I absolutely agree with the article. If they decide to go motion control, then my current console will last me as long as they continue manufacturing it because I have no interest in upgrading to motion control.
Car analogies are poor for IP examples because is not easily possible to duplicate physical items.
Yes, but for the first time in recorded history, we are speaking of the resale of legitimate first purchase games, as opposed to pirating copies. I think the car example is excellent in this case, because a modern car does in fact have probably just about as much code written into it as your run of the middle game, and they still give you full unrestricted license to resell it, lend it out to a friend, etc. Unlike with games, the car manufcature probably wouldn't even object if you made a copy of your car, so long as a very small percentage of people did it, and didn't make a large number of copies.
Re:The Sims, SimCity... and Utopia is menioned whe
on
Vintage Games
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I had the opportunity to buy "Intellivision Lives" for the PS2 the other day. It had Utopia on it as well as Sea Battle, Sub hunt, and others. It was only $10, but I was on a road trip and didn't get it. Now I could kick myself.
Am I the only one who was glad that "waggle" games were segmented to the Wii?
Not at all. I have both the Wii and the PS3, and I greatly prefer the controller on the PS3 to the motion controller on the Wii. I will absolutely NOT be buying any kind of motion controller for the PS3 when it comes out. I do like the wireless aspect of both the Wii and the PS3 controllers, but the PS3 is much better implemented, with the USB recharging ability, rather than Wii's replacing of batteries or buying additional equipment and rechargable batteries. Also, the handshake time for the PS3 controller to connect to the system is much faster than the Wii. Multiple controllers? On the PS3, it is a snap. On the Wii, it can take several minutes of messing around to get the controllers all working. The Wii will sometimes lose communications with the controller, but I have never had this happen with the PS3.
I know the Wii is a much cheaper system than the PS3, but given that it is aimed more at younger people, even kids, they need to have a dependable and simple controller system. To me, it just doesn't fit the bill.
it's helpful to consider the possibility that the atmosphere was much thicker
Not to mention that the Earth was around 6X10^13 less massive, perhaps even more, depending on how much meteorite dust rained down back then. It seems likely that there was more meteorite dust falling back then.
Of course, being closer in relation to the amphibians, perhaps they were able to absorb oxygen through their skin. Or perhaps, as I read in at least one dinosaur book back in the 70's, they had multiple hearts.
There are plenty of other old wives tales telling how bad soda is for you, such as the suggetsion of using it for removing rusty lug nuts.
Of course, plain old tap water can be substituted for soda in most of these old wives tales, and the result is the same.
How do I describe the guy in the office next to mine who happens to be of African decent?
That is an excellent question, considering that more than half of the people I have met who are TRULY African-American were of Caucasian descent. I don't see any particular reason to call a 5th or 6th generation immigrant to America African-American other than to be Politically Correct. I am third generation myself, but I consider myself to be an American and would never ask someone to call me Czechoslovakian-American.
That's because Fox News tells people what they want to hear.
Fox news doesn't tell ME what I want to hear. Fox news tells me stories about mothers and fathers killing their children, murder suicides, incest, kidnappings and whatnot on a daily basis. That is not what I want to hear. But the reason I don't want to hear it is that I don't want things like that happening, not that I want them to cover stuff like that up. Other news sources seem to cover all that stuff up, whereas Fox seems to have an unfortunately neverending supply of stories like that.
God created man in his image. Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God." I don't buy it.
Of course, that doesn't mean that humans physically look like God, especially since before Jesus, God had no physical form.
Why should the sysadmins be prosecuted? They should have been prosecuted if it had been a hardware failure, but if it was willfully destroyed by another person, then the other person is to blame.
This is kind of like robbing an old man at gunpoint and then the guy goes into cardiac arrest and dies. He probably would have died in the next few years anyway, but your action advanced it. How should the courts find? Are you guilty of theft, or manslaughter?
This is the same as leaving your car with doors unlocked and the key on the passengers seat. If you do that, blame yourself if your car gets stolen.
Nope. The thief is still to blame.
In this case, having no offsite backups is still a dumb move because the database could get corrupted, however because the database didn't get corrupted and some wast of flesh destroyed the data, it is indeed proper to blame the hacker.
Maybe they'll stop looking at me even stranger when I tell them which way is north WITHOUT a compass.
Telling North is pretty easy using the stars if available at night or the sun if you are reasonably sure of the season and approximately what time of day it is.
As for the old boyscout adage, I think it should be changed to "Moss always grows on the outside of the tree", that's how useful it is. And of course, a rolling stone gathers no moss, so no matter which way it is rolling, that is no indication of which way is north.
If you are ever going hiking and want to be sure not to get lost, be sure to pack your fiberoptic cable and a shovel. If you get well and truly lost, dig a trench and bury the cable. When the backhoe comes to dig it up, simply follow the backhoe back to civilization.
I'm sure a fair portion of people on/. have heard of google voice (not including me), but how many people in the general American population have used it. 1% maybe? If none of the techy people that I work with all day long have ever mentioned it to me, then I think it has a pretty poor market share, and find it even more unlikely that everyone would ditch voicemail in favor of it. Having heard of it, I have no desire to ditch voicemail in favor of it.
it costs me to listen to it, and if it's important enough, they'll call again or leave a text or something
I never call back random callers, ESPECIALLY if they call multiple times and don't bother to leave a message. Texting costs me money and vastly more time than a voice conversation. If you need to convey a message to me, leave a voicemail.
I signed some paperwork and wrote "under duress" next to it when I was forced by my company to sign some crap that I didn't agree with. They threatened to fire me if I didn't sign it, so I figured that constitutes under duress.
So if you make a million dollars and give it all to charity so that you have no earned income, they are going to throw you in jail for "avoiding" taxes. I would like to see some documentation of this.
It works great if you make millions from multiple sources where people take large chunks out of (like agents). It would work for everyone if corporate taxes were abolished and it didn't cost anything to incorporate.
First of all, it makes sens that if an agent is taking part of your income, you therefore no longer have that income, so why should you be taxed on it?
Second of all, it costs almost nothing to incorporate. Sure you could go through a lawyer, and get one set up for a minimum of $500, or you could go down to the Secretary of States office with some Articles of Incorporation that you copied off of the internet and inserted your company name, and have it filed for, in my state, about $100. You have to pay $25 a year franchise tax, but if you have legitimate business expenses (and who doesn't), they probably more than make up for that $25. Oh yeah, and driving down to the SoS to file your paperwork is also tax deductible.
In some cases, you may be able to just file your taxes as self-employed without filing anything with the SoS. Just be sure to take care of your payroll taxes properly. An hour a month at most for a single individual.
Is there some compelling reason to tax corporate profits?
I can think of some very good reasons NOT to tax corporate profits. If you tax a corporations profits, that is that much less money they could use to expand the corporation. Expansion of a corporation leads to more jobs, which leads to more people paying tax and also more people with money who can buy stuff and pay sales tax. If the corporation chose to distribute their profits to their investors rather than expand their operations, the money then gets taxed in the hands of the investors (albeit only in the eventual future in the case of 401k, etc). The third option is that the corporation could just sit on their pile of money rather than reinvest it or share a dividend, but sitting on a pile of money is not going to please a savvy investor, so corporations are not likely to do this.
Taxing corporations is sort of like thinking that a bird in the hand is worth a dozen in the bush, or that instant gratification is better than a long term huge payout. In other words, it fits perfectly with what has gotten us into the current economic impasse.
Evading taxes is evading taxes.
Yes, and avoiding taxes is avoiding taxes. The difference is that in one way you are illegally not paying a tax that you owe, and in the other way you are legally taking advantage of tax code in order to not have to pay as much tax.
For example, when you write off you mortgage interest you are avoiding taxes. You could just go ahead and pay all the tax if you want, but the IRS grants you a way to avoid doing so. When you buy your groceries in town A instead of town B because town A has lower taxes, you are avoiding taxes. All perfectly legal and completely different from evading taxes, which would be for instance claiming mortgage interest when you didn't have any, or not reporting tips from a job at a restaurant.
Blame congress for leaving the loop holes. Those aren't loopholes. They are put there on purpose either 1) because somebody bought the tax code or 2) because the United States wanted to offer an incentive to invest in the area in which they offered a tax break.
Also, evading taxes is illegal, but avoiding taxes is not. If you decide to buy a stick of gum in city A rather than city B because city A has cheaper tax rates, that is avoiding taxes. If you order the gum over the internet and then don't pay your Use Tax, that is evading taxes.
From the looks of it, Obama is going to go after the people who evade OR avoid taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely agree with the article. If they decide to go motion control, then my current console will last me as long as they continue manufacturing it because I have no interest in upgrading to motion control.
Car analogies are poor for IP examples because is not easily possible to duplicate physical items.
Yes, but for the first time in recorded history, we are speaking of the resale of legitimate first purchase games, as opposed to pirating copies. I think the car example is excellent in this case, because a modern car does in fact have probably just about as much code written into it as your run of the middle game, and they still give you full unrestricted license to resell it, lend it out to a friend, etc. Unlike with games, the car manufcature probably wouldn't even object if you made a copy of your car, so long as a very small percentage of people did it, and didn't make a large number of copies.
I had the opportunity to buy "Intellivision Lives" for the PS2 the other day. It had Utopia on it as well as Sea Battle, Sub hunt, and others. It was only $10, but I was on a road trip and didn't get it. Now I could kick myself.
Am I the only one who was glad that "waggle" games were segmented to the Wii?
Not at all. I have both the Wii and the PS3, and I greatly prefer the controller on the PS3 to the motion controller on the Wii. I will absolutely NOT be buying any kind of motion controller for the PS3 when it comes out. I do like the wireless aspect of both the Wii and the PS3 controllers, but the PS3 is much better implemented, with the USB recharging ability, rather than Wii's replacing of batteries or buying additional equipment and rechargable batteries. Also, the handshake time for the PS3 controller to connect to the system is much faster than the Wii. Multiple controllers? On the PS3, it is a snap. On the Wii, it can take several minutes of messing around to get the controllers all working. The Wii will sometimes lose communications with the controller, but I have never had this happen with the PS3.
I know the Wii is a much cheaper system than the PS3, but given that it is aimed more at younger people, even kids, they need to have a dependable and simple controller system. To me, it just doesn't fit the bill.
it's helpful to consider the possibility that the atmosphere was much thicker
Not to mention that the Earth was around 6X10^13 less massive, perhaps even more, depending on how much meteorite dust rained down back then. It seems likely that there was more meteorite dust falling back then.
Of course, being closer in relation to the amphibians, perhaps they were able to absorb oxygen through their skin. Or perhaps, as I read in at least one dinosaur book back in the 70's, they had multiple hearts.
There are plenty of other old wives tales telling how bad soda is for you, such as the suggetsion of using it for removing rusty lug nuts.
Of course, plain old tap water can be substituted for soda in most of these old wives tales, and the result is the same.
How do I describe the guy in the office next to mine who happens to be of African decent?
That is an excellent question, considering that more than half of the people I have met who are TRULY African-American were of Caucasian descent. I don't see any particular reason to call a 5th or 6th generation immigrant to America African-American other than to be Politically Correct. I am third generation myself, but I consider myself to be an American and would never ask someone to call me Czechoslovakian-American.
How does one measure that when one hasn't been able to even bear watching the whole thing through the first time?
That's because Fox News tells people what they want to hear.
Fox news doesn't tell ME what I want to hear. Fox news tells me stories about mothers and fathers killing their children, murder suicides, incest, kidnappings and whatnot on a daily basis. That is not what I want to hear. But the reason I don't want to hear it is that I don't want things like that happening, not that I want them to cover stuff like that up. Other news sources seem to cover all that stuff up, whereas Fox seems to have an unfortunately neverending supply of stories like that.
I'm going to license IBM's technology and then expand it for use with color blind users and people who only receive plain text e-mail.
You are supposed to blindly believe what the scientists tell you without seeing any actual proof for yourself.
So keep an eye on the lemurs. 45 million years from now they'll evolve into humans and apes.
God created man in his image. Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God." I don't buy it.
Of course, that doesn't mean that humans physically look like God, especially since before Jesus, God had no physical form.
Who gets to decide what Christianity is supposed to be?
Jesus.
HTH. HAND.
Why should the sysadmins be prosecuted? They should have been prosecuted if it had been a hardware failure, but if it was willfully destroyed by another person, then the other person is to blame.
This is kind of like robbing an old man at gunpoint and then the guy goes into cardiac arrest and dies. He probably would have died in the next few years anyway, but your action advanced it. How should the courts find? Are you guilty of theft, or manslaughter?
This is the same as leaving your car with doors unlocked and the key on the passengers seat. If you do that, blame yourself if your car gets stolen.
Nope. The thief is still to blame.
In this case, having no offsite backups is still a dumb move because the database could get corrupted, however because the database didn't get corrupted and some wast of flesh destroyed the data, it is indeed proper to blame the hacker.
Maybe they'll stop looking at me even stranger when I tell them which way is north WITHOUT a compass.
Telling North is pretty easy using the stars if available at night or the sun if you are reasonably sure of the season and approximately what time of day it is.
As for the old boyscout adage, I think it should be changed to "Moss always grows on the outside of the tree", that's how useful it is. And of course, a rolling stone gathers no moss, so no matter which way it is rolling, that is no indication of which way is north.
If you are ever going hiking and want to be sure not to get lost, be sure to pack your fiberoptic cable and a shovel. If you get well and truly lost, dig a trench and bury the cable. When the backhoe comes to dig it up, simply follow the backhoe back to civilization.
I'm sure a fair portion of people on /. have heard of google voice (not including me), but how many people in the general American population have used it. 1% maybe? If none of the techy people that I work with all day long have ever mentioned it to me, then I think it has a pretty poor market share, and find it even more unlikely that everyone would ditch voicemail in favor of it. Having heard of it, I have no desire to ditch voicemail in favor of it.
it costs me to listen to it, and if it's important enough, they'll call again or leave a text or something
I never call back random callers, ESPECIALLY if they call multiple times and don't bother to leave a message. Texting costs me money and vastly more time than a voice conversation. If you need to convey a message to me, leave a voicemail.
I signed some paperwork and wrote "under duress" next to it when I was forced by my company to sign some crap that I didn't agree with. They threatened to fire me if I didn't sign it, so I figured that constitutes under duress.
So if you make a million dollars and give it all to charity so that you have no earned income, they are going to throw you in jail for "avoiding" taxes. I would like to see some documentation of this.
It works great if you make millions from multiple sources where people take large chunks out of (like agents). It would work for everyone if corporate taxes were abolished and it didn't cost anything to incorporate.
First of all, it makes sens that if an agent is taking part of your income, you therefore no longer have that income, so why should you be taxed on it? Second of all, it costs almost nothing to incorporate. Sure you could go through a lawyer, and get one set up for a minimum of $500, or you could go down to the Secretary of States office with some Articles of Incorporation that you copied off of the internet and inserted your company name, and have it filed for, in my state, about $100. You have to pay $25 a year franchise tax, but if you have legitimate business expenses (and who doesn't), they probably more than make up for that $25. Oh yeah, and driving down to the SoS to file your paperwork is also tax deductible.
In some cases, you may be able to just file your taxes as self-employed without filing anything with the SoS. Just be sure to take care of your payroll taxes properly. An hour a month at most for a single individual.
Is there some compelling reason to tax corporate profits?
I can think of some very good reasons NOT to tax corporate profits. If you tax a corporations profits, that is that much less money they could use to expand the corporation. Expansion of a corporation leads to more jobs, which leads to more people paying tax and also more people with money who can buy stuff and pay sales tax. If the corporation chose to distribute their profits to their investors rather than expand their operations, the money then gets taxed in the hands of the investors (albeit only in the eventual future in the case of 401k, etc).
The third option is that the corporation could just sit on their pile of money rather than reinvest it or share a dividend, but sitting on a pile of money is not going to please a savvy investor, so corporations are not likely to do this.
Taxing corporations is sort of like thinking that a bird in the hand is worth a dozen in the bush, or that instant gratification is better than a long term huge payout. In other words, it fits perfectly with what has gotten us into the current economic impasse.
Evading taxes is evading taxes.
Yes, and avoiding taxes is avoiding taxes. The difference is that in one way you are illegally not paying a tax that you owe, and in the other way you are legally taking advantage of tax code in order to not have to pay as much tax.
For example, when you write off you mortgage interest you are avoiding taxes. You could just go ahead and pay all the tax if you want, but the IRS grants you a way to avoid doing so. When you buy your groceries in town A instead of town B because town A has lower taxes, you are avoiding taxes. All perfectly legal and completely different from evading taxes, which would be for instance claiming mortgage interest when you didn't have any, or not reporting tips from a job at a restaurant.
Blame congress for leaving the loop holes.
Those aren't loopholes. They are put there on purpose either 1) because somebody bought the tax code or 2) because the United States wanted to offer an incentive to invest in the area in which they offered a tax break.
Also, evading taxes is illegal, but avoiding taxes is not. If you decide to buy a stick of gum in city A rather than city B because city A has cheaper tax rates, that is avoiding taxes. If you order the gum over the internet and then don't pay your Use Tax, that is evading taxes.
From the looks of it, Obama is going to go after the people who evade OR avoid taxes.