As a general rule, we don't pay for content. Speaking as a society. We pay for the wrapper that the content is encased in, or we pay to reward the creator...but to pretty much all of us, we're not paying for the content, at least not directly.
People don't hear a song on the radio, then go to the bands website to toss a quarter at them, they don't get a lend of a friends book/DVD then send them a check for 19.99. We have no problem with renting a movie, or getting a book out of the library. Even though we are gaining the experience of the content, the only "cost" we perceive with it to be the cost of the packaging itself.
Why is this? I suspect that to most of us, content is culture. Or to be more precise, culture is content. And culture is something that we feel entitled to (and to be honest, in terms of our society we probably are. Our culture defines a large part of who and what we are). The efforts of big media to deny this, are doomed to fail.
Not that I'm supporting this sort of piracy. Far from it. 2 bucks for even a small game is actually a VERY reasonable price. I like paying for content that I want to enjoy on a long-term basis. But that said, I get books from the library. I rent movies and games. The problem with such a download is that it is probably offering very little packaging value for the cost. It's a big danger of DDL software. You need to add value to the packaging, I.E Steam with its auto-update/download system, friends lists, etc. or the perceived value will be effectively zero.
The answer is in music, hell no, in movies mostly no.
I haven't met anybody who bought a CD with the intention of reselling it. Most people who buy music collect it, so they want to keep it.
Movies are a bit different. I think that the big movie chains might overbuy on rentals in order to get people into the store, and with the knowledge that they can resell their extras down the road. So this might encourage slightly larger sales, but in terms of individuals, again, I don't think that the second hand market convinces anybody to actually buy an original copy.
Our coasts are at least 20 feet high in most places at least for a large chunk of the island. I grew up about 2 blocks away from the edge.There are low coastal areas, but they're pretty uncommon to be honest.
And yeah, the wind in the Highland areas is bad. That's why there are plans for building a wind farm up there. But AFAIK the proposed spaceport will be in the eastern Inverness area, which doesn't have nearly as much wind.
#1. It's not that foggy, in fact it's pretty nice. As well, our climate seems to be shifting closer to what they have in BC, but without the rain, at least for 10 months out of the year.
#2. Cape Breton is indeed beautiful. Tourists coming to go into space could see what they're leaving behind. I don't believe it's a unique beauty..the coast of California (especially Big Sur) feels very similar to me, but the combination is interesting.
#3. Unemployment isn't that high. It USED to be, after the natural resource industries collapsed (like they all do), but the population levels have evened out, and it's a pretty big destination for call centers these days. Why? #4.
#4. Friendly, intelligent (if not college educated) people. You could man such a spaceport with people from the area, not have to pay outlandish wages and still have a good experience for the tourists.
In a given field, will not increase the amount of jobs in a given field. Actually it probably will, a little bit, as it'll probably be combined with severe reduction in work visas given for those fields. But not enough. Especially not enough for the expected glut of talent that will take advantage of such an offer.
So what you'll end up with is a bunch of people with math, science and engineering degrees asking "Do you want fries with that?", which actually isn't bad. At least they're educated.
If any of the infringing material that Viacom claims, are things that are not currently comercially avaialble, Viacom should lose control of 100% of their IP, all released into the public domain.
Viacom were able to profit on our culture. They're not allowed to drop it down the corporate memory hole.
Actually, for Sony, shipped is when it leaves their factory. For "Just in time" shipping, this could result in a possible high number of "shipped" (by their terms" units, that may not get to stores for some time, because they're being held in a warehouse or something.
Yeah, the point isn't that people won't buy it..people will. Quite a few people (My guess is in the 20-30 million range)..but it's as you said, when it comes to development, it's going to be the 3rd choice, like the GC was this generation. It's the also.
Nintendo learned from the mistakes of the past (and I think that having an guy who ran a game design company running their operation is a big part of this), and have created the Wii from the ground up as being attractive to 3rd party developers, as well, as not changing their chip architecture, all the old libraries will still work, or will be really easy to adapt.
Microsoft has provided, from what I heard great tools to create on their system, which makes it attractive, and they have a very strong NA and European userbase which are very active players with a high attach rate.
Sony is going by brand and brand alone really.
And this is NOT about system sales, at least not directly. This is about game development, and which systems get what resources (and what games). Very few people seem to recognize it. Kudos on getting it.
Until the end of March I'd say. All snark aside, there's some reality to that statement. The reason there is a "console wars", is because the console that makes the best business model for 3rd party developers gets the most exclusive games and the best ports. It's as simple as that.
The business model that Sony presented this generation, is one of the highest development costs, for a variety of reasons, but they hoped to balance that by selling 100 million systems again this generation. Which would work pretty well. Except for the selling lots of systems part it seems. So their whole business model they're presenting breaks down. For this reason, you'll see a sparse line-up this holiday season, which results in less sales. It's a negative feedback loop, and the stronger it is, the more they'll need to do to counter it. (An AAA+++ title or a huge price cut or both)
Just to go a bit further. The 360 has a more comfortable programming/design environment and better tools provided, lowering costs, and has a large and very active American and European fanbase, plus online handled through XBL, the possibility of demos and new content, and microtransactions (even though we all hate them). It's a good model.
Nintendo is offering a very low development cost system, that focuses more on controller interaction than pushing polygons. And it looks like Nintendo will be combining this with a very large world-wide installed base. (The Wii will probably be the #1 system worldwide by middle of the year) It's a very good model.
It all comes down to the games. Before the launch of the PS3, people were saying they wanted it because they wanted the same experience they got with the PS2 and the PS1, namely the huge library that had games in every genre and even created a few new ones. But it's looking more and more like that experience is going to be on a non-Sony system.
So if Sony can't start selling systems, it's not going to get the games. And if it can't get the games, it'll probably end up like the GameCube..making games for it's core audience, but little beyond that. And I liked..no loved the GameCube. But a lot of people didn't. (Mostly people who didn't have it..but anyway) Or they perceived it to be a failure.
That does suck, I admit. But I think it's a balance between allowing null-routing spammers and as well null-routing..say..Vonage, for an example, I'd rather see no null-routing at all.
Assume the worst from these big corps, because that's what we'll see.
There's a basic formula to keep in mind...how busy is the desk? It's simple. The average amount of notation time should be half at maximum of the average amount of time between calls. Assume that for one reason or another on-call notation is impossible. (For doing this sort of phone support you need to be totally focusing on the little things that the end user says, or you might be at their desk).
So if you're following this rule. Things should be logged. No argument there. But if this math isn't adding up, (which is usually the case), then you need to either do one of three things.
Reduce the number of calls. Don't bother trying
Hire more people.
Make the ticketing system faster. Do they have web interfaces or direct access to databases? How long does it take for a window to load? Again, speed is the key. How much detail do you want on the cases/resolutions. And so on.
If it were up to me, I'd have a simple 3-prong dialog that automatically generated a number (to give to the user), and 3 fields. User (best if this is auto-populated), Problem and resolution. Offer a lot of space if needed for those things, but allow..natch encourage quick log notation for common issues. Back-end access is necessary for pulling up previous cases. So the workflow...
1)Call comes in. Logging window appears on tech's screen, with the ID filled in. (Have an ID number typed in at the beginning of the call IVR before it reaches the tech)
2)Call is handled
3)Notes are finished, when accepted, the person is available to take the next call, and the time is stopped and recorded.
This is as good as you're going to find. It's an interesting debate...Tallarico is a bit of a moron, but whatever. The first one they had on the PS3vs.360 had some good points as well.
No. You're wrong. Although I don't disagree with you that he's important, per se, without that video gaining wide exposure via YouTube, and various blogs and such, it never would have gotten off the ground, or ignored as a "dirty trick" of the Webb campaign.
But because it came from friends and family, it came organically, people stopped to listen just a little bit longer than they might
Time's explaination for their decision, is that the new importance of communitity tools changes how change is made. In the future, it'll be rare, maybe even impossible for a future "Person of the Year" to have an impact without the assistance of this ethos.
I was thinking about who'd I pick. Howard Dean for his 50-state strategy, Rumsfeld for being the iconic figure at the hinge of the Iraqi occupation, or Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert for reshaping how we look at current events.
But after I saw it, and read their argument. I was convinced.
It depends on the definition of "just fine" really.
How did the GameCube do this generation? If you answer "just fine", as it sold a good number of systems, and had a lot of fun, exclusive game experiences, then you're probably right. The PS3 will be just fine.
If you define how the GameCube did as failure, then the PS3 will more than likely fail as well.
If you're looking for the PS1/PS2 style library, then you probably won't find it on the PS3, at least not for a couple of years. I'm not sure who will have it, (My money is on the Wii reaching 15 million sales worldwide first) but I think the PS3 has the worst change of getting there, by a fair margin.
Which is why we need net neutrality laws to ensure that doesn't happen, and that if ISPs want to enhance QoS for certain apps, that it maintains a level playing field.
Why would they do this? Provide a better service for the most amount of their customers?
Net Neutrality would not, at least as its proposed, kill QOS standards. What it would do, would ensure that say if a major ISP gave preferrred access to VoIP or Gaming packets (as latency critical applicaitons), that your small start-up company if in those fields can partake in the high QOS as well.
There's so much "crap" because they are trying to make movies for much narrower audiences.
So what you see is one or two movies that you love, and everything else looks much worse compared to them. Compared to the past, where for the most part the movie-making landscape was fairly bland.
I go to the theatre fairly often and see a lot of movies. The last bad movie I've seen was War of the Worlds, and even that wasn't that bad.
In the last month I've seen Clerks II and Superman Returns. Both movies were much better than I expected.
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As a general rule, we don't pay for content. Speaking as a society. We pay for the wrapper that the content is encased in, or we pay to reward the creator...but to pretty much all of us, we're not paying for the content, at least not directly. People don't hear a song on the radio, then go to the bands website to toss a quarter at them, they don't get a lend of a friends book/DVD then send them a check for 19.99. We have no problem with renting a movie, or getting a book out of the library. Even though we are gaining the experience of the content, the only "cost" we perceive with it to be the cost of the packaging itself. Why is this? I suspect that to most of us, content is culture. Or to be more precise, culture is content. And culture is something that we feel entitled to (and to be honest, in terms of our society we probably are. Our culture defines a large part of who and what we are). The efforts of big media to deny this, are doomed to fail. Not that I'm supporting this sort of piracy. Far from it. 2 bucks for even a small game is actually a VERY reasonable price. I like paying for content that I want to enjoy on a long-term basis. But that said, I get books from the library. I rent movies and games. The problem with such a download is that it is probably offering very little packaging value for the cost. It's a big danger of DDL software. You need to add value to the packaging, I.E Steam with its auto-update/download system, friends lists, etc. or the perceived value will be effectively zero.
The answer is in music, hell no, in movies mostly no.
I haven't met anybody who bought a CD with the intention of reselling it. Most people who buy music collect it, so they want to keep it.
Movies are a bit different. I think that the big movie chains might overbuy on rentals in order to get people into the store, and with the knowledge that they can resell their extras down the road. So this might encourage slightly larger sales, but in terms of individuals, again, I don't think that the second hand market convinces anybody to actually buy an original copy.
Our coasts are at least 20 feet high in most places at least for a large chunk of the island. I grew up about 2 blocks away from the edge.There are low coastal areas, but they're pretty uncommon to be honest.
And yeah, the wind in the Highland areas is bad. That's why there are plans for building a wind farm up there. But AFAIK the proposed spaceport will be in the eastern Inverness area, which doesn't have nearly as much wind.
Born and raised here. Yes. Really.
#1. It's not that foggy, in fact it's pretty nice. As well, our climate seems to be shifting closer to what they have in BC, but without the rain, at least for 10 months out of the year.
#2. Cape Breton is indeed beautiful. Tourists coming to go into space could see what they're leaving behind. I don't believe it's a unique beauty..the coast of California (especially Big Sur) feels very similar to me, but the combination is interesting.
#3. Unemployment isn't that high. It USED to be, after the natural resource industries collapsed (like they all do), but the population levels have evened out, and it's a pretty big destination for call centers these days. Why? #4.
#4. Friendly, intelligent (if not college educated) people. You could man such a spaceport with people from the area, not have to pay outlandish wages and still have a good experience for the tourists.
Not really. We have foggy mornings, but all-day fog is actually pretty rare here.
In a given field, will not increase the amount of jobs in a given field. Actually it probably will, a little bit, as it'll probably be combined with severe reduction in work visas given for those fields. But not enough. Especially not enough for the expected glut of talent that will take advantage of such an offer.
So what you'll end up with is a bunch of people with math, science and engineering degrees asking "Do you want fries with that?", which actually isn't bad. At least they're educated.
ERrrr..no
There's only one Wii SKU in North America, and it comes with the console, remote+nunchuk and WiiSports.
If any of the infringing material that Viacom claims, are things that are not currently comercially avaialble, Viacom should lose control of 100% of their IP, all released into the public domain.
Viacom were able to profit on our culture. They're not allowed to drop it down the corporate memory hole.
Actually, for Sony, shipped is when it leaves their factory. For "Just in time" shipping, this could result in a possible high number of "shipped" (by their terms" units, that may not get to stores for some time, because they're being held in a warehouse or something.
Yeah, the point isn't that people won't buy it..people will. Quite a few people (My guess is in the 20-30 million range)..but it's as you said, when it comes to development, it's going to be the 3rd choice, like the GC was this generation. It's the also.
Nintendo learned from the mistakes of the past (and I think that having an guy who ran a game design company running their operation is a big part of this), and have created the Wii from the ground up as being attractive to 3rd party developers, as well, as not changing their chip architecture, all the old libraries will still work, or will be really easy to adapt.
Microsoft has provided, from what I heard great tools to create on their system, which makes it attractive, and they have a very strong NA and European userbase which are very active players with a high attach rate.
Sony is going by brand and brand alone really.
And this is NOT about system sales, at least not directly. This is about game development, and which systems get what resources (and what games). Very few people seem to recognize it. Kudos on getting it.
They have ohhh...
Until the end of March I'd say. All snark aside, there's some reality to that statement. The reason there is a "console wars", is because the console that makes the best business model for 3rd party developers gets the most exclusive games and the best ports. It's as simple as that.
The business model that Sony presented this generation, is one of the highest development costs, for a variety of reasons, but they hoped to balance that by selling 100 million systems again this generation. Which would work pretty well. Except for the selling lots of systems part it seems. So their whole business model they're presenting breaks down. For this reason, you'll see a sparse line-up this holiday season, which results in less sales. It's a negative feedback loop, and the stronger it is, the more they'll need to do to counter it. (An AAA+++ title or a huge price cut or both)
Just to go a bit further. The 360 has a more comfortable programming/design environment and better tools provided, lowering costs, and has a large and very active American and European fanbase, plus online handled through XBL, the possibility of demos and new content, and microtransactions (even though we all hate them). It's a good model.
Nintendo is offering a very low development cost system, that focuses more on controller interaction than pushing polygons. And it looks like Nintendo will be combining this with a very large world-wide installed base. (The Wii will probably be the #1 system worldwide by middle of the year) It's a very good model.
It all comes down to the games. Before the launch of the PS3, people were saying they wanted it because they wanted the same experience they got with the PS2 and the PS1, namely the huge library that had games in every genre and even created a few new ones. But it's looking more and more like that experience is going to be on a non-Sony system.
So if Sony can't start selling systems, it's not going to get the games. And if it can't get the games, it'll probably end up like the GameCube..making games for it's core audience, but little beyond that. And I liked..no loved the GameCube. But a lot of people didn't. (Mostly people who didn't have it..but anyway) Or they perceived it to be a failure.
That does suck, I admit. But I think it's a balance between allowing null-routing spammers and as well null-routing..say..Vonage, for an example, I'd rather see no null-routing at all.
Assume the worst from these big corps, because that's what we'll see.
There's a basic formula to keep in mind...how busy is the desk? It's simple. The average amount of notation time should be half at maximum of the average amount of time between calls. Assume that for one reason or another on-call notation is impossible. (For doing this sort of phone support you need to be totally focusing on the little things that the end user says, or you might be at their desk).
So if you're following this rule. Things should be logged. No argument there. But if this math isn't adding up, (which is usually the case), then you need to either do one of three things.
Reduce the number of calls. Don't bother trying
Hire more people.
Make the ticketing system faster. Do they have web interfaces or direct access to databases? How long does it take for a window to load? Again, speed is the key. How much detail do you want on the cases/resolutions. And so on.
If it were up to me, I'd have a simple 3-prong dialog that automatically generated a number (to give to the user), and 3 fields. User (best if this is auto-populated), Problem and resolution. Offer a lot of space if needed for those things, but allow..natch encourage quick log notation for common issues. Back-end access is necessary for pulling up previous cases. So the workflow...
1)Call comes in. Logging window appears on tech's screen, with the ID filled in. (Have an ID number typed in at the beginning of the call IVR before it reaches the tech)
2)Call is handled
3)Notes are finished, when accepted, the person is available to take the next call, and the time is stopped and recorded.
That's the ideal situation.
This is as good as you're going to find. It's an interesting debate...Tallarico is a bit of a moron, but whatever. The first one they had on the PS3vs.360 had some good points as well.
No. You're wrong. Although I don't disagree with you that he's important, per se, without that video gaining wide exposure via YouTube, and various blogs and such, it never would have gotten off the ground, or ignored as a "dirty trick" of the Webb campaign.
But because it came from friends and family, it came organically, people stopped to listen just a little bit longer than they might
Time's explaination for their decision, is that the new importance of communitity tools changes how change is made. In the future, it'll be rare, maybe even impossible for a future "Person of the Year" to have an impact without the assistance of this ethos.
I was thinking about who'd I pick. Howard Dean for his 50-state strategy, Rumsfeld for being the iconic figure at the hinge of the Iraqi occupation, or Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert for reshaping how we look at current events.
But after I saw it, and read their argument. I was convinced.
included the fact that he has the LotR pinball machine in his office.
I had a U-Force, I actually beat MegaMan 2 using it.
Which is kinda impressive if you think about it.
Last I heard Nintendo has actually increased the shipments, not vice versa.
It depends on the definition of "just fine" really.
How did the GameCube do this generation? If you answer "just fine", as it sold a good number of systems, and had a lot of fun, exclusive game experiences, then you're probably right. The PS3 will be just fine.
If you define how the GameCube did as failure, then the PS3 will more than likely fail as well.
If you're looking for the PS1/PS2 style library, then you probably won't find it on the PS3, at least not for a couple of years. I'm not sure who will have it, (My money is on the Wii reaching 15 million sales worldwide first) but I think the PS3 has the worst change of getting there, by a fair margin.
The problem is that in most places, you can't just turn into the arms of a competitor, because there might not be any.
No mod points, but if I did, you would be getting them ALL.
Our culture hates youth. We despise them, for various reasons. We may love our kids, but we hate THOSE kids. They're so disrespectful, don't you know?
Our parents had the privacy to do the things and build their own culture. We don't in our world, so we've taken that online, to be honest.
Which is why we need net neutrality laws to ensure that doesn't happen, and that if ISPs want to enhance QoS for certain apps, that it maintains a level playing field.
Why would they do this? Provide a better service for the most amount of their customers?
Net Neutrality would not, at least as its proposed, kill QOS standards. What it would do, would ensure that say if a major ISP gave preferrred access to VoIP or Gaming packets (as latency critical applicaitons), that your small start-up company if in those fields can partake in the high QOS as well.
The number of people out there who will complain just for the sake of complaining...for entertainment purposes...is shockingly high.
It's best to keep your distance from these people, as they are selfish and unpredictable.
There's so much "crap" because they are trying to make movies for much narrower audiences.
So what you see is one or two movies that you love, and everything else looks much worse compared to them. Compared to the past, where for the most part the movie-making landscape was fairly bland.
I go to the theatre fairly often and see a lot of movies. The last bad movie I've seen was War of the Worlds, and even that wasn't that bad.
In the last month I've seen Clerks II and Superman Returns. Both movies were much better than I expected.