I apologize for not seeing the humor. You're not the only one that suggested buying systems to screw MS. The other dude sounded pretty serious about it.
"How the hell are folks going to destroy the game market by messing with MS? "
Buying a bunch of systems and not buying games? Can you honestly tell me that screwing game companies is the right away to approach an attack on MS?
Think about it. That's why there was so much hooplah over the release of the PS2. It was $200 in the hole on a per unit basis as well. Sony needed 4 games per unit sold, and at best they got 1. The PS2's launch titles sucked so ppl watched DVD's on it instead.
If that kind of shit continues, the game market will have the same breakdown it did in the Atari days. It doesn't take much for a game company to say "well just make another Quake killer, we can't risk doing something original."
Call me nutso if you like, but if you hurt small game companies in this little spat, then you're no better than MS.
"This sort of action is ammunication *against* the DMCA etc and worth supporting for that reason even if you don't see point to it other than a fun technical exercise. "
It won't happen though, will it? Some dumbshit's going to port MAME over to the XBOX and show people how you can turn it into an arcade box. Trust me, the content peeps will find a way to twist it. "They're just using it to pirate ROMS!!!" and some dumb crap like that.
Before you argue with me: Just because the hypothetical argument isn't rational doesn't mean they wouldn't try it. This is the same industry that said that Apple was promoting piracy.
Manufacturing cost = $350 (not sure if that's true, but we'll run with it just for giggles)
MSRP = $200
When an XBOX is sold, MS makes MSRP - a very small commission for the store it's sold at. (Stores make nearly no money on Game consoles.)
So MS is out $150.
When the item is out, MS is out $350.
So, as near as I can tell, $350 > $150, therefore MS loses more money when an XBOX isn't sold.
Now, your argument is that people should buy XBOXs and not buy games for them. (In other words, people should pay for nothing) You're assuming that when you sell that XBOX, nothing will be there to replace it. WRONG. MS will not only make another XBOX in it's place to sell, but it'll be cheaper. Manufacturing cost is based on the total money spent to make these units divided by how many are sold. It takes a lot of money to get the factory started and so one. Once that's done, it just keeps churning out consoles. As time goes buy, the price goes down. (Not including that CPUS, RAM, etc get cheaper over time...) Eventually, MS will sell these at a profit. (assuming Sony/Nintendo don't undercut them to death.)
Now let's get back to the pscychology of buying a unit and not buying games with it: You're screwing yourself out of $200 that way. MS's systems sold # goes up, giving people more reason to buy one. They're going to buy it and play games for it. Meanwhile, you either have an expensive doorstop, or a shitty Linux machine. Woop-de-doo. 10 million XBOXes would have to be sold for MS to lose 1.5 bill. They have 40. Can you honestly tell me common sense wouldn't prevail with 10 million+ people involved?
If you don't like MS, don't buy their products. 'Sticking it to them' is not likely to do anything but good for them.
Frankly, I'm sick of all these "I hate MS" posts. If you get so zealous about attacking MS, not only will you never be taken seriously, but you'll also give them the ability to say "were just misunderstood." Pick your battles. Fight MS for making you buy Windows, don't fight MS for making a good game machine.
Smart move. Not only will you cause damage to the game market (which, btw, lends a huge hand to making the PC market successful), but you also give MS reason to buy a few senators and get shit like the SSSCA passed.
If you don't believe what I'm saying will happen, then here's an alternative point of view: You can't possibly buy enough XBOXes to make MS go broke. 10 million would have to be sold in order for MS to lose 1.5 billion.
There's no way 10 million people would buy XBOXes and go "Yeah! Im screwing ms!!" and not think about doing something practical with them, like playing games.
Face it, you're not going to succeed at doing anything but make MS invest more in DRM. Good choice.
"why does there have to be more of a point than just people playing around and showing others who might be interested? "
Because the content providers are already in a nasty tizzy over circumvention of protection devices? Hackers/Crackers already have a bad rep that's helping get shit like the DMCA passed. More of this kind of stuff without an obvious helpful reason is just going to make them spend more money on politicians.
Everytime someone buys one of these and put linux on it, it COSTS MS money...
Lets drive them out of the console market an hurt them so much they dont come back.
All you Anti-MS zealots have your fun picking on MS, but don't destroy the game market in the process.
If the content industry is going to call it theft when I try out their content, then I'm going to call it theft when they won't refund my money when a CD sucks.
"We survived without cell phones for the past 100,000 years, banning them in movie theaters (or just blocking them) is hardly going to cause the downfall of society."
Funny, the RIAA says you can't make MP3's, and you all wanna get the pitchforks and torches and burn them down. But when it comes to cell phones in theaters, hypocracy abounds.
I guess it's okay to punish everybody, even those like me who turn their phones to silent, when your precious movie (that you chose to watch in an audience) is interrupted.
I think a lot of you could take classes in perspective.
"Shooting yourself in the foot all the time will only drive away those casual fans, and hence revenue. Deary, deary me."
For some reason that seems to be a popular business model lately:
- Squeeze every penny out of your customer - Provide less and less quality - Call them names including thief - Cry like a baby to the gov't when you're not making enough money
I only took one semester of economics, and maybe I'm just being naieve, but how could this business plan possibly work?
Are you sure about that? I just did a Google search and read the code they use to link to a page. It's plain HTML with no javascript links or anything.
What exactly do you mean by 'garbage'? If you got a complaint, out with it. Or do you have the balls? I bet you're not even man enough to tell me what your problem is with your registerred nickname. It's easy to be brave when nobody knows who you are.
I got a dollar that says I'll never get a response from the guy hiding behind the coward mask.
Re:Google Cookies
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm not the one who made that claim. It's in the article (guess I shoulda quoted the guy.)
Here's the quote because people obviously read my post before reading the article:
More than that,
says Brandt, Google is a careless custodian of private information. When you search for something at Google, it saves your search terms and associates them with a cookie that is set to live on your machine for 36 years. Brandt fears that law enforcement officials could muscle Google into divulging all the terms you've ever searched for. Those terms could be "a window into your state of mind," and are therefore a clear violation of your privacy, he says."
Mr Anti-Google said that, not me.
Buried on the next page of the Salon article, Google responded with basically what you said:
In an e-mail, Nathan Tyler, a Google representative, told Salon that "Google uses cookies to enhance the user search experience. With cookies, Google can store a user's preferences such as their search language, SafeSearch settings, the number of results per page, etc. Our users tell us time and again that they want their preferences saved even if they don't return to Google for a long time. In addition, a longer cookie life means less data is transmitted at every visit (to refresh a cookie, check if it's current, etc.) and therefore speeds download times.
Mr. Anti-Google probably mistook the history bar for a cookie heh.
The point I was making was that even if Google did store search terms in the cookie, so what? There's a big difference between storing that locally on your machine and storing it on their own servers. Even if this guy was absolutely 100% right about how it works, his point carries no weight.
I don't quite understand what you're saying, clarify a bit?
Re:Google Cookies
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
So... Google makes a convience feature of storing your search terms in a cookie (which people are all well aware of), and that's a security risk? Google was being sneaky?
I think the reason this guy's being told to shut up is that everything he says sounds like propoganda. When he talks it reminds me of that "If you download MP3s, you're supporting COMMUNISM" ad I saw a while back.
"The crackers will love this. Yet another challenge and chance to prove 'skillz'. Do they actually think that people are simply burning copies of the disk? "
The first time I read this I thought you were making a racial slur. You should probably avoid using the words 'crackers' and 'burning' in the same post. Heh
Slashdot Mirror
I apologize for not seeing the humor. You're not the only one that suggested buying systems to screw MS. The other dude sounded pretty serious about it.
:)
Sorry bud.
"How the hell are folks going to destroy the game market by messing with MS? "
Buying a bunch of systems and not buying games? Can you honestly tell me that screwing game companies is the right away to approach an attack on MS?
Think about it. That's why there was so much hooplah over the release of the PS2. It was $200 in the hole on a per unit basis as well. Sony needed 4 games per unit sold, and at best they got 1. The PS2's launch titles sucked so ppl watched DVD's on it instead.
If that kind of shit continues, the game market will have the same breakdown it did in the Atari days. It doesn't take much for a game company to say "well just make another Quake killer, we can't risk doing something original."
Call me nutso if you like, but if you hurt small game companies in this little spat, then you're no better than MS.
"This sort of action is ammunication *against* the DMCA etc and worth supporting for that reason even if you don't see point to it other than a fun technical exercise. "
It won't happen though, will it? Some dumbshit's going to port MAME over to the XBOX and show people how you can turn it into an arcade box. Trust me, the content peeps will find a way to twist it. "They're just using it to pirate ROMS!!!" and some dumb crap like that.
Before you argue with me: Just because the hypothetical argument isn't rational doesn't mean they wouldn't try it. This is the same industry that said that Apple was promoting piracy.
Heh. That's interesting math:
Manufacturing cost = $350 (not sure if that's true, but we'll run with it just for giggles)
MSRP = $200
When an XBOX is sold, MS makes MSRP - a very small commission for the store it's sold at. (Stores make nearly no money on Game consoles.)
So MS is out $150.
When the item is out, MS is out $350.
So, as near as I can tell, $350 > $150, therefore MS loses more money when an XBOX isn't sold.
Now, your argument is that people should buy XBOXs and not buy games for them. (In other words, people should pay for nothing) You're assuming that when you sell that XBOX, nothing will be there to replace it. WRONG. MS will not only make another XBOX in it's place to sell, but it'll be cheaper. Manufacturing cost is based on the total money spent to make these units divided by how many are sold. It takes a lot of money to get the factory started and so one. Once that's done, it just keeps churning out consoles. As time goes buy, the price goes down. (Not including that CPUS, RAM, etc get cheaper over time...) Eventually, MS will sell these at a profit. (assuming Sony/Nintendo don't undercut them to death.)
Now let's get back to the pscychology of buying a unit and not buying games with it: You're screwing yourself out of $200 that way. MS's systems sold # goes up, giving people more reason to buy one. They're going to buy it and play games for it. Meanwhile, you either have an expensive doorstop, or a shitty Linux machine. Woop-de-doo. 10 million XBOXes would have to be sold for MS to lose 1.5 bill. They have 40. Can you honestly tell me common sense wouldn't prevail with 10 million+ people involved?
If you don't like MS, don't buy their products. 'Sticking it to them' is not likely to do anything but good for them.
Frankly, I'm sick of all these "I hate MS" posts. If you get so zealous about attacking MS, not only will you never be taken seriously, but you'll also give them the ability to say "were just misunderstood." Pick your battles. Fight MS for making you buy Windows, don't fight MS for making a good game machine.
Smart move. Not only will you cause damage to the game market (which, btw, lends a huge hand to making the PC market successful), but you also give MS reason to buy a few senators and get shit like the SSSCA passed.
If you don't believe what I'm saying will happen, then here's an alternative point of view: You can't possibly buy enough XBOXes to make MS go broke. 10 million would have to be sold in order for MS to lose 1.5 billion.
There's no way 10 million people would buy XBOXes and go "Yeah! Im screwing ms!!" and not think about doing something practical with them, like playing games.
Face it, you're not going to succeed at doing anything but make MS invest more in DRM. Good choice.
"why does there have to be more of a point than just people playing around and showing others who might be interested? "
Because the content providers are already in a nasty tizzy over circumvention of protection devices? Hackers/Crackers already have a bad rep that's helping get shit like the DMCA passed. More of this kind of stuff without an obvious helpful reason is just going to make them spend more money on politicians.
You really want MS to back the CTPBPTPBA?
... we used to buy game machines to play games, not turn them into half-assed computers.
All you Anti-MS zealots have your fun picking on MS, but don't destroy the game market in the process.
"I can spend $200 on a poor-quality, non-upgradable (and non-waranteed) Pentium III instead of building my own for about the same amount"
I'm sure Linux users everywhere are ready to buy a PC from Microsoft so they can run Linux on it. Heh.
If the content industry is going to call it theft when I try out their content, then I'm going to call it theft when they won't refund my money when a CD sucks.
"We survived without cell phones for the past 100,000 years, banning them in movie theaters (or just blocking them) is hardly going to cause the downfall of society."
Funny, the RIAA says you can't make MP3's, and you all wanna get the pitchforks and torches and burn them down. But when it comes to cell phones in theaters, hypocracy abounds.
I guess it's okay to punish everybody, even those like me who turn their phones to silent, when your precious movie (that you chose to watch in an audience) is interrupted.
I think a lot of you could take classes in perspective.
"Shooting yourself in the foot all the time will only drive away those casual fans, and hence revenue. Deary, deary me."
For some reason that seems to be a popular business model lately:
- Squeeze every penny out of your customer
- Provide less and less quality
- Call them names including thief
- Cry like a baby to the gov't when you're not making enough money
I only took one semester of economics, and maybe I'm just being naieve, but how could this business plan possibly work?
I'm sitting here in both Opera and IE and my safe search preferences have been established for like a year now. Yes, it does save stuff.
Add some cough syrup to it and you get a Flaming Hom^H^H^H^HMoe!
Are you sure about that? I just did a Google search and read the code they use to link to a page. It's plain HTML with no javascript links or anything.
"I am VERY curious as to what it was."
I got a chance to see the video. It was just five asterisks.
"I think the numbering change was partly for marketing reasons..."
It does make IE 6 sound inferior, duddnt it?
What exactly do you mean by 'garbage'? If you got a complaint, out with it. Or do you have the balls? I bet you're not even man enough to tell me what your problem is with your registerred nickname. It's easy to be brave when nobody knows who you are.
I got a dollar that says I'll never get a response from the guy hiding behind the coward mask.
Here's the quote because people obviously read my post before reading the article:
Mr Anti-Google said that, not me.
Buried on the next page of the Salon article, Google responded with basically what you said:
Mr. Anti-Google probably mistook the history bar for a cookie heh.
The point I was making was that even if Google did store search terms in the cookie, so what? There's a big difference between storing that locally on your machine and storing it on their own servers. Even if this guy was absolutely 100% right about how it works, his point carries no weight.
I don't quite understand what you're saying, clarify a bit?
So... Google makes a convience feature of storing your search terms in a cookie (which people are all well aware of), and that's a security risk? Google was being sneaky?
I think the reason this guy's being told to shut up is that everything he says sounds like propoganda. When he talks it reminds me of that "If you download MP3s, you're supporting COMMUNISM" ad I saw a while back.
Listen to the guys that replied. Heck I learned something from them today. All this time I thought I was being called a saltine.
Think so? The reason I added it is that 'enpimpins' kinda hides the word 'pimp' without it.
Whatcha think?
"D00d, th1$ izz AMERIKA. j00 g0t n0 r1g|-|t$!! "
I think reading your post caused me to violate the DMCA.
"The crackers will love this. Yet another challenge and chance to prove 'skillz'. Do they actually think that people are simply burning copies of the disk? "
The first time I read this I thought you were making a racial slur. You should probably avoid using the words 'crackers' and 'burning' in the same post. Heh