I'd hardly call "bundling rights" shady business deals. Unless there are facts missing from the article, this is a bullshit take on an otherwise innocent business deal.
That said, if I was a game development company, I would be putting the boots to nVidia any way I could right now. Today, it's "We'll get around to making your game work with our drivers when it's popular" but tomorrow it could be "You want your game to work well with our drivers? That will be $3,000,000 please." The shit that nVidia are pulling is a threat to Valves bread and butter, and they'd be fools if they took it lying down.
The company I work for has flash and windows media all over the place, and sells a content management system, one of the key features of which is the management of these types of media.
I don't think the company would survive such a change in this environment.
Quote from the page on the Mandrake site promoting this scheme:
With millions of downloads and sales every year...
Now, I suspect that they're not getting millions of sales every year, or they wouldn't be in financial difficulties.
How much do you think it costs to support downloading 3 iso images "millions" of times? How many adverts do you think they'd need to sell to break even on that?
I think they're likely to save more money on bandwidth than they'll make on advertisements.
1) Write song
2) Give song away
3) Track where song is popular
4) Tour where you are popular
5) Push merchandise where you are popular
6) Sell tickets
7) Sell merchandise
8) Profit!!!
9) *Flip RIAA the finger
Duplication of physical goods requires raw materials (paper & toner, or blank disks/tapes) and has an inherent cost in both time and money.
Why don't people photocopy the latest best seller? Because of the cost inherent with the process.
Further restraints aren't necessary in the analog world because the nature of the media is itself a restraint.
In the digital world it is just bits. I can make 10,000 copies of a music file for a net 0 cost -- my cable modem is a flat rate and my PC can serve files in the background without interfering with what I am doing.
What would 10,000 copies of a physical CD cost in duplication, time and distribution? How about the latest Harry Potter book?
In the digital world, the media itself no longer acts as a restraint.
Oh... of course! Hard drives and CD-R are free!
You can't make 10,000 copies of a music file unless you store it on something, just like you can make a copy of a book unless you store it on some paper. 10,000 tunes would take around 60G of space, so you're looking at at least a hundred bucks. And if you want to keep those, you need backup... cheapest option is around 80 CD-Rs, which aren't reuseable.
It is not my responsibility to pay for the fuck ups of MS and those that purchase their products. Adding cruft like this makes the ISP more expensive.
Those scumbags in Redmond are responsible for this mess... damned if I want my service compromised and made more expensive to cover their ass...
How bout the courts force them to pay for each of us that bought MS products to recieve a hardware firewall? That would be fair, and it would solve the problem.
Better to have everyone watching than to have the shadowy few watching... we might even feel better about ourselves and be a little easier on each other once we find out everyone else is just as fucked up as we are.
This is what TIA and Carnivore should be, if they are to be allowed to exist at all...
It ain't that great. The ad doesn't even say what Linux is.
Call me cynical but an 'ad' that doesn't tell you what it's advertising isn't an ad. The people who already know about Linux are the only ones who are going to get anything from it.
The whole point of modern advertising is to break it up into little chunks and make you feel without knowing what you're hearing about. That way, when you do learn what it's about, all the previous things you saw and heard about are associated with whats presented to you.
You can't really dispute something if you don't understand what it is, so on some level, you just absorb what you hear.
First, create a website that looks like an online community for spammers. Run it for a while, build a history, but don't actually have any real members.
Then, leave a hole in your security and "slip" that your enemys are the spammers.
I've tried so many linux distros over the past couple of years, trying to get a good workstation and a good server set up here. And after dealing with so many badly-implemented wizards and guis, the easiest one (hell, the only one) to get working and keep working was Debian.
Those guis and wizards need to be FLAWLESS. If the are not, you'll need to go to the command line and config files anyways, and those GUIs will just obfuscate you from what you need to do.
Mandrake, which is supposed to be among the easiest, was a nightmare to configure properly by comparison, because when the wizard fucks up (which it did numerous times), you don't have a clue what to do with the damned thing.
Now if only I could get eRServer in the stable tree, I'd be set...
That article was utterly without redemption. PHB on games... oh, lets take notes!
The viewpoint that games are solely a product to be sold, and not an art form is the sort of attitude that will ruin gaming the way it has pretty much ruined movies and music.
If a game has integrity and vision, it will be good.
If it is produced by a well-oiled, hollywood-style machine, it will be uninspired, fun for a few moments in the exact same fashion the last game you played was fun.
If it is caught between those two worlds, it will be garbage, with left-over complexity from the smashed vision but no integrity.
A fine example of a great game that appeals across demographics is the Baldurs Gate series. It requires significant time investment... my GF and I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours over several years playing them, and we're not quite done. It is challenging... you often need to repeat challenges to achieve victory, or to talk to everyone in the town for the third time before you find the one you're looking for. And it is, of course, fantasy, which is why we and so many others like it...
You want to know what key feature Baldurs Gate has that allows me to play it with my GF and loan it to my parents to play? It's one simple thing: You don't need fast reflexes to excel at it.
That's what I think differentiates a game for boys and young men from a game for everyone. If you need razor reflexes to play, most women and older ppl won't ever be good at it, so they won't like it. Hell, "The Sims" became successful using this key feature; I'd say that pretty much demonstrates it's effectiveness... the game didn't exactly have anything else going for it, did it?:)
I've been waiting anxiously for this. Postgres will definately be running my startup now... lack of replication was the only thing holding Postgres back.
Wonder how long it will take for this to migrate to debs stable branch...
I've been playing that game with my wife for years... we're just starting Throne Of Bhaal now. I'll be honestly depressed when we finish after having our party for so long...
Personally, I think the thing that makes Baldurs Gate shine is that any player can pause the game at any time and give commands to their characters. The need for reflexes is zero. This makes it accessable to ppl who don't have or want to develop the clicking speed and hotkey prowess that other 2.5D games require.
Hell, my mom could play this game without getting her butt kicked...
They never should have made the movies. If they wanted to bring it to the screen, they should have done it in a series format. 1hr * 52wks * 3yrs would have given plenty of time to do the books justice...
They seem to be doing more taking away from the sound than adding to these days...
(Some|Most|All) of the music coming out these days has been destroyed in the mixing process to produce a louder radio sound... there was an article that about it recently:
link
Slashdot Mirror
I'd hardly call "bundling rights" shady business deals. Unless there are facts missing from the article, this is a bullshit take on an otherwise innocent business deal.
That said, if I was a game development company, I would be putting the boots to nVidia any way I could right now. Today, it's "We'll get around to making your game work with our drivers when it's popular" but tomorrow it could be "You want your game to work well with our drivers? That will be $3,000,000 please." The shit that nVidia are pulling is a threat to Valves bread and butter, and they'd be fools if they took it lying down.
If this goes through, I could lose my job.
The company I work for has flash and windows media all over the place, and sells a content management system, one of the key features of which is the management of these types of media.
I don't think the company would survive such a change in this environment.
Damn the USA.
Quote from the page on the Mandrake site promoting this scheme:
With millions of downloads and sales every year...
Now, I suspect that they're not getting millions of sales every year, or they wouldn't be in financial difficulties.
How much do you think it costs to support downloading 3 iso images "millions" of times? How many adverts do you think they'd need to sell to break even on that?
I think they're likely to save more money on bandwidth than they'll make on advertisements.
I'd suspect that this is less about advertising revenue and more about keeping ppl who don't subscribe from downloading Mandrake from their servers.
Its for call centers, stupid.
As an added benefit, you can power the predictive dialers using these phones combined with a form of fusion.
Why is it that I have to pay more for a video card alone that I have to pay for an entire gaming console?
Yeah, but the games for a console are expensive, while games for the PC are free!
Age 20 years in 3 months.
That's what waking up at 3:00 in the morning every day to take care of the kid does to you. You got to go to sleep before 3 in the morning?
Yeah, thats why there are no indie bands out there.
Thats why Lessings Creative Commons licenses are in use by nobody whatsoever.
Unsigned bands exist, therefore unsigned bands are clearly capable of releasing music and profiting off it. Therefore, your argument must be wrong.
1) Write song
2) Give song away
3) Track where song is popular
4) Tour where you are popular
5) Push merchandise where you are popular
6) Sell tickets
7) Sell merchandise
8) Profit!!!
9) *Flip RIAA the finger
Fields marked with * are optional
We all owe you a lot. Good luck.
Duplication of physical goods requires raw materials (paper & toner, or blank disks/tapes) and has an inherent cost in both time and money.
Why don't people photocopy the latest best seller? Because of the cost inherent with the process.
Further restraints aren't necessary in the analog world because the nature of the media is itself a restraint.
In the digital world it is just bits. I can make 10,000 copies of a music file for a net 0 cost -- my cable modem is a flat rate and my PC can serve files in the background without interfering with what I am doing.
What would 10,000 copies of a physical CD cost in duplication, time and distribution? How about the latest Harry Potter book?
In the digital world, the media itself no longer acts as a restraint.
Oh... of course! Hard drives and CD-R are free!
You can't make 10,000 copies of a music file unless you store it on something, just like you can make a copy of a book unless you store it on some paper. 10,000 tunes would take around 60G of space, so you're looking at at least a hundred bucks. And if you want to keep those, you need backup... cheapest option is around 80 CD-Rs, which aren't reuseable.
Insightful my ass...
It is not my responsibility to pay for the fuck ups of MS and those that purchase their products. Adding cruft like this makes the ISP more expensive.
Those scumbags in Redmond are responsible for this mess... damned if I want my service compromised and made more expensive to cover their ass...
How bout the courts force them to pay for each of us that bought MS products to recieve a hardware firewall? That would be fair, and it would solve the problem.
Although I dislike Microsoft I can see their point.
How would you like it if you were a car manufacturer and suddenly a government would start producing cars and competing with you using taxpayer money?
Are they going to give as many cars as I want for free? I think I'd like that very much.
Don't start a company. Start a business instead.
As long as you pay your debtors, you'll never lose control of a sole proprietorship.
Better to have everyone watching than to have the shadowy few watching... we might even feel better about ourselves and be a little easier on each other once we find out everyone else is just as fucked up as we are.
This is what TIA and Carnivore should be, if they are to be allowed to exist at all...
It ain't that great. The ad doesn't even say what Linux is.
Call me cynical but an 'ad' that doesn't tell you what it's advertising isn't an ad. The people who already know about Linux are the only ones who are going to get anything from it.
The whole point of modern advertising is to break it up into little chunks and make you feel without knowing what you're hearing about. That way, when you do learn what it's about, all the previous things you saw and heard about are associated with whats presented to you.
You can't really dispute something if you don't understand what it is, so on some level, you just absorb what you hear.
First, create a website that looks like an online community for spammers. Run it for a while, build a history, but don't actually have any real members.
Then, leave a hole in your security and "slip" that your enemys are the spammers.
Watch the first global mob lynch them on TV
I've tried so many linux distros over the past couple of years, trying to get a good workstation and a good server set up here. And after dealing with so many badly-implemented wizards and guis, the easiest one (hell, the only one) to get working and keep working was Debian.
Those guis and wizards need to be FLAWLESS. If the are not, you'll need to go to the command line and config files anyways, and those GUIs will just obfuscate you from what you need to do.
Mandrake, which is supposed to be among the easiest, was a nightmare to configure properly by comparison, because when the wizard fucks up (which it did numerous times), you don't have a clue what to do with the damned thing.
Now if only I could get eRServer in the stable tree, I'd be set...
That article was utterly without redemption. PHB on games... oh, lets take notes!
:)
The viewpoint that games are solely a product to be sold, and not an art form is the sort of attitude that will ruin gaming the way it has pretty much ruined movies and music.
If a game has integrity and vision, it will be good.
If it is produced by a well-oiled, hollywood-style machine, it will be uninspired, fun for a few moments in the exact same fashion the last game you played was fun.
If it is caught between those two worlds, it will be garbage, with left-over complexity from the smashed vision but no integrity.
A fine example of a great game that appeals across demographics is the Baldurs Gate series. It requires significant time investment... my GF and I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours over several years playing them, and we're not quite done. It is challenging... you often need to repeat challenges to achieve victory, or to talk to everyone in the town for the third time before you find the one you're looking for. And it is, of course, fantasy, which is why we and so many others like it...
You want to know what key feature Baldurs Gate has that allows me to play it with my GF and loan it to my parents to play? It's one simple thing: You don't need fast reflexes to excel at it.
That's what I think differentiates a game for boys and young men from a game for everyone. If you need razor reflexes to play, most women and older ppl won't ever be good at it, so they won't like it. Hell, "The Sims" became successful using this key feature; I'd say that pretty much demonstrates it's effectiveness... the game didn't exactly have anything else going for it, did it?
I've been waiting anxiously for this. Postgres will definately be running my startup now... lack of replication was the only thing holding Postgres back. Wonder how long it will take for this to migrate to debs stable branch...
I've been playing that game with my wife for years... we're just starting Throne Of Bhaal now. I'll be honestly depressed when we finish after having our party for so long...
Personally, I think the thing that makes Baldurs Gate shine is that any player can pause the game at any time and give commands to their characters. The need for reflexes is zero. This makes it accessable to ppl who don't have or want to develop the clicking speed and hotkey prowess that other 2.5D games require.
Hell, my mom could play this game without getting her butt kicked...
(And yes, I'll kick your ass at Quake too)
You dumbass... the reason they freeze it is to keep it alive!
FreeBSD under the Vanilla Sky, FreeBSD will NEVER die...
They never should have made the movies. If they wanted to bring it to the screen, they should have done it in a series format. 1hr * 52wks * 3yrs would have given plenty of time to do the books justice...
They seem to be doing more taking away from the sound than adding to these days...
(Some|Most|All) of the music coming out these days has been destroyed in the mixing process to produce a louder radio sound... there was an article that about it recently: link
Who's talking about the military?
So the military can talk around it. What about everyone in NYC? Can they?