This is an interesting point. One would think the price they set would optimize profits. The thing is, the unit cost for production and distribution is fixed, so every price increase also increases profits, perhaps creating a false perception that higher prices are always better. I really wonder how much analysis they do before setting prices - because precedent and inertia certainly seem to rule the day.
OTOH did the massive sales spike occur due to viral publicity from the price cut? Or perhaps they simply tapped into what is ultimately a fixed amount of pent-up demand among of people who would eventually buy the game when the price dropped. I personally fit into this category - simply by being patient I get games for $10-$20 less than initial retail price. It's difficult to tell, since total sales also depend on unquantifiable factors - is it a good game that's really unique and fun to play? You can't easily quantify popularity.
Still, my gut feeling is that games and other media content like movies and music have been drastically overpriced for years but saw sales figures artificially propped up by the need to buy physical media in order to enjoy the content - you had no choice but to buy the disk. Now that downloading rules the market and the production and distribution costs of the physical media have been eliminated, the most profitable market price may be far lower than was traditionally thought.
This is a core reason why I get very, very nervous whenever people start talking about global geoengineering schemes to fix global warming. The first question is "how good is the data?" Any good science is all about getting good data.
You nailed it right off the bat - the tactile feedback of an actual keyboard is a must for me but the headphone jack is a deal breaker - If I had any idea how crippled the G1 is with regard to music playback I would have preferred an IPhone - except the Iphone has no keyboard. I can't believe HTC/google didn't learn from the G1 and put in a fucking headphone jack. Is it really that difficult?
No politician can get anything done without support from his political base. We have two main camps-banking & big oil vs media and the lawyer lobby. Neither camp represents my interests. Obama is no different than any other democrat - Biden is especially cozy with the big media lobby. They're getting the ugliest stuff done first so everybody forgets in time for the next election how their rights got sold down the river.
All the fucking idiot liberals with stars in their eyes now begin to be educated in the ways of the world, in that they were played like a violin for the election and are now being cast aside like a used tissue. Of course, the right does the same thing. Enjoy your day.
I think he's basically right, too. MS is desperate to get in bed with the content providers so it can better compete with Apple, etc., in the mobile & media player market. Since the whole DRM paradigm is broken it probably won't work unless they figure an effective way to force Win 7 down everyone's throats. I think ultimately they'll just stop supporting xp, since after playing with win7 for a month I still don't see a compelling reason to "upgrade" from xp.
One definition of pork is spending designed to stimulate the economy in a particular congress person's district. In that sense, as long the pork is evenly distributed throughout all the congressional districts then that's exactly what the US economy needs.
This is the purest bullshit I've read in a while. It should be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain that the economy would be much better off if the government never took the money as taxes in the first place. The administrative costs alone involved in collecting and redistributing the money are astronomical. Since when does congress know better than everyone else? Here we have a group of professional whores funneling all the stolen cash they possibly can into their districts to insure re-election. The fact that they're selling it as "Stimulus" is galling.
Another definition of pork is spending that doesn't have long term economic benefits. For example, if you spend money on a road, at the end of the day you have a road to use whereas, if you spend money on exotic dancers, at the end of the day you don't have anything other than pleasant memories - and the theory goes that roads make the economy more efficient while pleasant memories don't.
Who the fuck are you, or congress for that matter, to decide how to spend my money? Sure, road building is great if it isn't an 8 lane highway to nowhere through the congressman's district. How can you say spending the cash anywhere else isn't just as valid, if not more so? If a million dollars pays the salaries of say, 25 exotic dancers, they're going to go out an buy cars and houses and food and clothing, etc.. Spend it to support something that doesn't really have a market - look at congressional funding of ethanol fuel for an example - and ultimately the money is wasted if the industry fails. And the industry WILL fail if there isn't a real market for the products.
The original stimulus bill tried hard to spend on projects that were likely to lead to long term economic efficiency (infrastructure and education). Some Republican pork (e.g. tax cuts to spend on exotic dancers) may have been included in order to get the necessary Republican votes but the original stimulus tried hard to avoid being pork.
Ah, you expose yourself as a purely partisan Obama-zombie. I'd suggest you think before you speak but using your brain doesn't seem like one of your strong points. I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of doubt with regard to the realities of what is possible, but he certainly hasn't earned a rubber stamp. Get the stars out of your eyes - this "stimulus" is basically a guarantee that the US will never get remotely close to getting out of debt - and it's your kid's money they're spending.
I don't see anything unique about an MS branded store either. Even when you consider the large variety of MS branded products, there isn't any one stand-out product that will be a draw and the aggregate isn't that exciting either. Apple stores have the advantage of being exclusive and even if MS pulled all it's products from competing retailers they lack the cool factor. Look for MS to push this for a few years then fold when it becomes painfully obvious to everyone that the concept is a failure.
The fire alarm story is really interesting because it's about people finding a way to learn from a bad situation instead of shifting blame. The problems were real and could have cost someone their life. I once had a guy very apologetically tell me he couldn't proceed with some business because he had cancer - I had been jokingly giving him some crap about it and was very, very glad I hadn't been serious.
Listening to the other person's point of view and putting yourself into their shoes can often be a humbling experience.
It's interesting to read the negative comments about the ads. If they would only make the ads less annoying people would be less likely to skip them. Jacking up the volume and doing things like using intrusive pop-ups just forces people to use adblockers. Then again, the bastards are greedy AND stupid so it's not likely to change anytime soon.
This the other shoe dropping now that the RIAA claims they have stopped filing suits.
The problem here is that citizens of signatory countries will have no recourse within the laws of their own countries since it's a treaty. This will get very ugly if the bastards get their way - and they probably will. This makes me physically ill.
...but I just know that with one billion dollars you can give 20'000 people 50'000 dollars, each. I'm just asking myself whether rerouting such money directly into the pockets of those laid off wouldn't make more sense. Give them the opportunity to not worry too much for a year, get some additional education and try elsewhere.
Wouldn't it be better if the government didn't to take half of people's money in the first place? Your average homeowner gets about a third of his income lopped off in withholding, then another chunk in sales taxes and property taxes take the rest. How great would it be if everyone's earnings were suddenly doubled?
Even when they have the best of intentions you can't rely on government to do the right thing - look at both of the trillion dollar bailout packages: pure pork and waste. The process of government is inevitably biased by the actions of special interests, self interest of the politicians and plain old human stupidity.
Nope. The galaxy will be impacted by a giant hydrogen cloud and everything will be wiped out in 20-40 million years. Not enough time for another intelligent species to evolve. We get one shot, that's it.
Heh. The guy I work for has xp machines running on 256mb ram, unpatched ie6 & no sp3. The people he pays to "manage" his system send around a guy that runs spybot, ad-aware and some random virus scanner; He does not know what a rootkit is, nor does he insure all the machines are fully patched (a process that can be fully automated with a single click). When something breaks they order something expensive from Dell and mark it up.
Bottom line? Morons make the world go around. Grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.
You raise two interesting questions. a) What constitutes the perfect pmp (or to put it another way, the most desirable pmp) and b) will they become irrelevant as more phones morph into music players? The whole drm thing is a side issue. I can't think of any player that won't play drm-free mp3's - even the zune. The pmp manufacturers don't give a crap about drm but have to include it if they want to have a music downloading service because the record/movie companies demand it.
It looks to me like pmp market of the future will become be divided into expensive high end enthusiast devices and ultra cheap low end mass market devices, with the much larger middle ground being taken up by combination phone/pmp devices. Everyone carries a phone and it doesn't make sense for people to have two boxes to tote around just to listen to music or look at video. Regardless, most players work pretty much the same - they play music and video. How they do it is irrelevant as long as it's simple and makes sense to the end user.
What we end up talking about is really the music management software and associated music sales/downloading services. Ipods/phones/tunes already have a massive lead in this area in terms of seamless integration and a one-stop shop. Apple created the market and do a good job of making sure they remain the best. It's hard to imagine any company being able to outpace Apple on both hardware and software/services such that people see a clear advantage. How could Microsoft really hope to blow away Apple on both hardware and software/music services? Apple is more than good enough to make it impossible. Hence the market stays fragmented and Apple centric.
Don't underestimate the idiocy driving the MPAA's decisions. Free advertising is free advertising, but it doesn't mean they'll connect the dots....And now for something completely different: a man with three buttocks!
Vastly different rules apply to high school, since it's compulsory. Previous court rulings have upheld searches that would otherwise be considered unreasonable. The teacher is clearly being a jerk, but realistically it's unlikely that the school's Principle / administrators would contradict the teacher's actions, unless they had a lot of complaints from parents and not a lot of written policy to guide them. Still, assuming copyright law is applicable, the notes would seem to fall into the category of "fair use" for educational purposes.
Unfortunately the central question is what you can do about it and the answers are limited to: complain to the principle and the school board or file a lawsuit.
Personally, I'd make a stink and complain like hell to everyone. Claim the search and seizure is illegal. Enlisting parents to do the same would help too. If nothing else you'll feel better and possibly get the administrators to force the teacher to stop.
Ok, so it's more procedural stuff being filed on shaky ground. I assume there are rules and precedents that apply as to when cameras may be allowed? Unless they can come up with a reason that's acceptable to the judges, it will be broadcast eventually. How does that benefit them in the long run? A delaying tactic?
The article cited the ODF fiasco, which indicates their degree of dependence on the Office revenue stream. The mere existence of Open Office, Google Docs and the like gives people a valid alternative - and wakes them up the fact that they have a choice as to whether they want to be held hostage to proprietary data formats.
MS doesn't innovate, they copy, then leverage their market share...and the market responded.
It's been interesting to watch Obama change his tune. During the primaries he opposed the "surge" and was calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq. Now that Obama is actually president, he's basically just following through on a process Bush already started for Iraq troop withdrawal. He has no real choice but to deal with practical realities - immediate pullout from Iraq would have precipitated a major civil war and the "surge" worked.
Regarding warrantless wiretapping - one can only assume this is bearing serious fruit or they would simply end the program outright. I don't understand why they don't just institute more checks-and-balances type oversight to prevent abuse and call it a day. It's likely that they've been wiretapping all along for decades anyway.
It's rather strange - do they think the judge in the case has no knowledge of proper procedure? Or is it a simple delaying tactic? In how many different ways can Oppenheim claim to be affiliated with the lawsuits without revealing his actual role in the litigation campaign?
By the way, thanks for bringing the information to light - we all have to work for a living, but this stuff is too interesting to ignore!
Now, there may be trickery involved. "The ONLY music service for your Windows Mobile phone" seems like a dirty tactic MS could use to sucker people into using it, and if they do that, the service might just stay afloat for an extra year or two until people start catching on.
You may well be right, but as a strategy it still sounds like an efficient way to make windows mobile as a whole smell like skunk. Baffling.
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This is an interesting point. One would think the price they set would optimize profits. The thing is, the unit cost for production and distribution is fixed, so every price increase also increases profits, perhaps creating a false perception that higher prices are always better. I really wonder how much analysis they do before setting prices - because precedent and inertia certainly seem to rule the day.
OTOH did the massive sales spike occur due to viral publicity from the price cut? Or perhaps they simply tapped into what is ultimately a fixed amount of pent-up demand among of people who would eventually buy the game when the price dropped. I personally fit into this category - simply by being patient I get games for $10-$20 less than initial retail price. It's difficult to tell, since total sales also depend on unquantifiable factors - is it a good game that's really unique and fun to play? You can't easily quantify popularity.
Still, my gut feeling is that games and other media content like movies and music have been drastically overpriced for years but saw sales figures artificially propped up by the need to buy physical media in order to enjoy the content - you had no choice but to buy the disk. Now that downloading rules the market and the production and distribution costs of the physical media have been eliminated, the most profitable market price may be far lower than was traditionally thought.
Garbage in, garbage out.
This is a core reason why I get very, very nervous whenever people start talking about global geoengineering schemes to fix global warming. The first question is "how good is the data?" Any good science is all about getting good data.
You nailed it right off the bat - the tactile feedback of an actual keyboard is a must for me but the headphone jack is a deal breaker - If I had any idea how crippled the G1 is with regard to music playback I would have preferred an IPhone - except the Iphone has no keyboard. I can't believe HTC/google didn't learn from the G1 and put in a fucking headphone jack. Is it really that difficult?
No politician can get anything done without support from his political base. We have two main camps-banking & big oil vs media and the lawyer lobby. Neither camp represents my interests. Obama is no different than any other democrat - Biden is especially cozy with the big media lobby. They're getting the ugliest stuff done first so everybody forgets in time for the next election how their rights got sold down the river.
All the fucking idiot liberals with stars in their eyes now begin to be educated in the ways of the world, in that they were played like a violin for the election and are now being cast aside like a used tissue. Of course, the right does the same thing. Enjoy your day.
I think he's basically right, too. MS is desperate to get in bed with the content providers so it can better compete with Apple, etc., in the mobile & media player market. Since the whole DRM paradigm is broken it probably won't work unless they figure an effective way to force Win 7 down everyone's throats. I think ultimately they'll just stop supporting xp, since after playing with win7 for a month I still don't see a compelling reason to "upgrade" from xp.
One definition of pork is spending designed to stimulate the economy in a particular congress person's district. In that sense, as long the pork is evenly distributed throughout all the congressional districts then that's exactly what the US economy needs.
This is the purest bullshit I've read in a while. It should be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain that the economy would be much better off if the government never took the money as taxes in the first place. The administrative costs alone involved in collecting and redistributing the money are astronomical. Since when does congress know better than everyone else? Here we have a group of professional whores funneling all the stolen cash they possibly can into their districts to insure re-election. The fact that they're selling it as "Stimulus" is galling.
Another definition of pork is spending that doesn't have long term economic benefits. For example, if you spend money on a road, at the end of the day you have a road to use whereas, if you spend money on exotic dancers, at the end of the day you don't have anything other than pleasant memories - and the theory goes that roads make the economy more efficient while pleasant memories don't.
Who the fuck are you, or congress for that matter, to decide how to spend my money? Sure, road building is great if it isn't an 8 lane highway to nowhere through the congressman's district. How can you say spending the cash anywhere else isn't just as valid, if not more so? If a million dollars pays the salaries of say, 25 exotic dancers, they're going to go out an buy cars and houses and food and clothing, etc.. Spend it to support something that doesn't really have a market - look at congressional funding of ethanol fuel for an example - and ultimately the money is wasted if the industry fails. And the industry WILL fail if there isn't a real market for the products.
The original stimulus bill tried hard to spend on projects that were likely to lead to long term economic efficiency (infrastructure and education). Some Republican pork (e.g. tax cuts to spend on exotic dancers) may have been included in order to get the necessary Republican votes but the original stimulus tried hard to avoid being pork.
Ah, you expose yourself as a purely partisan Obama-zombie. I'd suggest you think before you speak but using your brain doesn't seem like one of your strong points. I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of doubt with regard to the realities of what is possible, but he certainly hasn't earned a rubber stamp. Get the stars out of your eyes - this "stimulus" is basically a guarantee that the US will never get remotely close to getting out of debt - and it's your kid's money they're spending.
I don't see anything unique about an MS branded store either. Even when you consider the large variety of MS branded products, there isn't any one stand-out product that will be a draw and the aggregate isn't that exciting either. Apple stores have the advantage of being exclusive and even if MS pulled all it's products from competing retailers they lack the cool factor. Look for MS to push this for a few years then fold when it becomes painfully obvious to everyone that the concept is a failure.
The fire alarm story is really interesting because it's about people finding a way to learn from a bad situation instead of shifting blame. The problems were real and could have cost someone their life. I once had a guy very apologetically tell me he couldn't proceed with some business because he had cancer - I had been jokingly giving him some crap about it and was very, very glad I hadn't been serious.
Listening to the other person's point of view and putting yourself into their shoes can often be a humbling experience.
It's interesting to read the negative comments about the ads. If they would only make the ads less annoying people would be less likely to skip them. Jacking up the volume and doing things like using intrusive pop-ups just forces people to use adblockers. Then again, the bastards are greedy AND stupid so it's not likely to change anytime soon.
Ray Beckerman aka NYCL blogs about the RIAA's legal campaign to sue people for downloading music.
This the other shoe dropping now that the RIAA claims they have stopped filing suits.
The problem here is that citizens of signatory countries will have no recourse within the laws of their own countries since it's a treaty. This will get very ugly if the bastards get their way - and they probably will. This makes me physically ill.
The bulk of public school money comes from local property taxes. That's why inner city schools suck.
...but I just know that with one billion dollars you can give 20'000 people 50'000 dollars, each. I'm just asking myself whether rerouting such money directly into the pockets of those laid off wouldn't make more sense. Give them the opportunity to not worry too much for a year, get some additional education and try elsewhere.
Wouldn't it be better if the government didn't to take half of people's money in the first place? Your average homeowner gets about a third of his income lopped off in withholding, then another chunk in sales taxes and property taxes take the rest. How great would it be if everyone's earnings were suddenly doubled?
Even when they have the best of intentions you can't rely on government to do the right thing - look at both of the trillion dollar bailout packages: pure pork and waste. The process of government is inevitably biased by the actions of special interests, self interest of the politicians and plain old human stupidity.
Nope. The galaxy will be impacted by a giant hydrogen cloud and everything will be wiped out in 20-40 million years. Not enough time for another intelligent species to evolve. We get one shot, that's it.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13179-giant-gas-cloud-to-crash-into-our-galaxy.html
Heh. The guy I work for has xp machines running on 256mb ram, unpatched ie6 & no sp3. The people he pays to "manage" his system send around a guy that runs spybot, ad-aware and some random virus scanner; He does not know what a rootkit is, nor does he insure all the machines are fully patched (a process that can be fully automated with a single click). When something breaks they order something expensive from Dell and mark it up.
Bottom line? Morons make the world go around. Grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.
You raise two interesting questions. a) What constitutes the perfect pmp (or to put it another way, the most desirable pmp) and b) will they become irrelevant as more phones morph into music players? The whole drm thing is a side issue. I can't think of any player that won't play drm-free mp3's - even the zune. The pmp manufacturers don't give a crap about drm but have to include it if they want to have a music downloading service because the record/movie companies demand it.
It looks to me like pmp market of the future will become be divided into expensive high end enthusiast devices and ultra cheap low end mass market devices, with the much larger middle ground being taken up by combination phone/pmp devices. Everyone carries a phone and it doesn't make sense for people to have two boxes to tote around just to listen to music or look at video. Regardless, most players work pretty much the same - they play music and video. How they do it is irrelevant as long as it's simple and makes sense to the end user.
What we end up talking about is really the music management software and associated music sales/downloading services. Ipods/phones/tunes already have a massive lead in this area in terms of seamless integration and a one-stop shop. Apple created the market and do a good job of making sure they remain the best. It's hard to imagine any company being able to outpace Apple on both hardware and software/services such that people see a clear advantage. How could Microsoft really hope to blow away Apple on both hardware and software/music services? Apple is more than good enough to make it impossible. Hence the market stays fragmented and Apple centric.
Don't underestimate the idiocy driving the MPAA's decisions. Free advertising is free advertising, but it doesn't mean they'll connect the dots. ...And now for something completely different: a man with three buttocks!
bullshit - or someone just screwed you but hard
Vastly different rules apply to high school, since it's compulsory. Previous court rulings have upheld searches that would otherwise be considered unreasonable. The teacher is clearly being a jerk, but realistically it's unlikely that the school's Principle / administrators would contradict the teacher's actions, unless they had a lot of complaints from parents and not a lot of written policy to guide them.
Still, assuming copyright law is applicable, the notes would seem to fall into the category of "fair use" for educational purposes.
Unfortunately the central question is what you can do about it and the answers are limited to: complain to the principle and the school board or file a lawsuit.
Personally, I'd make a stink and complain like hell to everyone. Claim the search and seizure is illegal. Enlisting parents to do the same would help too. If nothing else you'll feel better and possibly get the administrators to force the teacher to stop.
Ok, so it's more procedural stuff being filed on shaky ground. I assume there are rules and precedents that apply as to when cameras may be allowed? Unless they can come up with a reason that's acceptable to the judges, it will be broadcast eventually. How does that benefit them in the long run? A delaying tactic?
These guys are unbelievable.
The article cited the ODF fiasco, which indicates their degree of dependence on the Office revenue stream. The mere existence of Open Office, Google Docs and the like gives people a valid alternative - and wakes them up the fact that they have a choice as to whether they want to be held hostage to proprietary data formats.
MS doesn't innovate, they copy, then leverage their market share...and the market responded.
It's been interesting to watch Obama change his tune. During the primaries he opposed the "surge" and was calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq. Now that Obama is actually president, he's basically just following through on a process Bush already started for Iraq troop withdrawal. He has no real choice but to deal with practical realities - immediate pullout from Iraq would have precipitated a major civil war and the "surge" worked.
Regarding warrantless wiretapping - one can only assume this is bearing serious fruit or they would simply end the program outright. I don't understand why they don't just institute more checks-and-balances type oversight to prevent abuse and call it a day. It's likely that they've been wiretapping all along for decades anyway.
It's rather strange - do they think the judge in the case has no knowledge of proper procedure? Or is it a simple delaying tactic? In how many different ways can Oppenheim claim to be affiliated with the lawsuits without revealing his actual role in the litigation campaign?
By the way, thanks for bringing the information to light - we all have to work for a living, but this stuff is too interesting to ignore!
I second this! Ray, please translate a bit for us poor unfortunates. A little color commentary would be nice, too!
Now, there may be trickery involved. "The ONLY music service for your Windows Mobile phone" seems like a dirty tactic MS could use to sucker people into using it, and if they do that, the service might just stay afloat for an extra year or two until people start catching on.
You may well be right, but as a strategy it still sounds like an efficient way to make windows mobile as a whole smell like skunk. Baffling.