That's revenue, not profit. Last I heard, it was about a 50/50 split in terms of revenue but I guess it favors new games by 20% now. You have to dig into their numbers a bit to find the net revenue, which is dramatically higher for used games (for obvious reasons.)
Most of GameStop's profits come from used game sales. They make next to no profit on new games--that money goes almost wholly to the publisher. Reselling used games, especially recent ones, permits much higher profits. A new game is $60. While GameStop doesn't publish their trade-in prices, from what I can tell they pay $20 or less for all used games, and most games are going to pull in $10 or less. So, that $60 game you sold back to GameStop for (generously) $20, they will resell for $55. That's a quick and easy $35 profit for them.
If they are left only selling used games for the PS3/360 on back, you're talking much less profit per game. On top of that, demand for those games is going to diminish as the new generation takes off (assuming it does.) This is just not a viable business model that will promote growth of the bottom line.
This is not really in defense of GameStop, as making console games work more like PC games was pretty much inevitable, I'm just saying a retail gaming store like GameStop wouldn't be able to survive by changing into a "vintage" shop. That aims it at a totally different--much smaller--clientele. From a budget standpoint, it makes very little sense. No doubt GS is scrambling to figure out what to do once the used game gravy train stops.
Perhaps someone should introduce you to assembly language, which is composed entirely of well-understood mathematical operations. And all software reduces down to assembly language. (And then to binary numbers, but those are just numbers, not "math," as it were.)
It's bad because rich people are inclined to only look out for their fellow rich people. No "corruption" is required there, just self-interest.
What I find even worse is that over a third of the House and over half the Senate are made up of lawyers. So, here you have people who practiced law for a living, got into Congress to make laws, then will get out and practice law some more. Gee, it's hard to imagine how any conflicts of interest might arise there.
What your'e talking about already exists. It's called cognitive behavioral therapy. It is, in fact, the only treatment known to work for certain disorders--particularly anything psychosomatic or related to dissociation.
That said, CBT is sometimes used in tandem with pharmaceuticals, in order to first stabilize the patient, then reshape their thought processes to avoid the patterns that led to treatment in the first place.
With no measurements at all, you cannot make informed judgments about the quality of your software. You can only guess. This means you would be unable to convince anyone (sane and intelligent) that your product has n bugs. "Because I say so" is not a metric.
With a poor measurement--such as one that ranks all defects equally--you have information, but now it's bad information. If you share the information but not the method(s) used to gather it, you can convince people you're right, because you have data about it. Never mind if you are stacking up Product A with 1 show-stopping bug against Product B with 50 cosmetic bugs or unhandled corner cases. By this bugcount-only metric, Product A looks better, and that's just stupid.
You need good measurements, and sometimes that includes measurements which cannot be quantitatively calculated without human intervention. A human programmer (or QA or other support person) who is familiar with a product will know just how severe a given bug is in terms of its impact. It is why, after all, bug tracking systems generally allow you to prioritize work by severity, fixing the worst bugs first.
Poor information is worse than no information because it can lead you to make the wrong decisions with confidence. With no information, at least you know you are shooting in the dark.
99% of small web sites are using pre-made PHP scripts that demand MySQL and often support nothing else (or don't support anything else as well as they support MySQL.)
While I'm not sure how this started, I would assume it's because PHP initially supported MySQL before they supported anything else, and PHP quickly became the website hobbyist's language of choice. From there, it's just been inertia. If it's a PHP-based web application that requires a database, odds are it's just going to assume MySQL.
That's probably a big part of it. Of course, things manufactured that long ago were also much simpler. The simpler a device, the less likely it is to fail, generally speaking. When you put a device made of a dozen electronic components up against a device made of hundreds or thousands, it's no wonder that the latter doesn't last as long--all it takes is one failed component to stop the whole thing dead.
But we have apparently considered that a good tradeoff for the additional functionality we've accumulated over time.
I don't see how that's much different from what I said. IT may not even have room to make "suggestions" at all, and just gets stuck doing whatever upper management says they will do.
Even when you do make suggestions, as you pointed out, management makes the final decision, so you aren't likely to get what you wanted.
I have seen both happen. Rarely have I seen IT actually get their way in terms of what software to purchase, at least if anyone outside IT will ever have to use it.
But no, I do not work in an IT department (thankfully.)
I could be wrong, but I think the search feature has been crippled since Vista because there was supposed to be a new file system involved--WinFS. That was supposed to make searching with metadata quick and easy. But it was canceled from the Vista schedule, and apparently not replaced with anything decent, so we got stuck with this half-assed search tool that relies almost entirely upon indexing the contents of every file in some grossly slow and inefficient manner.
Microsoft hasn't bothered to innovate anything with regard to filesystems in ages, if ever. Hell, it took them until Vista to start using RAM in a sensible way, and even that implementation was botched.
Making their operating systems technically sound always seems to play second fiddle to making them nice to look at. It's as if MS learned precisely the wrong lesson from Apple's success in this area.
Usually, this is the result of people with no IT knowledge making IT purchasing decisions.
Non-Technical C-Level Exec: "Hey, this CRM software is really flashy and cool! Some guys came in and demo'd it for us last week. We loved it. We're going to buy it and put the whole company on it." IT Manager: "But it only works on IE 7..." Exec: "Aye-aye-aye-what now? Stop talking gibberish, just get started installing it."
Or it could just be that the people who wanted smartphones and tablets now have them, so those one-time boosts that created the new markets will not happen again. New smartphones and tablets will come out, of course, and they will sell, but not at a dramatically faster rate than last generation's models.
Going forward, it seems we may be in for more products that supplement smartphones and tablets, rather than replacing them. Google Glass is the most obvious recent example. I guess we'll see how that works out.
They were screwed because the enemy had thoroughly infiltrated the operating system that powered all of their (current-gen) ships. If not for that, it could have actually been a fight, rather than a slaughter.
That's not always true. It can be "elegant" in algorithmic terms, but difficult to understand as pure code. But in that case, "elegant" is probably standing in for "clever." Clever code is often unreadable. Some languages are built around how much cleverness they encourage. Perl is probably the gold standard for cleverness, while Python goes out of its way to make you code something that's readable rather than enigmatic.
On the contrary, one of the purposes of installing cameras everywhere is to propagate awareness that you are always being watched. While it's hard to say just how much crime that might prevent, it is a nonzero value.
I am not saying I support 24/7 surveillance, because I don't, but it does have effects on people's behavior, even if those effects are difficult to measure.
In other words, the key itself is considered evidence, rather than simply a means to an end. In order for the government to demand it, they would have to know you have it, and in this case, they couldn't demonstrate such knowledge.
Basically, it is a crime to withhold evidence that the government knows you have. But you can't be compelled to provide evidence against yourself that the government doesn't know you have.
Slashdot Mirror
I feel that /.'s news reporting has been rather shoddy lately.
Just lately?
That's revenue, not profit. Last I heard, it was about a 50/50 split in terms of revenue but I guess it favors new games by 20% now. You have to dig into their numbers a bit to find the net revenue, which is dramatically higher for used games (for obvious reasons.)
Most of GameStop's profits come from used game sales. They make next to no profit on new games--that money goes almost wholly to the publisher. Reselling used games, especially recent ones, permits much higher profits. A new game is $60. While GameStop doesn't publish their trade-in prices, from what I can tell they pay $20 or less for all used games, and most games are going to pull in $10 or less. So, that $60 game you sold back to GameStop for (generously) $20, they will resell for $55. That's a quick and easy $35 profit for them.
If they are left only selling used games for the PS3/360 on back, you're talking much less profit per game. On top of that, demand for those games is going to diminish as the new generation takes off (assuming it does.) This is just not a viable business model that will promote growth of the bottom line.
This is not really in defense of GameStop, as making console games work more like PC games was pretty much inevitable, I'm just saying a retail gaming store like GameStop wouldn't be able to survive by changing into a "vintage" shop. That aims it at a totally different--much smaller--clientele. From a budget standpoint, it makes very little sense. No doubt GS is scrambling to figure out what to do once the used game gravy train stops.
Perhaps someone should introduce you to assembly language, which is composed entirely of well-understood mathematical operations. And all software reduces down to assembly language. (And then to binary numbers, but those are just numbers, not "math," as it were.)
Do you not see a potential problem in having lawyers be the only people who understand the law?
How can everyone follow the law if no one but lawyers can understand it?
It's bad because rich people are inclined to only look out for their fellow rich people. No "corruption" is required there, just self-interest.
What I find even worse is that over a third of the House and over half the Senate are made up of lawyers. So, here you have people who practiced law for a living, got into Congress to make laws, then will get out and practice law some more. Gee, it's hard to imagine how any conflicts of interest might arise there.
It's true, Aramark food is pretty godawful.
What your'e talking about already exists. It's called cognitive behavioral therapy. It is, in fact, the only treatment known to work for certain disorders--particularly anything psychosomatic or related to dissociation.
That said, CBT is sometimes used in tandem with pharmaceuticals, in order to first stabilize the patient, then reshape their thought processes to avoid the patterns that led to treatment in the first place.
You are wrong, and here's why.
With no measurements at all, you cannot make informed judgments about the quality of your software. You can only guess. This means you would be unable to convince anyone (sane and intelligent) that your product has n bugs. "Because I say so" is not a metric.
With a poor measurement--such as one that ranks all defects equally--you have information, but now it's bad information. If you share the information but not the method(s) used to gather it, you can convince people you're right, because you have data about it. Never mind if you are stacking up Product A with 1 show-stopping bug against Product B with 50 cosmetic bugs or unhandled corner cases. By this bugcount-only metric, Product A looks better, and that's just stupid.
You need good measurements, and sometimes that includes measurements which cannot be quantitatively calculated without human intervention. A human programmer (or QA or other support person) who is familiar with a product will know just how severe a given bug is in terms of its impact. It is why, after all, bug tracking systems generally allow you to prioritize work by severity, fixing the worst bugs first.
Poor information is worse than no information because it can lead you to make the wrong decisions with confidence. With no information, at least you know you are shooting in the dark.
99% of small web sites are using pre-made PHP scripts that demand MySQL and often support nothing else (or don't support anything else as well as they support MySQL.)
While I'm not sure how this started, I would assume it's because PHP initially supported MySQL before they supported anything else, and PHP quickly became the website hobbyist's language of choice. From there, it's just been inertia. If it's a PHP-based web application that requires a database, odds are it's just going to assume MySQL.
That's probably a big part of it. Of course, things manufactured that long ago were also much simpler. The simpler a device, the less likely it is to fail, generally speaking. When you put a device made of a dozen electronic components up against a device made of hundreds or thousands, it's no wonder that the latter doesn't last as long--all it takes is one failed component to stop the whole thing dead.
But we have apparently considered that a good tradeoff for the additional functionality we've accumulated over time.
Are you a troll or what? Where did I ever mention rifles?
Handguns are by far the most common type of firearm death.
I don't see how that's much different from what I said. IT may not even have room to make "suggestions" at all, and just gets stuck doing whatever upper management says they will do.
Even when you do make suggestions, as you pointed out, management makes the final decision, so you aren't likely to get what you wanted.
I have seen both happen. Rarely have I seen IT actually get their way in terms of what software to purchase, at least if anyone outside IT will ever have to use it.
But no, I do not work in an IT department (thankfully.)
I could be wrong, but I think the search feature has been crippled since Vista because there was supposed to be a new file system involved--WinFS. That was supposed to make searching with metadata quick and easy. But it was canceled from the Vista schedule, and apparently not replaced with anything decent, so we got stuck with this half-assed search tool that relies almost entirely upon indexing the contents of every file in some grossly slow and inefficient manner.
Microsoft hasn't bothered to innovate anything with regard to filesystems in ages, if ever. Hell, it took them until Vista to start using RAM in a sensible way, and even that implementation was botched.
Making their operating systems technically sound always seems to play second fiddle to making them nice to look at. It's as if MS learned precisely the wrong lesson from Apple's success in this area.
Usually, this is the result of people with no IT knowledge making IT purchasing decisions.
Non-Technical C-Level Exec: "Hey, this CRM software is really flashy and cool! Some guys came in and demo'd it for us last week. We loved it. We're going to buy it and put the whole company on it."
IT Manager: "But it only works on IE 7..."
Exec: "Aye-aye-aye-what now? Stop talking gibberish, just get started installing it."
Or it could just be that the people who wanted smartphones and tablets now have them, so those one-time boosts that created the new markets will not happen again. New smartphones and tablets will come out, of course, and they will sell, but not at a dramatically faster rate than last generation's models.
Going forward, it seems we may be in for more products that supplement smartphones and tablets, rather than replacing them. Google Glass is the most obvious recent example. I guess we'll see how that works out.
"It shouldn't be that hard" seems to be the Unicode motto.
I guess we'll have to wait until there's a rash of killings committed with home-printed plastic guns before there will be any legal response.
Even then, I wouldn't consider its odds of success any better than a coin toss.
They were screwed because the enemy had thoroughly infiltrated the operating system that powered all of their (current-gen) ships. If not for that, it could have actually been a fight, rather than a slaughter.
That's not always true. It can be "elegant" in algorithmic terms, but difficult to understand as pure code. But in that case, "elegant" is probably standing in for "clever." Clever code is often unreadable. Some languages are built around how much cleverness they encourage. Perl is probably the gold standard for cleverness, while Python goes out of its way to make you code something that's readable rather than enigmatic.
On the contrary, one of the purposes of installing cameras everywhere is to propagate awareness that you are always being watched. While it's hard to say just how much crime that might prevent, it is a nonzero value.
I am not saying I support 24/7 surveillance, because I don't, but it does have effects on people's behavior, even if those effects are difficult to measure.
thatsthejoke.png
In other words, the key itself is considered evidence, rather than simply a means to an end. In order for the government to demand it, they would have to know you have it, and in this case, they couldn't demonstrate such knowledge.
Basically, it is a crime to withhold evidence that the government knows you have. But you can't be compelled to provide evidence against yourself that the government doesn't know you have.
In other words, everything goes to hell once personal bias creeps in.