If you've ever prototyped a circuit board, you'd be excited about this tech. The photofabriction process can create professional-looking 1 or 2 layer boards if you know what you're doing, but it's a lot of work.
If this lets you make a prototyping board as easily as you brint the transparency for the photofab, it is a major innovation. Sure you can make perfect prototyping boards fairly easily with a CNC machine, but that's not available to someone who does it as a hobby.
It's called a "printed circuit board" because it was originally made by printing the metal on a substrate. The process of etching the copper clad boards was a later innovation, but the name stuck.
the games are generally of low enough actual quality that the company has to cover their costs up front as much as possible, in order to cover those who drop out after the first month - a large percentage of their inital player-base due to the aforementioned low quality.
So what you're basically saying is that the upfront cost means the game sucks because the company needs to recoup their costs right away. It's better to wait until a game does come out with no upfront costs because then they have faith that people will want to stick around.
People generally believe free things are of lower quality than things they pay for.... and... If it were free, then they might also start to wonder about how much they're really paying for it through that monthly fee.
These statements are contridictory. People will think if it's free it's of lower quality and they'll feel they're being charged for it in the monthly fee. If they think they're being charged in the monthly fee, they'll realize it's not free.
The truth is they *are* paying for it out of the monthly fee, but that's not a bad thing. AOL users not only pay for their own "free" CD, but also all the others that just get thrown out. They don't think because the CD is free the service sucks. Regardless of your opinion of AOL, they are a huge sucess because they give away their software so aggressively and make it up on the monthly fee.
Profitability: It's already nearly impossible to make money on a game given the up-front development costs, and losing the markup at the front end probably means higher monthly fees, which makes it less motivating to play in the long run.
I'm somewhat involved in the board game industry. I imagine the numbers would be similar for computer games. Retail and wholesale markups are each 50%, so out of the $50, the manufacturer only gets $12.50 (already less than the monthly fee for a lot of games). Out of that, they still have to pay for manufacturing costs which are probably around $5.
I really doubt the company would lose a cent if they made the game a free download. The issue is appearance. The game won't be taken as seriously if players don't see it in a shiny retail package. As a previous poster said, RoE doesn't have as much market, probably because players don't see it in store. The companies need to get something into retail stores at a cost of about 1 month's service and then include the first month free.
The trend is going that way anyway. In the early 90's, ISPs charged a big activation fee when the market was new. After a few years that went away, and now a lot of ISPs have promotions like first month free or first 6 months at half price. As the MMORPG industry matures, it will go through the same sort of changes.
If you charge a monthly fee to maintain your virtual world, that's okay. Just don't charge a second time for the game itself. The "game" in the box is just a client to connect to the real game on the server. It's as stupid as if AOL charged $50 for those CDs they give away and then charged their monthly fee.
By charging $50 just to get one's foot in the door, you chase of 90% of the people who would try the game if it just cost the first month's fee. At least some of those people would stick around.
You must be the dumbass. The symbols make a nice pronouncable string of sylables.
h-heli-beb-cnof-ne-na-mg-al-sips-clark-ca....
We only had to memorize the first 40, but the teacher demonstrated that he could still do the first 80.
It's important to memorize the periodic table if you want to do anything in chemistry, so if you can't handle it, you deserve to fail. Everyone knows chemistry is mostly memorization anyway.
This still hasn't happened, and won't for a while yet. There is no viable replacement yet. Flash disks and CD/DVD are great for data storage, but that hasn't been the floppy's main niche for years.
These days the floppy is a lowest common denominator boot media. If your computer won't boot, you use a boot floppy, that alone is why it's still around.
I have floppies from my Apple 2 that still work after 20 years and not being used for years at a time. Most CDs I've burned over 2 years ago have already failed, and my USB notebook HD has already died on me once (taking a lot of data with it). Because of that, I store all my important documents on floppy as well as CD.
For digital camera pictures which I can't store on floppies, I use CDs, but I make a copy of each CD every 6 months...it's stupid to have to do that but modern media is just too unreliable. There have been a lot of articles on slashdot about how unreliable CDs and hard drives are.
By The Learning Channel do you mean TLC? They used to be The Learning Channel, but they changed years ago. Now they fill their schedule with reality TV shows that make survivor look high-brow. For example, a show where they get couples to let a stranger plan their wedding on a small budget, a show where the hosts spend an hour say how horrible the guests wardrobe is, and a lot of home makeover shows like Trading Spaces.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot...their answer to Fox's Magic Secrets Revealed was a series of shows showing the same tricks and pretending they're real. They're also big on shows on paranormal phenomena, also prentending it's real.
That will be a nightmare. Even when MS tries to issue what they think are legitimate security patches they do horrible things (like render Outlook Express unable to receive attachements that don't end in extensions MS approves - this is supposed to stop viruses but it doesn't have any override so I can't receive tarballs or stuffit files at all wihtout asking the sender to rename it to a.zip extension and resend it). Imagine what it will be like when they force you to install patches to break your DivX codec or stop you from running non MS software.
Have they made any progress on their other goal? They wanted to collect a $1 donation for each book from each of the 100 million people they expected to read it, so when they reached the 10,000 book milestone, they'd have raised $1 trillion.
I've bought stuff advertised in the commercials before hearing the commercials. 90% of commercials are so horrible they prevent me from buying the product.
Any OS is only as secure as the user. When an OS has as much market dominance as windows, it will have a lot of stupid users who do things like open email attachments and not install security patches.
That's why any dominant OS will be a prime target for virus writers.
This seems to be assuming "Trusted Computing" is intended to benefit users.
The real reason it exists is precisely to take control away from the computer owner and give it to the content owner. Given that, what is the point of the EFF proposing "fixes" to help keep the computer owner in control, when its primary design goal is the exact opposite?
That argument makes no sense though. The first amendment makes it illegal for the government to pass laws preventing telemarketers from existing at all, but it doesn't prevent people from refusing to hear the messages in a legally binding way.
The same arguement can be used to say the right to make harassing phone calls is protected free speech. In that case, all restraining orders are invalid because they violate the first amendment.
The do not call registry can be taken as a set of restraining orders that individuals apply for to make it illegal for telemarketers to contact them.
The CNN article about the recall says it's kept upright by a computer. I was trying to explain to a friend that that's BS and it's kept upright by the same principle as a bicycle. He just wouldn't believe it. Anyway, nice post.
Why do you seek to portray Verisign as such a sleazy company?
Because they are and always have been.
Besides using the fact that they run the root servers to hijack all unused addresses, in the past they've sent misleading correspondance to domain name owners to get them to switch registrars to verisign when all they want to do is renew.
I did that for a while, the problem is the footprint is way too big. I'm working on a "case" out of plexiglass that has all the components mounted to the outside so its very easy to get at to upgrade anything.
I run a student quotes website at student.profquotes.com. I'd like to register studentquotes.com but it's in the hands of a cybersquatter. There's no way I'd consider buying it from them, and I doubt anyone else is more likely to want the domain. If I really wanted another domain for studentquotes badly enough, there's too many variations for cybersquatters to be a problem; other TLDs or hyphens already give enough alternatives that it would cost more to register them all than the squatter is asking for studentquotes.com.
Slashdot Mirror
If you've ever prototyped a circuit board, you'd be excited about this tech. The photofabriction process can create professional-looking 1 or 2 layer boards if you know what you're doing, but it's a lot of work.
If this lets you make a prototyping board as easily as you brint the transparency for the photofab, it is a major innovation. Sure you can make perfect prototyping boards fairly easily with a CNC machine, but that's not available to someone who does it as a hobby.
Jason
ProfQuotes
It's called a "printed circuit board" because it was originally made by printing the metal on a substrate. The process of etching the copper clad boards was a later innovation, but the name stuck.
Jason
ProfQuotes
the games are generally of low enough actual quality that the company has to cover their costs up front as much as possible, in order to cover those who drop out after the first month - a large percentage of their inital player-base due to the aforementioned low quality.
... and ... If it were free, then they might also start to wonder about how much they're really paying for it through that monthly fee.
So what you're basically saying is that the upfront cost means the game sucks because the company needs to recoup their costs right away. It's better to wait until a game does come out with no upfront costs because then they have faith that people will want to stick around.
People generally believe free things are of lower quality than things they pay for.
These statements are contridictory. People will think if it's free it's of lower quality and they'll feel they're being charged for it in the monthly fee. If they think they're being charged in the monthly fee, they'll realize it's not free.
The truth is they *are* paying for it out of the monthly fee, but that's not a bad thing. AOL users not only pay for their own "free" CD, but also all the others that just get thrown out. They don't think because the CD is free the service sucks. Regardless of your opinion of AOL, they are a huge sucess because they give away their software so aggressively and make it up on the monthly fee.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Profitability: It's already nearly impossible to make money on a game given the up-front development costs, and losing the markup at the front end probably means higher monthly fees, which makes it less motivating to play in the long run.
I'm somewhat involved in the board game industry. I imagine the numbers would be similar for computer games. Retail and wholesale markups are each 50%, so out of the $50, the manufacturer only gets $12.50 (already less than the monthly fee for a lot of games). Out of that, they still have to pay for manufacturing costs which are probably around $5.
I really doubt the company would lose a cent if they made the game a free download. The issue is appearance. The game won't be taken as seriously if players don't see it in a shiny retail package. As a previous poster said, RoE doesn't have as much market, probably because players don't see it in store. The companies need to get something into retail stores at a cost of about 1 month's service and then include the first month free.
The trend is going that way anyway. In the early 90's, ISPs charged a big activation fee when the market was new. After a few years that went away, and now a lot of ISPs have promotions like first month free or first 6 months at half price. As the MMORPG industry matures, it will go through the same sort of changes.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Don't make me pay for the game twice:
If you charge a monthly fee to maintain your virtual world, that's okay. Just don't charge a second time for the game itself. The "game" in the box is just a client to connect to the real game on the server. It's as stupid as if AOL charged $50 for those CDs they give away and then charged their monthly fee.
By charging $50 just to get one's foot in the door, you chase of 90% of the people who would try the game if it just cost the first month's fee. At least some of those people would stick around.
Jason
ProfQuotes
You must be the dumbass. The symbols make a nice pronouncable string of sylables.
h-heli-beb-cnof-ne-na-mg-al-sips-clark-ca....
We only had to memorize the first 40, but the teacher demonstrated that he could still do the first 80.
It's important to memorize the periodic table if you want to do anything in chemistry, so if you can't handle it, you deserve to fail. Everyone knows chemistry is mostly memorization anyway.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Death to floppies. Please!
This still hasn't happened, and won't for a while yet. There is no viable replacement yet. Flash disks and CD/DVD are great for data storage, but that hasn't been the floppy's main niche for years.
These days the floppy is a lowest common denominator boot media. If your computer won't boot, you use a boot floppy, that alone is why it's still around.
I have floppies from my Apple 2 that still work after 20 years and not being used for years at a time. Most CDs I've burned over 2 years ago have already failed, and my USB notebook HD has already died on me once (taking a lot of data with it). Because of that, I store all my important documents on floppy as well as CD.
For digital camera pictures which I can't store on floppies, I use CDs, but I make a copy of each CD every 6 months...it's stupid to have to do that but modern media is just too unreliable. There have been a lot of articles on slashdot about how unreliable CDs and hard drives are.
Jason
ProfQuotes/A?
There where is 1 on this numberline?
Jason
ProfQuotes
By The Learning Channel do you mean TLC? They used to be The Learning Channel, but they changed years ago. Now they fill their schedule with reality TV shows that make survivor look high-brow. For example, a show where they get couples to let a stranger plan their wedding on a small budget, a show where the hosts spend an hour say how horrible the guests wardrobe is, and a lot of home makeover shows like Trading Spaces.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot...their answer to Fox's Magic Secrets Revealed was a series of shows showing the same tricks and pretending they're real. They're also big on shows on paranormal phenomena, also prentending it's real.
Jason
ProfQuotes
That will be a nightmare. Even when MS tries to issue what they think are legitimate security patches they do horrible things (like render Outlook Express unable to receive attachements that don't end in extensions MS approves - this is supposed to stop viruses but it doesn't have any override so I can't receive tarballs or stuffit files at all wihtout asking the sender to rename it to a .zip extension and resend it). Imagine what it will be like when they force you to install patches to break your DivX codec or stop you from running non MS software.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Have they made any progress on their other goal? They wanted to collect a $1 donation for each book from each of the 100 million people they expected to read it, so when they reached the 10,000 book milestone, they'd have raised $1 trillion.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Just use any PDA. I've read dozens of them on my Visor Deluxe.
Jason
ProfQuotes
I've bought stuff advertised in the commercials before hearing the commercials. 90% of commercials are so horrible they prevent me from buying the product.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Reading the article, I just kept thinking of the "if Microsoft made cars" joke.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Any OS is only as secure as the user. When an OS has as much market dominance as windows, it will have a lot of stupid users who do things like open email attachments and not install security patches.
That's why any dominant OS will be a prime target for virus writers.
Jason
ProfQuotes
This seems to be assuming "Trusted Computing" is intended to benefit users.
The real reason it exists is precisely to take control away from the computer owner and give it to the content owner. Given that, what is the point of the EFF proposing "fixes" to help keep the computer owner in control, when its primary design goal is the exact opposite?
Jason
ProfQuotes
Time for a lot of That sounds like the Matrix jokes
Jason
ProfQuotes
Don't forget you'll only be able to use MS certified bread in the toaster.
Jason
ProfQuotes
That argument makes no sense though. The first amendment makes it illegal for the government to pass laws preventing telemarketers from existing at all, but it doesn't prevent people from refusing to hear the messages in a legally binding way.
The same arguement can be used to say the right to make harassing phone calls is protected free speech. In that case, all restraining orders are invalid because they violate the first amendment.
The do not call registry can be taken as a set of restraining orders that individuals apply for to make it illegal for telemarketers to contact them.
Jason
ProfQuotes
The CNN article about the recall says it's kept upright by a computer. I was trying to explain to a friend that that's BS and it's kept upright by the same principle as a bicycle. He just wouldn't believe it. Anyway, nice post.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Didn't Judge Jackson say Bill Gates had a God complex? ...or was that Napolean complex.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Why do you seek to portray Verisign as such a sleazy company?
Because they are and always have been.
Besides using the fact that they run the root servers to hijack all unused addresses, in the past they've sent misleading correspondance to domain name owners to get them to switch registrars to verisign when all they want to do is renew.
I did that for a while, the problem is the footprint is way too big. I'm working on a "case" out of plexiglass that has all the components mounted to the outside so its very easy to get at to upgrade anything.
Jason
ProfQuotes
That was one of the first things I considered. I never thought I'd run a porn site though. :)
Jason
ProfQuotes
I run a student quotes website at student.profquotes.com. I'd like to register studentquotes.com but it's in the hands of a cybersquatter. There's no way I'd consider buying it from them, and I doubt anyone else is more likely to want the domain. If I really wanted another domain for studentquotes badly enough, there's too many variations for cybersquatters to be a problem; other TLDs or hyphens already give enough alternatives that it would cost more to register them all than the squatter is asking for studentquotes.com.
Jason
ProfQuotes