30 games are in short stock or sold out because they are more affordable.
Actual fraud in any form or sense should not be tolerated.
Many people made decisions based on those polls, including politicians. If the results are not random samples but where cherry picked, it could influence those politicians to support bills and policies that they think the public wants (Patriot Act, Warrentless Wiretapping, Waterboarding, Wars, etc) but in reality they might not actually want as a majority.
This applies for anything using statistics including scientific theories, the same fraud detecting method can be used on scientific theories to weed out the problems and fraud in science.
Most people could afford $30 or less for a game, but not $60. Which is why people pirate the games on P2P networks. They cannot afford it and the pirated version has the DRM removed. But the P2P version may cause lockups and might be malware infected, so people are taking a chance when they pirate a game from P2P networks.
But common sense says the #1 reason why people pirate the games is the cost of them. When the Atari 2600 came out games cost $15 to $30 each, but as the Atari 2600 got old they got sold at bargain bins for $5 to $1 each. Sometime in the 1980's the video game console market collapsed and then games got cheaper. Then in the 1990's they went to $30 again, then $40 or $45 by 2000. Then by 2005 they were almost $55, and now in 2009 they are $59.99. Yeah games did get bigger and more of a challenge to develop, but most of the work is offshored to the cheapest labor in third world nations and then the debuggers are in the USA. It is the same way with sneakers, they make them in third world nations but sell for $100 or more in the USA.
It is corporate greed and the companies conspire to all sell at the same retail price. Which is why sales are down, and companies cannot earn money. They keep raising the profit margin and that raises the retail price. If video games were reasonably priced, most people wouldn't pirate them, and video game companies will earn more money via the volume of sales. Back in the 1980's before they had DRM in games, after the crash, video game companies made millions and there wasn't as much piracy as there was now as games cost $20 or $30 each back then. Games like Bard's Tale made record sales and profits, but the Bard''s Tale remake for $60 wasn't anything like the original and was bloated and buggy and thus made record losses and couldn't sell very well.
Actually you can do what I do.
Video Movie rental stores also rent console video games. You can rent the game for under $5 to see if you like it. Then in three or six months you can buy it used from the Video store or Game Stop for $30 or less when people who didn't like the game sell it to the used game stores. If you wait 1 or 2 years, you can get it for under $10 used.
But it still sells for $59.99 new, unless the store has a sale. Used games are the ones that get discounted. Just get Skip Dr. or some other DVD repair kit to repair the scratches, and even if you don't the Video rental stores will fix scratched disks for like $2 each.
Well Dr. Hawking it will take two years just on the test subjects to see if there is any progress. As a man of science you should know that these sort of things cannot be rushed and the scientific method has to be followed and the work peer reviewed.
You've made it this far, chances are you can make it until they find a cure for ALS. I am certain after the trials are done and the procedure is ready for the public, you'll be on the top of the list because of your scientific importance.
Some in your situation may resort to prayer, and I am not sure if you are a religious man, but being that you beat dying of ALS all these years, it may be certified as a miracle of some sort. I am a scientific and religious man, and I'll be praying for you to keep living until the stem cell cure for ALS is discovered. I mean that in the best way, and don't mean to be offensive.
So basically Marvel's Wolverine is a ripoff of DC's Lobo, but Marvel can get away with it because they changed the character enough.
The Sentry is different enough from Superman, Ant Man is different enough from The Atom, The Vision is different enough from the Red Tornado, and Hawkeye is different enough from Green Arrow?
Why hasn't DC sued Marvel over those things yet?
I couldn't take a court case, I'd get so sick I'd die of a heart attack or stroke.
One company is a law firm in my area, another is a small business with under 15 employees. The law firm would keep my lawyers busy until I couldn't afford the legal fees and drop the case. The small business is immune to the employment laws for being so small.
Also if I sued, it would be the end of my career. Who'd want to hire me after I sued former employers, potential employers would fear that I would sue them as well and then not hire me and give a bogus reason that I didn't get hired.
for Superman/Superboy lawsuits.
First rename the characters or change the character to a different person being that character. Then drag the case on for years until a settlement is made.
Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and others.
Bruce Banner is no longer The Incredible Hulk, the Rulk or Red Hulk absorbed his gamma powers and Skar The Hulk's son will replace the Hulk.
The Mighty Thor, Thunderstrike or Beta Ray Bill will have to sub in for Thor.
Iron Man, Tony Stark got lobotomized in trying to erase the super hero registration list from his head, Pepper Potts has her own suit of armor and James Rhodes can take over as War Machine for Iron Man.
Spider-Man, Eddie Brock is now Anti-Venom, can sub for Spider-Man as Peter Parker quits or loses his powers again. Either that or another Ben Reilly Spider-Clone.
The Avengers have changed so much, right now the Dark Avengers are fighting the New Avengers, but they could easily change the group's name to the Challengers or Defenders like the other groups Kirby didn't invent.
Captain America, James "Bucky" Barnes is the new Captain America and was The Winter Soldier. Steve Rogers is dead, but they are trying to bring him back, doubts are in if he'd still be Captain America or let Bucky keep the uniform. Other men have been Captain America in the past. The 1950's Captain America is still alive with Steve Roger's face.
Most of those characters have been so radically changed that they don't resemble the Kirby versions anymore. Besides I thought Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did Spider-Man and not Jack Kirby.
sometimes you do nothing at all that gets you fired. Many times I was laid off because the company wasn't earning enough money and the companies I worked for would fire IT staff first. Usually with a 90% turn around in 4 years.
Last two programming jobs I had I got fired because I ran up health insurance rates and got sick too much. Turns out the stress of working too hard gave me high blood pressure and other illnesses and I even developed schizoaffective disorder. When management learned about my illnesses they tried to get me to quit, and failing that had fired me for being too sick and having too many sick days, etc. Even if I had doctor's notes and was in a hospital waiting for my blood pressure to go back to normal before they could release me, my sick days got counted against me. So I got fired for being too sick, and eventually ended up on disability being too sick to work. Had I continued working, I'd be dead or in a nursing home for being so sick.
Telecos usually have EULA's that say voice and data services cannot be used for illegal activities, and are suspect to monitoring for such activities. The Police, FBI, etc usually have a "reasonable cause" loophole that makes it so that they can bypass a warrant if they think someone is doing something illegal and there is no time for a warrant to get issued.
The problem is that when a warrant is served there is usually a leak in the government that tells the suspect that they are being monitored and they change their activity to avoid being arrested, this is corruption in our government.
I would like to see how this impacts the MPAA and RIAA cases where Telcos handed over IP ownership information from people who had IP addresses the MPAA and RIAA accused of piracy via file sharing. Maybe they won't be able to voluntarily hand that information out anymore without a warrant.
What needs to be done is the Patriot Act needs to be repealed and replaced with one that is Constitutional and keeps the suspect's rights and allows warrants to be issued faster to prevent them from being tipped off.
Right now the current system accesses voice call and Internet data and then does a keyword scan for trigger words and then logs the data. It isn't wiretapping everyone, but accesses the database and pulls up suspect data going to foreign telephones and IP addresses of known terrorist network ownership. I am sure there are false positives when people are joking around with bomb jokes and the like as well, so innocents are getting wiretapped as well as the guilty.
But getting back to the EULA, can an EULA violate the Constitution or any law? That is a good one, because if it cannot then any EULA can be found Unconstitutional and thus invalid. If someone breaks the Telco's EULA for voice or data does that give the Telco the right to have the government wiretap them or is a warrant still needed?
So far there haven't been any terrorist attacks on the USA main states since 9/11, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the warentless wiretappings have stopped it. There could be other factors like a better intelligence system, undercover agents, or people reporting suspicious activity leading to followups and investigations.
So you modders actually believe the Mac 128 upgraded to a Mac Plus has an internal hard drive?
Wikipedia Mac Plus entry
"The Plus still did not include provision for an internal hard drive and it would be over 9 months before Apple would offer a SCSI drive replacement for the slow Hard Disk 20."
Thanks for the overrated mods, you all were wrong. I am Orion Blastar so I get used to being modded down for the wrong reasons or because someone with more mod points than brains thinks I am wrong.
You forgot the Klingon religion from Star Trek or Shatnerism or even Vulcanism/Spockism.
Why do the Star Wars religions get all of the press but not the Star Trek religions?
Yeah maybe so but some of his stories like the The God Thing and other stories he couldn't finish or sell would be found. You will find that many authors get writer's block and if they have less than 50,000 words written on a book, they usually scrap it and start on a new different book. Writer's block is quite common, which I guess is why Roddenberry couldn't finish the God Thing story, but I guess he had enough of it written to keep it and try to pass it on to other writers to finish for him. So any deleted data would be books and movie scripts that got aborted due to writer's block and he had to quit them and give up and work on something different.
Oh yeah IIRC the Mac Plus didn't come with a hard drive, it used 3.5" floppy disks. It has a SCSI1 port to use an external hard drive and if it is not included with the auction you won't be recovering any data. The Mac Plus had no support for an internal hard drive like the Mac SE replacement had. I know as I have both a Mac Plus and Mac SE that I have worked on.
OSFree is an open source alternative to OS/2. As IBM could not open source OS/2 because of over 300 licensed code bases that went into developing it, they instead spund it off to Serenity systems to create an OEM version of OS/2 named eComStation. But OSFree is an attempt to build an open sourced OS/2 from scratch to work with MS-DOS, OS/2 1.X command, OS/2 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 (Warp and Merlin), and even some eComStation compatibility. I am not sure if they will try a WIN-OS2 substation or use ODIN to run 16 bit and 32 bit Windows applications. ODIN was the OS/2 version of WINE.
OSFree hasn't reached Alpha phase yet, but they are working on creating a LiveCD version that boots, and a version of OSFree that runs in Linux but runs OS/2 programs inside of Linux, like that Borg or Ferengi version of OS/2 ran under Windows to run OS/2 programs in a different OS.
Why has Slashdot almost ignored AROS Amiga Research OS? It has gone beyond what HaikuOS has and has had a LiveCD and VMWare image for a long time now. It is based on AmigaOS 3.1 APIs and written from scratch, IIRC AmigaOS 4.X was using AROS code to build it on. So while it is like an older AmigaOS 3.1 version it can run in a virtual machine or LiveCD or even a version that runs inside of Linux to run AROS programs. What Amiga Fan that runs Linux wouldn't want an AROS subsystem? All AROS lacks is decent applications, but that is being worked on with the AROS bounty system.
FreeDOS is a MS-DOS replacement. It can run the FreeGEM replacement GUI for Windows 3.X (basically a 16 bit GUI that runs GEM programs over DOS) or OpenGEM. But most think OpenGEM is the better of the 16 bit GUIS for DOS.
ReactOS is based on WINE to become a stand alone OS that is Windows XP/2003 compatible. It hasn't reached Beta stage yet, and lacks proper driver support, but it can be run via VmWare virtual machines or a LiveCD. The Virtual machine comes bundled with QEMU available from the downloads section and it is good to download and try out. It doesn't support modern 32 bit Windows programs but can be made to run the older ones that don't require .Net libraries or the BITS service. In about five years time it should become stable enough to reach the Beta stage and support most drivers and be able to be installed to an actual machine. By the time it reaches 1.0 status, Microsoft will have abandoned Windows XP and most likely have Windows 8 or 9 with a Virtual PC mode to run XP software like Windows 7 does. The Windows Legacy Software is not going away, and Microsoft proved that with the XP Virtual Machine for Windows 7 Pro and up users. Many software companies cannot afford to upgrade their software to work on Windows Vista or above and many small businesses have their old business software written for DOS, 16 bit Windows, or Windows XP or lower, and cannot afford to buy new machines that run Windows Vista or Windows 7 and lose compatibility with their legacy Windows software for business.
"We don't have very many for-profit fire departments in the United States any longer, although that was once the norm. Wonder why?"
We used to have for-profit police stations as well.
Turned out only the rich could afford them and the poor could not get coverage. So reform was needed and funded via a tax, and then everyone was covered rich or poor. Anyone remember the fire or police insurance collection to fund the for-profit days?
It is the same reason why coin operated bathroom doors got the coin boxes removed from them, discrimination against the poor that couldn't afford 10 cents to use the bathroom.
But in reforming the Police and Fire Stations so everyone can benefit from them, led to more corruption and controversies. Not only that but government budgets that couldn't be met to fund them when they went over budget.
Right now we have a federal government that is $11 trillion over budget, and we need at least another $1 or $2 trillion for health care.
Fact is we don't need a public option for health care, just reform it so pre-existing conditions are covered and put a cap on what the patient has to pay per procedure or co-pay, and then give Medicare to the poor who cannot afford insurance, then get rid of the Medicare doughnut hole so it covers name brands because not every drug will have a generic that works properly or even exists.
Germs!
Yeah but Hollywood, TV networks, video games, music groups, sports groups, the RIAA and MPAA etc all produce our culture. It has nothing to do with the Republicans and their war on science. People don't want to learn science because they are distracted by many other things. As I said teenagers in my high school chemistry class would rather grow up to be a sports athlete than a scientist. That is because culture puts sports ahead of science and math and other subjects.
"My culture told me to like Greenday, watch MTV, and go to school to become a lawyer or a doctor. I'm glad I fought my culture to be myself. My culture is distracted by petty garbage."
US culture was radically changed in the 1960's to the "tune in, turn on, drop out" mentality. In my generation we were told to drop out of school, don't join the military, and become a working class person and the government would take care of us via social programs. That was the 1970's and 1980's after the 1960's and it still had a HIPPIE mentality. But I went on to college and excelled in math and science and computer science and other subjects. I almost joined the military but a friend talked me out of it. He died in 1999 of a self inflicted shotgun wound because he suffered the same culture and society and pressures that I do and maybe you as well. My generation is Generation-X the suicide generation.
But I rebelled against culture and society, as you have, and I agree that out culture and society is sick. Both the Democrats and Republicans are corrupt and we seem to suffer no matter who is in the White House or Congress.
Culture and society ought to put science and technology as priorities to learn. But instead they promote other things. So our students are suffering in science and math in public schools and our public schools are jokes to the rest of the world.
Children and teenagers today would rather play video games, play sports, listen to music and watch TV than learn science or math. I have to educate my own son at home to learn math and science and teach him the scientific method so he can do science fair projects. He usually gets third or second place, but at least he tries. Like many other children he rushes to try to get homework done faster, and I am trying to teach him to take his time and get it done right the first time instead of hurrying up and getting too many wrong answers.
Many adults hardly know how to use a computer, but culture and society has advanced to where everything is going digital and computerized. So I teach friends and family members how to use a computer, and fix any problems they have. Which ironically anyone can learn to do.
many just don't have an interest in it. I remember in one high school chemistry class it was hard but I earned a B, but a few of the other students didn't like it. I asked them why and they said it was a waste of time and not real work like sports like football, baseball, basketball, etc. At least those are real work they claimed, and can earn serious money, unlike a scientist who does nothing all day and gets paid for it. Their words not mine. Later in the Physics class I earned an A, and everyone else thought it was for nerds and too hard to learn.
Science needs to be made more appealing and fun to students. So they can gain an interest in it.
I could have become a scientist but I chose computer science and programming instead. That is because Science has become watered down and the scientific method is not always followed and one can get their buddies to sign off and peer review their own theory. Not all scientists do that, but if you did a margin of error calculation on their statistics you'll find some are high. There needs to be an open source program that can peer review papers to check for errors and the like to crack down on fraud and plagiarism.
I suppose the Republicans have a war on science as some of the science has been use to attack religion and religious people. It is not all creationism vs. evolution, in some public schools and colleges science is used to attack religion. When evolution was abused to say there is no God, then the Republicans got angry and tried to get it banned from schools. Evolution doesn't even mention a God or lack thereof, and science was never designed to prove religion wrong or right, in fact you cannot use the scientific method on religious things.
it is just limited in what range it can cover.
I think Wimax or something else will replace it and be backwards compatible with the Wifi B and G cards so that even legacy systems can get on it. But it will need Wifi repeaters with long range antennas to cover a wide range. I doubt such a system would be cheap to implement, and even if it is implemented it won't be free but pay only.
Then again the electric companies can offer broadband via the electrical outlets, and then you'd need an adapter to plug into any electrical outlet to get on their network. Since most places have outlets and electricity one can log in any place with an adapter. Not wireless, but an idea to get more people connected using the power lines.
Yeah I had to keep adding in random strangers as friends to get benefits in the Facebook games like Farmville, Knighthood, Battlestations, Mafia, etc before I decided to quit doing that. Then I found out Facebook doesn't like it when you drop a large group of your 'friends' and ban you for it. We used to be able to add in many friends, add them in the games, and then drop them and they'd still be in the games.
Thing is if people only added in their "real friends" to these Facebook games they'd only have like 16 friends playing with them and not the required 250 or whatever it is to get the bonuses enough to matter. There are also Facebook groups for "mass add" for the various games so random strangers can "mass add" other random strangers by bulk email addresses to get the hundreds of "friends" required for the Facebook video games.
But after creating a new account I decided to stop playing those Facebook games. Turns out they collect email addresses and other info and sell it like any other spammer, plus they assault you with advertising and spam.
It does not make sense to have video games on a social networking site, because it interferes with social networking and requires one to "micromanage" their virtual world in each game.
Yeah shoot 'em up games get boring after a while. Like you have the Nazi Zombie add on via DLC, and you spend over an hour killing Nazi Zombies. So what is the point, you just keep killing the Nazi Zombies and they keep throwing more at you. No thing to get around, no variation, no victims to try and save, no pause in the Nazi Zombies regenerating so you get to move out of the sniper spot to find a new one and advance on the Nazi Zombie castle or whatever.
I got old MS-DOS formatted floppy disks that have my old DOS games on it. I am finding new use with them via DOSBox.
Modern games, mostly Windows based DirectX memory eating and bloated but full of 3D graphics and surround sound audio aren't as good to play as the old DOS games. The old DOS games had a limited memory system and most were written in assembly or C and had to fit in under 12M of RAM using XMS or EMS etc RAM that extended over the 640K of DOS. They didn't have gigabyte hard drives back then and had to fit games on 120M hard drives or lower. They only had 640x480 VGA graphics and Sound Blaster 16 Pro audio.
How many remember Syndicate, XCOM, Dune II, Master of Orion 1 and 2, Master of Magic, Bard's Tale (EGA graphics and no sound card support but the Bard's Tale Construction set fixed that with VGA and Sound Blaster support), and other classic DOS games?
I heard a rumor that the classic DOS games are coming back via online services for $5 each because modern games don't have that enjoyability that the old 1990's DOS games had, plus people are learning how to run old games via DOSBOX or emulators that run DOS operating systems. The online services allows a DOSBox type DOS emulator/environment to run the DOS video game in it.
Almost every gaming company is trying to get the best graphics and sound effects, and it seems like they followed the Doom first person shooter model too closely with variations and modifications to it and forgot to make it entertaining and mean something via those social aspects of it. Not just chatting with other players, but the social aspects of going up against a computer controlled AI opponent(s). One of the few modern games that does that is Civilization IV, but it is basically the same game since Civilization II (or the original Civilization for DOS and the SNES) with more graphics and sounds added to it with movies and animation and then some bonus features but still plays the same as the original pretty much. Send settlers to build cities, take your civilization from the stone age to modern times without an enemy civilization taking yours out and develop technology for stronger military units and improvements to cities and world wonders. But in order to bring it to video game console units they had to dumb it down to Civilization Revolutions.
People want a game that is challenging, but they can set the level of difficulty. Sometimes the turns based game is better than the first person shooter realtime game that eats up lots of RAM and hard drive space for all of the animation and sound. Think of Tetris and other innovative games that did something different from all of the rest, and didn't need the animation graphics and sound effects to win over gamers. Just have an easy to use interface that doesn't require a user manual to be read in order to play it. Some of the best video games the player just clicked the start button and then just joined in the game learning as they went along. Which is what saved games are for, if you mess up, load a saved game before you messed up so you can avoid it.
Too bad there are no neutral or independent news sources. Sometimes I have to go outside of US web sites to discover another point of view on the news. But then since I am not local to the foreign web site, I cannot be sure it isn't biased as well.
Ever since Reagan got rid of the fairness doctrine, all news has been is spun to the left or right.
I miss the old Saturday Night Live that used to parody the two sides of the news with "Point Counter-Point" with Jane Curtain with the liberal side and Dan Aykroyd on the conservative side.