1) The games industry does not have a revenue sharing agreement with game rental companies like Hollywood does with the movie industry. There is zero financial motivation to support rentals or the used game market.
2) If you're just renting a game what difference does it make that you wouldn't get the "value added" features. If you're going to just be playing a game for a short while does it really matter if you don't have some multiplayer maps in a shooter or songs in Rock Band?
Since people like their analogies, imagine that the game you purchased is like buying an appliance. And let's say that appliance comes with a warranty. You're more than free to sell that appliance to someone else, but if you expect the company to honor the warranty on the product when it's resold, you're crazy. The second-hand buyer gave nothing to the company that made the appliance, so why should the company pay for anything at that point? It's the same way with these features that games are adding.
I do agree that if the companies are going to do this they should at least provide a pay version after the fact, especially if it's multiplayer-oriented content.
I once had a PSU that whenever the computer got nudged (and since I had the box on top of dresser drawers it got banged around a lot) the computer would shut off.
Eventually I unscrewed the PSU and put it on the top of the case upside-down. From then on until I replaced it it was solid as a rock. I guess a fan was slightly out of wack or something.
You don't need to actually go to the windowsupdate website for critical updates if you turn on automatic updates.
Re:Hardware Progression Causing Lazy Programming?
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486 Turns 15 Years Old
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· Score: 1
Current programs have gotten so huge that they require massive amounts of time just to get the damn things to work, much less run fast. Also due to the scale most optimizations have to be done on the software engineering side, not the programming side.
Sure hypothetically you could take a program and work on it for a massive amount of time trying to shrink it down, but when you have to sell it and make money, and the average platform really is fast enough to handle it, it seems like a no-brainer.
Oh please. Suing file traders is a scare tactic, not a source of income. The lawyers cost more than the paltry 3 grand or so they're averaging per settlement.
I don't think any of the dozens of CDs I've bought in the last few months bear the Compact Disc logo (and none of them were copy protected). Take a gander at your local music store and check the new releases, chances are very few of them have the logo anymore.
I see the purchase of an X-BOX as a $200 endorsement of Microsoft. And that's not something I am comfortable doing.
Technically isn't MS still losing money on each X-Box unit sold? So if you just bought the game system (and nothing else), you're actually doing more harm to MS than not buying it at all.
Sure their methods are shady, but they've been around forever. Hell, you can find that type of pricing structure in razor blades.
And it's interesting, because Romero apparently drives his Hummer to school on the Friday mornings when he has his lecture... Basically he's making his students make an engine in a semester. Really difficult class from what my peers say.
If you're wondering what book he's using, it's Andre LaMothe's "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus".
Because the Internet infrastructure isn't completed yet. Everybody in the US (as far as I know) who wants power or telephone can get it. A dismal number of people in the states has broadband.
And there aren't many private companies that can bear the weight of putting it all together nowadays.
Sure once it's up and running you can leave it to the ISPs, but until then I'd say it should be gov't run.
Ah, but you see, if people saw how bad most of the movies are before they spend X dollars at a theatre, then they probably won't go. The movie theatres are afraid that if people "try before they buy", then they probably won't buy shit.
Quite simple. Their current MP3 players fit the demand for today. When/if they get their laws passed, they'll be able to sell the consumer a product that does the exact same thing but with 'DRM' capabilities. So they're making more money either way.
I don't know about you, but I just prefer the way IE handles things. Maybe it's because I'm used to it, but web pages in IE just look a lot more polished than Mozilla.
Either way, there are much better applications that do things like kill popup ads or annoying javascript. My personal favorite is the Proxomitron. Granted, it's just a complex find/replace local proxy server that only runs on windows, but I'm sure there are similar programs for your operating system of choice.
(To say nothing of the rediculousness of charging for bandwidth usage anyway. Bandwith isn't a non-renewable resource. Any bandwidth not used in a given time interval is wasted and unrecoverable.)
I've been toying around with this idea for a while: how about the government own the cable system? I'm talking last-mile coax and the fiber from hub to hub. Currently, different companies own different sections here and there, and they have to pay each other to use them (hence the reason why there are charges per Xbps, it's all about leasing). That way you'd get broadband to as many people as possible (with it being a public service), and have a monopoly business running on top of it with federally imposed price restrictions. Think AT&T before it was broken up.
If the Internet is really important to the future of business and entertainment, I see no reason why it shouldn't be like the phone/power/road systems. Granted, the first two were decentralized, and there were some problems with that, but it works now, and the prices are (for the most part, ignoring the Enron fiasco) cheap.
But for some reason I think nobody wants this. Individual companies don't want to give up the money makers they already have, and the White House probably doesn't want to go about shelling out huge amounts of taxpayers money for something that was actually being considered relabled as an 'information service' as opposed to a 'telecommunication service'.
Of course my perceptions on the could be wrong. Please enlighten me if I am.
Slashdot Mirror
Two points:
1) The games industry does not have a revenue sharing agreement with game rental companies like Hollywood does with the movie industry. There is zero financial motivation to support rentals or the used game market.
2) If you're just renting a game what difference does it make that you wouldn't get the "value added" features. If you're going to just be playing a game for a short while does it really matter if you don't have some multiplayer maps in a shooter or songs in Rock Band?
Since people like their analogies, imagine that the game you purchased is like buying an appliance. And let's say that appliance comes with a warranty. You're more than free to sell that appliance to someone else, but if you expect the company to honor the warranty on the product when it's resold, you're crazy. The second-hand buyer gave nothing to the company that made the appliance, so why should the company pay for anything at that point? It's the same way with these features that games are adding.
I do agree that if the companies are going to do this they should at least provide a pay version after the fact, especially if it's multiplayer-oriented content.
I once had a PSU that whenever the computer got nudged (and since I had the box on top of dresser drawers it got banged around a lot) the computer would shut off.
Eventually I unscrewed the PSU and put it on the top of the case upside-down. From then on until I replaced it it was solid as a rock. I guess a fan was slightly out of wack or something.
It always confused me when Blizzard CMs would post something about the "D**** of benediction" until I realized that they were talking about "drape".
Blizzard apparently doesn't trust their employees to post something that wouldn't require a run through the filter first.
but the fact that they all run at a non-4:3 resolution kills the deal for me. It just looks wrong.
The reason they run at 5:4 resolution is because, get this, the monitor itself is 5:4.
I don't know about the grandparent, but I knew this because it's an IE shortcut.
I agree completely. Put the laser tracking engine inside of the MX300 shell and I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
You don't need to actually go to the windowsupdate website for critical updates if you turn on automatic updates.
Current programs have gotten so huge that they require massive amounts of time just to get the damn things to work, much less run fast. Also due to the scale most optimizations have to be done on the software engineering side, not the programming side.
Sure hypothetically you could take a program and work on it for a massive amount of time trying to shrink it down, but when you have to sell it and make money, and the average platform really is fast enough to handle it, it seems like a no-brainer.
and then making money out of suing file traders
Oh please. Suing file traders is a scare tactic, not a source of income. The lawyers cost more than the paltry 3 grand or so they're averaging per settlement.
I don't think any of the dozens of CDs I've bought in the last few months bear the Compact Disc logo (and none of them were copy protected). Take a gander at your local music store and check the new releases, chances are very few of them have the logo anymore.
Sure their methods are shady, but they've been around forever. Hell, you can find that type of pricing structure in razor blades.
There's a PLIF comic strip that follows a similar idea.
http://plif.com/archive/wc263.gif
Tom Hall is also teaching there.
And it's interesting, because Romero apparently drives his Hummer to school on the Friday mornings when he has his lecture... Basically he's making his students make an engine in a semester. Really difficult class from what my peers say.
If you're wondering what book he's using, it's Andre LaMothe's "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus".
Volition was working on "Descent 4", but it was later revealed to be Red Faction.
So it wasn't given up, exactly... more like a change of focus.
Because the Internet infrastructure isn't completed yet. Everybody in the US (as far as I know) who wants power or telephone can get it. A dismal number of people in the states has broadband.
And there aren't many private companies that can bear the weight of putting it all together nowadays.
Sure once it's up and running you can leave it to the ISPs, but until then I'd say it should be gov't run.
Comcast is getting it at a great price, at least compared to what AT&T paid for the individual units.
One thing to note is that most 'failure rates' are averages. Meaning that doctors who are new to the procedure are included.
If your doctor has had over 200 operations, I think the failure rate drops to around the thousandth of a percentage point.
Quite simple. Their current MP3 players fit the demand for today. When/if they get their laws passed, they'll be able to sell the consumer a product that does the exact same thing but with 'DRM' capabilities. So they're making more money either way.
I don't know about you, but I just prefer the way IE handles things. Maybe it's because I'm used to it, but web pages in IE just look a lot more polished than Mozilla.
Either way, there are much better applications that do things like kill popup ads or annoying javascript. My personal favorite is the Proxomitron. Granted, it's just a complex find/replace local proxy server that only runs on windows, but I'm sure there are similar programs for your operating system of choice.
If the Internet is really important to the future of business and entertainment, I see no reason why it shouldn't be like the phone/power/road systems. Granted, the first two were decentralized, and there were some problems with that, but it works now, and the prices are (for the most part, ignoring the Enron fiasco) cheap.
But for some reason I think nobody wants this. Individual companies don't want to give up the money makers they already have, and the White House probably doesn't want to go about shelling out huge amounts of taxpayers money for something that was actually being considered relabled as an 'information service' as opposed to a 'telecommunication service'.
Of course my perceptions on the could be wrong. Please enlighten me if I am.
Oh I have a 30 gig 75GXP that's worked great for a while now.
/. at 6 AM.
I was trying to be funny. Oh well. Failed miserably, I suppose. That's what I get for posting to
... we should avoid Hitachi brand HDDs now?