Here's what these guys had to say:
"Yes, as long as the inspection is voluntary. No, if the bag check is involuntary or coerced. This is a rather fine legal distinction that is subject to misunderstanding and abuse. Basically, nothing in the law gives the merchant the right to detain a customer for the purpose of searching a shopping bag unless there is a reasonable suspicion of retail theft. "
The other thing to consider is that... sometimes coincidences happen! People die all the time, and 64 year old dudes face 25 - 40 years in prison are probably under a lot of stress at the best of times. Combine that with high altitude, who knows. Not everything is a conspiracy.
I can see we'll only be able to come to a heated agreement here, no matter what, but I still disagree -- your notion that GTA has primitive storytelling is based on your definition of "storytelling", not mine.
IMHO, GTA has about as deep a story as ICO... crap happens in the game and I make up the story in my head. People love Ico's "story" and bash GTA's, but they have about the same level of exposition as far as I'm concerned... GTA actually has more, to be honest.
For the record, I'm one of those people who bash GTA's story and love Ico's, but I think describing the storytelling of GTA as "primitive" just because it doesn't adhere to standard forms is nosogood. I see what you're saying though.
I hate that bag search scam... "Sir, I need to see your receipt..."
My typical reaction is to stare straight ahead and keep walking -- this saves a lot of time at Fry's, where there will usually be a 10 person line waiting to show their receipt to someone. Sometimes though, I've engaged in conversation, which is usually me saying "if you think I stole something, tackle me and call the cops, otherwise, go fuck yourself."
I do feel bad being rude to someone who has a crappy job, but I dislike the implication that they think I'm trying to steal something.
It may be obvious to anyone who knows anything about game design, but it isn't necessarily as obvious to the millions of people who play and like GTA. Although GTA doesn't do conventional linear storytelling, it does offer a compelling environment (ok, I'll say it -- a sandbox, if you will) for those who want to create their own mental narrative.
A GTA player may not be saying... "hmm... I enjoy beating this whore, but when does the entire story climax... what is my character's raison d'etre?" but that doesn't mean they aren't making up a story for what's going on in their heads.
I think Google pays them for the year; they just can't work. Anyone know how this stuff works? In CA, non-competes are invalid, so I don't really understand how they get enforced elsewhere.
Actually, it carries the same weight as law, in practice, because the AG reports to the president, so if the president is like "yo, don't do this," the AG won't. It doesn't have the same force of law in that future execs could overrule it. Executive orders are something all presidents do. Clinton had one notable one that banned logging on huge swaths of previously loggable federal land.
I enjoy Costco's inexpensive hotdogs and pizza, as well as the food samples, but I would advise people to only purchase things there that they know the prices of otherwise. For instance, catfood was like $36 there for a massive flat of it -- seemed like a great deal -- but it was only one flavor, and later comparison shopping showed that it was $.02 more per can than just buying it (not on sale) at Safeway. Also, certain things, like mustard or mayonaise, will probably go bad before you use all of it, so you have to factor that into the cost as well. Surprisingly, you can find some really good deals on electronics at Costco.
Still, I prefer CraigsList, because it creates a great environment for procrastinating sports fans. The later I decided to look for tickets on CraigsList, the more likely I will get a good deal on tickets. So far, my best case was paying 1/2 price 3 hours before the game. Go A's!
They could also take five seconds and turn off the power strip the 360 is in. The 360 resynchs time as soon as it logs onto live, so there's not a huge reason to leave it plugged in if you don't have to.
Actually to win the Xprize it needed to be able to carry two or three people. But teams were allowed to fly with one pilot and one (or two) human weight dummies.
They've been in China for a while. And TFA notes that the non-censored version of Google gets way more traffic than Google.cn anyway, so there's really no loss for them if they suddenly "take the moral stand" and stop doing a censored version.
I resent the implication. I *remember* quite well that I am now yelling at teenagers about the exact same crap my parents' generation yelled at me about. But I also understand that just as then it was my role in society to be a sullen, disgruntled, teenager, who no one understood, it's now my role to yell at kids to get off my lawn, stop smoking pot, stop talking on their cell phones, and go get jobs. Can you imagine how fucking BORING being a teenager would be if everywhere you went you encountered calm, understanding adults who were like "ahh, listening to your iPod too loud... I did just the same thing with my walkman when I was a lad..." Those are the kind of adults kids loathe even more than the get-off-my-lawn-and-get-a-job variety.
I think you're misusing the phrase "personal information". I don't mind if Google has a scanner reading every damn email I ever write. I'm totally fine with that - as long as I feel that my privacy is going to be protected.
Given Google's record in China, what makes you think your privacy is going to be protected?
I mean, let's be realistic -- if "they" want to, "they" can read anything you type -- but why make it easy for them by requiring trust in Google to keep your data safe?
You know what I rally, really like about Microsoft, relative to Google? At the end of the work day, when I take home my PC, my stuff isn't stored on Microsoft's servers.
Oh, I know, Google promises to "do no evil" with my personal information, but a) corporate policies change, and b) given how willingly they rolled over for the autocratic and tyrannical Chinese government, Google's promises to "do no evil" don't carry much weight with me.
I'm not sure; I started in '93 and so most of my knowledge comes from then. I know I worked at a smaller, less profitable magazine first, and it was well under the ratio monthly (maybe 33% ads), without going under, so you also have to figure bigger magazine companies, that want lots of profits, probably expect their books to perform better than smaller companies, which are content to make less dough per magazine. As the game industry got bigger, the magazines got more professional, and the ideal edit ratios changed. I seem to remember C&VG and GamePlayers having way less ads than GamePro or EGM, but again, GamePro and EGM are still with us, while C&VG and GamePlayers have gone the way of the dodo. Reading through old computer mags from the 1980s (like Compute! and Byte), they're full of ads, but I know as a user then, I liked the ads as much as I did the editorial content, so there may be some age-based nostalgia that makes you not remember the ads as evily as you may regard them now.
I fully agree on SA. When they lost the mathematical recreations column, I switched to The Science News.
Depends on the magazine, but it can cost $1 or more to print one, and shipping might be.50 or more -- it changes per month. That's $18 right there and you haven't accounted for the cost it takes to acquire the subscribe, or send out those millions of "renew now!" letters, never mind the customer service department, sending out new copies when peoples' get lost or mangled in the mail, etc. It adds up.
Actually, the value proposition that most normal people make is "is the amount of editorial content contained in this magazine worth the purchase price," not "omgwtf ads... in a MAGAZINE! someone call the cops!"
Newsflash: US magazines are ALWAYS 50% ads. That's the goal of the magazine. I used to be the editor of a videogame magazine, so I know something about this subject.
In the US, magazine distribution is really inefficient -- there are hundreds of thousands of places to buy magazines, and to reach the realtively small number of people interested in a nich publication (games, fishing, knitting, etc), you need to print way more copies than you can possibly sell. Selling through 20 or 22% of your newstand copies is considered good, and hitting 30% or higher is fantastic. That means you're wasting the cost of 70% of your newstand distribution, which is a lot. At best, your newsstand sales might break even.
Then you have subscriptions. The $12.99 or $19.99 you pay for a year of a magazine doesn't come close to paying for the printing and shipping. It's a total loss leader. What it does, however, is ensure a certain level of readership for the magazine (vs. the uncertainty of newstand/retail sales).
This number of readers -- the guarenteed circulation -- can then be shown to potential advertisers, along the lines of "hey, look, a quarter-million people subscribe to this magazine! Our research shows they each spend $600 a year on software! You should advertise, because this is your core audience." And then (hopefully) you sell some ads. Advertising is the *only* place a typical US magazine makes any money at all. This means the magazines have to be advertiser focused. Not by giving good reviews to advertisers' products (in six years in the biz, I never saw that kind of influence from advertising happen, even once -- editors typically have no clue what ads will be in the magazine until the see it come back from the printer), but by trying to appeal to a broad audience that makes their numbers look good to advertisers. Different magazines have different ways to accomplish this (EGM by being very broad and inclusive, PSM by being hardcore, etc), obviously, but the goal -- at some level -- is to being pretty advertising friendly as a product.
The size of the magazine, monthly, is basically set by the number of ads. You have a minimum book size (say 96 pages), and if you sell more than 50% ads (say you sell 60 pages), you may go up a form (usually 12 or 16 pages, depending on the printer) to say, 112. But the goal is to keep the ad/edit ratio pretty close to 50%. In lean months (like the summer), you may be at the minimum size, but have many more edit pages than ad pages, and in the fat months (leading up to Xmas), you may have way more ad pages than edit pages (although you'll likely have double or triple the total editorial pages you had in the lean months).
In the UK, by contrast, lossy subscriptions are less well known, and the smaller total size of the market means that newsstand sales can be managed much more effectively. A magazine may sell 80-90% of its retail issues, making newsstand profitable. This reduces the reliance on advertisers, and means magazines don't have to try to be "mainstream" to be as advertiser-friendly as possible. This means magazines that are much more niche than could be successful in the US (such as Edge, RetroGamer, Scootering) can do very well.
That all said, magazines are a fanastic bargain, and given that the ads are really very targeted, I don't mind seeing them in games mags, the same way I enjoy looking at the ads in car mags or other technology magazines.
To me, ask.com's best product is myway.com , a 100% ad-free portal, which you can customize with the traditional (AP news feed, scores, weather, movies, tvlisitings, etc.
When I still used Google regularly, I found that their ads, depending on my search, were as valuable as the search results. I mean, when doing a search for something like "custom pencils" or "cloisinne pins"; the ads that came up were at least as valuable sa the results.
But, Google is so gamed now that for many searches it's totally useless, while smaller sites like Ask or even AltaVista, which use different (and arguably worse) search algorithms, actually provide more usefull results.
For better or worse, Xbox was always second to PS2. PS2 was the everyman system, and Xbox was the system for people who wanted a little more. Put another way, if you were only going to have one console last generation, it was probably a PS2.
Multiple console people, Xbox Buyers, are quick to drop the platform when something new comes along. People who are more mass market, and only have one console, upgrade later because they aren't as rabid about games in general.
So, while Sony will/can/does have a good longterm PS2 business, regardless of PS2, the Xbox 1 biz may not be as long-lived, because the kind of people who buy Xboxes will have already moved on. (Of course, 15 years from now, they'll also be the ones buying them on eBay. "Dude! Halo 1! Remember that!")
Slashdot Mirror
Here's what these guys had to say: "Yes, as long as the inspection is voluntary. No, if the bag check is involuntary or coerced. This is a rather fine legal distinction that is subject to misunderstanding and abuse. Basically, nothing in the law gives the merchant the right to detain a customer for the purpose of searching a shopping bag unless there is a reasonable suspicion of retail theft. "
The other thing to consider is that... sometimes coincidences happen! People die all the time, and 64 year old dudes face 25 - 40 years in prison are probably under a lot of stress at the best of times. Combine that with high altitude, who knows. Not everything is a conspiracy.
IMHO, GTA has about as deep a story as ICO... crap happens in the game and I make up the story in my head. People love Ico's "story" and bash GTA's, but they have about the same level of exposition as far as I'm concerned... GTA actually has more, to be honest.
For the record, I'm one of those people who bash GTA's story and love Ico's, but I think describing the storytelling of GTA as "primitive" just because it doesn't adhere to standard forms is nosogood. I see what you're saying though.
My typical reaction is to stare straight ahead and keep walking -- this saves a lot of time at Fry's, where there will usually be a 10 person line waiting to show their receipt to someone. Sometimes though, I've engaged in conversation, which is usually me saying "if you think I stole something, tackle me and call the cops, otherwise, go fuck yourself."
I do feel bad being rude to someone who has a crappy job, but I dislike the implication that they think I'm trying to steal something.
A GTA player may not be saying... "hmm... I enjoy beating this whore, but when does the entire story climax... what is my character's raison d'etre?" but that doesn't mean they aren't making up a story for what's going on in their heads.
I think Google pays them for the year; they just can't work. Anyone know how this stuff works? In CA, non-competes are invalid, so I don't really understand how they get enforced elsewhere.
Actually, it carries the same weight as law, in practice, because the AG reports to the president, so if the president is like "yo, don't do this," the AG won't. It doesn't have the same force of law in that future execs could overrule it. Executive orders are something all presidents do. Clinton had one notable one that banned logging on huge swaths of previously loggable federal land.
Still, I prefer CraigsList, because it creates a great environment for procrastinating sports fans. The later I decided to look for tickets on CraigsList, the more likely I will get a good deal on tickets. So far, my best case was paying 1/2 price 3 hours before the game. Go A's!
They could also take five seconds and turn off the power strip the 360 is in. The 360 resynchs time as soon as it logs onto live, so there's not a huge reason to leave it plugged in if you don't have to.
You definitely can burn them for friends. In fact, buring iTunes tracks to CD and then re-reripping them is the easiest way to remove the DRM.
Logically, OR does not equal XOR, but linguistically, most people use it as though it does. Hence, and/or.
Actually to win the Xprize it needed to be able to carry two or three people. But teams were allowed to fly with one pilot and one (or two) human weight dummies.
And yet still... one little slightly-less-than-micrometeorite and *poof* But the chances of that happening are pretty small. I'd go.
I resent the implication. I *remember* quite well that I am now yelling at teenagers about the exact same crap my parents' generation yelled at me about. But I also understand that just as then it was my role in society to be a sullen, disgruntled, teenager, who no one understood, it's now my role to yell at kids to get off my lawn, stop smoking pot, stop talking on their cell phones, and go get jobs. Can you imagine how fucking BORING being a teenager would be if everywhere you went you encountered calm, understanding adults who were like "ahh, listening to your iPod too loud... I did just the same thing with my walkman when I was a lad..." Those are the kind of adults kids loathe even more than the get-off-my-lawn-and-get-a-job variety.
I mean, let's be realistic -- if "they" want to, "they" can read anything you type -- but why make it easy for them by requiring trust in Google to keep your data safe?
Oh, I know, Google promises to "do no evil" with my personal information, but a) corporate policies change, and b) given how willingly they rolled over for the autocratic and tyrannical Chinese government, Google's promises to "do no evil" don't carry much weight with me.
I fully agree on SA. When they lost the mathematical recreations column, I switched to The Science News.
Depends on the magazine, but it can cost $1 or more to print one, and shipping might be .50 or more -- it changes per month. That's $18 right there and you haven't accounted for the cost it takes to acquire the subscribe, or send out those millions of "renew now!" letters, never mind the customer service department, sending out new copies when peoples' get lost or mangled in the mail, etc. It adds up.
Actually, the value proposition that most normal people make is "is the amount of editorial content contained in this magazine worth the purchase price," not "omgwtf ads... in a MAGAZINE! someone call the cops!"
In the US, magazine distribution is really inefficient -- there are hundreds of thousands of places to buy magazines, and to reach the realtively small number of people interested in a nich publication (games, fishing, knitting, etc), you need to print way more copies than you can possibly sell. Selling through 20 or 22% of your newstand copies is considered good, and hitting 30% or higher is fantastic. That means you're wasting the cost of 70% of your newstand distribution, which is a lot. At best, your newsstand sales might break even.
Then you have subscriptions. The $12.99 or $19.99 you pay for a year of a magazine doesn't come close to paying for the printing and shipping. It's a total loss leader. What it does, however, is ensure a certain level of readership for the magazine (vs. the uncertainty of newstand/retail sales).
This number of readers -- the guarenteed circulation -- can then be shown to potential advertisers, along the lines of "hey, look, a quarter-million people subscribe to this magazine! Our research shows they each spend $600 a year on software! You should advertise, because this is your core audience." And then (hopefully) you sell some ads. Advertising is the *only* place a typical US magazine makes any money at all. This means the magazines have to be advertiser focused. Not by giving good reviews to advertisers' products (in six years in the biz, I never saw that kind of influence from advertising happen, even once -- editors typically have no clue what ads will be in the magazine until the see it come back from the printer), but by trying to appeal to a broad audience that makes their numbers look good to advertisers. Different magazines have different ways to accomplish this (EGM by being very broad and inclusive, PSM by being hardcore, etc), obviously, but the goal -- at some level -- is to being pretty advertising friendly as a product.
The size of the magazine, monthly, is basically set by the number of ads. You have a minimum book size (say 96 pages), and if you sell more than 50% ads (say you sell 60 pages), you may go up a form (usually 12 or 16 pages, depending on the printer) to say, 112. But the goal is to keep the ad/edit ratio pretty close to 50%. In lean months (like the summer), you may be at the minimum size, but have many more edit pages than ad pages, and in the fat months (leading up to Xmas), you may have way more ad pages than edit pages (although you'll likely have double or triple the total editorial pages you had in the lean months).
In the UK, by contrast, lossy subscriptions are less well known, and the smaller total size of the market means that newsstand sales can be managed much more effectively. A magazine may sell 80-90% of its retail issues, making newsstand profitable. This reduces the reliance on advertisers, and means magazines don't have to try to be "mainstream" to be as advertiser-friendly as possible. This means magazines that are much more niche than could be successful in the US (such as Edge, RetroGamer, Scootering) can do very well.
That all said, magazines are a fanastic bargain, and given that the ads are really very targeted, I don't mind seeing them in games mags, the same way I enjoy looking at the ads in car mags or other technology magazines.
To me, ask.com's best product is myway.com , a 100% ad-free portal, which you can customize with the traditional (AP news feed, scores, weather, movies, tvlisitings, etc.
But, Google is so gamed now that for many searches it's totally useless, while smaller sites like Ask or even AltaVista, which use different (and arguably worse) search algorithms, actually provide more usefull results.
Multiple console people, Xbox Buyers, are quick to drop the platform when something new comes along. People who are more mass market, and only have one console, upgrade later because they aren't as rabid about games in general.
So, while Sony will/can/does have a good longterm PS2 business, regardless of PS2, the Xbox 1 biz may not be as long-lived, because the kind of people who buy Xboxes will have already moved on. (Of course, 15 years from now, they'll also be the ones buying them on eBay. "Dude! Halo 1! Remember that!")