That's all well and good, but this software only allows you to share regular MP3 and AAC tracks and not tracks from the iTunes Music Store.. so the RIAA have little extra to worry about as people can just continue to go on Kazaa, Shareaza, Acquisition, Allofmp3, or whatever and get their illegal music. It doesn't affect the iTunes Music Store dealie at all.
What I don't get it why there aren't any smaller coding / artwork groups doing really well with MMORPGs.
Release the client for free, make it open source even, ditto for the server, and then charge, say, $10 a month to use a centrally hosted 'world' (which has all the good stuff). Even a 25,000 players (less than most of the games in this study) would rake in $250,000 per month.. and imagine what, say, 15 hardcore people (who might ordinarily be working on free software anyway) could do with that!
Okay, I'm not saying this is an easy venture by any means, but it strikes me as odd that I haven't heard of anyone trying this. There seems to be so much money and opportunity in it.
I'd say Meridian 59 was the first, starting in 1996. Strictly it was an RPG, but presented in FPS view, and you tended not to shoot rather than fire arrows;-)
But likewise, many British people spend a lot of time in Spain, or even live there, without being under attack or discrimination by the Spanish government or its people. Argentina and the UK also get on fine.
Of course Britain's going to go out and do some ass kicking when people tread on its interests, but I wouldn't see the UK arresting people for accidentally claiming the Falklands belong to Argentina.
I was lumping Western Europe in with America in terms of taking offence. The only thing a Frenchman would take offence at is listing English as the official language of France;-) Other than that, you could say Italy owns Corsica, and I doubt the French government would fly off the handle.
Northern Ireland is another matter, I guess, although I can't think of many Brits who would care if you accidentally showed Northern Ireland as belonging to Ireland. Many of us would rather we just gave it back to them anyway.
It's just shows you what the non Western world is like, really, when they get all upset about minor cultural oversights. They'll get over it and enter the bland world of fast-food, TiVo, billboards, and corporate drudgery soon enough though.
If a program accidentally showed Alaska as still belonging to Russia, I'm sure the US government wouldn't be delighted, but I can't see the developer getting arrested for it or the software even getting banned.
Those are called the US and the UK, right now (see Guantanamo Bay for the US, and David Blunkett's new anti terrorism laws in the UK).
In the less extreme cases, why should you lock someone up if you presume they're innocent? Surely if you believe in assuming everyone's innocent before proven to be guilty, then you shouldn't be put in jail whatsoever until proven guilty in court, no? That's not how our legal systems work. You're automatically assumed guilty in the short term by being held in custody, then the courts set about working it out for the long term.
Nothing to do with the amount of money their country has to pump into sports, the facilities they have grown up with, who has the best doping doctors who get past detection.
Your sarcasm is well placed. The UK is a good example of a nation with a reasonable population (over 60 million - ranking 21st in total), a high GNP (4th highest in the world), but which severely lacks in Olympic performance and medal tally. Why? We just don't have the faculties.
And, rather uncoincidentally, the news over the past couple of days has been talking about how we need to nurture and recognise sporting talent in schools a lot better...:-)
All this said, I can't see why being great at the Olympics is so amazing in itself. Sure, it's a nice ego boost to a country, but England would get more out of winning the World Cup than scooping a bunch of golds at an event almost no Brit watches.
This all looks really good. I've avoided CS in the past because of its use of the 1999 HalfLife engine (nothing wrong with it, just it's not up to, say, RTCW quality) but this looks and sounds excellent.
So, to get this, I need to buy Counterstrike: Condition Zero.. and then after that I'll be able to get it for free, right? Or what? I don't see any mention of this in the various stores, so I'm assuming Source isn't going to be a standalone product..?
Innocence is never presumed, but perhaps this is a good thing? If they think you murdered someone based on convenient evidence, they can keep you locked up for months awaiting trial. If innocence were truly presumed before being proven guilty, no-one could get arrested for crimes not committed in public, and everything would turn into a trial.
I thought this might be worth reading until I got to this:
[..] there lies a poorly designed game which rewards the greedy and violent, and punishes the hardworking and honest; and if you think about it, that's a good representation of capitalism.
Yeah, because it sucks so much to live as a hardworking and honest person in the US, UK, or Japan, compared to how amazing it is in China or was in Soviet Russia.
Actually, now you mention it.. there were two guys who made a Web site so they could get sponsored and go to college. As I recall, they got their first year's tuition all paid!
Hmm, thanks for the support, but really.. it's nothing to get out of your pram over.
Replies like yours piss me off because they look like the parent poster is grousing, when that's rarely the case. (Of course, this might be why you're doing it..)
While not as crucial as this one, I can think of two similarly novel uses of the Web to get what one wants.
Karyn Bosnak was $20,000 in the hole and set up SaveKaryn.com. Within a few months she had paid off all her debts from the contributions of strangers. Now she's an author.
Ramon Stoppelenburg wanted to travel around the world but had no money, so he started LetMeStayForADay.com, and managed to hitchhike around the world for a couple of years without spending a dime.
I also seem to recall a far older site called 'Send Me A Dollar', but I don't have the URL to hand now. Does anyone know of any other people who've used the Web for interesting personal gain?
Okay, I know you posted late at night, so you may be smoking crack, but $75,000 can be a significant amount to a small business. Expenses are, generally, negligible. I know their payment processor takes 10%-15%, and beyond that perhaps someone needs to maintain the sub-section of the site dedicated to these books. It's only a side section of TidBITS, and $75,000 for (almost) nothing isn't to be sniffed at!
All true, but in my case, I bought the first section of The Plant, and found it so poor that I didn't even want to download the rest for free! I'd also second the whole time delay thing.. who wants to read a book over so many months!?
To be honest, even if the book were good, his attitude would have turned me off. He made it sound like it was some major act of philanthropy and personal hardship to release the book in the way he did. Come on.. the guy is a multi-multi-millionaire!
lol, I guess there is that, but I was thinking more along the lines that you can pay for it once (say, $99) and then use it as long as you want. Of course, the subscription model does mean you get upgrades as you go, and if you can fit it into your budget, that's great.
BaseCamp is probably the best project manager I've seen, and it's online. I don't get it, why can't desktop apps be this cute and easy to use? Just go look at the screenshots!
Of course, I don't have a paid up BaseCamp membership since I think it's overpriced, but there you go:-) (This is one benefit of regular desktop software)
A projection onto a flat screen also looks wrong when you're not facing it directly. It's just that we've gotten used to sitting at a weird angle and watching a parallellogram screen.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
I'm not sure why this is seen as surprising. This is actually pretty good, given that Americans make up less than 5% of the world population. America isn't particularly known for its long line of fine engineers (although there are many, I'd admit), or its large scale industry, being known better for the development of the service industries. I'd like to see the figures, but I'd put money that there are significantly more engineers coming out of industrial stalwarts like France, Germany, or Japan (which have large manufacturing sectors).
But since economic factors can take years to drag out, maybe it was all the measures the Republican president put in place that improved things a few years later when a Democrat was in power?
One of the companies I work for gives employees free lunch at a pretty good bar/restaurant on the ground floor of the building every day. Drinks and tip aren't included, but as far as benefits go, that's pretty cool. Hmm.. they did a pretty good burger:) (you can tell I have taste)
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That's all well and good, but this software only allows you to share regular MP3 and AAC tracks and not tracks from the iTunes Music Store.. so the RIAA have little extra to worry about as people can just continue to go on Kazaa, Shareaza, Acquisition, Allofmp3, or whatever and get their illegal music. It doesn't affect the iTunes Music Store dealie at all.
What I don't get it why there aren't any smaller coding / artwork groups doing really well with MMORPGs.
Release the client for free, make it open source even, ditto for the server, and then charge, say, $10 a month to use a centrally hosted 'world' (which has all the good stuff). Even a 25,000 players (less than most of the games in this study) would rake in $250,000 per month.. and imagine what, say, 15 hardcore people (who might ordinarily be working on free software anyway) could do with that!
Okay, I'm not saying this is an easy venture by any means, but it strikes me as odd that I haven't heard of anyone trying this. There seems to be so much money and opportunity in it.
I'd say Meridian 59 was the first, starting in 1996. Strictly it was an RPG, but presented in FPS view, and you tended not to shoot rather than fire arrows ;-)
But likewise, many British people spend a lot of time in Spain, or even live there, without being under attack or discrimination by the Spanish government or its people. Argentina and the UK also get on fine.
Of course Britain's going to go out and do some ass kicking when people tread on its interests, but I wouldn't see the UK arresting people for accidentally claiming the Falklands belong to Argentina.
I was lumping Western Europe in with America in terms of taking offence. The only thing a Frenchman would take offence at is listing English as the official language of France ;-) Other than that, you could say Italy owns Corsica, and I doubt the French government would fly off the handle.
Northern Ireland is another matter, I guess, although I can't think of many Brits who would care if you accidentally showed Northern Ireland as belonging to Ireland. Many of us would rather we just gave it back to them anyway.
It's just shows you what the non Western world is like, really, when they get all upset about minor cultural oversights. They'll get over it and enter the bland world of fast-food, TiVo, billboards, and corporate drudgery soon enough though.
If a program accidentally showed Alaska as still belonging to Russia, I'm sure the US government wouldn't be delighted, but I can't see the developer getting arrested for it or the software even getting banned.
Those are called the US and the UK, right now (see Guantanamo Bay for the US, and David Blunkett's new anti terrorism laws in the UK).
In the less extreme cases, why should you lock someone up if you presume they're innocent? Surely if you believe in assuming everyone's innocent before proven to be guilty, then you shouldn't be put in jail whatsoever until proven guilty in court, no? That's not how our legal systems work. You're automatically assumed guilty in the short term by being held in custody, then the courts set about working it out for the long term.
Nothing to do with the amount of money their country has to pump into sports, the facilities they have grown up with, who has the best doping doctors who get past detection.
:-)
Your sarcasm is well placed. The UK is a good example of a nation with a reasonable population (over 60 million - ranking 21st in total), a high GNP (4th highest in the world), but which severely lacks in Olympic performance and medal tally. Why? We just don't have the faculties.
And, rather uncoincidentally, the news over the past couple of days has been talking about how we need to nurture and recognise sporting talent in schools a lot better...
All this said, I can't see why being great at the Olympics is so amazing in itself. Sure, it's a nice ego boost to a country, but England would get more out of winning the World Cup than scooping a bunch of golds at an event almost no Brit watches.
This all looks really good. I've avoided CS in the past because of its use of the 1999 HalfLife engine (nothing wrong with it, just it's not up to, say, RTCW quality) but this looks and sounds excellent.
So, to get this, I need to buy Counterstrike: Condition Zero.. and then after that I'll be able to get it for free, right? Or what? I don't see any mention of this in the various stores, so I'm assuming Source isn't going to be a standalone product..?
Oh my god, I nearly crapped myself. Kudos, one of the funniest posts on Slashdot in some time.
Innocence is never presumed, but perhaps this is a good thing? If they think you murdered someone based on convenient evidence, they can keep you locked up for months awaiting trial. If innocence were truly presumed before being proven guilty, no-one could get arrested for crimes not committed in public, and everything would turn into a trial.
I have, sort of.. It's called the Ambient Orb. There are some variations between the ideas, however.
I thought this might be worth reading until I got to this:
[..] there lies a poorly designed game which rewards the greedy and violent, and punishes the hardworking and honest; and if you think about it, that's a good representation of capitalism.
Yeah, because it sucks so much to live as a hardworking and honest person in the US, UK, or Japan, compared to how amazing it is in China or was in Soviet Russia.
Actually, now you mention it.. there were two guys who made a Web site so they could get sponsored and go to college. As I recall, they got their first year's tuition all paid!
Hmm, thanks for the support, but really.. it's nothing to get out of your pram over.
Replies like yours piss me off because they look like the parent poster is grousing, when that's rarely the case. (Of course, this might be why you're doing it..)
While not as crucial as this one, I can think of two similarly novel uses of the Web to get what one wants.
Karyn Bosnak was $20,000 in the hole and set up SaveKaryn.com. Within a few months she had paid off all her debts from the contributions of strangers. Now she's an author.
Ramon Stoppelenburg wanted to travel around the world but had no money, so he started LetMeStayForADay.com, and managed to hitchhike around the world for a couple of years without spending a dime.
I also seem to recall a far older site called 'Send Me A Dollar', but I don't have the URL to hand now. Does anyone know of any other people who've used the Web for interesting personal gain?
Okay, I know you posted late at night, so you may be smoking crack, but $75,000 can be a significant amount to a small business. Expenses are, generally, negligible. I know their payment processor takes 10%-15%, and beyond that perhaps someone needs to maintain the sub-section of the site dedicated to these books. It's only a side section of TidBITS, and $75,000 for (almost) nothing isn't to be sniffed at!
I think the comments on Slashdot stories are a testament to that!
All true, but in my case, I bought the first section of The Plant, and found it so poor that I didn't even want to download the rest for free! I'd also second the whole time delay thing.. who wants to read a book over so many months!?
To be honest, even if the book were good, his attitude would have turned me off. He made it sound like it was some major act of philanthropy and personal hardship to release the book in the way he did. Come on.. the guy is a multi-multi-millionaire!
lol, I guess there is that, but I was thinking more along the lines that you can pay for it once (say, $99) and then use it as long as you want. Of course, the subscription model does mean you get upgrades as you go, and if you can fit it into your budget, that's great.
BaseCamp is probably the best project manager I've seen, and it's online. I don't get it, why can't desktop apps be this cute and easy to use? Just go look at the screenshots!
:-) (This is one benefit of regular desktop software)
Of course, I don't have a paid up BaseCamp membership since I think it's overpriced, but there you go
A projection onto a flat screen also looks wrong when you're not facing it directly. It's just that we've gotten used to sitting at a weird angle and watching a parallellogram screen.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
I'm not sure why this is seen as surprising. This is actually pretty good, given that Americans make up less than 5% of the world population. America isn't particularly known for its long line of fine engineers (although there are many, I'd admit), or its large scale industry, being known better for the development of the service industries. I'd like to see the figures, but I'd put money that there are significantly more engineers coming out of industrial stalwarts like France, Germany, or Japan (which have large manufacturing sectors).
But since economic factors can take years to drag out, maybe it was all the measures the Republican president put in place that improved things a few years later when a Democrat was in power?
One of the companies I work for gives employees free lunch at a pretty good bar/restaurant on the ground floor of the building every day. Drinks and tip aren't included, but as far as benefits go, that's pretty cool. Hmm.. they did a pretty good burger :) (you can tell I have taste)