Is it just me or is this the last body part we should actually care about regenerating? Once my brain is gone, I couldn't care less if you regenerated it for me to start over with a fresh, empty brain or not. I'd rather them find a way to regenerate my body on my existing head, thank you very much.
I still find the Palm Pre and WebOS as better phone platform all around than the iPhone. Sure, we only have 2 or 3 iFart apps instead of 50, but most of the important apps are covered in the catalog. No one beats Palm as far as importing/organizing contacts, e-mail, multitasking, and GUI go and their web browser is up to snuff with mobile Safari...and those are the real things that matter to me. It's smaller than the iPhone (which is good because I'm a pocket carrier) and has an unbreakable screen, so I won't have to pay some teenage kid on Craigslist $100 to fix my screen like most of the iPhoners I know. The physical keyboard is icing on the cake. That's my "total experience"...being able to do everything I need to do as efficiently as possible. I think what you meant to say was "The iPhone was the first cell phone that clicked with me and when I go to other platforms I miss having that first 'wow' moment like I did the first time I used a modern smartphone OS."
It's funny, modern instruction manuals are....worthless. There's about 10 pages of front matter, including boilerplate information from the console manufacturer (controller configuration, seizure warnings, etc), ToC, etc. Then there's about 5-10 pages on the actual game. Then once you start the game you go through 30minutes to an hour of non-skippable tutorial. It's obnoxious. How many different ways can you explain to someone to hit the button to jump and the other one to shoot?
I remember, back when games were much simpler, even stupidly simple games would have much larger instruction books. Dare I say they were even fun to read? They were full of story, jokes, cool art, etc. To this day, I have all the instruction books for my old NES and SNES games. I wouldn't buy a game without them. Now I couldn't care less about them. Which is sad to say because I write technical manuals for a living. I'd be lying if I said that videogame instruction books weren't influential in me going down this career path.
I agree. I think portable DVD players, gameboys (I know they're DS/DSi/DSiXXXL and PSPs now, but still), etc. have their place on long car trips...but it is a shame how many parents pop in the DVD for their kid when they're just running to the store for milk, etc. These are the times to engage your child. Long trips are the times when you pop in the movie or whatever to keep them from getting into fights.
Well, in addition to what you listed I also couldn't stand: Time Enough For Love by Heinlein, Trigun, any Wild Arms games past the first one, the Mass Effect series...I could go on. At least I readily admit that I don't like the genre at all instead of trying to argue that it's bad even for it's genre. It's not bad, the genres just dumb and it suffers from the source material.
Nope. I thought it was drivel myself. I personally dislike space westerns, so that might have something to do with it...but I couldn't find anything to really pull out of it story or character wise to draw my attention. I thought it was well acted and generally well filmed, but it was just....boring. I consider myself a fairly big sci fi fan as well.
" It's like you're saying that because there is no perfect security, we should therefore do nothing."
This is the key. The biggest security risk is the lay person who uses the system on a daily basis, not the enemy. This is a key reason why credit checks are a regular part of gaining a security clearances. Most sensitive information leaks are from internal sources, not from enemy infiltration.
The thing is, the software is useless to the NSA if they don't have full access to all of the source and no one else does. They have to make sure that there are no holes are security issues with the software and they have to make sure no one else has access to the software source to find potential security holes.
The fact that this software exists isn't any big news....big whoop, it's not really any amazing feat that hasn't been done already. The fact that the NSA has software for this that is approved is big news. Security officers will let out a collective sigh of relief now as they don't have to worry about idiots trying to charge their cell phones/mp3 players via the USB port.
You hit it in your last sentence. The NSA isn't concerned about booting from a USB device. For the system to be certified and contain sensitive information, the BIOS would have to be protected and USB boot would be disabled.
You have to take into consideration, the NSA isn't looking to keep out hackers. Well they are...of course they are...but they also know hackers are hackers and will find their way into a machine. They're looking to lock out and detect/prevent lay people from being able to put in a USB stick and walk away with data they can sell.
I'd trust Opera more than any of the other browser publishers. Opera is in the browser business and that's just about it. They can't afford to put out a shoddy product like any of the other contenders....and they never do.
Yeah, but you're talking about Apple, not Apple. Two distinctly different companies. Apple was a fantastic company that looked to do interesting new things and push concepts and technology. Apple is a company that is so in love with their own vision that they purposely leave out important features if they get in the way of this vision. Palm is/was a great company because they've always had a vision and always pushed the vision, but they've always been realistic about their limitations and mixed a little bit of Apple A with a little bit of Apple B.
But you're absolutely right, Job's has a major NIH issue and it's honestly a shame.
WebOS is by far the best mobile OS on the market. It's still young and still has its problems, but the GUI is as beautiful as it is useful. The "type anything anywhere" concept is beautiful. You want to set an alarm and can't remember that you do that in the clock ap and you don't remember where it is? That's fine...type in alarm from anywhere in the UI and it'll show you the clock icon. It handles multitasking well, looks miles better than anything else on the market, and the best part....there's a backdoor purposely left in for us nerd types to install unapproved apps, overclock the processor, etc. Palm did everything right with WebOS except the marketing.
My first choice for a purchaser would be HTC. They could take their form factors they were designing for Windows Mobile phones, dump WebOS on it, and have market penetration nearly over night. They're going to have to have new designs/concepts for WM7 soon anyway. Either way, there's going to be a bidding war for Palm because of all the patents they hold. The WORST possible thing that could happen would be Apple buying them for the patents and dissolving the software.
I'm not really bothered by the 300k number. I'm sure there's nearly that many Apple zealots waiting to get their hands on one to begin with. What I'm curious about is how many of those 300k people are people who are just going to buy the next Apple gadget on launch day vs. those who bought it out of genuine interest. Also, I'm curious if this will drive up the sales of iPod Touches when people go out to get an iPad but realize they can save a few hundred dollars and basically have the same functionality + portability. Personally, I hope it flops...we don't need Apple dictating, shaping, and propriatizing yet another format...but that's just an off topic rant.
I worked in a tech staffing office for about 7 years and I know the industry pretty well. There is what seems like a large markup at first, but you have to take a few things into consideration. When you work direct at a company, there's a lot of hidden fees that you don't see that come with your employment. There's overhead, computers and office equipment, holidays, administration, etc. As with all businesses, they're going to make money off of you; however, you have to realize that professional staffing agencies (not "temp agencies") are there to build a working relationship with the client. In addition, they want to build a good working relationship with you as well. If your job doesn't go temp to perm, they want to be able to place you somewhere else to keep that source of revenue. There's good agencies and bad agencies, yes...but when you find a good agency it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship.
As far as the agency taking a percentage of your pay, this is 100% inaccurate. You negotiate your compensation with the agency, then the agency decides markup based on your compensation and presents it to the client...so at no time is anything being taken from you. In addition, if you take a temp position through a staffing agency, 95% of the time you should be looking to make MORE than you would if you were working a direct/perm job in your field. These companies pay top dollar after your salary and agency markup because its cheaper for them to pay more for a short term job everytime the short term job pops up than it is to bring someone on staff. Insurance, 401K, etc. is a large part of this. This is why you see so many professional contractors out there. I can work contract positions 9 months out of the year and make roughly the same as I would working a salaried position. The only downside is job security.
Someone being employeed through a staffing agency will have the exact same tax situation as someone working full time at a company. You become an employee of the staffing agency and you are not a contractor in the sense that you do not deal with 1099s.
Nintendo tries more off the wall ideas than any other company in the industry. For as many failures as they've had, they also have a higher success rate than most at creating and marketing fads. Lets hope there's something to this one and it doesn't go the way of the Virtual Boy. New Nintendo handhelds make me giddy.
So, say this does catch on and people start getting house doors and cars compatible with this. What if there's an emergency and I have to get into the house of a family member or friend and I don't have an iphone or whatever it'll take the pop the lock? If there's an emergency, I doubt they're going to be able to hand me their phone or whatever this device might be...and what if they're so used to using this device to open all their doors and they don't have a physical key on them?
I don't like this every growing dependence on electronic devices for simple tasks, like opening and closing doors. Of course, there's going to be the arguement that this is great for when you forget your keys at home, lock your keys in your car, etc. And it will be great for those uses. But come on, lets me seriously, people will use their device exclusively as their way of unlocking doors. I definitely don't want to be stuck outside of my car or house just because I forgot to charge my phone before I leave the office...
IMO, this is a slightly different scenario. You're basically selling a license per photograph. If they want to buy the picture, they have to buy it from you. This is like selling multiple seats of a piece of software. From what I got out of the article, this would be more along the lines of buying 10 copyrighted photos from you and drawing mustaches on them at home. Then again, it's early and my attention span isn't quite there yet.
This is a weird and slippery slope. I don't think that anybody feels that because they buy software they own rights to the source code, to edit code and distribute it, etc. But they do own the rights to use or utilize the software as they see fit within the confines of common copyright laws.
The author uses the example that you can buy a book or movie, but you don't own the rights to that book or movie. And that's fine, I think we'll all agree to that. However, if I buy a replication of a piece of art, a book, etc., I'm allowed to vandalize/defile it in any nature I wish as long as its for personal use and it is not distributed.
I'm not sure that I like the slippery slope that a lot of developers are trying to tread these days. Notice my use of the words "use" and "utilize." These are two very different words in the English language. Use means, well, to use something. Utilize means to use something for a purpose in which it wasn't originally intended. I can go to the hardware store and buy thousands of different tools and items for home repairs and various other projects. Many times I'll buy patented items because they almost meet my uses. I modify and "utilize" them for the specific task at hand. And this is fine, as you don't see me on the street corner trying to sell modified black and decker pecker wreckers at a markup. I think think that 1) that would infringe patents, 2) that would infringe registered trademarks and patents, and 3) I'd probably go to jail for trying to sell "pecker wreckers."
In the end, I have a product that meets my requirements and the vendor makes money off of my purchase. Everyone is happy, right? I think that this is the hurdle that software developers have to get over. As long as people buy your software, that's all you should care about. Let them modify it to their hearts content as long as they're not selling it for profit. In fact, possibly learn a lesson and integrate some of these features in your next version to appeal to a larger market. I think this is mutually beneficial in the long run. EULA are trash and need to go away.
I agree, if you have a finite and reasonable number of possible errors, the puppy/colored box idea should work great as long as each different error icon is unique enough (i.e., a puppy icon and a kitten icon would be fine, but I would avoid different types of puppies...the user will remember they saw a puppy, not necessarily what type of puppy).
Other possible ideas would be to just assign a number to your error and make it flash. Flashing gives a sense of urgency and, as long as your list of typical errors is small, the user should be able to recall a flashing number. If you get into the hundreds, this might not work so well.
I find it so weird that these companies aren't forward thinking enough to see how the used game market HUGELY benefits them. A few scenarios:
1) Gamer - A gamer is probably going to buy all the titles they're excited about at launch. They'll then buy the titles they wanted to play, but could wait for, used. Low and behold, they really liked this title they bought used. They go back and buy all the downloadable content. They're actually excited about the sequel and buy it brand new. And probably buy the downloadable content for it as well. And if they didn't care for it, whatever. THESE are the people who are keeping the industry and niche markets afloat to begin with.
2) Casual Gamer - This is the guy who's probably only interested in the big, flagship titles. Give him the newest Mario, Halo, Madden etc. and he's set. He's probably buying a few games a year and they're probably going to be new from the store. He'll probably borrow games before he buys a lot of used ones. Will probably buy some of the older games that came out before he got his system used. He's kept EA afloat for years buying the newest Madden game.
3) Kids - This is the crowd that really chews through the used games. Mom and dad take the kids shopping and the kids want a game. Mom says "pick out something under $10/$20." They end up getting some terrible game used that probably shouldn't have ever been bought new to begin with. Like it or not, besides birthdays and Christmas this is the only way these kids are ever going to get games to play. Mom and dad can't afford $60 a pop. Kids don't care that it's new, just that it seems cool. The industry makes very little off of kids, but these kids get older and get jobs and they become the new gamers and casual gamers.
4) The Mooch - Just be glad this guy even bothers buying used games. At least that stimulates the economy. Would probably be just as happy to download games and play them with a mod chip. You're not going to convert this guy. Don't waste your time.
Like the old adage says, "Any press is good press" and I think this is how the industry should look at used games. People buying used games are buying advertisement that will entice them to buy future games in the series and other games from the developer. The more games people play, the more people like games and the more games they buy. And, regardless if the game is bought new or used, there is still money to be made off of the DLC. It's not news that Sony wants, very badly, to turn the game industry into a cloud market. You buy the game and basically play it through the internet. You own no physical item, just the entitlement to play the game. All this will do is thwart people from buying nothing but the top tier games.
Just because you bought your system near a major change in computer components doesn't mean everyone does. I've used my current computer for at least 4 years and I've upgrade my video card twice and I'm about to buy a new processor. Am I going to get the latest and greatest processor? No. Will it be a good upgrade from what I have? Yes.
In addition, think about adding extra hard drives, upgrading your old dvd-r to a blu ray drive, etc. While a lot of people don't upgrade their computers, plenty do and plenty plan their pc purchase around components that they know will be upgradable to at least some degree.
So, how exactly does it save you a small fortune? All I see are people nodding their heads, but I see no reason this is true. Even if you compare the lowest cost Mac Mini w/ an equal price PC (which will be speced better and be upgradeable), I don't see the savings. Not only is Windows 7 equally as stable as a Mac (in my experience, I use both), but the network's are (debatably) easier to setup on a PC. And the real kicker is, you don't have all that downtime when employees have to learn to get accustomed to an OS and software that they've probably never used. I'd throw in at least a few hundred dollars per employee in lost productivity. You can argue all day that the user probably isn't used to Windows 7 either, but it's much less of a jump going from XP/Vista to Windows 7 (along with the built in knowledge that it's Windows and it should work similarly to XP/Vista) than going to OSX (which is exotic and, even if it is simple to use, users will have a bit of hesitation to). When the PC breaks, a computer shop will easily be able to fix it if the owners son or nephew isn't a computer wiz. When the Mini breaks, well...there's a good chance it's just broken.
Honestly, I'm all for Macs...they're a good product even if they're overpriced. But I don't believe for a second you're going to save a small fortune switching an office to a Mac without a strong argument.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me or is this the last body part we should actually care about regenerating? Once my brain is gone, I couldn't care less if you regenerated it for me to start over with a fresh, empty brain or not. I'd rather them find a way to regenerate my body on my existing head, thank you very much.
I still find the Palm Pre and WebOS as better phone platform all around than the iPhone. Sure, we only have 2 or 3 iFart apps instead of 50, but most of the important apps are covered in the catalog. No one beats Palm as far as importing/organizing contacts, e-mail, multitasking, and GUI go and their web browser is up to snuff with mobile Safari...and those are the real things that matter to me. It's smaller than the iPhone (which is good because I'm a pocket carrier) and has an unbreakable screen, so I won't have to pay some teenage kid on Craigslist $100 to fix my screen like most of the iPhoners I know. The physical keyboard is icing on the cake. That's my "total experience"...being able to do everything I need to do as efficiently as possible. I think what you meant to say was "The iPhone was the first cell phone that clicked with me and when I go to other platforms I miss having that first 'wow' moment like I did the first time I used a modern smartphone OS."
It's funny, modern instruction manuals are....worthless. There's about 10 pages of front matter, including boilerplate information from the console manufacturer (controller configuration, seizure warnings, etc), ToC, etc. Then there's about 5-10 pages on the actual game. Then once you start the game you go through 30minutes to an hour of non-skippable tutorial. It's obnoxious. How many different ways can you explain to someone to hit the button to jump and the other one to shoot?
I remember, back when games were much simpler, even stupidly simple games would have much larger instruction books. Dare I say they were even fun to read? They were full of story, jokes, cool art, etc. To this day, I have all the instruction books for my old NES and SNES games. I wouldn't buy a game without them. Now I couldn't care less about them. Which is sad to say because I write technical manuals for a living. I'd be lying if I said that videogame instruction books weren't influential in me going down this career path.
I agree. I think portable DVD players, gameboys (I know they're DS/DSi/DSiXXXL and PSPs now, but still), etc. have their place on long car trips...but it is a shame how many parents pop in the DVD for their kid when they're just running to the store for milk, etc. These are the times to engage your child. Long trips are the times when you pop in the movie or whatever to keep them from getting into fights.
Well, in addition to what you listed I also couldn't stand: Time Enough For Love by Heinlein, Trigun, any Wild Arms games past the first one, the Mass Effect series...I could go on. At least I readily admit that I don't like the genre at all instead of trying to argue that it's bad even for it's genre. It's not bad, the genres just dumb and it suffers from the source material.
Nope. I thought it was drivel myself. I personally dislike space westerns, so that might have something to do with it...but I couldn't find anything to really pull out of it story or character wise to draw my attention. I thought it was well acted and generally well filmed, but it was just....boring. I consider myself a fairly big sci fi fan as well.
" It's like you're saying that because there is no perfect security, we should therefore do nothing."
This is the key. The biggest security risk is the lay person who uses the system on a daily basis, not the enemy. This is a key reason why credit checks are a regular part of gaining a security clearances. Most sensitive information leaks are from internal sources, not from enemy infiltration.
The thing is, the software is useless to the NSA if they don't have full access to all of the source and no one else does. They have to make sure that there are no holes are security issues with the software and they have to make sure no one else has access to the software source to find potential security holes.
The fact that this software exists isn't any big news....big whoop, it's not really any amazing feat that hasn't been done already. The fact that the NSA has software for this that is approved is big news. Security officers will let out a collective sigh of relief now as they don't have to worry about idiots trying to charge their cell phones/mp3 players via the USB port.
You hit it in your last sentence. The NSA isn't concerned about booting from a USB device. For the system to be certified and contain sensitive information, the BIOS would have to be protected and USB boot would be disabled.
You have to take into consideration, the NSA isn't looking to keep out hackers. Well they are...of course they are...but they also know hackers are hackers and will find their way into a machine. They're looking to lock out and detect/prevent lay people from being able to put in a USB stick and walk away with data they can sell.
I'd trust Opera more than any of the other browser publishers. Opera is in the browser business and that's just about it. They can't afford to put out a shoddy product like any of the other contenders....and they never do.
Yeah, but you're talking about Apple, not Apple. Two distinctly different companies. Apple was a fantastic company that looked to do interesting new things and push concepts and technology. Apple is a company that is so in love with their own vision that they purposely leave out important features if they get in the way of this vision. Palm is/was a great company because they've always had a vision and always pushed the vision, but they've always been realistic about their limitations and mixed a little bit of Apple A with a little bit of Apple B.
But you're absolutely right, Job's has a major NIH issue and it's honestly a shame.
WebOS is by far the best mobile OS on the market. It's still young and still has its problems, but the GUI is as beautiful as it is useful. The "type anything anywhere" concept is beautiful. You want to set an alarm and can't remember that you do that in the clock ap and you don't remember where it is? That's fine...type in alarm from anywhere in the UI and it'll show you the clock icon. It handles multitasking well, looks miles better than anything else on the market, and the best part....there's a backdoor purposely left in for us nerd types to install unapproved apps, overclock the processor, etc. Palm did everything right with WebOS except the marketing.
My first choice for a purchaser would be HTC. They could take their form factors they were designing for Windows Mobile phones, dump WebOS on it, and have market penetration nearly over night. They're going to have to have new designs/concepts for WM7 soon anyway. Either way, there's going to be a bidding war for Palm because of all the patents they hold. The WORST possible thing that could happen would be Apple buying them for the patents and dissolving the software.
Lord knows, if this wasn't true the FPS genre would have died off in the 90s.
I'm not really bothered by the 300k number. I'm sure there's nearly that many Apple zealots waiting to get their hands on one to begin with. What I'm curious about is how many of those 300k people are people who are just going to buy the next Apple gadget on launch day vs. those who bought it out of genuine interest. Also, I'm curious if this will drive up the sales of iPod Touches when people go out to get an iPad but realize they can save a few hundred dollars and basically have the same functionality + portability. Personally, I hope it flops...we don't need Apple dictating, shaping, and propriatizing yet another format...but that's just an off topic rant.
How do you explain people who were born blind?
I worked in a tech staffing office for about 7 years and I know the industry pretty well. There is what seems like a large markup at first, but you have to take a few things into consideration. When you work direct at a company, there's a lot of hidden fees that you don't see that come with your employment. There's overhead, computers and office equipment, holidays, administration, etc. As with all businesses, they're going to make money off of you; however, you have to realize that professional staffing agencies (not "temp agencies") are there to build a working relationship with the client. In addition, they want to build a good working relationship with you as well. If your job doesn't go temp to perm, they want to be able to place you somewhere else to keep that source of revenue. There's good agencies and bad agencies, yes...but when you find a good agency it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship.
As far as the agency taking a percentage of your pay, this is 100% inaccurate. You negotiate your compensation with the agency, then the agency decides markup based on your compensation and presents it to the client...so at no time is anything being taken from you. In addition, if you take a temp position through a staffing agency, 95% of the time you should be looking to make MORE than you would if you were working a direct/perm job in your field. These companies pay top dollar after your salary and agency markup because its cheaper for them to pay more for a short term job everytime the short term job pops up than it is to bring someone on staff. Insurance, 401K, etc. is a large part of this. This is why you see so many professional contractors out there. I can work contract positions 9 months out of the year and make roughly the same as I would working a salaried position. The only downside is job security.
Someone being employeed through a staffing agency will have the exact same tax situation as someone working full time at a company. You become an employee of the staffing agency and you are not a contractor in the sense that you do not deal with 1099s.
Right, except Apple isn't in "the industry." The "industry" we're talking about is the console gaming industry.
At least I hope not.
Nintendo tries more off the wall ideas than any other company in the industry. For as many failures as they've had, they also have a higher success rate than most at creating and marketing fads. Lets hope there's something to this one and it doesn't go the way of the Virtual Boy. New Nintendo handhelds make me giddy.
So, say this does catch on and people start getting house doors and cars compatible with this. What if there's an emergency and I have to get into the house of a family member or friend and I don't have an iphone or whatever it'll take the pop the lock? If there's an emergency, I doubt they're going to be able to hand me their phone or whatever this device might be...and what if they're so used to using this device to open all their doors and they don't have a physical key on them?
I don't like this every growing dependence on electronic devices for simple tasks, like opening and closing doors. Of course, there's going to be the arguement that this is great for when you forget your keys at home, lock your keys in your car, etc. And it will be great for those uses. But come on, lets me seriously, people will use their device exclusively as their way of unlocking doors. I definitely don't want to be stuck outside of my car or house just because I forgot to charge my phone before I leave the office...
IMO, this is a slightly different scenario. You're basically selling a license per photograph. If they want to buy the picture, they have to buy it from you. This is like selling multiple seats of a piece of software. From what I got out of the article, this would be more along the lines of buying 10 copyrighted photos from you and drawing mustaches on them at home. Then again, it's early and my attention span isn't quite there yet.
This is a weird and slippery slope. I don't think that anybody feels that because they buy software they own rights to the source code, to edit code and distribute it, etc. But they do own the rights to use or utilize the software as they see fit within the confines of common copyright laws.
The author uses the example that you can buy a book or movie, but you don't own the rights to that book or movie. And that's fine, I think we'll all agree to that. However, if I buy a replication of a piece of art, a book, etc., I'm allowed to vandalize/defile it in any nature I wish as long as its for personal use and it is not distributed.
I'm not sure that I like the slippery slope that a lot of developers are trying to tread these days. Notice my use of the words "use" and "utilize." These are two very different words in the English language. Use means, well, to use something. Utilize means to use something for a purpose in which it wasn't originally intended. I can go to the hardware store and buy thousands of different tools and items for home repairs and various other projects. Many times I'll buy patented items because they almost meet my uses. I modify and "utilize" them for the specific task at hand. And this is fine, as you don't see me on the street corner trying to sell modified black and decker pecker wreckers at a markup. I think think that 1) that would infringe patents, 2) that would infringe registered trademarks and patents, and 3) I'd probably go to jail for trying to sell "pecker wreckers."
In the end, I have a product that meets my requirements and the vendor makes money off of my purchase. Everyone is happy, right? I think that this is the hurdle that software developers have to get over. As long as people buy your software, that's all you should care about. Let them modify it to their hearts content as long as they're not selling it for profit. In fact, possibly learn a lesson and integrate some of these features in your next version to appeal to a larger market. I think this is mutually beneficial in the long run. EULA are trash and need to go away.
I agree, if you have a finite and reasonable number of possible errors, the puppy/colored box idea should work great as long as each different error icon is unique enough (i.e., a puppy icon and a kitten icon would be fine, but I would avoid different types of puppies...the user will remember they saw a puppy, not necessarily what type of puppy).
Other possible ideas would be to just assign a number to your error and make it flash. Flashing gives a sense of urgency and, as long as your list of typical errors is small, the user should be able to recall a flashing number. If you get into the hundreds, this might not work so well.
I find it so weird that these companies aren't forward thinking enough to see how the used game market HUGELY benefits them. A few scenarios:
1) Gamer - A gamer is probably going to buy all the titles they're excited about at launch. They'll then buy the titles they wanted to play, but could wait for, used. Low and behold, they really liked this title they bought used. They go back and buy all the downloadable content. They're actually excited about the sequel and buy it brand new. And probably buy the downloadable content for it as well. And if they didn't care for it, whatever. THESE are the people who are keeping the industry and niche markets afloat to begin with.
2) Casual Gamer - This is the guy who's probably only interested in the big, flagship titles. Give him the newest Mario, Halo, Madden etc. and he's set. He's probably buying a few games a year and they're probably going to be new from the store. He'll probably borrow games before he buys a lot of used ones. Will probably buy some of the older games that came out before he got his system used. He's kept EA afloat for years buying the newest Madden game.
3) Kids - This is the crowd that really chews through the used games. Mom and dad take the kids shopping and the kids want a game. Mom says "pick out something under $10/$20." They end up getting some terrible game used that probably shouldn't have ever been bought new to begin with. Like it or not, besides birthdays and Christmas this is the only way these kids are ever going to get games to play. Mom and dad can't afford $60 a pop. Kids don't care that it's new, just that it seems cool. The industry makes very little off of kids, but these kids get older and get jobs and they become the new gamers and casual gamers.
4) The Mooch - Just be glad this guy even bothers buying used games. At least that stimulates the economy. Would probably be just as happy to download games and play them with a mod chip. You're not going to convert this guy. Don't waste your time.
Like the old adage says, "Any press is good press" and I think this is how the industry should look at used games. People buying used games are buying advertisement that will entice them to buy future games in the series and other games from the developer. The more games people play, the more people like games and the more games they buy. And, regardless if the game is bought new or used, there is still money to be made off of the DLC. It's not news that Sony wants, very badly, to turn the game industry into a cloud market. You buy the game and basically play it through the internet. You own no physical item, just the entitlement to play the game. All this will do is thwart people from buying nothing but the top tier games.
Just because you bought your system near a major change in computer components doesn't mean everyone does. I've used my current computer for at least 4 years and I've upgrade my video card twice and I'm about to buy a new processor. Am I going to get the latest and greatest processor? No. Will it be a good upgrade from what I have? Yes.
In addition, think about adding extra hard drives, upgrading your old dvd-r to a blu ray drive, etc. While a lot of people don't upgrade their computers, plenty do and plenty plan their pc purchase around components that they know will be upgradable to at least some degree.
So, how exactly does it save you a small fortune? All I see are people nodding their heads, but I see no reason this is true. Even if you compare the lowest cost Mac Mini w/ an equal price PC (which will be speced better and be upgradeable), I don't see the savings. Not only is Windows 7 equally as stable as a Mac (in my experience, I use both), but the network's are (debatably) easier to setup on a PC. And the real kicker is, you don't have all that downtime when employees have to learn to get accustomed to an OS and software that they've probably never used. I'd throw in at least a few hundred dollars per employee in lost productivity. You can argue all day that the user probably isn't used to Windows 7 either, but it's much less of a jump going from XP/Vista to Windows 7 (along with the built in knowledge that it's Windows and it should work similarly to XP/Vista) than going to OSX (which is exotic and, even if it is simple to use, users will have a bit of hesitation to). When the PC breaks, a computer shop will easily be able to fix it if the owners son or nephew isn't a computer wiz. When the Mini breaks, well...there's a good chance it's just broken.
Honestly, I'm all for Macs...they're a good product even if they're overpriced. But I don't believe for a second you're going to save a small fortune switching an office to a Mac without a strong argument.