No more than they currently are. When companies buy each other, they typically maintain corporate structures (or create new ones). It's actually fairly rare for a big company to be anything other than a holding company if they have participated in much acquisition activity. For example, MS Great Plains is probably still a separate corporation (entirely owned by MS).
Re:Sony should be very scared indeed...
on
Out Of The XBox
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The thing I've been watching has been MS success at courting Asian game studios. You don't see it yet, but they started going over when the X-Box was first on the drawing board, to begin wooing game producers. More importantly they kept at it through years of failure, and now it appears that with the launch of the next console, they might begin to reap dividends on all those investments. I think you're right that consoles live or die on the games they can deliver (although the DVD add-in was a nice bonus last round and DVR capability will probably be similar this round) so watching MS success at getting traditional console developers should be telling.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding the question, but could you measure current flow to the CPU to measure its operating level? You know the idle current flow, and you know the expected peak draw, so by measuring current current flow through the processor you should be able to tell how loaded it is.
Newspapers generate most of their revenue from adverting. It's probably a higher percentage than CNN/Fox News which take in a considerable sum from subscribers (where most of your cable bill goes every month). From their latest release TimeWarner gets a little over half it's cable network revenue from subscriptions and about a third from ads. The rest is licensing of original content. It's on page two in the networks division.
From their latestrelease, the NYT generates about two thirds of revenue from advertising and a quarter from readers, (the rest comes from smaller ancillary businesses). If pure generation of revenues was an indicator of bias, cable news networks would be the least biased sources of news. The big reason for the difference in depth of coverage is the audience. Most TV viewers do not want to sit through half hour sagas about a news story (while newspaper readers prefer reading 4,000 word stories about imporant subjects). I'd bet that a higher portion of newspaper readers prefer PBS of BBC news if they watch any of the news sources becuase they have deeper coverage of important issues and less fluff (which is far more popular).
Actually, retailers who sell games quickly learned that unsold merchandise can languish on shelves for a very long time. So they have very good return provisions in their contracts. Game companies are supposed to estimate how many copies will be returned, and increase their costs when they recognise the sale and recievable. However, estimates in accounting mean that management gets some control over their results, which they typically use, until the cookie jar gets too big (or small) and they finally have to own up to their snowballed mistake (which was probably what happened at WorldCom). Fraud almost always starts small and grows.
The bullet is technically just the lead (sometimes encased in brass or other harder metals) projectile. The casing propellent and primer make a cartridge. Reloaders reuse the casing only, acquiring new bullets (typically the bullet would be highly deformed on impact to be reloaded). If the bullet were tagged it wouldn't matter if the factory or the reloader assembled the cartridge, the projectile could still be tagged. Sure reloaders could buy a stockpile of bullets, but non-reloaders could buy a stock pile of cartridges too. I'm not sure that an RFID tag would survive most impacts.
Since I'm an economist, I wonder if this would cause an increase in jacketed rounds for criminal activity, if the round passes through your target (and would be far more difficult to find) is a passive RFID tag still useful?
I've never understood why the RPG system is deemed evil by so many Christians. Sure the rule set would be quite different from a normal one, but imagine the power of an RPG that used something like the drug use of Fallout to represent sin, it could be beneficial in the short run, but very costly in the long run. The bible is quite clear that sin is pleasurable for a season, and a great deal of a Christian life requires that people leave the mindset of what feels good now, to focus on more lasting rewards (not just heaven, but doing benevolent good for your neighbor doesn't get you much back now, but probably makes you a friend in the long run). Christian living always seemed to hold a ton of great source material for an RPG.
One big advantage for public companies was the shifting of employee compensation from your income to the shareholders through employee stock options. That benefit was huge for a ton of public companies, look at microsoft's income statement from three years ago and today for an example of how much of compensation was shouldered directly by the shareholders. As the value of that benefit declines following options expensing, I'd expect more companies that didn't need to raise money in the first place (why companies are supposed to go public) to go back to being private. As far as timing, the shift probably won't occur until equity prices have reverted to a level below their historic mean. This will probably occur as the boomers start retiring and they sell their equities to fund retirement.
Both MTV and TLC found that reality programming garnered several times the ratings that their original programming recieved. With TLC I can understand that, but I still don't know anyone who admits to watching MTV now. I don't think the audience is more specialized than it had been, but it is considerably bigger.
I'll second this, I like an RPG that takes a few weeks to play (I can only play a few hours every few days anyomre. I just wish there was less skill progression in an RPG, the challenging first levels are fun, finishing the plot after you have reached uber level is more tedious. I'd be all for an RPG that started you out at normal and only let you acheive something more than competance in a single skill, if you spent all your effort building that skill.
As an example, I adore the fallout series, but once you get power armor you have pretty much reached a point at which nothing will challenge you. I'd like a game where say you couldn't get anything better than combat armor and an FN FAL but your competition was competitive with that, ie no uber level challenge at the end requiring you to reach acendancy to finish the game.
I loved Symphonia of the Night as much as any RPG, until the castle flipped. After that I sort of petered out. We moved on to MGS or something in the Resident Evil series.
Campaign contributions are only really useful for providing resources that will [buy] votes. Campaign contributions are important but look at Steve Forbes he can spend all the money he wants, and will likely never be elected to anything, which is what his real goal is. Sure some cash greases the wheel, but if the cash comes at the cost of votes, it better buy more votes than it costs. Several hundred million for political contributions not buy NABLA much political support, but an email blast from the old moral majority or ACLU gets the wheels of government turning nine times out of 10.
That's the way politics almost always works. Things don't happen politically because they are the best ideas, they happen because some bright person adds them to a popular issue. Elected officals maximize votes, so they only care about popular issues (except in the rare case of an of an official who has a passionate pet issue). If you want to get something done politically, you have to play the game and find a more powerful ally to support your issue. The geeks just are not a large enough voting bloc to win support on a national issue by ourselves, so working with "strange bedfellows" will likely be how anything is acomplished.
You're right for competitive swimming, but even the long endurance runs take about an hour or so. If you are swimming long distances, you have to be in warmer water to ensure that you don't lose heat too rapidly over the course of the next several weeks.
The problem I have is that there aren't any good replacements, nothing renewable comes close to the energy return of fossil fuels or nuclear (at current production).
How strange I was doing the same thing with Europa Unversalis II last night until about 1. I dug it out of my CD case while downloading a compeletely unrelated patch and after fixing an old save game crash bug, was hooked, again.
Typically in a strategy game, the computer controlled players recieve a bonus of materials, equipment, or cash and occasionally gameplay bonuses (less overhead in economy or more effective fighters). The size of this subsidy is usually the main adjustment in a difficulty setting.
I just wish someone would come up with something that had the fun of the orignial game with more modern graphics. That was the only game I put down and walked away from after I started dreaming about it and seeing the red pulsating alien indicator when not playing. I still recall my first terror mission when the Etherials showed up, I was feeling pretty badass until I turned tail and ran with about half my squad. That and Master of Orion got more gaming time than anything else I've played in the last decade.
The author of the article is incorrect, WSJ.com is not the primary generator of revenue or income of electronic publishing, they don't make money on the electronic version of their newspaper. They make tons of money on their DJ newswire services and index services (which have effectivly zero current costs). Newswire services are news terminals similar to Reuters or Bloomberg terminals that probably rent for several thousand dollars annually. You can dig up the numbers in their quarterly releases.
Print subscribers create an exceedingly valuable advertising market (especially for the Journal which counts most business spenders in its readership) newspapers make 5x-10x the revenue from advertising that they do from circulation (which is how those free papers survive). Online advertising isn't worth that much yet, so they can't just toss the online subsciptions.
This is all a big fight over control of Dow Jones whose print and online offerings (which go way beyond WSJ.com) are worth quite a bit, as the founders progeny fights off outsiders (who believe they have better ideas of how to manage those assets) for control. These are exceedingly common in business, go watch Wall Street or read Barbarians at the Gate for other examples of this. Finally, remember that in business press, everyone has an interest in selling you a story.
I'd be surprised if anyone here of a certain age didn't learn more about pirates and 15th century politics from Sid Meier's Pirates than any other source. Certainly we played it to have fun, but after a few games you learned why Drake chose a Pinace over a Galleon when raiding.
Slashdot Mirror
No more than they currently are. When companies buy each other, they typically maintain corporate structures (or create new ones). It's actually fairly rare for a big company to be anything other than a holding company if they have participated in much acquisition activity. For example, MS Great Plains is probably still a separate corporation (entirely owned by MS).
The thing I've been watching has been MS success at courting Asian game studios. You don't see it yet, but they started going over when the X-Box was first on the drawing board, to begin wooing game producers. More importantly they kept at it through years of failure, and now it appears that with the launch of the next console, they might begin to reap dividends on all those investments. I think you're right that consoles live or die on the games they can deliver (although the DVD add-in was a nice bonus last round and DVR capability will probably be similar this round) so watching MS success at getting traditional console developers should be telling.
Well, you and I can be the two people in line for "The Red Balloon" when it is re-released as counter programming to Star Wars.
Well, actually I'll only stand in the line to look cool until Star Wars starts. After that you are on your own.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding the question, but could you measure current flow to the CPU to measure its operating level? You know the idle current flow, and you know the expected peak draw, so by measuring current current flow through the processor you should be able to tell how loaded it is.
Newspapers generate most of their revenue from adverting. It's probably a higher percentage than CNN/Fox News which take in a considerable sum from subscribers (where most of your cable bill goes every month). From their latest release TimeWarner gets a little over half it's cable network revenue from subscriptions and about a third from ads. The rest is licensing of original content. It's on page two in the networks division.
From their latestrelease, the NYT generates about two thirds of revenue from advertising and a quarter from readers, (the rest comes from smaller ancillary businesses). If pure generation of revenues was an indicator of bias, cable news networks would be the least biased sources of news. The big reason for the difference in depth of coverage is the audience. Most TV viewers do not want to sit through half hour sagas about a news story (while newspaper readers prefer reading 4,000 word stories about imporant subjects). I'd bet that a higher portion of newspaper readers prefer PBS of BBC news if they watch any of the news sources becuase they have deeper coverage of important issues and less fluff (which is far more popular).
Actually, retailers who sell games quickly learned that unsold merchandise can languish on shelves for a very long time. So they have very good return provisions in their contracts. Game companies are supposed to estimate how many copies will be returned, and increase their costs when they recognise the sale and recievable. However, estimates in accounting mean that management gets some control over their results, which they typically use, until the cookie jar gets too big (or small) and they finally have to own up to their snowballed mistake (which was probably what happened at WorldCom). Fraud almost always starts small and grows.
The bullet is technically just the lead (sometimes encased in brass or other harder metals) projectile. The casing propellent and primer make a cartridge. Reloaders reuse the casing only, acquiring new bullets (typically the bullet would be highly deformed on impact to be reloaded). If the bullet were tagged it wouldn't matter if the factory or the reloader assembled the cartridge, the projectile could still be tagged. Sure reloaders could buy a stockpile of bullets, but non-reloaders could buy a stock pile of cartridges too. I'm not sure that an RFID tag would survive most impacts.
Since I'm an economist, I wonder if this would cause an increase in jacketed rounds for criminal activity, if the round passes through your target (and would be far more difficult to find) is a passive RFID tag still useful?
I've never understood why the RPG system is deemed evil by so many Christians. Sure the rule set would be quite different from a normal one, but imagine the power of an RPG that used something like the drug use of Fallout to represent sin, it could be beneficial in the short run, but very costly in the long run. The bible is quite clear that sin is pleasurable for a season, and a great deal of a Christian life requires that people leave the mindset of what feels good now, to focus on more lasting rewards (not just heaven, but doing benevolent good for your neighbor doesn't get you much back now, but probably makes you a friend in the long run). Christian living always seemed to hold a ton of great source material for an RPG.
One big advantage for public companies was the shifting of employee compensation from your income to the shareholders through employee stock options. That benefit was huge for a ton of public companies, look at microsoft's income statement from three years ago and today for an example of how much of compensation was shouldered directly by the shareholders. As the value of that benefit declines following options expensing, I'd expect more companies that didn't need to raise money in the first place (why companies are supposed to go public) to go back to being private. As far as timing, the shift probably won't occur until equity prices have reverted to a level below their historic mean. This will probably occur as the boomers start retiring and they sell their equities to fund retirement.
Both MTV and TLC found that reality programming garnered several times the ratings that their original programming recieved. With TLC I can understand that, but I still don't know anyone who admits to watching MTV now. I don't think the audience is more specialized than it had been, but it is considerably bigger.
I'll second this, I like an RPG that takes a few weeks to play (I can only play a few hours every few days anyomre. I just wish there was less skill progression in an RPG, the challenging first levels are fun, finishing the plot after you have reached uber level is more tedious. I'd be all for an RPG that started you out at normal and only let you acheive something more than competance in a single skill, if you spent all your effort building that skill.
As an example, I adore the fallout series, but once you get power armor you have pretty much reached a point at which nothing will challenge you. I'd like a game where say you couldn't get anything better than combat armor and an FN FAL but your competition was competitive with that, ie no uber level challenge at the end requiring you to reach acendancy to finish the game.
I loved Symphonia of the Night as much as any RPG, until the castle flipped. After that I sort of petered out. We moved on to MGS or something in the Resident Evil series.
Campaign contributions are only really useful for providing resources that will [buy] votes. Campaign contributions are important but look at Steve Forbes he can spend all the money he wants, and will likely never be elected to anything, which is what his real goal is. Sure some cash greases the wheel, but if the cash comes at the cost of votes, it better buy more votes than it costs. Several hundred million for political contributions not buy NABLA much political support, but an email blast from the old moral majority or ACLU gets the wheels of government turning nine times out of 10.
That's the way politics almost always works. Things don't happen politically because they are the best ideas, they happen because some bright person adds them to a popular issue. Elected officals maximize votes, so they only care about popular issues (except in the rare case of an of an official who has a passionate pet issue). If you want to get something done politically, you have to play the game and find a more powerful ally to support your issue. The geeks just are not a large enough voting bloc to win support on a national issue by ourselves, so working with "strange bedfellows" will likely be how anything is acomplished.
Others might argue that "all is for the best in this, the best of possible worlds" or that everything is meeting its ideal puropse.
You're right for competitive swimming, but even the long endurance runs take about an hour or so. If you are swimming long distances, you have to be in warmer water to ensure that you don't lose heat too rapidly over the course of the next several weeks.
The problem I have is that there aren't any good replacements, nothing renewable comes close to the energy return of fossil fuels or nuclear (at current production).
How strange I was doing the same thing with Europa Unversalis II last night until about 1. I dug it out of my CD case while downloading a compeletely unrelated patch and after fixing an old save game crash bug, was hooked, again.
Typically in a strategy game, the computer controlled players recieve a bonus of materials, equipment, or cash and occasionally gameplay bonuses (less overhead in economy or more effective fighters). The size of this subsidy is usually the main adjustment in a difficulty setting.
Well played. I regret that I have only 5 mod points to give to Slashdot posters.
I just wish someone would come up with something that had the fun of the orignial game with more modern graphics. That was the only game I put down and walked away from after I started dreaming about it and seeing the red pulsating alien indicator when not playing. I still recall my first terror mission when the Etherials showed up, I was feeling pretty badass until I turned tail and ran with about half my squad. That and Master of Orion got more gaming time than anything else I've played in the last decade.
I think marble madness has you predated by a few months.
The author of the article is incorrect, WSJ.com is not the primary generator of revenue or income of electronic publishing, they don't make money on the electronic version of their newspaper. They make tons of money on their DJ newswire services and index services (which have effectivly zero current costs). Newswire services are news terminals similar to Reuters or Bloomberg terminals that probably rent for several thousand dollars annually. You can dig up the numbers in their quarterly releases.
Print subscribers create an exceedingly valuable advertising market (especially for the Journal which counts most business spenders in its readership) newspapers make 5x-10x the revenue from advertising that they do from circulation (which is how those free papers survive). Online advertising isn't worth that much yet, so they can't just toss the online subsciptions.
This is all a big fight over control of Dow Jones whose print and online offerings (which go way beyond WSJ.com) are worth quite a bit, as the founders progeny fights off outsiders (who believe they have better ideas of how to manage those assets) for control. These are exceedingly common in business, go watch Wall Street or read Barbarians at the Gate for other examples of this. Finally, remember that in business press, everyone has an interest in selling you a story.
What about a monthly subscription (either access to the library) or a random title each month or biweekly for say $10-$20 bucks a year.
I'd be surprised if anyone here of a certain age didn't learn more about pirates and 15th century politics from Sid Meier's Pirates than any other source. Certainly we played it to have fun, but after a few games you learned why Drake chose a Pinace over a Galleon when raiding.