You know, when I bought my Wii, it was becuase it represented a new paradigm in gaming, and the games that were already available for it were incredibly fun and interesting.
When I bought my 360, I knew it would be the PS2 of this generation, filled with the interesting titles other consoles wouldn't bother publishing. I just finished Braid this weekend.
When I bought my PSP, I thought it was really cool I could hang out in front of a hotel and press a few buttons and have any one of a huge selection of playstation games at my fingertips for less than a meal at McDonald's.
When I bought my DS, I was impressed by the massive library of dependably solid titles, as well as backwards compatibility with the GBA.
So you're saying your PS3's power cable plugs right into it? That's great...
Sony's gaming division lost $1.24 billion in 2008. This means that anyone who lost less than 1.24 billion dollars in 2008 is more profitable than Sony's gaming division. Sony did NOT make money on the PS3 in 2008.
That said, your other statement is more accurate. Third party developers have finally stepped up and begun releasing games people might actually want to play, and Sony finally lowered the price of the console, leading to an increase in sales of 156%. Their share of the market increased by about 5% in 2008, but it's still a tiny slice of the market.
By most measures, the PS3 is a flop. It's trailing both it's competitors by double digits in market share, their gaming division is losing money while both competitors are making money hand over fist, and there's very little light on the horizon, since they're selling the most expensive console in the middle of a recession. The only real upside for Sony is everyone who wanted a Wii and 360 has bought one, so the PS3 is next on the list.
After paying 25 bucks for Saint Anger, Metallica is going to have to do something pretty goddamn special to justify me giving them another penny of my money.
It was literally the last album I bought. At that point, it was like "You know, you're right, Metallica. I AM getting screwed hard. I'll stop giving you guys my money."
I absolutely support DRM where it makes sense. It's where it's shoehorned in and makes the value of software less than a pirated copy that I disagree with it. I have written in the past about this, where DRM in places like Windows causes a product I've paid for refuses to work on a regular basis has forced me to boycott future versions of Windows whether it's good or not because I'm not paying for Microsoft to take my software away from me.
Steam, by contrast, increases the value of Valve's software, because I don't lose access to my software just because I lose the CD. I had a nasty break-up with an ex-girlfriend and lost my half-life CD and CD-Key, but was able to play half-life within minutes of the urge with my Valve username and password. For that value, I'm willing to pay the price of needing to get a crack if the company goes under.
This is all a red herring used so people with a philosophical problem with DRM can have something to be outraged about anyway, in my view. History shows that the developers of insanely popular FPSes don't go out of business. id software, Epic Megagames, 3d Realms, all creators of 3d shooters with popularity on par with the Half-life series, all of them have never had their existence in question. Creators of other incredibly popular franchises, DMA Design(Now Rock Star), Blizzard, Square, Capcom, Lucasarts, Maxis, Origin are all healthy decades after their creation. Even companies that fail in this market don't disappear, they're just absorbed into other companies. Looking Glass became Irrational Studios became 2k Games Boston/Austrilia, SNK became SNK Playmore, Dynamix was absorbed into Irrational. Since Steam is a massive revenue stream for the company, it's unlikely such a merger would mean disruption of service.
My experience with CDs has been that they're far more transient than on-line media. I don't even have the copy of X2 I bought a couple years ago. I've lost hundreds of dollars of games to moving, and to scratches, and to this or that, but I can still enter my ICQ number from 1998 and get into that account, and I can still open up my hotmail account from 1997 and get into there.
Your post was wrong in the first paragraph, so your entire post is based on a false premise. These cases are civil, not criminal. That's why the RIAA can ask for millions of dollars for a relatively minor offense. In civil cases, the standard isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt", but "a preponderance of evidence", a much lower standard.
You seem to be asserting things that are both misleading and factually incorrect.
First, just one year of Bush's wars required a 70 billion dollar act of congress in 20091. 2008 alone required 140 billion dollars in funding2, so your claim that the two wars only cost 100 billion is blatantly wrong.
My research3 shows that Bush increased the federal budget by 777 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation, and the federal debt by 2.7 trillion, adjusted for inflation. Bush's budgetted dollars account for annual spending on par with Obama's 2-year bailout plan, and the wars in Iraq and Afganistan weren't budgetted, until now, since Obama has them listed in HIS budget.
The challenge isn't this bailout, which wouldn't be a huge expense averaged out over 4 years, but the days after. If Obama is telling the truth and there are significant cuts to be made in 2011, then he could actually do what most of his democratic contemporaries have done, and outcut the Republicans.
One thing really bothers me. Look at my research. The Republicans have increased the federal budget at TWICE the inflation adjusted rate of the Democrats. They've increased the federal debt at TEN TIMES the inflation adjusted rate. Why is it that they're suddenly fiscal conservatives when they're not in power, but when they ARE in power, they spend and run up debt like a college kid with is parents visa? Why is it that they get away with acting like Democrats spend and debt more?
That all sounds well and good, but all this is done without any court involvement, with no due process.
In one case, the man was supposed to be in the US for an hour to switch flights, they kidnapped him at JFK airport and threw him on a plane to syria. No court order, just "We're the CIA and we do what we want".
I hate to agree with you, because I really don't like Bush on account of all the horribly immoral things his administration did, but he's not soley, or even substantially, to blame.
He DID make things harder longer by going with policies that kept the economy at pre-bust levels after the Y2K bubble burst, and he DID do his best to keep interest rates at record lows to defer the pain period from the bubbles bursting, and he DID send out "stimulus cheques", inflating the currency to further keep the economy going far past when it should've hit recession, but that's just firefighting.
Deregulation causes bubbles, even in industries that should be able to self-regulate. The best example is a garden hose. If you hire a person to put a kink in a hose and carefully control the flow, then one day realise the original flow was the right amount, you're still going to get a huge slug of water when you release the kink, because the system has been disturbed and needs to find equalibrium. The best example is gold. Private ownership of gold was illegal for 50 years. After ownership was legalized once again, prices spiked to levels we have never seen since, before stabilizing at a certain level that has more or less been stable with inflation.
The problem is, the prosperity of 1999 was caused by a series of bubbles. A bubble was caused by the deregulation of the banks through repealing Glass-Steagall. A bubble was caused by deregulation of the energy industry in California. A bubble was caused by record low interest rates, further destabilizing the loan industry. A bubble was caused by the disruptive effect of the Internet, paired with the massive capital inflow from Y2K.
Neither George Bush nor Al Gore realized it at the time, but they were inheriting an economy that was the equivilent to a house made out of glass. Under Bush, the bubbles collapsed one after another(Predictably), and no other politician would've done anything different than try to keep the bubble propped up as long as possible, even though what the economy needed was a pain period after each burst to find equalibrium.
Unfortunately, you pose a very strong point. I've followed, for example, the Ron Paul campaign, and he has worked really hard to get his simple messages and values out there. For saying common sense things like "People get mad at us when we blow them up", he gets treated like a crazy person.
My hope is that polemics like these posts will help people wake up to how much of their soul is being sold, how much of their honesty and good name is being spent in the dubious name of 'safety'.
I'm just noticing that everyone is so outraged at me saying you're amoral, nobody seems to give a fuck that soviet-style kidnappings and torture are going on.
"How DARE you attack America for kidnapping people from your country and sending them to Syria! You have NO RIGHT to hate us! We did NOTHING WRONG besides kidnap people from your country and send them to Syria!"
Slashdot Mirror
And yet this thread continues to add absolutely nothing to the discussion, which is why I made fun of you in the last post. Interesting.
I'm not sure if Office Depot sells them, but the Asus Eee PC has a composite out.
My prepaid mastercard doesn't even have my name on it.
Freedom isn't dead, it's just hiding.
Sorry, everyone who isn't cheap who wanted a Wii and a 360 have bought them.
You know, when I bought my Wii, it was becuase it represented a new paradigm in gaming, and the games that were already available for it were incredibly fun and interesting.
When I bought my 360, I knew it would be the PS2 of this generation, filled with the interesting titles other consoles wouldn't bother publishing. I just finished Braid this weekend.
When I bought my PSP, I thought it was really cool I could hang out in front of a hotel and press a few buttons and have any one of a huge selection of playstation games at my fingertips for less than a meal at McDonald's.
When I bought my DS, I was impressed by the massive library of dependably solid titles, as well as backwards compatibility with the GBA.
So you're saying your PS3's power cable plugs right into it? That's great...
Clever is designing a padded suit that lets you wrestle bears without lethal injury. Smart is not wrestling bears.
All this fanboy talk can cease.
Sony's gaming division lost $1.24 billion in 2008. This means that anyone who lost less than 1.24 billion dollars in 2008 is more profitable than Sony's gaming division. Sony did NOT make money on the PS3 in 2008.
That said, your other statement is more accurate. Third party developers have finally stepped up and begun releasing games people might actually want to play, and Sony finally lowered the price of the console, leading to an increase in sales of 156%. Their share of the market increased by about 5% in 2008, but it's still a tiny slice of the market.
By most measures, the PS3 is a flop. It's trailing both it's competitors by double digits in market share, their gaming division is losing money while both competitors are making money hand over fist, and there's very little light on the horizon, since they're selling the most expensive console in the middle of a recession. The only real upside for Sony is everyone who wanted a Wii and 360 has bought one, so the PS3 is next on the list.
You misspelled the typo. It's "I herd you liek[...]"
I don't know how to feel about that...
After paying 25 bucks for Saint Anger, Metallica is going to have to do something pretty goddamn special to justify me giving them another penny of my money.
It was literally the last album I bought. At that point, it was like "You know, you're right, Metallica. I AM getting screwed hard. I'll stop giving you guys my money."
I absolutely support DRM where it makes sense. It's where it's shoehorned in and makes the value of software less than a pirated copy that I disagree with it. I have written in the past about this, where DRM in places like Windows causes a product I've paid for refuses to work on a regular basis has forced me to boycott future versions of Windows whether it's good or not because I'm not paying for Microsoft to take my software away from me.
Steam, by contrast, increases the value of Valve's software, because I don't lose access to my software just because I lose the CD. I had a nasty break-up with an ex-girlfriend and lost my half-life CD and CD-Key, but was able to play half-life within minutes of the urge with my Valve username and password. For that value, I'm willing to pay the price of needing to get a crack if the company goes under.
This is all a red herring used so people with a philosophical problem with DRM can have something to be outraged about anyway, in my view. History shows that the developers of insanely popular FPSes don't go out of business. id software, Epic Megagames, 3d Realms, all creators of 3d shooters with popularity on par with the Half-life series, all of them have never had their existence in question. Creators of other incredibly popular franchises, DMA Design(Now Rock Star), Blizzard, Square, Capcom, Lucasarts, Maxis, Origin are all healthy decades after their creation. Even companies that fail in this market don't disappear, they're just absorbed into other companies. Looking Glass became Irrational Studios became 2k Games Boston/Austrilia, SNK became SNK Playmore, Dynamix was absorbed into Irrational. Since Steam is a massive revenue stream for the company, it's unlikely such a merger would mean disruption of service.
Even if they don't unlock the games, it's not like you won't be able to download a crack months before the company goes tits up.
You already CAN download cracked versions of valve's software.
My experience with CDs has been that they're far more transient than on-line media. I don't even have the copy of X2 I bought a couple years ago. I've lost hundreds of dollars of games to moving, and to scratches, and to this or that, but I can still enter my ICQ number from 1998 and get into that account, and I can still open up my hotmail account from 1997 and get into there.
You can't just file a writ of habeas corpus into Mordor!
Your post was wrong in the first paragraph, so your entire post is based on a false premise. These cases are civil, not criminal. That's why the RIAA can ask for millions of dollars for a relatively minor offense. In civil cases, the standard isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt", but "a preponderance of evidence", a much lower standard.
[citation needed]
You seem to be asserting things that are both misleading and factually incorrect.
First, just one year of Bush's wars required a 70 billion dollar act of congress in 20091. 2008 alone required 140 billion dollars in funding2, so your claim that the two wars only cost 100 billion is blatantly wrong.
My research3 shows that Bush increased the federal budget by 777 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation, and the federal debt by 2.7 trillion, adjusted for inflation. Bush's budgetted dollars account for annual spending on par with Obama's 2-year bailout plan, and the wars in Iraq and Afganistan weren't budgetted, until now, since Obama has them listed in HIS budget.
The challenge isn't this bailout, which wouldn't be a huge expense averaged out over 4 years, but the days after. If Obama is telling the truth and there are significant cuts to be made in 2011, then he could actually do what most of his democratic contemporaries have done, and outcut the Republicans.
One thing really bothers me. Look at my research. The Republicans have increased the federal budget at TWICE the inflation adjusted rate of the Democrats. They've increased the federal debt at TEN TIMES the inflation adjusted rate. Why is it that they're suddenly fiscal conservatives when they're not in power, but when they ARE in power, they spend and run up debt like a college kid with is parents visa? Why is it that they get away with acting like Democrats spend and debt more?
We're talking about books in the public domain. The original author is loooong dead.
I was definitely confused there. "How can you have a monopoly on that which by definition isn't a monopoly anymore?"
That all sounds well and good, but all this is done without any court involvement, with no due process.
In one case, the man was supposed to be in the US for an hour to switch flights, they kidnapped him at JFK airport and threw him on a plane to syria. No court order, just "We're the CIA and we do what we want".
What's that? Facts? Congress apologized to this man for his ordeal, being kidnapped from JFK airport and being sent to Syria to be tortured, but one Republican said "Sorry, but we're not stopping".
Your constitution is toilet paper.
This clearly violates the prime directive.
Why are there so many analyses of technology in law magazines done by lawyers?
Because our demographic demands it. There's only a few NYCLs in the community.
Either we get law analysis by techies, or we don't get anything.
I hate to agree with you, because I really don't like Bush on account of all the horribly immoral things his administration did, but he's not soley, or even substantially, to blame.
He DID make things harder longer by going with policies that kept the economy at pre-bust levels after the Y2K bubble burst, and he DID do his best to keep interest rates at record lows to defer the pain period from the bubbles bursting, and he DID send out "stimulus cheques", inflating the currency to further keep the economy going far past when it should've hit recession, but that's just firefighting.
Deregulation causes bubbles, even in industries that should be able to self-regulate. The best example is a garden hose. If you hire a person to put a kink in a hose and carefully control the flow, then one day realise the original flow was the right amount, you're still going to get a huge slug of water when you release the kink, because the system has been disturbed and needs to find equalibrium. The best example is gold. Private ownership of gold was illegal for 50 years. After ownership was legalized once again, prices spiked to levels we have never seen since, before stabilizing at a certain level that has more or less been stable with inflation.
The problem is, the prosperity of 1999 was caused by a series of bubbles. A bubble was caused by the deregulation of the banks through repealing Glass-Steagall. A bubble was caused by deregulation of the energy industry in California. A bubble was caused by record low interest rates, further destabilizing the loan industry. A bubble was caused by the disruptive effect of the Internet, paired with the massive capital inflow from Y2K.
Neither George Bush nor Al Gore realized it at the time, but they were inheriting an economy that was the equivilent to a house made out of glass. Under Bush, the bubbles collapsed one after another(Predictably), and no other politician would've done anything different than try to keep the bubble propped up as long as possible, even though what the economy needed was a pain period after each burst to find equalibrium.
Unfortunately, you pose a very strong point. I've followed, for example, the Ron Paul campaign, and he has worked really hard to get his simple messages and values out there. For saying common sense things like "People get mad at us when we blow them up", he gets treated like a crazy person.
My hope is that polemics like these posts will help people wake up to how much of their soul is being sold, how much of their honesty and good name is being spent in the dubious name of 'safety'.
So my countryman WASN'T kidnapped by the CIA, shipped to Syria, then tortured for months?
Oh wait, he was.
When facts make your theory incorrect, it means your theory is wrong.
I'm just noticing that everyone is so outraged at me saying you're amoral, nobody seems to give a fuck that soviet-style kidnappings and torture are going on.
How is this proving me wrong?
Thanks for proving my point.
"How DARE you attack America for kidnapping people from your country and sending them to Syria! You have NO RIGHT to hate us! We did NOTHING WRONG besides kidnap people from your country and send them to Syria!"