Let's say that I'm an independent developer, and I'm looking to make a revolutionary product that will make computing much, much easier for the majority of users. In order to recoup my expenses, I'm looking to sell it for a small amount of money -- say $5. I'm not greedy, and I figure that I'll sell (literally) billions of copies, across the globe, since my software is so amazing and revolutionary. However, there's a problem: because my software is so awesome, most people will see it as a necessity, and, as a necessity, they will pirate it, en masse. Once I realize this, why wouldn't I just give up and write it off as a lost cause? If something revolutionary isn't even worth $5 to the majority of people, then why should I even waste my time making it, when I could make a killing on something that I market to the lowest common denominator?
I'm not going to pretend that this is an amazing, debate-winning example, and it ignores some strong counter-arguments ("just make it open source", "the government can fund it", "put it on ROM and sell it to Intel", etc). However, it is conceivable that there are situations where one could make this argument, like if my favorite game or movie never gets a sequel, because the piracy would be rampant. I'm not saying that this is an argument that I necessarily advocate, just that it's conceivable that something I would have wanted isn't offered to me, due to piracy concerns.
In general, I find DRM to be detestable (it only punishes the honest), and if I weren't going to buy something anyways, it's difficult to see how anyone has lost money due to piracy. However, piracy does have negative effects, and to pretend otherwise is naive (or outright ignorant). For every person who pirates Windows 7 or Photoshop, Linux and the GIMP become just a little bit less relevant. If Windows 7 and Photoshop were 100% uncrackable, then Linux and GIMP would flourish. Oh well.
So, all those people who supported Barrack Obama since 2000 don't count? And all the people who voted for him in the primary don't count? And so on.
You can say the same thing about any politician. Ronald Reagan was a Hollywood Halfwit, but none of the Republicans ever mention that. It's easy to criticize and ridicule any politician. It's not like you have some special insight into the candidacy and election of Barrack Obama.
No politician is ever as good or bad as the ideologues allege.
Yeah, and why do operating systems have exploits in them? People who write operating systems should contact security researchers and tell them to work for free and find all the exploits.
As long as they protect the users' privacy, this could end up being very interesting. As the users opt into sending more detailed information, such as CPU, video card, and memory, they can collect demographics information useful for answering questions like whether CPU/GPU intensive programs should be included in the default installation. Other information, such as whether the computer is a desktop/laptop could also be used.
Hellgate:London (the next game from the developers of Diablo 2) didn't have a LAN play mode, which made a lot of gamers really pissed off (including me). The single player version of the game was treated like crap. It frequently lagged several patches behind the online server (which was essentially an MMORPG). The final patch, before the game was abandoned, didn't even get ported to single player.
I don't think that anyone is even going to bother with a single player version, if they can get away with it. There's still a market for games like Civilization, but they'll probably get DRM'd to hell, like Sacred 2.
Oh well. Seems like there should be something that can be done with all those user accounts. Bringing in new management could only help, if they're that incompetent.
Cash in on the Web 2.0 fad. Hire a hundred bloggers to blog all day long. Turn AOL.com into a huge social network, rivaling Facebook. Everyone with an AOL account is automatically added to the social network, with all privacy defaults set to "disallow all but my friends". Advertise on television that AOL is now web 2.0, more private than Facebook, and hiring bloggers.
Do they still own the Netscape brand? If so, I'd resurrect it. Make a bootable Linux CD-ROM that has Firefox on it, connects to AOL, and uses KDE as a desktop. Put them in computer stores and gaming stores. Sell them for $1 or make them free.
Hey, Dave. It pains me to disagree with you, but I disagree with you. Not about capitalism, which I agree with. It's just that I don't want to play a game where you pop bubbles. I don't care if you secretly take control of my webcam and post embarrassing pictures of me online, as long as the game is awesome. Doom was awesome. Popping bubbles... not awesome. I admit. I haven't seen the game yet. I might be missing out on the chance of a lifetime to finally be happy and forget about my woe-filled life. But I'm unlikely to take a chance on a game that sounds like it belongs on a Wii. I've got certain preconceived notions about an FPS, an RTS, an RPG, etc., and should a game fall into a demographic that I almost always dislike, I'm unlikely to try it. My ex-girlfriend sounds like the kind of person who'd love this game, so I'll mention it to her. In order to reach her, going to indie game portals wouldn't have worked, anyways. You'd have to advertise on sites that specialize in retro gaming, and, even then, she probably wouldn't even see it, since she doesn't go to these sites often. The only real thing I can think of is to reach out to me, a hardcore gamer who likes carnage and death, because I'm so much more likely to be paying attention to these sorts of things. Thus, make a throwaway game every once in a while, just to remind me that you're still alive and making games. Or give some interviews on a big gaming site about some bullshit like "where ddt sees the games industry going in ten years". or some bullshit retrospective, on the 20th anniversary of Doom or Quake. Or, possibly ebay some autographed, original Doom/Quake memorabilia. This is the sort of thing that will cause me to wake up from my stupor and recognize that an Event has transpired. I'm a big old fanboy, so I'll blab on about it to anyone who will listen, including my ex-girlfriend, who's right in your demographic.
Or you could pay me to handle your marketing. That'd work, too. For a programmer, I think I wield the power of the dark side rather well.
I think you're actually on to something here, and you've hit the nail on the head as to why I can't stand reading slashdot for an extended period of time.
If I ever needed to raise up an army of brainwashed minions who think they're impervious to brainwashing, I'd use slashdot.
They closed my account and cancelled my debit card when I was a day or two late paying off an overdraft fee. Believe me, I told them how I feel back then.
From the viewpoint of Intel, this is actually good practice. They don't know what features that AMD actually supports (through possibly intentional ignorance), and they don't want to cause someone's system to lock up. While I'd rather see my AMD CPU be supported by Intel's compiler, I can understand why they might be reticent to support certain features, even though the CPU reports support for that feature.
Anyways, it's not like MMX/SSE are really used for much of anything but benchmarks and voice synthesis. Or, at least, that's what it was like last time I actually cared enough to look.
When I was a kid, we didn't even have MMX. We made use with math coprocessors, and sometimes we didn't even have that. In fact, I remember using CPUs that didn't even have onboard MMUs or support for protected mode operation. Kids today are spoiled. Try using a VIC 20 or TI 99/4a for a few hours, then tell me how important it is to have your competitor design a compiler that optimizes for your CPU.
I agree. It's horrible. The cliches, the cliches...
I don't know what else is on television right now, because I don't watch television (I borrowed it on DVD), but if this is the BEST TV SHOW EVAR, this really, really makes me glad that I gave up on network television. Holy crap.
It's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Even More Indulgent And Forcefully Quirky (WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK). Oh yeah, I forgot to add a few pop culture references and snarky one-liners. Zing! There, that should do it.
I can't stand Joss Whedon's writing. He's actually arguably worse than Joe Eszterhas, the man responsible for Showgirls.
That wasn't Lord British. That was Chuckles, in what I recall was his first solo venture (Wing Commander didn't come until a few years later).
Anyways, Autoduel wasn't that great. A good Car Wars game would be awesome, though. Imagine the potential for destruction and mayhem on a modern PC, rather than the Apple IIe. I'd kill for a good, modern vehicle combat game.
My mom uses Gentoo and KDE. She's actually a grandmother now, thanks to my sister's kid. Granted, I do some system administration for her (usually when something goes wrong), but she's quite proficient with Gentoo. If you try to sit her down in front of a Windows or Mac system, you'll never hear the end of it. She genuinely does prefer Gentoo and KDE. She comes from the old school CP/M and BASIC days (she's got a working Commodore 64 in her kitchen), so maybe that has something to do with it, too.
Remember, just because they have grandkids doesn't mean they can't read and follow instructions. Also, your grandma might surprise you by having a working Atari 2600 or Intellivision in her attic...
Whenever you use an apostrophe, add the word "ass" after it. If it makes sense, you have properly used an apostrophe. If it does not make sense, you have incorrectly used an apostrophe.
Ad's ass on Toilet Paper???? Nope. Doesn't make sense. You have incorrectly used an apostrophe.
I've been trying to hold off on upgrading, too. I made some minor upgrades over the past few years, but nothing too crazy. Waiting for the dual core systems seemed like a great idea at first, mostly because I'd waited so long already; however, it seems like we're not going to be seeing much in the way of dual core computers for the next few months. Months. Ugh. Forget about them and just buy a good system today, then upgrade to a dual core system in a year. I for one am getting tired of waiting, and I don't want to deal with shortages and high prices (driven by lack of demand and slow production).
I can't wait for dual cores to finally become standard, because I've been using dual processor systems ever since the Pentium II days. My dream system was two dual core Opterons, but that doesn't seem to be panning out as well as I had hoped. Too expensive and too hard to find.
Good luck with your laptop -- it sounds very high end, just not top-of-the-line, like you'd need to play a recent game (on a laptop, at least). If you want some suggestions on other games, send me an e-mail (krachtm@yahoo.com) or IM (cynicalnihilist on AIM), and I'll pass on some games my girlfriend liked. You two seem to have somewhat similar tastes, if you both bought Psychonauts. It's definitely not my kind of game.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Never had any problems with her boobs, and they're far bigger than your sister's. I like them.
I'll take a stab at this.
Let's say that I'm an independent developer, and I'm looking to make a revolutionary product that will make computing much, much easier for the majority of users. In order to recoup my expenses, I'm looking to sell it for a small amount of money -- say $5. I'm not greedy, and I figure that I'll sell (literally) billions of copies, across the globe, since my software is so amazing and revolutionary. However, there's a problem: because my software is so awesome, most people will see it as a necessity, and, as a necessity, they will pirate it, en masse. Once I realize this, why wouldn't I just give up and write it off as a lost cause? If something revolutionary isn't even worth $5 to the majority of people, then why should I even waste my time making it, when I could make a killing on something that I market to the lowest common denominator?
I'm not going to pretend that this is an amazing, debate-winning example, and it ignores some strong counter-arguments ("just make it open source", "the government can fund it", "put it on ROM and sell it to Intel", etc). However, it is conceivable that there are situations where one could make this argument, like if my favorite game or movie never gets a sequel, because the piracy would be rampant. I'm not saying that this is an argument that I necessarily advocate, just that it's conceivable that something I would have wanted isn't offered to me, due to piracy concerns.
In general, I find DRM to be detestable (it only punishes the honest), and if I weren't going to buy something anyways, it's difficult to see how anyone has lost money due to piracy. However, piracy does have negative effects, and to pretend otherwise is naive (or outright ignorant). For every person who pirates Windows 7 or Photoshop, Linux and the GIMP become just a little bit less relevant. If Windows 7 and Photoshop were 100% uncrackable, then Linux and GIMP would flourish. Oh well.
So, all those people who supported Barrack Obama since 2000 don't count? And all the people who voted for him in the primary don't count? And so on.
You can say the same thing about any politician. Ronald Reagan was a Hollywood Halfwit, but none of the Republicans ever mention that. It's easy to criticize and ridicule any politician. It's not like you have some special insight into the candidacy and election of Barrack Obama.
No politician is ever as good or bad as the ideologues allege.
So, when Iran defends itself from what they see as an imperialist nation, they're antagonizing the West?
OK.
But it's still not newsworthy.
Great. So now we'll get a story about Turkey or Romania fielding its first UAV?
I can't wait.
Yeah, and why do operating systems have exploits in them? People who write operating systems should contact security researchers and tell them to work for free and find all the exploits.
As long as they protect the users' privacy, this could end up being very interesting. As the users opt into sending more detailed information, such as CPU, video card, and memory, they can collect demographics information useful for answering questions like whether CPU/GPU intensive programs should be included in the default installation. Other information, such as whether the computer is a desktop/laptop could also be used.
Hellgate:London (the next game from the developers of Diablo 2) didn't have a LAN play mode, which made a lot of gamers really pissed off (including me). The single player version of the game was treated like crap. It frequently lagged several patches behind the online server (which was essentially an MMORPG). The final patch, before the game was abandoned, didn't even get ported to single player.
I don't think that anyone is even going to bother with a single player version, if they can get away with it. There's still a market for games like Civilization, but they'll probably get DRM'd to hell, like Sacred 2.
Oh well. Seems like there should be something that can be done with all those user accounts. Bringing in new management could only help, if they're that incompetent.
God damn. Why do you haste the English language so much?
Cash in on the Web 2.0 fad. Hire a hundred bloggers to blog all day long. Turn AOL.com into a huge social network, rivaling Facebook. Everyone with an AOL account is automatically added to the social network, with all privacy defaults set to "disallow all but my friends". Advertise on television that AOL is now web 2.0, more private than Facebook, and hiring bloggers.
Do they still own the Netscape brand? If so, I'd resurrect it. Make a bootable Linux CD-ROM that has Firefox on it, connects to AOL, and uses KDE as a desktop. Put them in computer stores and gaming stores. Sell them for $1 or make them free.
They could still make it through this.
Hey, Dave. It pains me to disagree with you, but I disagree with you. Not about capitalism, which I agree with. It's just that I don't want to play a game where you pop bubbles. I don't care if you secretly take control of my webcam and post embarrassing pictures of me online, as long as the game is awesome. Doom was awesome. Popping bubbles... not awesome. I admit. I haven't seen the game yet. I might be missing out on the chance of a lifetime to finally be happy and forget about my woe-filled life. But I'm unlikely to take a chance on a game that sounds like it belongs on a Wii. I've got certain preconceived notions about an FPS, an RTS, an RPG, etc., and should a game fall into a demographic that I almost always dislike, I'm unlikely to try it. My ex-girlfriend sounds like the kind of person who'd love this game, so I'll mention it to her. In order to reach her, going to indie game portals wouldn't have worked, anyways. You'd have to advertise on sites that specialize in retro gaming, and, even then, she probably wouldn't even see it, since she doesn't go to these sites often. The only real thing I can think of is to reach out to me, a hardcore gamer who likes carnage and death, because I'm so much more likely to be paying attention to these sorts of things. Thus, make a throwaway game every once in a while, just to remind me that you're still alive and making games. Or give some interviews on a big gaming site about some bullshit like "where ddt sees the games industry going in ten years". or some bullshit retrospective, on the 20th anniversary of Doom or Quake. Or, possibly ebay some autographed, original Doom/Quake memorabilia. This is the sort of thing that will cause me to wake up from my stupor and recognize that an Event has transpired. I'm a big old fanboy, so I'll blab on about it to anyone who will listen, including my ex-girlfriend, who's right in your demographic.
Or you could pay me to handle your marketing. That'd work, too. For a programmer, I think I wield the power of the dark side rather well.
I think that basically sums it up.
Unless you count Kingdom of Loathing and such.
I think you're actually on to something here, and you've hit the nail on the head as to why I can't stand reading slashdot for an extended period of time.
If I ever needed to raise up an army of brainwashed minions who think they're impervious to brainwashing, I'd use slashdot.
They closed my account and cancelled my debit card when I was a day or two late paying off an overdraft fee. Believe me, I told them how I feel back then.
But now I feel a little better about it.
From the viewpoint of Intel, this is actually good practice. They don't know what features that AMD actually supports (through possibly intentional ignorance), and they don't want to cause someone's system to lock up. While I'd rather see my AMD CPU be supported by Intel's compiler, I can understand why they might be reticent to support certain features, even though the CPU reports support for that feature.
Anyways, it's not like MMX/SSE are really used for much of anything but benchmarks and voice synthesis. Or, at least, that's what it was like last time I actually cared enough to look.
When I was a kid, we didn't even have MMX. We made use with math coprocessors, and sometimes we didn't even have that. In fact, I remember using CPUs that didn't even have onboard MMUs or support for protected mode operation. Kids today are spoiled. Try using a VIC 20 or TI 99/4a for a few hours, then tell me how important it is to have your competitor design a compiler that optimizes for your CPU.
I agree. It's horrible. The cliches, the cliches...
I don't know what else is on television right now, because I don't watch television (I borrowed it on DVD), but if this is the BEST TV SHOW EVAR, this really, really makes me glad that I gave up on network television. Holy crap.
It's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Even More Indulgent And Forcefully Quirky (WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK). Oh yeah, I forgot to add a few pop culture references and snarky one-liners. Zing! There, that should do it.
I can't stand Joss Whedon's writing. He's actually arguably worse than Joe Eszterhas, the man responsible for Showgirls.
Don't worry. They'll correct the summary when the dupe is posted later tonight.
That wasn't Lord British. That was Chuckles, in what I recall was his first solo venture (Wing Commander didn't come until a few years later).
Anyways, Autoduel wasn't that great. A good Car Wars game would be awesome, though. Imagine the potential for destruction and mayhem on a modern PC, rather than the Apple IIe. I'd kill for a good, modern vehicle combat game.
That's just creepy.
My mom uses Gentoo and KDE. She's actually a grandmother now, thanks to my sister's kid. Granted, I do some system administration for her (usually when something goes wrong), but she's quite proficient with Gentoo. If you try to sit her down in front of a Windows or Mac system, you'll never hear the end of it. She genuinely does prefer Gentoo and KDE. She comes from the old school CP/M and BASIC days (she's got a working Commodore 64 in her kitchen), so maybe that has something to do with it, too.
Remember, just because they have grandkids doesn't mean they can't read and follow instructions. Also, your grandma might surprise you by having a working Atari 2600 or Intellivision in her attic...
Whenever you use an apostrophe, add the word "ass" after it. If it makes sense, you have properly used an apostrophe. If it does not make sense, you have incorrectly used an apostrophe.
Ad's ass on Toilet Paper????
Nope. Doesn't make sense. You have incorrectly used an apostrophe.
As Benjamin Franklin once said, "He who would give up a chance to fuck the government deserves no more chances to fuck."
Or something.
I hope that you get moderated down so far that your user number goes up.
I've been trying to hold off on upgrading, too. I made some minor upgrades over the past few years, but nothing too crazy. Waiting for the dual core systems seemed like a great idea at first, mostly because I'd waited so long already; however, it seems like we're not going to be seeing much in the way of dual core computers for the next few months. Months. Ugh. Forget about them and just buy a good system today, then upgrade to a dual core system in a year. I for one am getting tired of waiting, and I don't want to deal with shortages and high prices (driven by lack of demand and slow production).
:)
I can't wait for dual cores to finally become standard, because I've been using dual processor systems ever since the Pentium II days. My dream system was two dual core Opterons, but that doesn't seem to be panning out as well as I had hoped. Too expensive and too hard to find.
Good luck with your laptop -- it sounds very high end, just not top-of-the-line, like you'd need to play a recent game (on a laptop, at least). If you want some suggestions on other games, send me an e-mail (krachtm@yahoo.com) or IM (cynicalnihilist on AIM), and I'll pass on some games my girlfriend liked. You two seem to have somewhat similar tastes, if you both bought Psychonauts. It's definitely not my kind of game.