This is the problem with the Music/Movie companies. They want to maximize their profits. So they ran their numbers through some computer, and discovered that movies should cost $X and that CDs should cost $Y. These prices have nothing to do with the cost of producing the CD/DVD, because the cost of those is effectively $0. Instead they try to figure out how many people they can get to buy the product at a certain price in order to make the highest profit. However, these calculations were done a long time ago, long before P2P was widespread. People were willing to pay more for stuff when there was no other way to get it. However, now that people have another way to get it, legal or otherwise, they should lower their prices in order to compete with piracy. Piracy shouldn't be an issue. If you like a song, it should be so cheap to buy it that you won't even think twice and will just get it right away. Currently, people have to look at the price, think it over, leave the store, and then maybe go back to the store (virtual or brink and mortar) and make a conscious descision to purchase music. However, if they made CDs $5, and DVDs similar, and downloaded songs around 10-25 cents, people wouldn't even think about whether or not they should buy it, or if it was worth pirating, they would just pay for it.
Does anybody else find it funny that they're supposed to use a product called "magic" to block P2P traffic? Does it detect things that are zipped/rarred? How about ISOs? How about Ogg? How about VFQ files? It's nice that they have a product that is supposed to do the blocking for them, so they don't have to worry about how well the filtering is being done, but I think it will be pretty useless, and that people will just find a very easy way to get around the filter.
Although your solution is a little bit harsh, I can see this kind of thing being over prescribed. While I wouldn't say "get the fuck over it" to somebody who is a victim of rape, I would say it to somebody who had just broken up with their girl/boy friend, or failing an exam or something. Some people get way to worked up over little things like this, and almost have a breakdown. However, I would hope that they'd seek other kinds of help to learn how to deal with small problems that everybody encounters, rather than try to use a drug so they never have to learn to deal with problems.
I believe points 2 and 3 can be lumped into 1 format. It's like creating backup tapes, and then throwing out the tape reader. Who thinks these systems up?
I couldn't see the bother of actually having a real install of FreeDOS. I currently have it installed in VMWare for the times when I need to use it. For the old DOS games I have DosBox. Not any other things I need to run that aren't covered by those two uses.
I totally agree. Although I'm playing through TP on the GC so no Wiimote for me (actually GC on Wii, I picked up TP about 2 weeks before I managed to find a Wii). The story line in TP is miles beyond any Zelda game I've ever played. Most Zelda games once you complete a dungeon you feel like you can stop playing, but in TP, the story just keeps on going, and you don't ever want to put it down.
Walk up to 100 random people on the street, and ask them if they've heard of a video game, called Counterstrike. And if they have heard of it, have they played it. Now ask the same about Mario. Seriously, I know that Counterstrike is a good game, but apart from the people who do play it, most people have never even heard of it.
With the Wii, Nintendo may be getting closer to VR than any other game system ever has. Remember VR Headsets, Force feedback controls, and all those other things that you never see around anymore? Well I for one think the Wiimote is the best progression we have towards actual VR. The fact that you can swing it like a golf club, or a tennis racket, or a baseball bat, and have it do the same thing on the screen is kind of exactly what people looking for VR have been dreaming of for a long time. It's not much of VR if you're just pushing a bunch of buttons but you happen to have a set of VR goggles.
I'm playing through twilight princess right now, and I have to say, it's a lot better than Ocarina of time, or any other Zelda game I've played. I know a lot of people complained it's slowed paced and something about fishing. I don't know, I only fished for about 5 minutes in the entire game. Not counting the skeleton fish in the Zora dungeon for extra hearts. The story in this one is just really fluid, and it really draws you into the game. Granted, I haven't made it all the way through yet, but I'm at the Desert dungeon now, and even without knowing the rest of the game, feel that twilight princess is the best game I've ever played.
If it's pretty common practice for them to give out this code to their users, then why was SAP in the wrong with downloading it. Are they complaining that SAP downloaded some code off of Oracle's website that was right out in the open for their customers to download? The article seems to be a little light on the details, so what did SAP actually download, and how hard was it for them to "hack" in to the Oracle website containing the code?
How likely is it that Oracle left a honeypot for SAP, MS, MySQL, or any other competitor to walk into, so that they could get rid of that competitor, or at least ruin their reputation and get some money? The fact that their was code on a website accessible to the outside world seems a little suspicious to me. Who leaves code on a publicly accessible server? I think that Oracle would at least be security savvy enough not to let their code be stolen. Anyway, not to start any conspiracy theories or anything, but I just find it a little odd.
MS need to give money to people just to jump on their bandwagon, because the service wasn't popular, and they needed to give the labels a reason to join their service. iTunes on the other hand is extremely popular, and doesn't need to make stupid deals like giving away a percentage of iPod profits to music companies. Universal is already getting a percentage of the music sales they get from iTunes, and that is all they should get.
I really don't understand this. Almost all the CDs sold in the last 20 years had no form of DRM. And they weren't scared then. What all of a sudden makes them want to sell everything. If they'd focus more on making quality music, and delivering it at a fair price, then they wouldn't have problems with people pirating music.
I've bought more music (and spent more money) on eMusic in the last 6 months than I did in the previous 5 years before I was on eMusic. No song is worth 99 cents. I don't care if the Pope is singing it. Bring down the prices, especially on the digital downloads, and you'll have tons more people buying the music. Differentiate CDs and digital downloads on price, any you'll see people stop downloading them illegally.
Yeah, I thought about this, and then though that they'd probably have to resort to some kind of LiveCD. Which I'd be perfectly fine with. I only log into my bank about once a week, and it wouldn't be much trouble to reboot and put in a CD. It would be more hassle then just logging in with a web browser, but I can't believe the banks let that one happen in the first place. Having unknown, insecure computers connecting to your network is a bad idea, especially when they have the ability to access the customer data and transfer money and all that other stuff.
The problem with the Carmen Sandiego games is that they are all about memorization an looking stuff up. It's history and geography, and unless they start getting you to write essays about how different things in history or how the location of a river spawned the towns around it, there isn't anything you are going to learn.
One great game I've played recently is Safecracker basically you work your way through this mansion and crack a bunch of safes with different locking/combination mechanisms. Each safe has clues on how to break the next safe. It's lots of fun, and definitely very challenging. I even used some of the skills I learned in my computer security courses to crack some of the safes. Definitely a lot of fun and while you probably don't learn anything directly applicable, you definitely give your brain a work out.
If you don't like it enough to buy it, then either you don't like it, or they are charging too much for it. I find it usually to be the second thing. When I look at most CDs, I think, yeah, that's a pretty good CD, but I don't really think it's worth $15. Probably closer to $5. So I end up not buying it. I get my music off eMusic because that's where the cost of the music is actually worth it. 30 cents for a song is definitely worth it for me. I will never buy off iTunes because $1, or $1.29 for non-DRM is way too much for a single song, and not what I consider a good deal.
I was just thinking about something similar. If the bank is so worried about the user's system being comprimised, then they should send out CDs with a VMWare image that the user can run so that it's known to be safe. There's probably still some attack vectors, because the Host OS could be majorly compromised, but it would make the process a whole lot more secure. But the VM Image could be signed, so that it could be verified to be unchanged upon each boot, and the memory contents could even be kept encrypted. It would also make sense for the access point of the bank not to be an actual web page you could visit with any browser, preventing people clicking on links in their email, or even being used to visiting the site in the browser. It would be plenty fast for online banking, and would take a lot of the risk out. But then again, they're probable going to just keep on adding layer after layer of stupid "security" functions like asking you your mother's maiden name (because nobody knows that information).
I remember hearing about that with NFS. One car company (Ferrari I think) wouldn't let them put their cars in the game if they had damage modelling, so they didn't have it, I think this was NFS3. NFS4 had damaging, but no Ferrari's. Personally, I think the driving games are a lot better if they have the damage simulation, because it stops opponents, cpu or otherwise, from ramming into you to run you off the track, and suffering no consequences.
If it's supposed to be Ye Old Tavern, set in medieval times, then yes, it really is that bad when you see a McDonald's sign. It's really hard to suspend your disbelief when you are seeing things that are so out of place. That's why you don't see Shakespeare actors wearing Nike shoes and Tommy Hillfigger sweaters. It ruins the appeal of the play. If you see an actor pick up a coke in a movie set in the present day, then it's not that bad. However, if you see Bilbo drinking a can of Coke, then you start to have problems. Look at Back to the Future II. Pepsi ads everywhere. But it really did help ad to the effect. Maybe that's what they though the future would be like. Judging from where things are going, they weren't far off.
The problem is that the reason that they are resorting to ads is because games are becoming more expensive to make, and yet people want them to stay the same price, or become even cheaper. So while it would be nice for games to come down in price because of these ads, it won't happen. As long as people want games with more complexity and cost than the previous generation, prices aren't going to come down.
The problem is making the ads actually fit into the game. For instance, in Super Monkey Ball, the bananas have Dole stickers on them. Every single one of them. You don't even notice it all the time, and it's kind of funny to see them on there. It doesn't really detract from the game in any way. However, working ads into games like Mario or Zelda would probably be impossible without it looking like blatant advertising. Other games might do very well. ExciteTruck could easily have trucks with real company logos on them. Just as Need For Speed has always had real cars. I don't think this kind of thing detracts from the games. It isn't actually blatant advertising, but does promote that "brand awareness" concept that advertisers are always looking for.
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This is the problem with the Music/Movie companies. They want to maximize their profits. So they ran their numbers through some computer, and discovered that movies should cost $X and that CDs should cost $Y. These prices have nothing to do with the cost of producing the CD/DVD, because the cost of those is effectively $0. Instead they try to figure out how many people they can get to buy the product at a certain price in order to make the highest profit. However, these calculations were done a long time ago, long before P2P was widespread. People were willing to pay more for stuff when there was no other way to get it. However, now that people have another way to get it, legal or otherwise, they should lower their prices in order to compete with piracy. Piracy shouldn't be an issue. If you like a song, it should be so cheap to buy it that you won't even think twice and will just get it right away. Currently, people have to look at the price, think it over, leave the store, and then maybe go back to the store (virtual or brink and mortar) and make a conscious descision to purchase music. However, if they made CDs $5, and DVDs similar, and downloaded songs around 10-25 cents, people wouldn't even think about whether or not they should buy it, or if it was worth pirating, they would just pay for it.
Does anybody else find it funny that they're supposed to use a product called "magic" to block P2P traffic? Does it detect things that are zipped/rarred? How about ISOs? How about Ogg? How about VFQ files? It's nice that they have a product that is supposed to do the blocking for them, so they don't have to worry about how well the filtering is being done, but I think it will be pretty useless, and that people will just find a very easy way to get around the filter.
Although your solution is a little bit harsh, I can see this kind of thing being over prescribed. While I wouldn't say "get the fuck over it" to somebody who is a victim of rape, I would say it to somebody who had just broken up with their girl/boy friend, or failing an exam or something. Some people get way to worked up over little things like this, and almost have a breakdown. However, I would hope that they'd seek other kinds of help to learn how to deal with small problems that everybody encounters, rather than try to use a drug so they never have to learn to deal with problems.
I believe points 2 and 3 can be lumped into 1 format. It's like creating backup tapes, and then throwing out the tape reader. Who thinks these systems up?
I couldn't see the bother of actually having a real install of FreeDOS. I currently have it installed in VMWare for the times when I need to use it. For the old DOS games I have DosBox. Not any other things I need to run that aren't covered by those two uses.
I totally agree. Although I'm playing through TP on the GC so no Wiimote for me (actually GC on Wii, I picked up TP about 2 weeks before I managed to find a Wii). The story line in TP is miles beyond any Zelda game I've ever played. Most Zelda games once you complete a dungeon you feel like you can stop playing, but in TP, the story just keeps on going, and you don't ever want to put it down.
Walk up to 100 random people on the street, and ask them if they've heard of a video game, called Counterstrike. And if they have heard of it, have they played it. Now ask the same about Mario. Seriously, I know that Counterstrike is a good game, but apart from the people who do play it, most people have never even heard of it.
With the Wii, Nintendo may be getting closer to VR than any other game system ever has. Remember VR Headsets, Force feedback controls, and all those other things that you never see around anymore? Well I for one think the Wiimote is the best progression we have towards actual VR. The fact that you can swing it like a golf club, or a tennis racket, or a baseball bat, and have it do the same thing on the screen is kind of exactly what people looking for VR have been dreaming of for a long time. It's not much of VR if you're just pushing a bunch of buttons but you happen to have a set of VR goggles.
I'm playing through twilight princess right now, and I have to say, it's a lot better than Ocarina of time, or any other Zelda game I've played. I know a lot of people complained it's slowed paced and something about fishing. I don't know, I only fished for about 5 minutes in the entire game. Not counting the skeleton fish in the Zora dungeon for extra hearts. The story in this one is just really fluid, and it really draws you into the game. Granted, I haven't made it all the way through yet, but I'm at the Desert dungeon now, and even without knowing the rest of the game, feel that twilight princess is the best game I've ever played.
If it's pretty common practice for them to give out this code to their users, then why was SAP in the wrong with downloading it. Are they complaining that SAP downloaded some code off of Oracle's website that was right out in the open for their customers to download? The article seems to be a little light on the details, so what did SAP actually download, and how hard was it for them to "hack" in to the Oracle website containing the code?
How likely is it that Oracle left a honeypot for SAP, MS, MySQL, or any other competitor to walk into, so that they could get rid of that competitor, or at least ruin their reputation and get some money? The fact that their was code on a website accessible to the outside world seems a little suspicious to me. Who leaves code on a publicly accessible server? I think that Oracle would at least be security savvy enough not to let their code be stolen. Anyway, not to start any conspiracy theories or anything, but I just find it a little odd.
MS need to give money to people just to jump on their bandwagon, because the service wasn't popular, and they needed to give the labels a reason to join their service. iTunes on the other hand is extremely popular, and doesn't need to make stupid deals like giving away a percentage of iPod profits to music companies. Universal is already getting a percentage of the music sales they get from iTunes, and that is all they should get.
I really don't understand this. Almost all the CDs sold in the last 20 years had no form of DRM. And they weren't scared then. What all of a sudden makes them want to sell everything. If they'd focus more on making quality music, and delivering it at a fair price, then they wouldn't have problems with people pirating music.
I've bought more music (and spent more money) on eMusic in the last 6 months than I did in the previous 5 years before I was on eMusic. No song is worth 99 cents. I don't care if the Pope is singing it. Bring down the prices, especially on the digital downloads, and you'll have tons more people buying the music. Differentiate CDs and digital downloads on price, any you'll see people stop downloading them illegally.
Yeah, I thought about this, and then though that they'd probably have to resort to some kind of LiveCD. Which I'd be perfectly fine with. I only log into my bank about once a week, and it wouldn't be much trouble to reboot and put in a CD. It would be more hassle then just logging in with a web browser, but I can't believe the banks let that one happen in the first place. Having unknown, insecure computers connecting to your network is a bad idea, especially when they have the ability to access the customer data and transfer money and all that other stuff.
Mine too. I'm actually posting this from my Wii.
The problem with the Carmen Sandiego games is that they are all about memorization an looking stuff up. It's history and geography, and unless they start getting you to write essays about how different things in history or how the location of a river spawned the towns around it, there isn't anything you are going to learn.
One great game I've played recently is Safecracker basically you work your way through this mansion and crack a bunch of safes with different locking/combination mechanisms. Each safe has clues on how to break the next safe. It's lots of fun, and definitely very challenging. I even used some of the skills I learned in my computer security courses to crack some of the safes. Definitely a lot of fun and while you probably don't learn anything directly applicable, you definitely give your brain a work out.
If you don't like it enough to buy it, then either you don't like it, or they are charging too much for it. I find it usually to be the second thing. When I look at most CDs, I think, yeah, that's a pretty good CD, but I don't really think it's worth $15. Probably closer to $5. So I end up not buying it. I get my music off eMusic because that's where the cost of the music is actually worth it. 30 cents for a song is definitely worth it for me. I will never buy off iTunes because $1, or $1.29 for non-DRM is way too much for a single song, and not what I consider a good deal.
You should probably add in "sleep 600" to make it look likes it's actually scanning for something.
I was just thinking about something similar. If the bank is so worried about the user's system being comprimised, then they should send out CDs with a VMWare image that the user can run so that it's known to be safe. There's probably still some attack vectors, because the Host OS could be majorly compromised, but it would make the process a whole lot more secure. But the VM Image could be signed, so that it could be verified to be unchanged upon each boot, and the memory contents could even be kept encrypted. It would also make sense for the access point of the bank not to be an actual web page you could visit with any browser, preventing people clicking on links in their email, or even being used to visiting the site in the browser. It would be plenty fast for online banking, and would take a lot of the risk out. But then again, they're probable going to just keep on adding layer after layer of stupid "security" functions like asking you your mother's maiden name (because nobody knows that information).
I remember hearing about that with NFS. One car company (Ferrari I think) wouldn't let them put their cars in the game if they had damage modelling, so they didn't have it, I think this was NFS3. NFS4 had damaging, but no Ferrari's. Personally, I think the driving games are a lot better if they have the damage simulation, because it stops opponents, cpu or otherwise, from ramming into you to run you off the track, and suffering no consequences.
If it's supposed to be Ye Old Tavern, set in medieval times, then yes, it really is that bad when you see a McDonald's sign. It's really hard to suspend your disbelief when you are seeing things that are so out of place. That's why you don't see Shakespeare actors wearing Nike shoes and Tommy Hillfigger sweaters. It ruins the appeal of the play. If you see an actor pick up a coke in a movie set in the present day, then it's not that bad. However, if you see Bilbo drinking a can of Coke, then you start to have problems. Look at Back to the Future II. Pepsi ads everywhere. But it really did help ad to the effect. Maybe that's what they though the future would be like. Judging from where things are going, they weren't far off.
The problem is that the reason that they are resorting to ads is because games are becoming more expensive to make, and yet people want them to stay the same price, or become even cheaper. So while it would be nice for games to come down in price because of these ads, it won't happen. As long as people want games with more complexity and cost than the previous generation, prices aren't going to come down.
The problem is making the ads actually fit into the game. For instance, in Super Monkey Ball, the bananas have Dole stickers on them. Every single one of them. You don't even notice it all the time, and it's kind of funny to see them on there. It doesn't really detract from the game in any way. However, working ads into games like Mario or Zelda would probably be impossible without it looking like blatant advertising. Other games might do very well. ExciteTruck could easily have trucks with real company logos on them. Just as Need For Speed has always had real cars. I don't think this kind of thing detracts from the games. It isn't actually blatant advertising, but does promote that "brand awareness" concept that advertisers are always looking for.