I make a living by serving coffee. It's pretty good coffee and I charge a high price. My customers are still willing to pay it, despite there being cheaper (though not as delicious) alternatives. I guess a Starbucks can come in and undercut me at some point, and if they did I might have to reduce my prices or buy some more exotic beans.
What if the government decided that it was going to provide coffee - an essential to at least as many people as the internet - for free - and use taxes I was paying to do it.
I suppose when the villain is some 'evil telco' that makes you wait on hold for twenty hours, it seems a little more 'right' to screw them on the huge investments they had to make to get the last mile lines in place. But it's still the same.
I wonder how many people here are rejoicing at government destroying private internet providers with this business but whine when Wal-Mart does it fair and square with nothing more than consent of those who choose to co-operate with it.
The cost of the Oblivion upgrade in real dollars is $2.60. Whether you think that is too much or too little or just right, it is a little deceptive the way XBL prices things as POINTS so that you don't recognize the conversion rate. 1 point = $.013 (assuming you buy them in lots of 5000).
I think the mount mod is not worth it (and that should be the end of it - maybe if sales are poor MS will think to lower the price - no need for being a loudmouth on/. about it.
That aside, there is a ton of cool, free stuff on XBL 360. Games, videos. I liked the Natasha Beddingfield exclusive video.
I played the last version on Xbox my own special way: serial killer. Forget the story line, that takes too much reading.
Basically I went around killing everyone. Sneak into their homes and get them from behind! YEAH!
This was easist with an archer character as you could perch yourself somewhere and fire away with impunity. I guess this was a bit of a bug. I would take 10 minutes to kill a guard. The only downside is that guards would respawn, spoiling my ability to be the last man standing in the game!
Getting a 360 on Sunday when the next shipment comes in and cannot wait to try this in Oblivion.
Looking at the same events with a different perspective, they are looking to generate money by making people the most happy. (Very different from how government's generate money).
So to maximize profits/happiness, they have decided to scrap a game that seemed a little unoriginal. It read like a combo between Halo and splinter Cell. It might have come out a little like Brute Force - a great game, but not Blizzard Worthy.
These guys have never failed to hit it out of the park and they are the only company I would buy a game from without testing the demo. And I don't even play WoW.
Blizzard only DOES make games that people want to play. They could have probably cheezed out some cash on this one - ala SWG - with a subpar (for them, non-spectacular title) but opted not to.
This only raises my esteem for the company and it's products.
It was wierd and an example of the failure of the parlimentarian system. But other than that.... Ok, so if you are right and the election was a farce, then outlawing stealing music is the least of your problems.
Itunes has no subscriber base. If you try to count the install base, you get my brother who never actually buys is but enjoys it's clunky interface and resource hogging to manage his own music on his hard drive.
The only thing the new Battlestar Galactica has done is made me wish every last character would suffer a horrible, horrible, slow, agonizing death. All of them. oO;
And what's great about the show is that it might just be the actual outcome. See the passion it stirs in you?
I'm not sure there is any character on that show I totally 'dig' personally. Admiral Adama comes closest. But they are all very flawed characters.
In one of the recent Sci Fi anthologies that come out every year there was a story that involved this very thing. Was some kind of virtual reality game and contestants tried to see how long they could go without falling asleep.
It is not so much that a 'tolerant' culture lead to these developments, but a culture where property rights and trade were free (and more political freedoms follow.)
So when you go about trying to nation-build, capitalism must be at the foundation.
What you say is true, but you have to recognize that they really have no choice in the matter - if they didn't grab that pattent, someone else would and then would do exactly what you describe.
And it's not a bad thing, necessarily. If some real 'white hat' in your eyes got the pattent and then liscensed it to everyone for free, there would be little incentive to invest in developing it.
1) They are nearly all written before the game is gold. Frequently enough, the guide has information that reflects a beta version of the game and is inaccurate as it pertains to the release version. If the guides didn't have to ship with the game and instead came out maybe a week or so later, they would be more valuable.
2) They are not written by the people who should be writing them - the designers. Once the designers are done with a game, the last thing they want to do is hang around and write a guide. They are either working on a patch or taking a vacation. They typically give almost no support to the people who actually write the guide whom, aside from writing ability, are no better gamers than the kid who picks the game off the retail shelf, resulting in a whole lot of fluff to fill pages.
3) These guides use to be called 'instruction manuals.' Guides back in the day use to come out well after the game and had actual tips and tricks that were truly valuable and could not be determined on the players own - or they included really good versions of maps. Now this role has been supplanted by the Internet - including the maps.
Game Guides will likely continue to see steep declines in sales as free fan created, internet based guides are becoming increasingly better written and presented. This 75% decrease this past year is not 'cyclical' in any way.
Typical comment. And incorrect. I just tried to buy one - with shipping it was $500. And that was the cheapest ones - the rest are over 500. Don't judge it by the price two days out from closing, BTW.
And yes, everytime I check FYE and EB Games and Best Buy, etc., they are _sold out_.
The biggest problem with the Xbox 360 is it is not for sale anywhere. I have wanted one since release day. I don't want to buy a bundle - I just want to pay $400 and get an extra controller and one or two games. I cannot find one anywhere.
He's a Democrat with Democrat connections. DC is a Republican City. The regulator agencies, both houses of congress and all of it's committees are Republican run. There is not much of a chance of this changing until 2012.
And, as the game industry is in the business of making money, they should choose a lobbyist whose legislative history isn't in destroying businesses and having contempt for any money earned from a source other than the gov'ment.
Slashdot Mirror
What if the government decided that it was going to provide coffee - an essential to at least as many people as the internet - for free - and use taxes I was paying to do it.
I suppose when the villain is some 'evil telco' that makes you wait on hold for twenty hours, it seems a little more 'right' to screw them on the huge investments they had to make to get the last mile lines in place. But it's still the same.
I wonder how many people here are rejoicing at government destroying private internet providers with this business but whine when Wal-Mart does it fair and square with nothing more than consent of those who choose to co-operate with it.
Note - it's not horse armor. It's a horse tablecloth.
Xbox's original Live didn't have it perfect, but it was still worlds ahead of the PS2 experience.
IIRC, the online connectivity of original Xboxes in the US was around 25%.
I think the mount mod is not worth it (and that should be the end of it - maybe if sales are poor MS will think to lower the price - no need for being a loudmouth on /. about it.
That aside, there is a ton of cool, free stuff on XBL 360. Games, videos. I liked the Natasha Beddingfield exclusive video.
Basically I went around killing everyone. Sneak into their homes and get them from behind! YEAH!
This was easist with an archer character as you could perch yourself somewhere and fire away with impunity. I guess this was a bit of a bug. I would take 10 minutes to kill a guard. The only downside is that guards would respawn, spoiling my ability to be the last man standing in the game!
Getting a 360 on Sunday when the next shipment comes in and cannot wait to try this in Oblivion.
So to maximize profits/happiness, they have decided to scrap a game that seemed a little unoriginal. It read like a combo between Halo and splinter Cell. It might have come out a little like Brute Force - a great game, but not Blizzard Worthy.
These guys have never failed to hit it out of the park and they are the only company I would buy a game from without testing the demo. And I don't even play WoW.
Blizzard only DOES make games that people want to play. They could have probably cheezed out some cash on this one - ala SWG - with a subpar (for them, non-spectacular title) but opted not to.
This only raises my esteem for the company and it's products.
It was wierd and an example of the failure of the parlimentarian system. But other than that.... Ok, so if you are right and the election was a farce, then outlawing stealing music is the least of your problems.
Besides, 'socially acceptable' is coward language to try and demure the difference between right/progress and wrong/destructiveness.
Get a job, hippie.
Itunes has no subscriber base. If you try to count the install base, you get my brother who never actually buys is but enjoys it's clunky interface and resource hogging to manage his own music on his hard drive.
And what's great about the show is that it might just be the actual outcome. See the passion it stirs in you?
I'm not sure there is any character on that show I totally 'dig' personally. Admiral Adama comes closest. But they are all very flawed characters.
In one of the recent Sci Fi anthologies that come out every year there was a story that involved this very thing. Was some kind of virtual reality game and contestants tried to see how long they could go without falling asleep.
Note that no one actually discussess these alleged rights that are being violated/lost OR anyone who has actually lost them.
And also note how a majority of both parties voted for the patriot act - BOTH times! It just passed the Senate with 84 votes.
You are all morons.
But this is /., so the actual facts stated in the article are irrelevant to any discussion of the article.
EA best stick to shoveling out more sims expansions. Spore is _not_ going to be a mass market hit.
So when you go about trying to nation-build, capitalism must be at the foundation.
Whelp, I think we probably agree that there needs to be some kind of reform. I'm just not certain about what it should be.
And it's not a bad thing, necessarily. If some real 'white hat' in your eyes got the pattent and then liscensed it to everyone for free, there would be little incentive to invest in developing it.
But don't expect this to stop the slash-herd from making dozens of +5 insightful comments about M$ being evil.
2) They are not written by the people who should be writing them - the designers. Once the designers are done with a game, the last thing they want to do is hang around and write a guide. They are either working on a patch or taking a vacation. They typically give almost no support to the people who actually write the guide whom, aside from writing ability, are no better gamers than the kid who picks the game off the retail shelf, resulting in a whole lot of fluff to fill pages.
3) These guides use to be called 'instruction manuals.' Guides back in the day use to come out well after the game and had actual tips and tricks that were truly valuable and could not be determined on the players own - or they included really good versions of maps. Now this role has been supplanted by the Internet - including the maps.
Game Guides will likely continue to see steep declines in sales as free fan created, internet based guides are becoming increasingly better written and presented. This 75% decrease this past year is not 'cyclical' in any way.
And yes, everytime I check FYE and EB Games and Best Buy, etc., they are _sold out_.
The biggest problem with the Xbox 360 is it is not for sale anywhere. I have wanted one since release day. I don't want to buy a bundle - I just want to pay $400 and get an extra controller and one or two games. I cannot find one anywhere.
Dev for the 360 scales well with the identical dev of current PC games. Can the Xbox 360 even run F.E.A.R. with all the bells and whistles turned on?
The fact that they didn't catch that they are using an ethnic slur as the name of their online services suggests it's time to short the stock.
Donald Trump would fire someone for that. How stupid can you be. And it's not like they don't have a whole lot of eyes looking at this stuff.
I say I am pro-life without exception, but I think I miiiiight have given your mom one.
And, as the game industry is in the business of making money, they should choose a lobbyist whose legislative history isn't in destroying businesses and having contempt for any money earned from a source other than the gov'ment.