Hmm, off the top of my head, I'd deal with this by creating quests that are cyclic. Let's go back to the "defend a village" example in the article. Say Player A gets a quest from the village head to defend a village. He kills off 5 bandits attacking the village and the rest of the bandits run off. This can trigger off a number of potential quests for Player B, who's on the side of the bandits. He can get quests to (for example) gather supplies for the bandits, recruit more bandits, kill Player A, and eventually lead another attack against the village. And this triggers off the initial "defend a village" quest again. So no completed quest objective is truly permanent.
I am 100% sure that the reason for the high prices of text books is purely the greed of the textbook publishing cartel. Their practices have ironically come to huant them in some areas. If you had read this article a while back, you would have learned about it being cheaper to buy textbooks published by American publishers... overseas. Why you ask? Because the publishers are dumping on overseas markets to drive out local publishers. God only knows what they are doing in this country to stomp out any competition. I'd like to hear the story on that one.
That reminds me of what some of my international friends did to exploit the lower prices - went home over summer break and winter break (to places like Singapore or Hong Kong), picked up multiple copies of some engineering textbooks that would be used the next semester, and sold them at a markup.
Price in US: ~US$110
Price in Singapore/HK: ~US$30
They sold them for $80 or thereabouts on campus and made a huge profit on it (and all the buyers were happy to get a $30 discount off the bookshop price on a new book). I'm not sure if the prices in Asia are artificially low, as quite a few of the textbooks are actually published there, but it sure seems to me that the US prices are seriously inflated.
I'm studying at Columbia University, and (surprise surprise) this is starting to become a big issue here too. There have been a number of articles about it in the school newspaper over the past few months. One pretty scary statistic they quoted is that "a recent study by the National Association of College Stores found that the amount the average New York college student pays for textbooks has increased 41 percent in the last five years". (emphasis mine)
One thing that's sprouted recently at Columbia is a direct student-to-student text exchange service, which basically cuts out middlemen and shipping times/costs. I've found that it works great due to the tiny size of the Columbia campus and lack of afforable off-campus housing (hey, it's NYC) - virtually everyone using the service is within walking distance, making transactions a breeze. I've managed to save a fair bit of cash each semester thanks to it.
Actually, I believe that this means that the content providers and merchants will want to figure out a way of pricing their merchandise according to where their customer comes from, instead of restricting downloads to a single country. If a British guy is willing to pay 99p for a mp3 track, there's no way in hell these people want to let him pay US$0.99 or even CDN$0.99. I don't remember the exact economics terminology for this - 'differential pricing' or something like that - but the basic idea is that if you can each person to pay the maximum of what they're willing to pay, you can maximize profits. It's why the airline industry doesn't standarize ticket prices - they make far more because there are people who will just walk in and buy a ticket at an inflated price, and others who aren't willing to buy at that price but will go to any length to chase down a good deal. With differential pricing, they can sell to both types of people, without losing the extra revenue coming in from the inflated price. Which is why I believe that these online companies will want to be able to charge differently according to where their customer comes from. Whether I think it will work, on the other hand, is another matter altogether.
(Anime Fan 1): Damn this sucks. I mean, they gave them American names for god's sake!
(Anime Fan 2): Yeah... but wasn't some of the character not even japanese? German, etc.?
(Anime Fan 1): So? What's the point?
(Anime Fan 2): Nothing, just my brain trying to think a bit, it's ok now. Anyway, I'll only watch the movie if the character's names stay in japanese.
(Anime Fan 1): Yeah. And if they shoot it in japanese only...
(Anime Fan 2): Subbed. Oh yeah, and count me out if they do not follow the serie to the letter, all XYZ episodes and fit them in 2 hours without anything missing or added.
(Anime Fan 1): Oh! Oh! And it must be all anime, I mean, Live Action will just suck you know? Will lose all the exagerated proportions and all.
(Anime Fan 2): Yeah... Hey, lets just go watch the serie again.
(Anime Fan 1): Ok.
-Karhgath
Evolve.
Actually, that's precisely why I think the movie's going to flop. Change it and you alienate your fanbase, don't change it and everyone else won't come. Seems like a lose-lose situation to me.
[Of course, I'm one of those crazy purists who'd rather not see this made in the first place and isn't going to watch how they'll massacre the original story, so take that last comment with a pinch of salt.]
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, off the top of my head, I'd deal with this by creating quests that are cyclic. Let's go back to the "defend a village" example in the article. Say Player A gets a quest from the village head to defend a village. He kills off 5 bandits attacking the village and the rest of the bandits run off. This can trigger off a number of potential quests for Player B, who's on the side of the bandits. He can get quests to (for example) gather supplies for the bandits, recruit more bandits, kill Player A, and eventually lead another attack against the village. And this triggers off the initial "defend a village" quest again. So no completed quest objective is truly permanent.
That reminds me of what some of my international friends did to exploit the lower prices - went home over summer break and winter break (to places like Singapore or Hong Kong), picked up multiple copies of some engineering textbooks that would be used the next semester, and sold them at a markup.
Price in US: ~US$110
Price in Singapore/HK: ~US$30
They sold them for $80 or thereabouts on campus and made a huge profit on it (and all the buyers were happy to get a $30 discount off the bookshop price on a new book). I'm not sure if the prices in Asia are artificially low, as quite a few of the textbooks are actually published there, but it sure seems to me that the US prices are seriously inflated.
I'm studying at Columbia University, and (surprise surprise) this is starting to become a big issue here too. There have been a number of articles about it in the school newspaper over the past few months. One pretty scary statistic they quoted is that "a recent study by the National Association of College Stores found that the amount the average New York college student pays for textbooks has increased 41 percent in the last five years". (emphasis mine)
[Link to article in Columbia Spectator]
One thing that's sprouted recently at Columbia is a direct student-to-student text exchange service, which basically cuts out middlemen and shipping times/costs. I've found that it works great due to the tiny size of the Columbia campus and lack of afforable off-campus housing (hey, it's NYC) - virtually everyone using the service is within walking distance, making transactions a breeze. I've managed to save a fair bit of cash each semester thanks to it.
[Link to DogEars site]
Actually, I believe that this means that the content providers and merchants will want to figure out a way of pricing their merchandise according to where their customer comes from, instead of restricting downloads to a single country. If a British guy is willing to pay 99p for a mp3 track, there's no way in hell these people want to let him pay US$0.99 or even CDN$0.99. I don't remember the exact economics terminology for this - 'differential pricing' or something like that - but the basic idea is that if you can each person to pay the maximum of what they're willing to pay, you can maximize profits. It's why the airline industry doesn't standarize ticket prices - they make far more because there are people who will just walk in and buy a ticket at an inflated price, and others who aren't willing to buy at that price but will go to any length to chase down a good deal. With differential pricing, they can sell to both types of people, without losing the extra revenue coming in from the inflated price. Which is why I believe that these online companies will want to be able to charge differently according to where their customer comes from. Whether I think it will work, on the other hand, is another matter altogether.
[Of course, I'm one of those crazy purists who'd rather not see this made in the first place and isn't going to watch how they'll massacre the original story, so take that last comment with a pinch of salt.]