I did... The games were paid for from inmates' purchases...
I was referring in general how prison items are purchased. The state doesn't buy those items. The inmates do by generating their own revenue. TVs in cells are pruchased individually by inmates who earn money doing work. Other, larger group items, such as excercise equipment are purchased by committiee in many cases(Varies from state to state of course) In many states even the books in the library are in-mate funded.
...Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, maintains that "in 1980, 6 percent of inmates were in for drug offenses. That's up to 21 percent in 2000."...
Allow me to revise for clarity
...More than a quarter of the state and federal inmates were in prison for drug offenses (234,600 prisoners) in 1993. Prisoners serving a drug sentence increased from 8 percent of the state and federal prison population in 1980 to 26 percent in 1993. In federal prisons, inmates sentenced for drug law violations were the single largest group--60 percent in 1993, up from 25 percent in 1980.... ( http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/pi94.pr )
This doesn't even take the recent surge after 1993 with Crystal Meth hitting the mainstream drug users in the late 90s.
It's potential is enormous!! It would make everyone liable for content as everyone is part of the distribution of the content. In case you haven't noticed the RIAA and MPAA tend to go after UPLOADERS more then downloaders. Now this new decentralized version makes us all active uploaders (or maintainers of the content) rather then downloaders and uploaders (Obviously with a torrent you already are an uploader, think like a lawyer and you see what I mean.) I'm not impressed. Even if the tracker is not maintaining data, you are effectivly, by law, Aiding in the Distribution of Stolen Merchandise on a higher level then before. Now you are potentially tying all the uploaders together. Now your starting to get into rackeeting territory. I am not a fan of P2P technology not for what it does, but I just find it poor technology. Giving users plausable deniability in the distribution is the best solution. It is what protects an ISP, why not use the same logic with end users.
The view though is trapped. Cable has commericals too and if the networks folded, lets say, then cable would be more pressured into having commericals. If it went the way of payperview or all premium channels then you are at the mercy of the channel and they would want the free money for commercials. Do what I did, throw your TV away (not leterally, just don't watch television. No cable, nothing.) I just watch the occasional DVD but I went back to a commercial free form of entertainment and I invite ANYONE who is fed up with TV and movies to follow my example...
FYI: Prisoners still need to buy those items, the prison doesn't give them those items for free. They could also be gifts from relatives (yes criminals do have family and friends more often then not) not to mention that the majority of people in prison are in there for drug possession charges rather then act such as homicide, buglury, rape, or assaults (hell in short, violent crimes.)
WTF?!?!?! WHY ARE PRISONERS PLAYING VIDEO GAMES IN THE FIRST F%$^#! PLACE!!!???? It's god damn prison. No TV, no playstation, nothing. They're criminal for crying out lound. What the fuck happened to "PUNISHMENT?" That's what prisons if for!!!!
THEY SHOULD GET WATER, PLAIN WHOLE WHEAT BREAD AND A CAN OF UNSALTED PEANUTS AND WITH GOOD BEHAVIOR, MAYBE, A MULTIVITAMIN!!!
Good to see we treat our criminals better then we treat our poor!
You are not the network's customer. Their customers are the people that buy commercial time on the network. The show you watch is, in fact, a commercial to draw you to the TV so you can see the real product (what we call a commercial.)
How are they alienating their customers? I hate to break it to you...
You are not the customer when it comes to network television.
That explains the quality of games coming from EA these last few years... Crap, Mostly Crap, Crap with a slight chance of less then crappy crap, and finally not-so-crappy crap.
Only 10 million? Shit kid get a real job in America. My budget alone for my department is 2 million and I burn that supporting only 1000 users nation wide. Hell my monthly long distance bill is 15k doing remote support and file distribution. Get out of highschool, buy a house, and learn just how muc real life cost.
The costs of operation are huge. Everquest financially was only pulling about 5-5.25% margin on the monthly based on estimates. Mythic with DAOC is only pulling down 7-9% profit margin by the last figures I saw. Just look up the monthly costs for some of those optical carrier lines and your best guess on hardware reqs. MMORPGS draw a huge amount of capital on but the operational costs are massive. The server hardware, colocation fees, customer service staff, programmers, licensing fees, bandwidth, maintenance contracts, royalty fees, distribution fees, marketing, etc end up nickle and diming you to death. You can make a game for 5 million but you end up spending 10 million to distribute and promote it. With DAOC using Numeric Designs front end (The same one used for Morrowind) had a licensing fee that, when I inquired about it, made me laugh. The $50,000 front against pending royalties was hillarious and Big World's licensing was just shy of absurde for an engine. The way games are sold the $50 for the box sales large go to distribution channels. At least 50% of the monthly subscription fee is going to be burned in operations. Operational costs aside you also need to bank funds for further expansions and financial outlays. Just because a company posts 1 million in profit doesn't mean they have 1 million to "play" with. That "profit" may already be spent or at the very least ear-marked. Also that profit may get ate offsetting a loss from a previous project. I've worked with companies that made millions yet didn't have a dime to their name due to these types of costs.
There are a plethora of business factors in developing a service and product. Remember that there are two very different items you buy. You buy the game and subscribe to a service. There are very different business beasts and are as closely related as apples and lava, from a business standpoint at least. The game side can post a decent profit but the service side, the measure of profit, is very different. You'd be better off comparing the service side (specifically the $15 a month) to say a resturant rather then a manufacturing sample.
They'll need every penny they can get. Underfunded services die and wither easy.
Ok for those who complain lets try something few understand, PERSPECTIVE.
1 Movie: $9 1 Popcorn and Soda: $9 Movie Runs 2 hours. That's $9 an hour for entertainment.
Assume for the moment you play an online game 1 hour a day on average.
$15 dollars a month or $15 dollars for $30 hours. That's about 50 cents an hour..50 9.00 last I checked.
Now lets add in your DSL\CAble Bill to help this out.
$60 dollars a month or about $2.00 an hour to play. Still cheaper then a movie.
To further the study you could factor your inital $50 purchase of the game over, say 2 years to better tune this.
Even at $100 dollars a month that is about $3.40 per hour and is still cheaper then going to the movies. And thats assuming you can get in and out of the theater for only $18 bucks.
But, to be fair and balanced, a good quality basketball, football, or baseball setup can run you a 1 time $80 bucks and factoring that over a 2 year period throwing the old pig skin, playing softball, or doing a little boot hockey can be a hella cheaper then a video game.
She's done an excellent job maintaining them and making additions. Doesn't take a rocket scientist. Sorry but it's highschool level work now. You can cling to your delusions of being a scientist all you want, I hear it all day long as I automate people out of a job.
Face facts and reality, the "Tech" industry is now equivilent to the TV and VCR repair industry. Why should I pay a SQL DB expert 40k a year. MY 17 year old niece does a great job managing a few MS and Oracle dbs for me. They teach that shit in Highschool now. If I can get an MCSE in highschool I would expect that a MCSE is now worth highschool pay. Face reality. The bar has been raised and most of us are below the bar now. Did you honestly think that you would get $55 and hour with 5 years experience when highschool students are starting to come out with CCNAs and MCSEs?
I think God should sue DC for infringing on his intellectual property of humanoid figures that can articulate. Perhaps the Nazi party should also sue DC and Marvel for their use of the Swastika in many of there post 1940 comics. How often has Captain America battled the Nazi's in comic books? That would violate their IP and infringe upon their flag wouldn't it? I also think that Marvel and DC need to stop infringing upon the United States Governments IP including the American Flag colors. While we're at it I think that Mavel needs to change their name to "Corporate United Network of Totality" or C.U.N.T for short.
First off we can recycle a certain amount of nuclear waste in breeder reactors and gain a bit more out of the waste and along with the new fused sillica containers we can rather safely store nuclear waste underground without worry of contamination. Currently US utilities are working towards moving people to fuel cell electric at homes (pumping natural gs and then converting it to electricity is cheaper and more profitable for the Utilities then power lines. Remember you lose energy [profits] in the form of resistance over power lines. Gas can be pumped under pressure with little loss of energy). The key to any conversion is it must be profitable. If it's not profitable, no matter how altruistic an entity is, if it's not profitable, that entity will cease to exist. All those zelots out there that believe that "The Man" or "The Big Oil" types are keeping alternative fuel sources out of main stream need to take a few economic courses.
Ok so let me get this straight, your going to make "The Matrix" into a video game that takes place after the truce, after Neo's "death" and the defeat of agent Smith. So what exactly are you battling? Defective accounting programs? Rebellious AIs that don't want to ally with the humans? Michevious programming mistakes that cause the Matrix to blue screen?
Was anyone else besides me dissapointed with this game? Why beat a lame horse? The "scare" factor wore off after the first hour of the same routine of "something teleports in front of you and behind you at the same time" and critters emerging from concealed closets that serve no purpose. My god I fell asleep twice and work up thinking I was playing Half-Life 1 with an updated graphic engine. All you need to do is substitute the word demon for alien and you've got Halflife. Someone please burn that garbage like I grilled my doom3 disks. Worst game ever next to Daitakwhateveritscalled. The FPS is dead now. An old horse that has been savagely beaten and descerated. What happen to entertaining games? Hell I thought Shadowgate was a better thrill then that Doom 3 crap. And where is the Friggin Co-Op? At least I could get drunk with some friends and duke it out with the way-to-alien looking demons. How about this for a FPS:
Slashdot Mirror
I did ... The games were paid for from inmates' purchases ...
I was referring in general how prison items are purchased. The state doesn't buy those items. The inmates do by generating their own revenue. TVs in cells are pruchased individually by inmates who earn money doing work. Other, larger group items, such as excercise equipment are purchased by committiee in many cases(Varies from state to state of course) In many states even the books in the library are in-mate funded.
Allow me to revise for clarity
for drug offenses (234,600 prisoners) in 1993. Prisoners serving a
drug sentence increased from 8 percent of the state and federal prison
population in 1980 to 26 percent in 1993. In federal prisons, inmates
sentenced for drug law violations were the single largest group--60
percent in 1993, up from 25 percent in 1980.
( http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/pi94.pr )
This doesn't even take the recent surge after 1993 with Crystal Meth hitting the mainstream drug users in the late 90s.
It's potential is enormous!! It would make everyone liable for content as everyone is part of the distribution of the content. In case you haven't noticed the RIAA and MPAA tend to go after UPLOADERS more then downloaders. Now this new decentralized version makes us all active uploaders (or maintainers of the content) rather then downloaders and uploaders (Obviously with a torrent you already are an uploader, think like a lawyer and you see what I mean.) I'm not impressed. Even if the tracker is not maintaining data, you are effectivly, by law, Aiding in the Distribution of Stolen Merchandise on a higher level then before. Now you are potentially tying all the uploaders together. Now your starting to get into rackeeting territory. I am not a fan of P2P technology not for what it does, but I just find it poor technology. Giving users plausable deniability in the distribution is the best solution. It is what protects an ISP, why not use the same logic with end users.
The view though is trapped. Cable has commericals too and if the networks folded, lets say, then cable would be more pressured into having commericals. If it went the way of payperview or all premium channels then you are at the mercy of the channel and they would want the free money for commercials. Do what I did, throw your TV away (not leterally, just don't watch television. No cable, nothing.) I just watch the occasional DVD but I went back to a commercial free form of entertainment and I invite ANYONE who is fed up with TV and movies to follow my example...
Read Books.
So you think they are playing with the media to influence future potential jurors?
FYI: Prisoners still need to buy those items, the prison doesn't give them those items for free. They could also be gifts from relatives (yes criminals do have family and friends more often then not) not to mention that the majority of people in prison are in there for drug possession charges rather then act such as homicide, buglury, rape, or assaults (hell in short, violent crimes.)
WTF?!?!?! WHY ARE PRISONERS PLAYING VIDEO GAMES IN THE FIRST F%$^#! PLACE!!!???? It's god damn prison. No TV, no playstation, nothing. They're criminal for crying out lound. What the fuck happened to "PUNISHMENT?" That's what prisons if for!!!!
THEY SHOULD GET WATER, PLAIN WHOLE WHEAT BREAD AND A CAN OF UNSALTED PEANUTS AND WITH GOOD BEHAVIOR, MAYBE, A MULTIVITAMIN!!!
Good to see we treat our criminals better then we treat our poor!
Dear Sir,
You are not the network's customer.
Their customers are the people that buy commercial time on the network. The show you watch is, in fact, a commercial to draw you to the TV so you can see the real product (what we call a commercial.)
How are they alienating their customers? I hate to break it to you...
You are not the customer when it comes to network television.
That explains the quality of games coming from EA these last few years... Crap, Mostly Crap, Crap with a slight chance of less then crappy crap, and finally not-so-crappy crap.
Only 10 million? Shit kid get a real job in America. My budget alone for my department is 2 million and I burn that supporting only 1000 users nation wide. Hell my monthly long distance bill is 15k doing remote support and file distribution. Get out of highschool, buy a house, and learn just how muc real life cost.
The costs of operation are huge. Everquest financially was only pulling about 5-5.25% margin on the monthly based on estimates. Mythic with DAOC is only pulling down 7-9% profit margin by the last figures I saw. Just look up the monthly costs for some of those optical carrier lines and your best guess on hardware reqs. MMORPGS draw a huge amount of capital on but the operational costs are massive. The server hardware, colocation fees, customer service staff, programmers, licensing fees, bandwidth, maintenance contracts, royalty fees, distribution fees, marketing, etc end up nickle and diming you to death. You can make a game for 5 million but you end up spending 10 million to distribute and promote it. With DAOC using Numeric Designs front end (The same one used for Morrowind) had a licensing fee that, when I inquired about it, made me laugh. The $50,000 front against pending royalties was hillarious and Big World's licensing was just shy of absurde for an engine. The way games are sold the $50 for the box sales large go to distribution channels. At least 50% of the monthly subscription fee is going to be burned in operations. Operational costs aside you also need to bank funds for further expansions and financial outlays. Just because a company posts 1 million in profit doesn't mean they have 1 million to "play" with. That "profit" may already be spent or at the very least ear-marked. Also that profit may get ate offsetting a loss from a previous project. I've worked with companies that made millions yet didn't have a dime to their name due to these types of costs.
There are a plethora of business factors in developing a service and product. Remember that there are two very different items you buy. You buy the game and subscribe to a service. There are very different business beasts and are as closely related as apples and lava, from a business standpoint at least. The game side can post a decent profit but the service side, the measure of profit, is very different. You'd be better off comparing the service side (specifically the $15 a month) to say a resturant rather then a manufacturing sample.
They'll need every penny they can get. Underfunded services die and wither easy.
Ok for those who complain lets try something few understand, PERSPECTIVE.
.50 9.00 last I checked.
1 Movie: $9
1 Popcorn and Soda: $9
Movie Runs 2 hours.
That's $9 an hour for entertainment.
Assume for the moment you play an online game 1 hour a day on average.
$15 dollars a month or $15 dollars for $30 hours.
That's about 50 cents an hour.
Now lets add in your DSL\CAble Bill to help this out.
$60 dollars a month or about $2.00 an hour to play. Still cheaper then a movie.
To further the study you could factor your inital $50 purchase of the game over, say 2 years to better tune this.
Even at $100 dollars a month that is about $3.40 per hour and is still cheaper then going to the movies. And thats assuming you can get in and out of the theater for only $18 bucks.
But, to be fair and balanced, a good quality basketball, football, or baseball setup can run you a 1 time $80 bucks and factoring that over a 2 year period throwing the old pig skin, playing softball, or doing a little boot hockey can be a hella cheaper then a video game.
She's done an excellent job maintaining them and making additions. Doesn't take a rocket scientist. Sorry but it's highschool level work now. You can cling to your delusions of being a scientist all you want, I hear it all day long as I automate people out of a job.
Face facts and reality, the "Tech" industry is now equivilent to the TV and VCR repair industry. Why should I pay a SQL DB expert 40k a year. MY 17 year old niece does a great job managing a few MS and Oracle dbs for me. They teach that shit in Highschool now. If I can get an MCSE in highschool I would expect that a MCSE is now worth highschool pay. Face reality. The bar has been raised and most of us are below the bar now. Did you honestly think that you would get $55 and hour with 5 years experience when highschool students are starting to come out with CCNAs and MCSEs?
I think God should sue DC for infringing on his intellectual property of humanoid figures that can articulate. Perhaps the Nazi party should also sue DC and Marvel for their use of the Swastika in many of there post 1940 comics. How often has Captain America battled the Nazi's in comic books? That would violate their IP and infringe upon their flag wouldn't it? I also think that Marvel and DC need to stop infringing upon the United States Governments IP including the American Flag colors. While we're at it I think that Mavel needs to change their name to "Corporate United Network of Totality" or C.U.N.T for short.
First off we can recycle a certain amount of nuclear waste in breeder reactors and gain a bit more out of the waste and along with the new fused sillica containers we can rather safely store nuclear waste underground without worry of contamination. Currently US utilities are working towards moving people to fuel cell electric at homes (pumping natural gs and then converting it to electricity is cheaper and more profitable for the Utilities then power lines. Remember you lose energy [profits] in the form of resistance over power lines. Gas can be pumped under pressure with little loss of energy). The key to any conversion is it must be profitable. If it's not profitable, no matter how altruistic an entity is, if it's not profitable, that entity will cease to exist. All those zelots out there that believe that "The Man" or "The Big Oil" types are keeping alternative fuel sources out of main stream need to take a few economic courses.
Hostage Down.
Hostage Down.
HEAD SHOT.
Damn it...
Ok so let me get this straight, your going to make "The Matrix" into a video game that takes place after the truce, after Neo's "death" and the defeat of agent Smith. So what exactly are you battling? Defective accounting programs? Rebellious AIs that don't want to ally with the humans? Michevious programming mistakes that cause the Matrix to blue screen?
Hmmm...
Boring?
Yeah that sounds about right...
Terrorists are considered Civilians according to international reports. Insurgents are considered Civilians according to most international reports.
So what % of those civilians are terrorists and insurgents?
Was anyone else besides me dissapointed with this game? Why beat a lame horse? The "scare" factor wore off after the first hour of the same routine of "something teleports in front of you and behind you at the same time" and critters emerging from concealed closets that serve no purpose. My god I fell asleep twice and work up thinking I was playing Half-Life 1 with an updated graphic engine. All you need to do is substitute the word demon for alien and you've got Halflife. Someone please burn that garbage like I grilled my doom3 disks. Worst game ever next to Daitakwhateveritscalled. The FPS is dead now. An old horse that has been savagely beaten and descerated. What happen to entertaining games? Hell I thought Shadowgate was a better thrill then that Doom 3 crap. And where is the Friggin Co-Op? At least I could get drunk with some friends and duke it out with the way-to-alien looking demons. How about this for a FPS:
Virtual Running Man
KayThxByeDiePlz.
N+1=N
Why Slashdot obesses over patent issuance I'll never understand. Just because some gets a patent doesn't mean that it will hold water in court.
Ever thing it just the shoulder rest for the bulletproof vest that most recent presidents wear when out and about?
For CPL to work the game must have strong multi-player support and Doom3's engine is made to be pretty not network friendly.
You Said:
If someone went around killing trial lawyers I'd seriously have to think about leaving free ammo outside my door with a Thank You sign..
I think I found my new email tag!