Article II prevents anybody from owning a celestial body. I can mine the moon without owning it just as I can carry out commercial operations in the ocean without owning it.
Article VI is about limiting the scope of national and international activities in space. It doesn't apply to private ventures.
This treaty is just an exercise in diplomacy and nobody takes it seriously. Already the weapons-in-space provisions have pretty much been totally ignored.
Even if the treaty expressly forbade any commercial activity, only about 100 countries have signed on to it. All you would have to do is launch and run mission control from a country that hasn't signed the treaty.
Actually, you probably will. I don't like 3D movies and I ended up with a 3D capable TV just because most of the really good new TV's have this capability. If I could have bought the exact same model without 3D, I would have.
Easy, they will buy more machines and install the properly signed software that they wrote with their DECR-1000A workstations. They weren't relying on the crippled OtherOS feature.
I don't know if I agree with that. The tile metaphor is fairly unique and has been duplicated on Android. I think any innovation they come up with will be quickly cloned.
I would put their problems in three categories.
1. Their marketing sucks. They spent a fortune on a campaign to establish that WP7 is good for people who don't like using a smart phone. 2. They have the appeal and sexiness of Cisco or Oracle. They're that middle aged slightly pudgy guy driving a sports car. There doesn't seem to be anybody at Microsoft with any sense of design. At least nobody of any apparent authority. 3. Their best developers have moved on to Google, Apple, and Facebook and Microsoft isn't very attractive to the best of the new generation of developers and designers. They might attract some people with fat pay checks, but they aren't ever going to get the truly passionate people.
Add to that their craptastic management and stifling bureaucracy and it's no wonder their stock has been dead in the water for a decade.
You have to admit Microsoft has a problem here. There is very little buzz around their phones despite them spending over $100,000,000 in marketing before launch. I think they may have another Zune on their hands here. A good product that compares well to its rivals, but still doesn't sell.
I'm actually surprised that they partnered with Nokia rather than purchasing RIM.
Entice people with nice offices, nice equipment, good salaries, realistic deadlines, and good hours, and you'll probably have no trouble getting developers to work for you.
I don't know about that. The console vs app model are so fundamentally different. A console game gets pressed to disk and that's it! Release early and often can't work on a console. Even the online marketplaces on the consoles are far too heavy and slow. The console business model is just old fashioned.
What the console makers need to do is loosen their grip. While I doubt you will ever see them go as far as Google has and allow alternative marketplaces, they could at least try to be as open as Apple is.
Yeah, I don't feel a lot of sympathy either. The big publishers are so risk-averse that they are stuck making the same games over-and-over. Small and independent game makers are innovating and disrupting the big guys and that's a great thing.
That's an interesting point. If these cheap games are mostly being sold to new gamers, then this doesn't affect the people who make big, expensive games. They just have a relatively smaller slice of a bigger pie and usually that's a good thing.
I'm not sure that's true though. I'm one of the people I was talking about. I mostly want to play a quick game a few times per week. I do however have a Wii and a PS3 and would play them more often if games were less expensive. My second most used video game machine is my PC and that's mostly because of steam sales. It turns out that the cheaper games are, the more money big publishers get from me.
Because resources available to dedicate towards producing games are limited.
Late last year, Sony suspended work on the PS4 and moved the entire team to work on their mobile (Android) games. If that turns out to be more profitable than the console business, then the console business is going to get starved for resources.
Look at the sales numbers. Worldwide, console games are something like a $40 billion business. Late last year mobile gaming (of which Android and iOS are the largest part) passed that number. Can you guess which market is stagnant and which is growing like crazy right now? The console market is still huge, but if the publishers have to start charging $30 instead of $60 per game, they are going to revolt even if they make more money. Nobody likes it when their market is disrupted.
But for every person like you, there are lots like me who only want to play Angry Birds for a few minutes a couple of times a week. Honestly, I've spent more on phone games in the past year than I have on PC or console (PS3 and Wii) titles and frankly I've been disappointed with purchases on all the platforms. The difference is that when I buy a crappy phone game, I'm only out a few dollars. When I buy a crappy PS3 game (like I did twice last year - GT5 and ModNation Racers), I'm out $60 each time.
hiring rock star programmers and artists on a $1.00 iOS game is utterly stupid
It's not that expensive although the cost is rising quickly. There's a significant number of rock star programmers out there who want to write for their phone and are willing to take a pay cut to do so. Try hiring for a console game right now. That's become even more expensive because so many developers no longer want to write for consoles or work on a multi-million dollar title. The stress involved in doing so can be substantial.
Good for Microsoft. It's nice to see a company realizing that a shitty product could be worse than no product. When they do come out with something, it should be worth a look.
I'm guessing Windows Phone 7 / CE is going to be their tablet OS of choice, or perhaps their XBox OS.
Why not? In this case, the guy is a research scientist and likely doesn't care a whole lot about market share. Secondly, I'm guessing he has an iPhone rather than an Android phone and so he's more likely to develop for the phone he has.
Companies often develop for the iPhone first because iPhone owners are more affluent and spend more money on apps than Android developers.
And new player sales are down significantly since their 2003 peak.
Online delivery is expanding incredibly quick while physical media sales and rentals are stagnant or dropping. The trend is pretty clear. Blu-Ray is this generation's quadrophonic sound. Certain geeks appreciate it, but mostly nobody cares.
I'd pay for a subscription today if I could stream it to my phone without needing to connect my laptop. I stream Pandora to my phone all the time and it has worked flawlessly, even when I drive around in my car.
I actually don't want to download music to my phone. I have a Nexus S which is extremely limited in storage space. This week I uploaded my entire collection to Amazon's cloud service and to be honest, this is more useful to me than Rdio and it is much less expensive. Amazon + Pandora is working out to be a great combination for me.
Like Spotify, Rdio has a pricing model where they charge more if the endpoint is a phone. This makes no sense to me whatsoever and reminds me of the bad old days when cable tv companies wanted you to buy a separate subscription for each television set.
For Rdio, I can tether my laptop to my phone and listen for $5 / month. Great! If, however, I wanted the phone to be the endpoint, they double the price. I can understand there are costs associated with producing a mobile app, but I would rather they just charge for the app rather than double the monthly fee. Bastards.
I do subscribe to Pandora though. $36 / year is about the right price for me, plus their client is built into my television and my receiver.
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Here's a more scholarly run down of the topic:
http://www.law.uoregon.edu/org/oril/docs/12-1/brittingham.pdf
Article II prevents anybody from owning a celestial body. I can mine the moon without owning it just as I can carry out commercial operations in the ocean without owning it.
Article VI is about limiting the scope of national and international activities in space. It doesn't apply to private ventures.
This treaty is just an exercise in diplomacy and nobody takes it seriously. Already the weapons-in-space provisions have pretty much been totally ignored.
No it doesn't. You can read the treaty here.
Even if the treaty expressly forbade any commercial activity, only about 100 countries have signed on to it. All you would have to do is launch and run mission control from a country that hasn't signed the treaty.
In TFA, he doesn't mention a return trip. Is that intentional? A one way trip to mars makes a lot of sense.
You understand the difference between climate and weather, right?
Actually, you probably will. I don't like 3D movies and I ended up with a 3D capable TV just because most of the really good new TV's have this capability. If I could have bought the exact same model without 3D, I would have.
Easy, they will buy more machines and install the properly signed software that they wrote with their DECR-1000A workstations. They weren't relying on the crippled OtherOS feature.
That works out to about $2,000 per phone sold during that time.
They would have been better off to pay people $1,000 to take the phone and let word of mouth do it's job.
The Metro UI is pretty cool, I'll agree with that. Supposedly it's going to start showing up in lots of MSFT products. I believe that's a good thing.
I don't know if I agree with that. The tile metaphor is fairly unique and has been duplicated on Android. I think any innovation they come up with will be quickly cloned.
I would put their problems in three categories.
1. Their marketing sucks. They spent a fortune on a campaign to establish that WP7 is good for people who don't like using a smart phone.
2. They have the appeal and sexiness of Cisco or Oracle. They're that middle aged slightly pudgy guy driving a sports car. There doesn't seem to be anybody at Microsoft with any sense of design. At least nobody of any apparent authority.
3. Their best developers have moved on to Google, Apple, and Facebook and Microsoft isn't very attractive to the best of the new generation of developers and designers. They might attract some people with fat pay checks, but they aren't ever going to get the truly passionate people.
Add to that their craptastic management and stifling bureaucracy and it's no wonder their stock has been dead in the water for a decade.
You have to admit Microsoft has a problem here. There is very little buzz around their phones despite them spending over $100,000,000 in marketing before launch. I think they may have another Zune on their hands here. A good product that compares well to its rivals, but still doesn't sell.
I'm actually surprised that they partnered with Nokia rather than purchasing RIM.
Nokia will need it. Few companies have spent so much producing so little.
I don't know about that. The console vs app model are so fundamentally different. A console game gets pressed to disk and that's it! Release early and often can't work on a console. Even the online marketplaces on the consoles are far too heavy and slow. The console business model is just old fashioned.
What the console makers need to do is loosen their grip. While I doubt you will ever see them go as far as Google has and allow alternative marketplaces, they could at least try to be as open as Apple is.
Yeah, I don't feel a lot of sympathy either. The big publishers are so risk-averse that they are stuck making the same games over-and-over. Small and independent game makers are innovating and disrupting the big guys and that's a great thing.
That's an interesting point. If these cheap games are mostly being sold to new gamers, then this doesn't affect the people who make big, expensive games. They just have a relatively smaller slice of a bigger pie and usually that's a good thing.
I'm not sure that's true though. I'm one of the people I was talking about. I mostly want to play a quick game a few times per week. I do however have a Wii and a PS3 and would play them more often if games were less expensive. My second most used video game machine is my PC and that's mostly because of steam sales. It turns out that the cheaper games are, the more money big publishers get from me.
Because resources available to dedicate towards producing games are limited.
Late last year, Sony suspended work on the PS4 and moved the entire team to work on their mobile (Android) games. If that turns out to be more profitable than the console business, then the console business is going to get starved for resources.
Look at the sales numbers. Worldwide, console games are something like a $40 billion business. Late last year mobile gaming (of which Android and iOS are the largest part) passed that number. Can you guess which market is stagnant and which is growing like crazy right now? The console market is still huge, but if the publishers have to start charging $30 instead of $60 per game, they are going to revolt even if they make more money. Nobody likes it when their market is disrupted.
But for every person like you, there are lots like me who only want to play Angry Birds for a few minutes a couple of times a week. Honestly, I've spent more on phone games in the past year than I have on PC or console (PS3 and Wii) titles and frankly I've been disappointed with purchases on all the platforms. The difference is that when I buy a crappy phone game, I'm only out a few dollars. When I buy a crappy PS3 game (like I did twice last year - GT5 and ModNation Racers), I'm out $60 each time.
It's not that expensive although the cost is rising quickly. There's a significant number of rock star programmers out there who want to write for their phone and are willing to take a pay cut to do so. Try hiring for a console game right now. That's become even more expensive because so many developers no longer want to write for consoles or work on a multi-million dollar title. The stress involved in doing so can be substantial.
At least with the Xoom you aren't going to have to hold it for long. Motorola needs to work on the battery life.
Good for Microsoft. It's nice to see a company realizing that a shitty product could be worse than no product. When they do come out with something, it should be worth a look.
I'm guessing Windows Phone 7 / CE is going to be their tablet OS of choice, or perhaps their XBox OS.
Why not? In this case, the guy is a research scientist and likely doesn't care a whole lot about market share. Secondly, I'm guessing he has an iPhone rather than an Android phone and so he's more likely to develop for the phone he has.
Companies often develop for the iPhone first because iPhone owners are more affluent and spend more money on apps than Android developers.
And new player sales are down significantly since their 2003 peak.
Online delivery is expanding incredibly quick while physical media sales and rentals are stagnant or dropping. The trend is pretty clear. Blu-Ray is this generation's quadrophonic sound. Certain geeks appreciate it, but mostly nobody cares.
It's endemic to music industry executives. When they see somebody finding new ways to use music, they think they should be paid for it.
I'd pay for a subscription today if I could stream it to my phone without needing to connect my laptop. I stream Pandora to my phone all the time and it has worked flawlessly, even when I drive around in my car.
I actually don't want to download music to my phone. I have a Nexus S which is extremely limited in storage space. This week I uploaded my entire collection to Amazon's cloud service and to be honest, this is more useful to me than Rdio and it is much less expensive. Amazon + Pandora is working out to be a great combination for me.
Like Spotify, Rdio has a pricing model where they charge more if the endpoint is a phone. This makes no sense to me whatsoever and reminds me of the bad old days when cable tv companies wanted you to buy a separate subscription for each television set.
For Rdio, I can tether my laptop to my phone and listen for $5 / month. Great! If, however, I wanted the phone to be the endpoint, they double the price. I can understand there are costs associated with producing a mobile app, but I would rather they just charge for the app rather than double the monthly fee. Bastards.
I do subscribe to Pandora though. $36 / year is about the right price for me, plus their client is built into my television and my receiver.