...because, I mean, cash rich companies with great selling mobile devices, portfolios of valuable IP, and games that sell 4+ million copies in a few days go bust all the time...
Just because the WiiU isn't the hottest selling console doesn't mean the 3ds isn't doing utterly stupendous numbers for them.
...I mean it's not like we've already seen privatisations of Gas, Water, Steel, Coal, Telecoms, and Rail go down the tubes is it. And it's not like in some of those we're subsidising the PRIVATISED industry while they give bonuses to bosses. And it is absolutely not the case that a regulator has ever had to step in against any of those industries to stop them doing amoral or ridiculous things...
Might I also volunteer http://www.baen.com/library/ ?
Baen have a nice line of Sci-Fi and have seen sales of some older titles increase as a result of having free e-books of them.
...this is such a problem. Britain has operated this system for over 20 years as "Pay and Display", and I've never seen anyone over here take a real issue with it (Except that time where I overstayed and got fined £25 by Derby County Council....but it was my own fault, so hey, I wasn't too put out). It's not good or bad, just a way of paying for parking.
I work in schools IT, and let me tell you there's little to no improvement, just more and more people getting way out of their depth and not bothering to train to cover the gap. Instead it's front line support who has to pick up the slack and beat the solution into people.
Yes, it is very possible. I currently sysadmin three schools without a degree based largely on the fact that I knew enough about server 2003 and Active Directory to do so. Admittedly, yes, in total my job's not highly paid but I enjoy it, and the more time I can spend in the IT industry the more chance I have of 1. keeping my job or 2. getting a better job if I lose my current one.
The best advice I can give is to go out, seek yourself an MCSE/CCNA to prove you're willing to train, get some mildly interesting hobbies (something bizarre, it gets your CV noticed), and then the best place I found to apply for IT positions is in councils....they love new technology and constantly need new techies for someone's pet project.
I quite agree that PS/2 isn't obsolete. I've bought multiple keyboards that have upped and died in the space of my reliable old PS/2 keyboard's life. The keys have been worn down enough to glean unnaturally, and it may have been built before the Windows key....but it's a fantastic piece of hardware and also creates a fantastic amount of noise if you get your typing up to speed on it.
The average SUV rates extremely poorly in most modern crash tests. Alongated frames cause pressures on the car ranging from cracking the chassis in half to actually making the doors inoperable after any decent sized bump. I don't care about the mileage they get, all I know is that your average Renault Megane will keep the kids safer, is less likely to kill pedestrians, and is good deal more wallet friendly.
When the heck will people learn that bigger cars does not equal more safety?
I reall do find it very amusing that the entire gaming world has nothing better to do than jump onto a mistranslated out of context comment followed by a slightly sarcastic retort by the man who regularly draws the Mister Chief stuff!
It's a slow day on the internet when people turn this kind of rubbish into a fight...I mean come on people, get a grip, this is like watching two people sit and eat lunch quietly while everyone else circles them shouting "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT" over and over again.
Actually Britain used the metrification of measurement to decrease the amount in things. A common measurement for things was 4oz or 113.5g (roughly). Many supermarkets, on the day the legislation came in, simply moved to 100g units at the same price. The biggest culprit in all this is Sainsbury's.
All British schools have a legal duty to teach Imperial Units alongside metric, the fact they don't is somewhat strange.
Scientists, engineers, and builders can use metric, it's good for them...but for everyday people we should stick to what works...miles, inches, feet, pounds, stones, pints, gallons. The reasons these measurements have stuck so long is that they're easy to work with. Height is graduated by 4/5/6/7 foot divisions where you can estimate from one number if someone is tall, short etc. Pints stick because it's easier than using half litres or whatever.
Heck, look at the meaurements now legally obligated on things....minced beef and jam, for instance, are sold in 454g packets...or 1lb...maybe eventually we'll move to metric through neglect of our education system...but it will be a loss.
Prestige Classes were a nice touch, as were the new force powers...they needed work though (Restriction of powers at some levels to certain classes, or restriction by dark/light not just a penalty point system).
The lightsaber forms were next to useless though. I have now done two run throughs of the game, lightside I used the forms once and then never bothered again. Second time through as darkside I never bothered using them.
I think the issue with KOTOR 2 is that it added too much in one go. The new workbench system was cumbersome (sometimes forcing you to quit and then reopen the same workbench to do some tasks) but powerful, the influence system was somewhat hit and miss (Some actions that really SHOULD have forced you into someone's good books did nothing), and so much more that muddled the experience a little. Add to this the fact that the characters of KOTOR 2 rarely matched up to those in KOTOR and it made the experience less fulfilling for me...Visas really was the sole interesting character.
The game needed 4 more months in development, just to finish off the plot and levels....but alas Lucasarts got itchy and released it anyway.
I just hope this finally hammers out the bugs in PGR3 with the guide...I stopped playing the multi because bringing up the guide to change my music or similar would make it crash and force me to reboot, or a popup would tell me someone was online and that crashed the guide as well. I also hope that the lag during XBL sign-in won't be as noticeable....the whole console just grinds to a halt when I do it.
I love my 360, I really do...but the little bugs and oddities (I download Live Arcade titles a lot...so mentally I think of downloads as being on that tab....when they're not...) really do make it a weird place to do things.
Hopefully Marketplace will be a nicer place to browse now....hopefully.
The single WORST decision on any level in this iteration of Firefox has to be the removal of the right click from the mouse button being held down on the Mac. That's seriously going to confuse people, I mean, doesn't every website tell apple users to hold down the mouse button over a graphic to get the context menu?
Oh it can be re-implemented but I had to rummage around in about:config to find the thing and, due to the failure of the release notes to MENTION this had been removed, even submitted a bug report on the topic. I know it's a small thing....but it's always the little things that matter with an application as big as a web browser!
This project has been in the pipeline for months, why have a news update about it now, it's not like there's been some massive update about the whole thing.
I was as happy to hear about this project as anyone else, but I heard about it 4-6 months ago on wikipedia!
The film's total takings worldwide (Excluding DVDs) was in the area of $550m
Now, using your maths we have $150m in the hole on US takings with $350m of non-US takings still to go. Halving that figure we get $175m so $25m of profit, then add in rebates for filming in New Zealand.
Even if you go into the whole "Hollywood accounting" system the film, as an entity is STILL likely to have made in excess of $75m.
Lest we forget to that film distributors have stakes in companies that are notionally giving them a cut of sales, or that both are owned by a single overarching parent.
Gross - Production budget is usually a good indicator of profitability in these terms because, heck, if Hollywood Maths(tm) can turn Forrest Gump into a commercial failure then who knows what a bigger film would become!
King Kong did not "barely break even", it's the 36th highest grossing film of all time with nearly $400m of profit to its name. The only way it could have been classed as break even is if you looked at US gross only without DVD sales.
I hear "PS3 price cut" so then I look at the price of all the major consoles in Japan: Wii... 25,000 yen... 360... 29,800 yen... PS3... 62,790 yen...
Now this is all for "Low End" models but forgive for saying that the PS3 price is still ringing the insanity alarm inside my head. The console is STILL more than double the price of either of its competitors (Yes, I know 360 isn't selling in Japan but Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon et al. may help to convince the Japanese market that 360 is worth it).
I've never been a big fan of Sony, never will be, but their recent list of faux pas, technical errors and the mockery of the whole is world is slowly making me think that one day they might just not bother with consoles...maybe not this generation, or the next....but soon...and for the rest of my life hopefully.
Not going to happen. PAX is too niche and too unknown to be a good place for games companies to give out whatever message it is marketing is getting them to seel this week.
E3 is something that normal people know about right now, and for that reason alone PAX won't be coming close for some considerable years....and even then I doubt it will.
Companies will move on to the smaller, more targeted shows to get news to press. E3 lost its focus...if it was for press then why was so much money spent on each booth, why not just some standard demo pods and a desk for literature, if it was for the everyman then why in LA....why not on a few "Battlebus" type things to tour Europe, North America and Japan...
Publish a Grand Theft Auto MMORPG and use google adsense to advertise it on gang blogs...take real world crime into virtual space....and make money....wonderful.
And just for once I would actually support Jack Thompson.
This is the sort of stuff that givers all gamers who quite like the way things are right now some serious headaches over what could become of their hobby.
No, not trolling, just a genuine lack of understanding as to why someone who wants to run Windows apps wouldn't just buy a cheaper/more powerful machine that is more suited to the OS.
Choice is one thing, fair enough, I'm just questioning why you would be crazy enough to run Windows on Mac hardware?
Forgetting first of all that the Mac is more expensive than an equivalent PC counterpart, and that it was designed to work with OSX and not Windows, I (personally) would also question why someone would want to work in Windows when they could be working in OSX (And if someone says it's for games then I'm afraid I refer you back to your average PC having much better hardware for the same price).
Personally I've run Linux, Windows, and OSX and all three have their advantages, true enough, but when I buy a Mac I buy it because it is one simple no-messing-necessary solution...adding in Windows just seems to go against that for me.
Slashdot Mirror
...because, I mean, cash rich companies with great selling mobile devices, portfolios of valuable IP, and games that sell 4+ million copies in a few days go bust all the time... Just because the WiiU isn't the hottest selling console doesn't mean the 3ds isn't doing utterly stupendous numbers for them.
...I mean it's not like we've already seen privatisations of Gas, Water, Steel, Coal, Telecoms, and Rail go down the tubes is it. And it's not like in some of those we're subsidising the PRIVATISED industry while they give bonuses to bosses. And it is absolutely not the case that a regulator has ever had to step in against any of those industries to stop them doing amoral or ridiculous things...
Might I also volunteer http://www.baen.com/library/ ? Baen have a nice line of Sci-Fi and have seen sales of some older titles increase as a result of having free e-books of them.
...this is such a problem. Britain has operated this system for over 20 years as "Pay and Display", and I've never seen anyone over here take a real issue with it (Except that time where I overstayed and got fined £25 by Derby County Council....but it was my own fault, so hey, I wasn't too put out). It's not good or bad, just a way of paying for parking.
If that wasn't funny it would be very very sad.
I work in schools IT, and let me tell you there's little to no improvement, just more and more people getting way out of their depth and not bothering to train to cover the gap. Instead it's front line support who has to pick up the slack and beat the solution into people.
Yes, it is very possible. I currently sysadmin three schools without a degree based largely on the fact that I knew enough about server 2003 and Active Directory to do so. Admittedly, yes, in total my job's not highly paid but I enjoy it, and the more time I can spend in the IT industry the more chance I have of 1. keeping my job or 2. getting a better job if I lose my current one.
The best advice I can give is to go out, seek yourself an MCSE/CCNA to prove you're willing to train, get some mildly interesting hobbies (something bizarre, it gets your CV noticed), and then the best place I found to apply for IT positions is in councils....they love new technology and constantly need new techies for someone's pet project.
I quite agree that PS/2 isn't obsolete. I've bought multiple keyboards that have upped and died in the space of my reliable old PS/2 keyboard's life. The keys have been worn down enough to glean unnaturally, and it may have been built before the Windows key....but it's a fantastic piece of hardware and also creates a fantastic amount of noise if you get your typing up to speed on it.
The average SUV rates extremely poorly in most modern crash tests. Alongated frames cause pressures on the car ranging from cracking the chassis in half to actually making the doors inoperable after any decent sized bump. I don't care about the mileage they get, all I know is that your average Renault Megane will keep the kids safer, is less likely to kill pedestrians, and is good deal more wallet friendly.
When the heck will people learn that bigger cars does not equal more safety?
I reall do find it very amusing that the entire gaming world has nothing better to do than jump onto a mistranslated out of context comment followed by a slightly sarcastic retort by the man who regularly draws the Mister Chief stuff!
It's a slow day on the internet when people turn this kind of rubbish into a fight...I mean come on people, get a grip, this is like watching two people sit and eat lunch quietly while everyone else circles them shouting "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT" over and over again.
Actually Britain used the metrification of measurement to decrease the amount in things. A common measurement for things was 4oz or 113.5g (roughly). Many supermarkets, on the day the legislation came in, simply moved to 100g units at the same price. The biggest culprit in all this is Sainsbury's.
All British schools have a legal duty to teach Imperial Units alongside metric, the fact they don't is somewhat strange. Scientists, engineers, and builders can use metric, it's good for them...but for everyday people we should stick to what works...miles, inches, feet, pounds, stones, pints, gallons. The reasons these measurements have stuck so long is that they're easy to work with. Height is graduated by 4/5/6/7 foot divisions where you can estimate from one number if someone is tall, short etc. Pints stick because it's easier than using half litres or whatever. Heck, look at the meaurements now legally obligated on things....minced beef and jam, for instance, are sold in 454g packets...or 1lb...maybe eventually we'll move to metric through neglect of our education system...but it will be a loss.
Prestige Classes were a nice touch, as were the new force powers...they needed work though (Restriction of powers at some levels to certain classes, or restriction by dark/light not just a penalty point system).
The lightsaber forms were next to useless though. I have now done two run throughs of the game, lightside I used the forms once and then never bothered again. Second time through as darkside I never bothered using them.
I think the issue with KOTOR 2 is that it added too much in one go. The new workbench system was cumbersome (sometimes forcing you to quit and then reopen the same workbench to do some tasks) but powerful, the influence system was somewhat hit and miss (Some actions that really SHOULD have forced you into someone's good books did nothing), and so much more that muddled the experience a little. Add to this the fact that the characters of KOTOR 2 rarely matched up to those in KOTOR and it made the experience less fulfilling for me...Visas really was the sole interesting character.
The game needed 4 more months in development, just to finish off the plot and levels....but alas Lucasarts got itchy and released it anyway.
I just hope this finally hammers out the bugs in PGR3 with the guide...I stopped playing the multi because bringing up the guide to change my music or similar would make it crash and force me to reboot, or a popup would tell me someone was online and that crashed the guide as well. I also hope that the lag during XBL sign-in won't be as noticeable....the whole console just grinds to a halt when I do it.
I love my 360, I really do...but the little bugs and oddities (I download Live Arcade titles a lot...so mentally I think of downloads as being on that tab....when they're not...) really do make it a weird place to do things.
Hopefully Marketplace will be a nicer place to browse now....hopefully.
The single WORST decision on any level in this iteration of Firefox has to be the removal of the right click from the mouse button being held down on the Mac. That's seriously going to confuse people, I mean, doesn't every website tell apple users to hold down the mouse button over a graphic to get the context menu?
Oh it can be re-implemented but I had to rummage around in about:config to find the thing and, due to the failure of the release notes to MENTION this had been removed, even submitted a bug report on the topic. I know it's a small thing....but it's always the little things that matter with an application as big as a web browser!
This project has been in the pipeline for months, why have a news update about it now, it's not like there's been some massive update about the whole thing.
I was as happy to hear about this project as anyone else, but I heard about it 4-6 months ago on wikipedia!
The film's total takings worldwide (Excluding DVDs) was in the area of $550m
Now, using your maths we have $150m in the hole on US takings with $350m of non-US takings still to go. Halving that figure we get $175m so $25m of profit, then add in rebates for filming in New Zealand.
Even if you go into the whole "Hollywood accounting" system the film, as an entity is STILL likely to have made in excess of $75m.
Lest we forget to that film distributors have stakes in companies that are notionally giving them a cut of sales, or that both are owned by a single overarching parent.
Gross - Production budget is usually a good indicator of profitability in these terms because, heck, if Hollywood Maths(tm) can turn Forrest Gump into a commercial failure then who knows what a bigger film would become!
King Kong did not "barely break even", it's the 36th highest grossing film of all time with nearly $400m of profit to its name. The only way it could have been classed as break even is if you looked at US gross only without DVD sales.
I hear "PS3 price cut" so then I look at the price of all the major consoles in Japan:
Wii... 25,000 yen...
360... 29,800 yen...
PS3... 62,790 yen...
Now this is all for "Low End" models but forgive for saying that the PS3 price is still ringing the insanity alarm inside my head. The console is STILL more than double the price of either of its competitors (Yes, I know 360 isn't selling in Japan but Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon et al. may help to convince the Japanese market that 360 is worth it).
I've never been a big fan of Sony, never will be, but their recent list of faux pas, technical errors and the mockery of the whole is world is slowly making me think that one day they might just not bother with consoles...maybe not this generation, or the next....but soon...and for the rest of my life hopefully.
Not going to happen. PAX is too niche and too unknown to be a good place for games companies to give out whatever message it is marketing is getting them to seel this week.
E3 is something that normal people know about right now, and for that reason alone PAX won't be coming close for some considerable years....and even then I doubt it will.
Companies will move on to the smaller, more targeted shows to get news to press. E3 lost its focus...if it was for press then why was so much money spent on each booth, why not just some standard demo pods and a desk for literature, if it was for the everyman then why in LA....why not on a few "Battlebus" type things to tour Europe, North America and Japan...
Publish a Grand Theft Auto MMORPG and use google adsense to advertise it on gang blogs...take real world crime into virtual space....and make money....wonderful.
And just for once I would actually support Jack Thompson.
This is the sort of stuff that givers all gamers who quite like the way things are right now some serious headaches over what could become of their hobby.
I love anime, I run a local anime society here in Wales, I even like Evangelion....but seriously....does this REALLY need a /. article?
It's the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy versus Encyclopedia Galactica all over again...
No, not trolling, just a genuine lack of understanding as to why someone who wants to run Windows apps wouldn't just buy a cheaper/more powerful machine that is more suited to the OS.
Choice is one thing, fair enough, I'm just questioning why you would be crazy enough to run Windows on Mac hardware?
Forgetting first of all that the Mac is more expensive than an equivalent PC counterpart, and that it was designed to work with OSX and not Windows, I (personally) would also question why someone would want to work in Windows when they could be working in OSX (And if someone says it's for games then I'm afraid I refer you back to your average PC having much better hardware for the same price).
Personally I've run Linux, Windows, and OSX and all three have their advantages, true enough, but when I buy a Mac I buy it because it is one simple no-messing-necessary solution...adding in Windows just seems to go against that for me.