Actually I see the chances of being able to replay a game years down the line as INCREASED with things like Steam.
No more lost CD's/cd key since its part of your account. Better chance of support for games on new operating systems/Hardware, since if they make even a few bucks now and then from sales a publisher has incentive to keep those old titles compatible.
And worrying simultaneously about Steam becoming the de facto monopoly AND then going dark? So it's too successful and yet will die leaving you without access to your games? Doesn't seem likely. Not in any reasonable span of time anyways.
Basically I think if Steam dies at this point, it'll be far enough down the line that it'll be like complaining about nobody making stereos with 8-track tape support anymore - so you can't play all those nifty disco beats you picked up back in the 1970's. And thats something you risk just by using almost anything based on technology.
No DRM and multiple formats - you can download the book later in a different format if you change devices. I got an ipod touch, set it up so it can access their store using the Stanza e-reader software and download any book I had purchased from my wireless network.
Easy.
Free library - usually offering the first book in a series (or back catalogue books) And authors have found their sales go UP when they offer the books this way for free.
Great price point - most books are 6 bucks, 15 dollar webscription gives you 5-6 books which combines 2-3 new books with 2-3 older ones.
Baen's webscriptions is the whole reason I got into ebooks - and I buy their monthly webscription every month and several package deals and individual books every year. I can get books immediately, carry a large amount around with me on a small device, and then read them whenever I get the chance. (30 mins reading when I'm on the subway, 10 minutes reading waiting for the dentist, etc)
They've even in the past released hardcover books that came with a CD full of ebooks. Getting some of these books free hasn't stopped me from paying them - it's in some cases gotten me introduced to authors I wouldn't have tried if I had to buy a 19.99 book - and then I've gone and bought all of their books after reading the one free one.
"Here's a short excerpt from the constitution of the People's Republic of China.
"Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Article 36. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief..."
Constitutions only work when the people in charge feel constrained by their content"
-- Actually I think their constitution is completely accurate - I'm sure most of their citizens WOULD enjoy freedom of religion, association, procession, and of demonstration. Of course the government would have to give it to them to find out for sure....
Well one tip is to buy an old palm PDA if you don't have one and use it as your ebook reader - they're cheap, hold several webscription titles at a time, and highly portable. (My old treo 270 is my cellphone, email device, and public transit book repository.... turns my commute on transit into reading time without having to card around books. Also means any downtime is reading time, since it is always on me and I have several books ready to go.... waiting at the doctors office is no longer quite as much of a chore. (which also means I wish webscriptions would put out twice the number of titles at times, darn them!:) Or at least some other publishers would get a clue and use their business model!
BTW baen also has a free library - highly recommended, full back catalogue books and first in a series titles to get you hooked. Whole bunch of sci fi and fantasy titles for absolutely free, and from a business aspect it makes perfect sense... since I found the free library first, read everything, and since then have likely bought a few hundred dollars worth of titles frmo Baen I wouldn't have bought otherwise (in paper format) When I buy paper I buy used - new books are getting quite pricy, so it has to be something known and good for me to invest 12-14 bucks canadian for a single paperback!
One free read of a first in a series book however from the free library and I've gone out and bought paper editions of the rest - because I knew I'd enjoy reading them so it was worth the investment.
Re:EBooks are a failure... get over it
on
Textbooks With EULAs
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Actually I buy my casual reading almost exclusively in ebook format - but through webscriptions.net (baen, scifi and fantasy publisher)
The difference is they offer a variety of formats, NO DRM, and you can redownload any time if you lose the original file. (I've done that a few times when I had to wipe out my palm and restore)
Ebooks will only catch on when they are convenient, and less expensive than the paper versions (the webscription model is about 5 books for 15 bucks US... certainly reasonable)
Compared to other publishers with onerous DRM, prices that frequently are MORE than a paper copy - and they have indifferent selection at best.... I can understand why most ebooks don't do well - but I personally hope baen keeps on doing what they are doing. (heck they've pretty much hooked me for a steady 15 bucks per month since I tend to buy every month when it comes out)
I hear they're going to make 35 percent of piracy be Canadian content as well! Several of my friends have recently had CRTC officials show up with MP3's of Anne Murray - mind you I think he went the easier route and just went to prison....
(The above posting should not be read by the sarcasm challenged. If you are unsure if you are sarcasm challenged, please immediately report to your local comedy club for testing. Do not, repeat, do not take any sarcasm unless able to process it - otherwise grave side effects of confusion, loss of bowel function, and several people pointing and laughing in your general direction may be experienced. At no time operate any kind of humour while unable to process sarcasm. Lock all puns in a safe place and gently croon yourself to sleep in a darkened room. Trust me you'll feel better for it)
Actually only the later models of the wright flyer used a capapult to assist in launching (useless trivia: The original machine had no name at the time of launching as was just referred to by the wright brothers as "the machine") The original machine, as I recall, had no wheels and used a wheeled sled to take off from, but it did take off and fly under its own power. (and even later, the flyer only used the capapult for launching)
The main accomplishments of the wright brothers however are not so much coming up with powered flight - people had been flying gliders, balloons and such for a little bit and the concept was not truly shocking - but that the came up with a primative (but workable) control system (involving warping the wings to control the flyer) and techniques to be used in piloting the craft. Before the flyer, most flights were basically straight line "hope you don't end up hitting a tree" type things.
Personally - I'd like a button controlled display that could display an image of whats right behind me. (Mirrors and shoulder checks are still essential, but sometimes with heavy traffic or an idiot in front of you riding too close to the next car and slamming on his brakes at random, you don't have the luxusy to do them as often as you should.)
Speed I usually know by gearing/engine sound to within an acceptible error level (Most riders would know this I imagine, one of the first rules of safety on a bike would be "Know Thy Machine") RPM's I can hear well enough so that I can deal without checking that on the speedo either. So neither of these would be as important as knowing what the cagers around me are doing. (I've been saved several times from being run down by some idiot because of shoulder and mirror checks... I've had people pass me in no drive areas (yellow striped marked areas on the road) coming from right behind me and passing literally within inches - which means they're coming right from where I have a hard time spotting them with mirrors.
A small (one inch square maybe) display in the corner only of a visor displaying an image of whats behind me would be I think a good thing - but I think every safe motorcyclist knows that in traffic the safe speed would be slightly faster or as fast as traffic is going (you want to keep from either continuously passing or being passed, since those are both situations where car drivers tend to not see you or not give you enough room), and if they aren't in traffic they should know within 10kph what speed they are generally at without referring much to the speedo. (I know what speed I'm going from what gear I'm in and how much throttle I'm giving it)
That being said - I might change my mind if I had one of the new maxi-scooters (twistngo type machines) with an automatic clutch - MUCH harder to tell by "feel" exactly what speed you are going at without manual gearing. Still doable, but takes more experience. (And before anyone says anything about scooters not having much to worry about speeding - keep in mind the new maxi-scoots can have 650cc's on them and are VERY capable of going well above posted limits)
Does this mean when I get mugged they'll be taking body parts?:) Or that instead of people using the excuse "I left my wallet at home, can you cover the bill for me?" they'll be saying "I just had a really good loofah, can you cover the bill for me?"
It makes me a litle nervous - not quite for the privacy concerns many of the traditional tinfoil hat crowd will be worried about (which are not entirely non-valid concerns, but I don't see them as being quite as bad as they are often made out to be.) This concerns me because of the rise in things such as ATM and banking fees (Most major banks here in Canada recently started charging extra fees for using anything but their ATMS, and yanked their ATMs out of the convenience stores - conveniently leaving rebranded identical machines with a new no-name company listed on them in at least a few cases I can think of)
When you are RFID'd and if they manage to essentially change the monetary base to an electronic one, will this provide them with a monopoly (the banks) and allow them to raise service fees for electronic transactions - since you will not effectively have any other recourse?
Of course on the other hand - with rampant counterfeiting - this may be less of a choice and more of a necessity to move away from physical paper money that is relatively easily forged to a secure electronic transactional system.
Agreed - I've found myself spending more on ebooks through baen than I used to for regular books (where I usually went for used books due to price issues and might only pick up 1-5 new books a year) No nasty DRM to make reading the books more difficult, already formatted nicely for my palm (works great with the mobipocket reader) and it doesn't hurt being able to pick things up in ebook format before they even hit the shelves in paper!
Plus they did some smart moves to appeal financially - the ebooks are cheaper than the paper version (unlike a lot of idiotic publishers), can be downloaded as much as you want if you need another format or lose your copy, PLUS you can send a free subscription of any ebook you buy to a friend when you checkout - meaning if you know someone addicted to fantasy/science fiction you can effectively get a two for one deal whenever you buy or they buy.
Not to mention the free library... smart smart move - that got me hooked on a couple new authors and then I moved onto buying them in webscriptions.
If other publishers did this kind of thing I suspect ebooks would be MAJORLY catching up to paper copies.
Actually on a corporate IT level, press can be VERY important towards sales - I've been in quite a few larger corporations where products were bought because of name recognition, which comes from press coverage. IT managers frequently are more manager and less technical - they rely on the news for their information a lot more than you would think. (Might be different where you work, but this has been my experience in some larger environments)
That being said, I didn't actually say they would pickup new customers BECAUSE of the good press (though it certainly will result in that, since the sales people can push it) but because it removes uncertainty - so customers who want a particular linux app but are unsure about the current legal situation will find HP attractive about now.
They're going to get some good press out of this, pick up some new customers (especially on the corporate side) and at the same time generate some goodwill for themselves.
AND at the same time they likely won't have to invest much in legal work - SCO doesn't really have a case (as has been demonstrated) and doesn't have the money to take on another big lawsuit anyways (think they would go after HP while the redhat/ibm lawsuits are out there? Not likely... their warchest has to be getting a bit less weighty these days)
Hmm.... correct me if I'm wrong, but according to that definition - wouldn't president bush be declaring pretzels as WMD?
(I mean, he did end up getting choked into unconsciousness by one..... clearly the pretzel manufacturers need to be stopped! No more of their twisted plans to dominate the salty snack industry!)
**This post has not been approved for reading by the Sarcasm Challenged**
From a legal standpoint they're tainted. Anyone who works for SCO might have had access to the source code at any point - which means if you are developing your own code, since SCO (Well Canopy group anyways) has proven to sue at the drop of a hat without any real evidence, you CAN'T hire any kind of technical staff who recently worked at SCO without potentially exposing yourself to a frivilous lawsuit.
They might well launch the suit just to punish someone jumping ship for that matter - they haven't exactly proven themselves to have much of an ethical track record as a company after all.
Until the suits are settled and the legal issues over with (and SCO buried likely), you're opening yourself up for some potential liability hiring ANY technical staff who worked for SCO. (Management is a moot point - I mean who would want to work with them anyways? Well possibly certain mafia shell companies.... no... even the mafia has limits....)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I see the chances of being able to replay a game years down the line as INCREASED with things like Steam. No more lost CD's/cd key since its part of your account. Better chance of support for games on new operating systems/Hardware, since if they make even a few bucks now and then from sales a publisher has incentive to keep those old titles compatible. And worrying simultaneously about Steam becoming the de facto monopoly AND then going dark? So it's too successful and yet will die leaving you without access to your games? Doesn't seem likely. Not in any reasonable span of time anyways. Basically I think if Steam dies at this point, it'll be far enough down the line that it'll be like complaining about nobody making stereos with 8-track tape support anymore - so you can't play all those nifty disco beats you picked up back in the 1970's. And thats something you risk just by using almost anything based on technology.
No DRM and multiple formats - you can download the book later in a different format if you change devices. I got an ipod touch, set it up so it can access their store using the Stanza e-reader software and download any book I had purchased from my wireless network. Easy. Free library - usually offering the first book in a series (or back catalogue books) And authors have found their sales go UP when they offer the books this way for free. Great price point - most books are 6 bucks, 15 dollar webscription gives you 5-6 books which combines 2-3 new books with 2-3 older ones. Baen's webscriptions is the whole reason I got into ebooks - and I buy their monthly webscription every month and several package deals and individual books every year. I can get books immediately, carry a large amount around with me on a small device, and then read them whenever I get the chance. (30 mins reading when I'm on the subway, 10 minutes reading waiting for the dentist, etc) They've even in the past released hardcover books that came with a CD full of ebooks. Getting some of these books free hasn't stopped me from paying them - it's in some cases gotten me introduced to authors I wouldn't have tried if I had to buy a 19.99 book - and then I've gone and bought all of their books after reading the one free one.
"Here's a short excerpt from the constitution of the People's Republic of China.
"Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Article 36. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief..."
Constitutions only work when the people in charge feel constrained by their content"
-- Actually I think their constitution is completely accurate - I'm sure most of their citizens WOULD enjoy freedom of religion, association, procession, and of demonstration. Of course the government would have to give it to them to find out for sure....
Well one tip is to buy an old palm PDA if you don't have one and use it as your ebook reader - they're cheap, hold several webscription titles at a time, and highly portable. (My old treo 270 is my cellphone, email device, and public transit book repository.... turns my commute on transit into reading time without having to card around books. Also means any downtime is reading time, since it is always on me and I have several books ready to go.... waiting at the doctors office is no longer quite as much of a chore. :) Or at least some other publishers would get a clue and use their business model!
(which also means I wish webscriptions would put out twice the number of titles at times, darn them!
BTW baen also has a free library - highly recommended, full back catalogue books and first in a series titles to get you hooked. Whole bunch of sci fi and fantasy titles for absolutely free, and from a business aspect it makes perfect sense... since I found the free library first, read everything, and since then have likely bought a few hundred dollars worth of titles frmo Baen I wouldn't have bought otherwise (in paper format) When I buy paper I buy used - new books are getting quite pricy, so it has to be something known and good for me to invest 12-14 bucks canadian for a single paperback!
One free read of a first in a series book however from the free library and I've gone out and bought paper editions of the rest - because I knew I'd enjoy reading them so it was worth the investment.
Actually I buy my casual reading almost exclusively in ebook format - but through webscriptions.net (baen, scifi and fantasy publisher)
The difference is they offer a variety of formats, NO DRM, and you can redownload any time if you lose the original file. (I've done that a few times when I had to wipe out my palm and restore)
Ebooks will only catch on when they are convenient, and less expensive than the paper versions (the webscription model is about 5 books for 15 bucks US... certainly reasonable)
Compared to other publishers with onerous DRM, prices that frequently are MORE than a paper copy - and they have indifferent selection at best.... I can understand why most ebooks don't do well - but I personally hope baen keeps on doing what they are doing. (heck they've pretty much hooked me for a steady 15 bucks per month since I tend to buy every month when it comes out)
"No, it means he will receive an integer number of kicks in the ass. It's rather difficult to kick someone a fractional number of times."
What if you do a half-assed kick?
"Anyone who sends bulk spam emails should be rounded up and shot. Well, maybe publicly humiliated first and then shot.
Slowly."
It's rather difficult to shoot someone slowly - pretty much it works like this....
Not shot.... Not shot..... Not shot..... *BANG*
Shot.
I suppose you could push the bullet in with some kind of stick if you were particularly vicious and/or desiring to save on gunpowder.....
Good thing too... I could imagine the reactions of the poor SUV drivers trying to follow the GPS signal of a can in midflight...
"Speedup damnit, that guy has to be doing a few hundred miles per hour!"
Yeah and then you wake up in the afterlife and the first words out of your (disembodied) mouth would be "Oh crap, I forgot a UPS in my tomb!" ;)
I hear they're going to make 35 percent of piracy be Canadian content as well! Several of my friends have recently had CRTC officials show up with MP3's of Anne Murray - mind you I think he went the easier route and just went to prison....
(The above posting should not be read by the sarcasm challenged. If you are unsure if you are sarcasm challenged, please immediately report to your local comedy club for testing. Do not, repeat, do not take any sarcasm unless able to process it - otherwise grave side effects of confusion, loss of bowel function, and several people pointing and laughing in your general direction may be experienced. At no time operate any kind of humour while unable to process sarcasm. Lock all puns in a safe place and gently croon yourself to sleep in a darkened room. Trust me you'll feel better for it)
Actually only the later models of the wright flyer used a capapult to assist in launching (useless trivia: The original machine had no name at the time of launching as was just referred to by the wright brothers as "the machine") The original machine, as I recall, had no wheels and used a wheeled sled to take off from, but it did take off and fly under its own power. (and even later, the flyer only used the capapult for launching)
The main accomplishments of the wright brothers however are not so much coming up with powered flight - people had been flying gliders, balloons and such for a little bit and the concept was not truly shocking - but that the came up with a primative (but workable) control system (involving warping the wings to control the flyer) and techniques to be used in piloting the craft. Before the flyer, most flights were basically straight line "hope you don't end up hitting a tree" type things.
Personally - I'd like a button controlled display that could display an image of whats right behind me. (Mirrors and shoulder checks are still essential, but sometimes with heavy traffic or an idiot in front of you riding too close to the next car and slamming on his brakes at random, you don't have the luxusy to do them as often as you should.)
Speed I usually know by gearing/engine sound to within an acceptible error level (Most riders would know this I imagine, one of the first rules of safety on a bike would be "Know Thy Machine") RPM's I can hear well enough so that I can deal without checking that on the speedo either. So neither of these would be as important as knowing what the cagers around me are doing. (I've been saved several times from being run down by some idiot because of shoulder and mirror checks... I've had people pass me in no drive areas (yellow striped marked areas on the road) coming from right behind me and passing literally within inches - which means they're coming right from where I have a hard time spotting them with mirrors.
A small (one inch square maybe) display in the corner only of a visor displaying an image of whats behind me would be I think a good thing - but I think every safe motorcyclist knows that in traffic the safe speed would be slightly faster or as fast as traffic is going (you want to keep from either continuously passing or being passed, since those are both situations where car drivers tend to not see you or not give you enough room), and if they aren't in traffic they should know within 10kph what speed they are generally at without referring much to the speedo. (I know what speed I'm going from what gear I'm in and how much throttle I'm giving it)
That being said - I might change my mind if I had one of the new maxi-scooters (twistngo type machines) with an automatic clutch - MUCH harder to tell by "feel" exactly what speed you are going at without manual gearing. Still doable, but takes more experience.
(And before anyone says anything about scooters not having much to worry about speeding - keep in mind the new maxi-scoots can have 650cc's on them and are VERY capable of going well above posted limits)
Does this mean when I get mugged they'll be taking body parts? :) Or that instead of people using the excuse "I left my wallet at home, can you cover the bill for me?" they'll be saying "I just had a really good loofah, can you cover the bill for me?"
It makes me a litle nervous - not quite for the privacy concerns many of the traditional tinfoil hat crowd will be worried about (which are not entirely non-valid concerns, but I don't see them as being quite as bad as they are often made out to be.) This concerns me because of the rise in things such as ATM and banking fees (Most major banks here in Canada recently started charging extra fees for using anything but their ATMS, and yanked their ATMs out of the convenience stores - conveniently leaving rebranded identical machines with a new no-name company listed on them in at least a few cases I can think of)
When you are RFID'd and if they manage to essentially change the monetary base to an electronic one, will this provide them with a monopoly (the banks) and allow them to raise service fees for electronic transactions - since you will not effectively have any other recourse?
Of course on the other hand - with rampant counterfeiting - this may be less of a choice and more of a necessity to move away from physical paper money that is relatively easily forged to a secure electronic transactional system.
Well, unless it's made by Diebold anyways.
Yes but the worst thing about being proven wrong in THIS case is you'd be hearing about it for a LOOOOONNNNGGG time :)
"Hey, remember a thousand years ago when you dismissed that urchin thing?"
"Good idea! However, you lose this round. Kevin Bacon was in Footloose [imdb.com], not Flashdance [imdb.com]."
;)
Well I'm pretty sure he WAS within 6 people of starring in Flashdance if you think about it
Agreed - I've found myself spending more on ebooks through baen than I used to for regular books (where I usually went for used books due to price issues and might only pick up 1-5 new books a year) No nasty DRM to make reading the books more difficult, already formatted nicely for my palm (works great with the mobipocket reader) and it doesn't hurt being able to pick things up in ebook format before they even hit the shelves in paper!
Plus they did some smart moves to appeal financially - the ebooks are cheaper than the paper version (unlike a lot of idiotic publishers), can be downloaded as much as you want if you need another format or lose your copy, PLUS you can send a free subscription of any ebook you buy to a friend when you checkout - meaning if you know someone addicted to fantasy/science fiction you can effectively get a two for one deal whenever you buy or they buy.
Not to mention the free library... smart smart move - that got me hooked on a couple new authors and then I moved onto buying them in webscriptions.
If other publishers did this kind of thing I suspect ebooks would be MAJORLY catching up to paper copies.
Headaches and nausea combined with better memory and reaction times.... finally I can remember just how quickly I'm throwing up!
Actually on a corporate IT level, press can be VERY important towards sales - I've been in quite a few larger corporations where products were bought because of name recognition, which comes from press coverage. IT managers frequently are more manager and less technical - they rely on the news for their information a lot more than you would think. (Might be different where you work, but this has been my experience in some larger environments)
That being said, I didn't actually say they would pickup new customers BECAUSE of the good press (though it certainly will result in that, since the sales people can push it) but because it removes uncertainty - so customers who want a particular linux app but are unsure about the current legal situation will find HP attractive about now.
They're going to get some good press out of this, pick up some new customers (especially on the corporate side) and at the same time generate some goodwill for themselves.
AND at the same time they likely won't have to invest much in legal work - SCO doesn't really have a case (as has been demonstrated) and doesn't have the money to take on another big lawsuit anyways (think they would go after HP while the redhat/ibm lawsuits are out there? Not likely... their warchest has to be getting a bit less weighty these days)
Hmm.... correct me if I'm wrong, but according to that definition - wouldn't president bush be declaring pretzels as WMD?
(I mean, he did end up getting choked into unconsciousness by one..... clearly the pretzel manufacturers need to be stopped! No more of their twisted plans to dominate the salty snack industry!)
**This post has not been approved for reading by the Sarcasm Challenged**
From a legal standpoint they're tainted. Anyone who works for SCO might have had access to the source code at any point - which means if you are developing your own code, since SCO (Well Canopy group anyways) has proven to sue at the drop of a hat without any real evidence, you CAN'T hire any kind of technical staff who recently worked at SCO without potentially exposing yourself to a frivilous lawsuit.
They might well launch the suit just to punish someone jumping ship for that matter - they haven't exactly proven themselves to have much of an ethical track record as a company after all.
Until the suits are settled and the legal issues over with (and SCO buried likely), you're opening yourself up for some potential liability hiring ANY technical staff who worked for SCO.
(Management is a moot point - I mean who would want to work with them anyways? Well possibly certain mafia shell companies.... no... even the mafia has limits....)
"I basically live paranoid, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. :)"
How do you know the people who are out to get you aren't TRYING to make you paranoid?
(Waits for brains to implode wrapping themselves around THAT one)
I disagree... my own informal poll shows that 30 percent of users think they have found something STRONGER than crack to smoke :)
I think with this latest announcement we at least have finally found the answer to one question.... where did the Iraqi Information Minster end up?
I guarantee you - nude beaches in brazil won't be much of a draw if your average slashdot reader starts moving down there! :)
Now you've made me wonder if they would ask the passenger to turn the pacemaker off for the duration of the flight!