If I'd be japanese, I'd be quite cross at this fucking planet.
Breaking news! Squenix has finally announced a remake of Final Fantasy 7, featuring a brand new ending! After having to deal with one too many Weapon attacks, Cloud and company get pissed off and team up with Sephiroth to kick Gaia's ass!
For every metric in which a person might care and in which category Impulse performs better than A, it turns out that B actually does a better job than Impulse.
Like you said, Impulse doesn't have encryption DRM like Steam, so Impulse is better than Steam for DRM!...but then if i care about that then GOG has absolutely no DRM, so GOG is better than Impulse.
As for GOG service a different market, does it really? It certainly serves a slightly different product (though their definition of what's "Old" is changing pretty constantly.) However they both sell games to gamers. The reasons why one might prefer one to the other are just more extreme reasons why one might prefer Impulse to either one of them.
Aside from all the other issues others have pointed out, this is really a case where supply and demand applies. Apparently a lot of IT people view working from home as a perk. Every time a company adds a perk to a job they can also reduce the salary by some amount without causing a net change in the desirability of the job. Sure they _could_ pay more due to savings on their end, but why would they when most people would be willing to accept less? That will only happen when the job market is saturated with telecommuting positions and they have to attract talent by increased cash rather than increased perks.
"There are more fighting robots than elevators in the country."
That's the metric we're using? So all i need to do to have my own robot war is build a single robot, and find a country with no elevators for it to attack?
Impulse kind of suffers from being halfway between Steam and Good Old Games.
On average Impulse doesn't have base prices as cheap as Good Old Games.
On average Impulse doesn't have sales discounts as large as Steam
Impulse has more DRM than GOG.
Impulse doesn't have as many really old games as GOG.
Impulse doesn't have as many big new games as Steam.
Impulse doesn't have achievements or community features like the Steam client does.
But Impulse does force you to use a client, unlike GOG.
I like Impulse, and i have bought a number of games from them, but they're certainly not the ones that i've bought the most games from. For just about any single category of comparison either Steam or GOG outperforms it. If it was just a competition between Impulse and _one_ of the other two they'd probably be doing pretty well for themselves, but as things stand...
There's a great fictional story about this- pick up a copy of Vinge's 'Rainbows End' at your local libr... oops.
Except in that case, if i remember correctly at least, the library was giving into bribes from a megacorp that wanted to (destructively) digitize the books as part of their business plan. So it was due to corporate greed and stupidity.
In this case the public doesn't want to pay taxes to fund the library, but they get outraged when the library tries to make cuts to deal with the reduced amount of funding. So it's due to public greed and stupidity.
Ok, as long as you want to point out the obvious, does the second video (which i'd already watched before i asked the question, thanks) actually show the results of a patched rom? Or did they just tweak the speed run script a tiny bit so that it looks the same but the bug fails to be triggered? If it were a serious article i'd be willing to take them at their word, but since the whole thing is a joke anyways i couldn't blame them if they "cheated" in order to make it more humorous.
Sure... your choice... JarJar and Lady Gaga may be good enough for your money, then.
Tell ya... use torrents... same entertainment, cost of the download is pretty low.
Huh, let's see if i can figure out all the arguments made in this thread (by different people.)
3D is more immersive than 2D
Reality is 3D
Reality is more immersive than reproduced entertainment.
Live performances occur in reality and are therefore more immersive
Artists get more money from live performances
Entertainment purchasing decisions should be based on how much entertainment your money will get you.
People who make entertainment purchasing decisions based on value rather than charity may tend to like JarJar and Lady Gaga more.
If you appreciate value you should just download all your entertainment because that's the cheapest way to do it.
So the first question is, does your head explode every time someone goes to see Lady Gaga in concert? Clearly by your logic there must be some kind of contradiction there.
I like Jonathan Coulton, i go to his concerts because i want to be entertained, not as an act of charity. Therefore i like Lady Gaga?
And does it somehow suddenly become a sin when i go to see a live indie performance and then buy one of their CDs after the show? I've removed their performance from reality and made it less immersive! (And therefore like Lady Gaga.)
So are we all supposed to hire live musicians to play music for us in our cars while driving? Are we supposed to hire live performers every evening to come put on a play in our living rooms when we want to see entertainment?
If you're willing to grant that that would be impossible for the average person, both logistically and monetarily, are we then allowed to use recordings whenever we're not making a special occasion to go see something live?
And if we're allowed to use recordings, what exactly is wrong with trying to get the best reproduction of "reality" that we can? If someone thinks 3D is more immersive than 2D because it's more like reality what exactly is the problem? Do you think it's somehow an anti-competitive conspiracy against real live artists?
And finally you conclude that if someone wants the best entertainment value they should just download it for free? Since when does wanting to make good purchasing decisions immediately lead to the recommendation to do things the illegal and free way? Aren't we allowed to both make wise purchasing decisions _and_ keep on living our lives legally and morally? Do you advocate the same thing if someone likes the live performers that you seem to be advocating? Should i steal all the Jonathan Coulton music i listen to and sneak into the back of his concerts rather than buying a ticket?
I stand by my original position that the/. article is nothing more than a Google shill at work.
Uh, did you even read the original article? The final paragraph is:
John Doerr, once said "The Internet is the greatest legal creation of wealth in history." Android may be the opposite of that, the greatest legal destruction of wealth in history.
That doesn't exactly sound like a google shill to me.
In other news, buggywhip makers decry the surging popularity of horseless carriages.
No, as far as i can tell from the description they're not worried that people don't want to buy buggywhips anymore. This is buggywhip makers complaining that people have discovered a new way to use their buggywhips, but each person is using the same whip for multiple purposes instead of buying a separate whip for each way in which they want to use it.
You are very correct. Absolutely everyone spent more money than 60,000. You're probably also right that a lot of them spent more $60,000. So i sure hope they're not doing it for the money, since if they were i could offer them a much better deal. I'd give them 120,000 for their $60,000. They'd probably take me up on it, since 2 is more than $1 right?
"Now that the Experimental Aircraft Association is offering a 60,000 prize for the best ones"
The prize is 60,000? Really? That's not hard, here's a 60,000 just for asking, and i can offer a lot more than that. How about 600,000? Or 6,000,000? Really i can sit here and hold the "0" key down all day, so you can have as big of an integer as you want. (Though at a certain point i might have to switch to scientific notation.)
If you couldn't go to prison for crimes, wouldn't you do things a wee bit differently?;-)
No. I wouldn't. I'm not a sociopath. I don't refrain from doing evil because of a fear of punishment. I refrain from doing evil because I have empathy, and because of that, hurting others hurts me directly.
I don't do evil things to people that i consider good because of empathy.
I don't do evil things to people that i consider evil but who honestly think they're doing good because of morality.
I don't do evil things to clearly evil people (people who do evil and don't give a fuck as long as it benefits them in some way) because of the law, ie fear of punishment.
If that means i'm not as civilized as i ought to be, oh well. Not that it makes a big difference practically speaking, since barring the collapse of civilization i'll behave the same in all circumstances anyways.
I think you're kinda missing the point? I'm pretty sure most people would rather die of old age, but a lot of people don't get that option.
IF i'm going to die tomorrow, i'd certainly rather die working on a spaceship or saving someone else's life or something else important. As opposed to dying working as a cashier at a fast food restaurant during a robbery, or getting killed during a mugging, or failing to look both ways before crossing the street, etc.
Dying old and dying well are both better than dying early and ignobly. Of course the difficult question comes when you have to choose between a long but ignoble life or a early but noble death (whatever your own definition of noble may be.) Luckily (presumably?) most of us aren't faced with that choice.
Even if we directly elected the president we could still have 51% of the House of Representatives, each of whom were elected by 51% of their population, create or veto a law. Even if the views of those Representatives were perfectly reflective of the views of those who voted for them that could mean a law was passed/not passed that only 26% of the population agreed with/disagreed with. As soon as you elect agents rather than exercising direct democracy the results will no longer directly reflect the will of the people, but it still falls under the modern English definition of democracy. That is why there is a distinction between democracy and direct democracy, at least in the language which is relevant to this discussion.
The president is not the government. The president is certainly a very symbolic and relatively powerful position, but it is far from the whole thing. That's why it's a republic and not an autocracy. And he is elected by us, just not directly by a simple majority.
And i'm not redefining the word, according to my dictionary at least the first definition for democracy is "government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." (Re: above, the president is an elected agent of our elected agents.) What does speaking Greek have to do with it anyways? Yes it was originally a Greek word, but all the term literally means in Greek is "government by the people" right? So what if English speaking people hundreds of years ago adopted a Greek word from thousands of years ago to refer to systems of government that fit the exact denotation of the word, if not the exact connotation in Greece? And it would certainly be far from the only word in English, Greek, or any other language that had drifted in meaning from when the word was first coined to its current use. I'm a modern English speaker debating a law proposed by modern English speaking lawmakers that would apply to modern English speaking teachers and students. I would think going by the modern English definition would be acceptable? Whether or not we should have come up with our own name for what we call democracy instead of evolving the use of the Greek word is an entirely different etymological argument.
And the reason i say it doesn't _have_ to be by majority is because it doesn't actually have to be and isn't actually in many democratic systems. It could be by majority, or it could be by plurality, or it could be by super-majority, or it could be something else that i haven't thought of but which still clearly reflects the will of the people. And it could be by a plurality/majority/super-majority/whatever of the elected representatives, which won't necessarily reflect a plurality/majority/super-majority/whatever of the original electors.
"There are a number of governments throughout history that used democracy (everyone votes, and every vote is used to line a trash can), but they are not democratic."
Faulty logic there, or you're using weird definitions. Personally i wouldn't describe that situation as "using democracy," only as "pretending to use democracy," and would thus describe the government as one that pretends to be democratic.
I'm confused about the part where we don't elect our representatives. State representatives, senators and mayors generally run on a straight plurality or majority system. Likewise US representatives and senators. The only significant representative we don't elect directly that i can think of is the President, and in that case we (effectively) vote on representatives on a straight plurality system who then vote on the President.
Many people think that majority rule is a fundamental part of democracy, but it doesn't _have_ to be. "An essential process in 'ideal' representative democracies is competitive elections that are fair both substantively and procedurally." Cynical comments aside, the presidential election in the US is a procedural system that is theoretically fair and competitive. It is not a perfect system, it may very well not be the best system, but you'd have to really nitpick to declare that it's not a democratic system.
So we're a democratic constitutional republic. Kind of like the thing about passwords, something we are, something we do, and something we have. So of course saying we're a democratic republic or a constitutional republic is also correct, though not as fully informative.
Saying that we're a republic and not a democracy is false, unless by democracy you actually mean "direct democracy," and twisting words like that as part of an argument to use correct terminology as the Utah lawmakers seem to be trying to do is rather asinine.
Two anecdotal points. First, i don't really seem to have a circadian rhythm. I can get up early and stay up late one day and get up late and go to bed early on another. Given the opportunity i can take a nap in the middle of the day and then stay up all night and return to a more or less normal sleep schedule the next day. And i've never been bothered by jet lag.
Second, i never have what most people would qualify as trouble falling asleep. However if i don't drop off instantly after going to bed i've got three usual options to speed up the process. Lie still and focus on relaxing muscles one by one, read a book, or play Sudoku on my cell phone. Sudoku usually works just as well as forcibly relaxing myself, sometimes even better, despite the fact that i'm staring into a lit screen and being "interactive." Reading a book _usually_ works just as well, but it does occasionally backfire if it happens to be an particularly interesting book, especially if i'm getting towards the end.
Hey, i want my utopia right now damn it as much as the next person, but do you have a better suggestion?
Since the idea of "the government ought to provide all the basic necessities and then some so no one ever has to go homeless or hungry again" is clearly _WAY_ too conservative, what alternatives do you want to put forth? Are you seriously proposing "just take all the money from the rich and give it to the poor"? Do you really think that would be a viable long term solution?
Slashdot Mirror
If I'd be japanese, I'd be quite cross at this fucking planet.
Breaking news! Squenix has finally announced a remake of Final Fantasy 7, featuring a brand new ending! After having to deal with one too many Weapon attacks, Cloud and company get pissed off and team up with Sephiroth to kick Gaia's ass!
Uh, that was kinda the whole the point?
...but then if i care about that then GOG has absolutely no DRM, so GOG is better than Impulse.
For every metric in which a person might care and in which category Impulse performs better than A, it turns out that B actually does a better job than Impulse.
Like you said, Impulse doesn't have encryption DRM like Steam, so Impulse is better than Steam for DRM!
As for GOG service a different market, does it really? It certainly serves a slightly different product (though their definition of what's "Old" is changing pretty constantly.) However they both sell games to gamers. The reasons why one might prefer one to the other are just more extreme reasons why one might prefer Impulse to either one of them.
Aside from all the other issues others have pointed out, this is really a case where supply and demand applies. Apparently a lot of IT people view working from home as a perk. Every time a company adds a perk to a job they can also reduce the salary by some amount without causing a net change in the desirability of the job. Sure they _could_ pay more due to savings on their end, but why would they when most people would be willing to accept less? That will only happen when the job market is saturated with telecommuting positions and they have to attract talent by increased cash rather than increased perks.
"There are more fighting robots than elevators in the country."
That's the metric we're using? So all i need to do to have my own robot war is build a single robot, and find a country with no elevators for it to attack?
Impulse kind of suffers from being halfway between Steam and Good Old Games.
On average Impulse doesn't have base prices as cheap as Good Old Games.
On average Impulse doesn't have sales discounts as large as Steam
Impulse has more DRM than GOG.
Impulse doesn't have as many really old games as GOG.
Impulse doesn't have as many big new games as Steam.
Impulse doesn't have achievements or community features like the Steam client does.
But Impulse does force you to use a client, unlike GOG.
I like Impulse, and i have bought a number of games from them, but they're certainly not the ones that i've bought the most games from. For just about any single category of comparison either Steam or GOG outperforms it. If it was just a competition between Impulse and _one_ of the other two they'd probably be doing pretty well for themselves, but as things stand...
And here's another article from 1UP.
There's a great fictional story about this- pick up a copy of Vinge's 'Rainbows End' at your local libr... oops.
Except in that case, if i remember correctly at least, the library was giving into bribes from a megacorp that wanted to (destructively) digitize the books as part of their business plan. So it was due to corporate greed and stupidity.
In this case the public doesn't want to pay taxes to fund the library, but they get outraged when the library tries to make cuts to deal with the reduced amount of funding. So it's due to public greed and stupidity.
Ok, as long as you want to point out the obvious, does the second video (which i'd already watched before i asked the question, thanks) actually show the results of a patched rom? Or did they just tweak the speed run script a tiny bit so that it looks the same but the bug fails to be triggered? If it were a serious article i'd be willing to take them at their word, but since the whole thing is a joke anyways i couldn't blame them if they "cheated" in order to make it more humorous.
Did they just make up something random, or could you actually apply the patch to a ROM and "fix" the "bug"?
"Amazon, a company with a proven track record of leveraging a legal advantage (remember one-click?)"
Damn it! You're almost making me want to root for the RIAA! I didn't think that was possible! =P
Sure... your choice... JarJar and Lady Gaga may be good enough for your money, then.
Tell ya... use torrents... same entertainment, cost of the download is pretty low.
Huh, let's see if i can figure out all the arguments made in this thread (by different people.)
3D is more immersive than 2D
Reality is 3D
Reality is more immersive than reproduced entertainment.
Live performances occur in reality and are therefore more immersive
Artists get more money from live performances
Entertainment purchasing decisions should be based on how much entertainment your money will get you.
People who make entertainment purchasing decisions based on value rather than charity may tend to like JarJar and Lady Gaga more.
If you appreciate value you should just download all your entertainment because that's the cheapest way to do it.
So the first question is, does your head explode every time someone goes to see Lady Gaga in concert? Clearly by your logic there must be some kind of contradiction there.
I like Jonathan Coulton, i go to his concerts because i want to be entertained, not as an act of charity. Therefore i like Lady Gaga?
And does it somehow suddenly become a sin when i go to see a live indie performance and then buy one of their CDs after the show? I've removed their performance from reality and made it less immersive! (And therefore like Lady Gaga.)
So are we all supposed to hire live musicians to play music for us in our cars while driving? Are we supposed to hire live performers every evening to come put on a play in our living rooms when we want to see entertainment?
If you're willing to grant that that would be impossible for the average person, both logistically and monetarily, are we then allowed to use recordings whenever we're not making a special occasion to go see something live?
And if we're allowed to use recordings, what exactly is wrong with trying to get the best reproduction of "reality" that we can? If someone thinks 3D is more immersive than 2D because it's more like reality what exactly is the problem? Do you think it's somehow an anti-competitive conspiracy against real live artists?
And finally you conclude that if someone wants the best entertainment value they should just download it for free? Since when does wanting to make good purchasing decisions immediately lead to the recommendation to do things the illegal and free way? Aren't we allowed to both make wise purchasing decisions _and_ keep on living our lives legally and morally? Do you advocate the same thing if someone likes the live performers that you seem to be advocating? Should i steal all the Jonathan Coulton music i listen to and sneak into the back of his concerts rather than buying a ticket?
I stand by my original position that the /. article is nothing more than a Google shill at work.
Uh, did you even read the original article? The final paragraph is:
John Doerr, once said "The Internet is the greatest legal creation of wealth in history." Android may be the opposite of that, the greatest legal destruction of wealth in history.
That doesn't exactly sound like a google shill to me.
In other news, buggywhip makers decry the surging popularity of horseless carriages.
No, as far as i can tell from the description they're not worried that people don't want to buy buggywhips anymore. This is buggywhip makers complaining that people have discovered a new way to use their buggywhips, but each person is using the same whip for multiple purposes instead of buying a separate whip for each way in which they want to use it.
You are very correct. Absolutely everyone spent more money than 60,000. You're probably also right that a lot of them spent more $60,000. So i sure hope they're not doing it for the money, since if they were i could offer them a much better deal. I'd give them 120,000 for their $60,000. They'd probably take me up on it, since 2 is more than $1 right?
"Now that the Experimental Aircraft Association is offering a 60,000 prize for the best ones"
The prize is 60,000? Really? That's not hard, here's a 60,000 just for asking, and i can offer a lot more than that. How about 600,000? Or 6,000,000? Really i can sit here and hold the "0" key down all day, so you can have as big of an integer as you want. (Though at a certain point i might have to switch to scientific notation.)
If you couldn't go to prison for crimes, wouldn't you do things a wee bit differently? ;-)
No. I wouldn't. I'm not a sociopath. I don't refrain from doing evil because of a fear of punishment. I refrain from doing evil because I have empathy, and because of that, hurting others hurts me directly.
I don't do evil things to people that i consider good because of empathy.
I don't do evil things to people that i consider evil but who honestly think they're doing good because of morality.
I don't do evil things to clearly evil people (people who do evil and don't give a fuck as long as it benefits them in some way) because of the law, ie fear of punishment.
If that means i'm not as civilized as i ought to be, oh well. Not that it makes a big difference practically speaking, since barring the collapse of civilization i'll behave the same in all circumstances anyways.
What do you think this is? Your personal blog?
;)
(And for those who don't get the joke, yes, i know
I think you're kinda missing the point? I'm pretty sure most people would rather die of old age, but a lot of people don't get that option.
IF i'm going to die tomorrow, i'd certainly rather die working on a spaceship or saving someone else's life or something else important. As opposed to dying working as a cashier at a fast food restaurant during a robbery, or getting killed during a mugging, or failing to look both ways before crossing the street, etc.
Dying old and dying well are both better than dying early and ignobly. Of course the difficult question comes when you have to choose between a long but ignoble life or a early but noble death (whatever your own definition of noble may be.) Luckily (presumably?) most of us aren't faced with that choice.
Even if we directly elected the president we could still have 51% of the House of Representatives, each of whom were elected by 51% of their population, create or veto a law. Even if the views of those Representatives were perfectly reflective of the views of those who voted for them that could mean a law was passed/not passed that only 26% of the population agreed with/disagreed with. As soon as you elect agents rather than exercising direct democracy the results will no longer directly reflect the will of the people, but it still falls under the modern English definition of democracy. That is why there is a distinction between democracy and direct democracy, at least in the language which is relevant to this discussion.
The president is not the government. The president is certainly a very symbolic and relatively powerful position, but it is far from the whole thing. That's why it's a republic and not an autocracy. And he is elected by us, just not directly by a simple majority.
And i'm not redefining the word, according to my dictionary at least the first definition for democracy is "government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." (Re: above, the president is an elected agent of our elected agents.) What does speaking Greek have to do with it anyways? Yes it was originally a Greek word, but all the term literally means in Greek is "government by the people" right? So what if English speaking people hundreds of years ago adopted a Greek word from thousands of years ago to refer to systems of government that fit the exact denotation of the word, if not the exact connotation in Greece? And it would certainly be far from the only word in English, Greek, or any other language that had drifted in meaning from when the word was first coined to its current use. I'm a modern English speaker debating a law proposed by modern English speaking lawmakers that would apply to modern English speaking teachers and students. I would think going by the modern English definition would be acceptable? Whether or not we should have come up with our own name for what we call democracy instead of evolving the use of the Greek word is an entirely different etymological argument.
And the reason i say it doesn't _have_ to be by majority is because it doesn't actually have to be and isn't actually in many democratic systems. It could be by majority, or it could be by plurality, or it could be by super-majority, or it could be something else that i haven't thought of but which still clearly reflects the will of the people. And it could be by a plurality/majority/super-majority/whatever of the elected representatives, which won't necessarily reflect a plurality/majority/super-majority/whatever of the original electors.
"There are a number of governments throughout history that used democracy (everyone votes, and every vote is used to line a trash can), but they are not democratic."
Faulty logic there, or you're using weird definitions. Personally i wouldn't describe that situation as "using democracy," only as "pretending to use democracy," and would thus describe the government as one that pretends to be democratic.
Thanks for trying though.
I'm confused about the part where we don't elect our representatives. State representatives, senators and mayors generally run on a straight plurality or majority system. Likewise US representatives and senators. The only significant representative we don't elect directly that i can think of is the President, and in that case we (effectively) vote on representatives on a straight plurality system who then vote on the President.
Many people think that majority rule is a fundamental part of democracy, but it doesn't _have_ to be. "An essential process in 'ideal' representative democracies is competitive elections that are fair both substantively and procedurally." Cynical comments aside, the presidential election in the US is a procedural system that is theoretically fair and competitive. It is not a perfect system, it may very well not be the best system, but you'd have to really nitpick to declare that it's not a democratic system.
Is the US a republic? Yes.
Does the US use democracy? Yes.
Does the US have a constitution? Yes.
So we're a democratic constitutional republic. Kind of like the thing about passwords, something we are, something we do, and something we have. So of course saying we're a democratic republic or a constitutional republic is also correct, though not as fully informative.
Saying that we're a republic and not a democracy is false, unless by democracy you actually mean "direct democracy," and twisting words like that as part of an argument to use correct terminology as the Utah lawmakers seem to be trying to do is rather asinine.
Two anecdotal points. First, i don't really seem to have a circadian rhythm. I can get up early and stay up late one day and get up late and go to bed early on another. Given the opportunity i can take a nap in the middle of the day and then stay up all night and return to a more or less normal sleep schedule the next day. And i've never been bothered by jet lag.
Second, i never have what most people would qualify as trouble falling asleep. However if i don't drop off instantly after going to bed i've got three usual options to speed up the process. Lie still and focus on relaxing muscles one by one, read a book, or play Sudoku on my cell phone. Sudoku usually works just as well as forcibly relaxing myself, sometimes even better, despite the fact that i'm staring into a lit screen and being "interactive." Reading a book _usually_ works just as well, but it does occasionally backfire if it happens to be an particularly interesting book, especially if i'm getting towards the end.
Hey, i want my utopia right now damn it as much as the next person, but do you have a better suggestion?
Since the idea of "the government ought to provide all the basic necessities and then some so no one ever has to go homeless or hungry again" is clearly _WAY_ too conservative, what alternatives do you want to put forth? Are you seriously proposing "just take all the money from the rich and give it to the poor"? Do you really think that would be a viable long term solution?