> I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD.
You raise a couple of very good points. Let me elaborate:
Let's look at entertainment, specifically in this order:
Music/Boardgames Movies Games
Music is the most accessable, with games being the least accessable. By accessable I mean by how much attention you need to give it, in order to enjoy it. And also how many times you tend to repeat the experience.
Music: You can listen to it anywhere, and you tend to listen to time and time again with your favorite bands.
Games: Requires your direct attention, and usually tend to become outdated with technology. How often do you play the same game? MMORPGs are an exception, usually more in line with card games or board games. You keep playing them because of the social setting.
> Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture (even allowing for a smaller audience).
You're not a nut. Let's look at the production costs! Games cost $2 to $10 million, compared to Movies at $10 to $200 million That's different by at LEAST a factor of 10. ($5 million, AAA to $50 million, blockbuster.)
Why can movies be sold for $10 (Ticket) / $20 (DVD), when games have always cost $50 - $60. When you have a smaller market, you need to raise the cost, to make the same profit.
The 2-fold problem with games becoming more and more niche market is:
1. The problem is (computer) games become out-dated. The changing technology in movies, doesn't make movies outdated. (They usually just retold, and modernized to better relate to today's culture)
(Point 2 is below.)
What I'm trying to say, is how you summarized your post.
> I used to buy almost every new game I could get my hands on. Anymore, though, I see a game price on a store shelf and I spend a lot more time thinking over whether I really want it or not--the pricing has driven the product out of the impulse-buying range.
Yeap, as someone who has been a gamer for 25+ years, I have to agree with you. Most "new" games, are not new, they are more evolutionary, then revolutionary. Admist the sea of sequel-itis, it's becoming harder and harder to find Orginal & Good games.
2. I agree with you're conclusion: Music and DVDs represent a better "value" for me.
What's going to be real interesting is when the computer games industry has finally matured, in 50 to 100 years. Its similiar to the movie industry when it first started. We are still in the B & W stage.
> If you buy the low-end Dell projector, you can have a setup for less than $1000. I laugh at people who spent over $2K for their puny 40" high-def TV.
Not everyone likes the "film" look. Personally, I love the 'surreal' look of Plasma. Jet Li's "Hero", and "Baraka" are good examples. Size is nice, but so is quality.
Anyways, this topic has been discussed to death over on avsforum. Different strokes for different folks.
Peace -- Them: If you don't like it [the government] you are always free to leave. Me: Is that how you deal with all your problems? By running away from them? Name one government that is not corrupt so we can move there?
Of all the thousands of posts on avsforum.com, I think I've seen a grand total of 1 or 2 posts about it. I've never experienced it on my own plasma either, and I've put a lot of long continious hours on it.
You're comment hits the nail right on the head, unfortunately, after seeing this happen having shipped 3 games now. Within 5 years, most game programmers want OUT of the industry.
There is an interesting concept in Jim Collin's "Good to Great", which I'll paraphrase:
"It important to get the right people. Along with that, most companies think they need to motivate their employees, but it is MORE important NOT to DEMOTIVATE them."
Peace
-- Orignal, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty! http://www.arcanejourneys.com/
> Id rather have a small world with a lot of detail than Morrowind.
What you are describing is called "gameworld density" If the world is larger, you need to INCREASE the number of interesting things, places, etc, to *maintain* the same density.
That's why smaller worlds tend to be better. It is much easier to see "the holes", and fill them in.
Cheers
-- "When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets, it's hard. I AM not there. My name is not I WAS".
"When you live in the future with it's problems and fears, it's hard. I AM not there. My name is not I WILL BE."
"When you live in this moment, it is not hard. I AM here. My name is I AM."
The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live, but the fact remains it is unconstitutional to homogenize community by its own standards.
When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law."
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
-- "The difference between Religion and Philosophy, is that one is put into practise." -- Emmanuel
Yes, I've tried Mathematica and Maxima. For my needs, even version 5.9.0 Maxima is useless. (Large prime patterns, and making video (2D) and audio from them.)
i.e. PRIME (n) gives the nth prime. MAXPRIME[489318] is the largest number accepted as argument. Note: The PRIME command does not work in maxima, since it required a large file of primes, which most users do not want. PRIMEP does work however.
-- The "Book of Enoch" is directly quoted in the Bible's New Covenent at Jude (vs 6, 14 and 15) and II Peter 2:4, yet it is not in the "official" cannon?!?!
I should of clarified that I meant between Mathematica (5) and Maxima (not sure what version I used last year, sorry, didn't keep it around.)
And yes, I've tried both. I had a specific number theory / graphics problem that I wanted to work out. Couldn't do it in Maxima. I even took a look at the source to see what the problem was. Unimplemented functionality. Nice! NOT.
I tried Mathematica, and found my answers in about half a day. (The help system rocks, especially for someone not used to the system.)
> or are you just making a general "OSS programs suck compared to commercial ones" statement?
I've used quality apps of both sides. Open or Closed-source has nothing to do with quality. That's about design. In the long-run OSS will "win", but we still have a ways to get there. Which means I need to use stuff that "works" *today*.
Peace
-- "My Karma killed my Dogma" (Paraphrasing Sister Dawn)
> does Maxima compare well to Mathematica and does Octave compare well to Matlab?
Not even in the same league.
Peace
-- ALL governments and civilizations eventually collapse. Or are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't? "The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
> Those white dots might have been the "Weaving the Web" pop-up factoids that are part of the special features of the first movie.
No, for 1) they were much too small. We're talkig a few "pixels" at most. 2) They only lasted 1/24 of a second. Pop-ups last 1 or 2 seconds. 3) They were more of them then actual factoids.
Peace -- "The difference between Religion and Philosophy, is that one is put into practise."
-- Emmanuel
As much as I love the first movie, the DVD transfer has to be one the WORST I have ever seen. I stopped counting at the number of times a white dot would show up for a single frame, all through-out the movie, which sticks out like a sore thumb on the Plasma.
The story changes however, I liked (and I was a big fan of the orginal comic book.) The story was updated "for the times" to have it make more sense. Radiation -> Genetic Engineering, etc.
The problem is customers are co-creators of their character, due to the time they put in, and the money they pay.
A better licencese is needed, where both parties can agree to what is "fair"
Peace -- "Ideas are dime a dozen. Good ones are a little rarer. But the Great ones are ones that were acted upon, proving them Great. Don't worry about the guy who never makes any mistakes, he's never done anything." - Michaelangelo
Part of what makes Fallout, Fallout, is its turn-based strategy. That goes away in a MMORPG.
-- The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live. When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law." "The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55 ALL civilizations eventually collapse. Are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?
I was read to mod this "Heretic:)", but you know, you have a point, because you're probably including all 3 movies. I'm kind of curious as what you think makes the Animatrix *better* then the 1st matrix movie?
I would say the visual styles and the story (both on a micro and macro level) of Animatrix is not better or worse then the 1st Matix, it is just in a league of its own.
Is there a command-line paramater to NOT have the.exe use/share the same copy in memory? Basically bypass the semaphore code.
i.e. I have a *lot* of windows open, usually 4 browsers with 20 tabs each. When 1 window crashes, ALL of them crash. (I copied an url from Mozilla into OpenOffice and had them both stall:(
Each time you run IE, it starts up a new thread. If one browser window crashes, you can just start fire up another copy. (Of course stability of the system is another issuem with the integration of the OS, but that's another story.)
It sure would be nice to be able to have the user decide if he wants a new instance as a stand-alone, or shared thread.
Yeah, Yeah, I can hack the code, but if someone already has done this...;-)
> I have never heard of a dual CPU machine with different architectures
The PS2 for one.
The MIPS cpu in the orginal CPU is the IOP in the PS2, which also doubles for the main CPU when playing PS1 games on it.
-- The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live, but the fact remains it is unconstitutional to homogenize community by its own standards. When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law." "The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55 ALL civilizations eventually collapse. Are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?
Boy, I can't wait till they find out that genes are multi-dimensional, the same way a fugue is.:)
-- The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live, but the fact remains it is unconstituational to homogenize community by its own standards. When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law." "The more corrupt the republic, the more numerious the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55 ALL civilizations eventualy collapse. Are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?
Slashdot Mirror
Why isn't there a wiki for the man pages?
The biggest problem I have with the man pages, is lack of examples!
--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/
> Is it just me, or are scientists trying to make science fit the theory?
:)
Don't worry, science will undergo a major revolution soon enough, when they stop being blind to the truth of the subjective.
--
I wasn't smart enough to be a Mathematician,
and was too lazy to be a Engineer,
so I became a programmer
Because Control-H is older
--
Orignal, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/
> I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD.
You raise a couple of very good points. Let me elaborate:
Let's look at entertainment, specifically in this order:
Music/Boardgames
Movies
Games
Music is the most accessable, with games being the least accessable. By accessable I mean by how much attention you need to give it, in order to enjoy it. And also how many times you tend to repeat the experience.
Music: You can listen to it anywhere, and you tend to listen to time and time again with your favorite bands.
Games: Requires your direct attention, and usually tend to become outdated with technology. How often do you play the same game? MMORPGs are an exception, usually more in line with card games or board games. You keep playing them because of the social setting.
> Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture (even allowing for a smaller audience).
You're not a nut. Let's look at the production costs!
Games cost $2 to $10 million, compared to Movies at $10 to $200 million
That's different by at LEAST a factor of 10. ($5 million, AAA to $50 million, blockbuster.)
Why can movies be sold for $10 (Ticket) / $20 (DVD), when games have always cost $50 - $60. When you have a smaller market, you need to raise the cost, to make the same profit.
The 2-fold problem with games becoming more and more niche market is:
1. The problem is (computer) games become out-dated. The changing technology in movies, doesn't make movies outdated. (They usually just retold, and modernized to better relate to today's culture)
(Point 2 is below.)
What I'm trying to say, is how you summarized your post.
> I used to buy almost every new game I could get my hands on. Anymore, though, I see a game price on a store shelf and I spend a lot more time thinking over whether I really want it or not--the pricing has driven the product out of the impulse-buying range.
Yeap, as someone who has been a gamer for 25+ years, I have to agree with you. Most "new" games, are not new, they are more evolutionary, then revolutionary. Admist the sea of sequel-itis, it's becoming harder and harder to find Orginal & Good games.
2. I agree with you're conclusion: Music and DVDs represent a better "value" for me.
What's going to be real interesting is when the computer games industry has finally matured, in 50 to 100 years. Its similiar to the movie industry when it first started. We are still in the B & W stage.
Cheers
--
Orignal, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
> If you buy the low-end Dell projector, you can have a setup for less than $1000. I laugh at people who spent over $2K for their puny 40" high-def TV.
Not everyone likes the "film" look. Personally, I love the 'surreal' look of Plasma. Jet Li's "Hero", and "Baraka" are good examples. Size is nice, but so is quality.
Anyways, this topic has been discussed to death over on avsforum. Different strokes for different folks.
Peace
--
Them: If you don't like it [the government] you are always free to leave.
Me: Is that how you deal with all your problems? By running away from them? Name one government that is not corrupt so we can move there?
... is OVER rated.
Of all the thousands of posts on avsforum.com, I think I've seen a grand total of 1 or 2 posts about it. I've never experienced it on my own plasma either, and I've put a lot of long continious hours on it.
--
Orignal, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/
You're comment hits the nail right on the head, unfortunately, after seeing this happen having shipped 3 games now. Within 5 years, most game programmers want OUT of the industry.
There is an interesting concept in Jim Collin's "Good to Great", which I'll paraphrase:
"It important to get the right people. Along with that, most companies think they need to motivate their employees, but it is MORE important NOT to DEMOTIVATE them."
Peace
--
Orignal, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/
> Id rather have a small world with a lot of detail than Morrowind.
What you are describing is called "gameworld density" If the world is larger, you need to INCREASE the number of interesting things, places, etc, to *maintain* the same density.
That's why smaller worlds tend to be better. It is much easier to see "the holes", and fill them in.
Cheers
--
"When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets, it's hard.
I AM not there. My name is not I WAS".
"When you live in the future with it's problems and fears, it's hard.
I AM not there. My name is not I WILL BE."
"When you live in this moment, it is not hard.
I AM here. My name is I AM."
- Paraphrasing by Helen Mallicoat
The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live, but the fact remains it is unconstitutional to homogenize community by its own standards.
When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law."
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
--
"The difference between Religion and Philosophy, is that one is put into practise."
-- Emmanuel
> Have you even tried them?
Yes, I've tried Mathematica and Maxima. For my needs, even version 5.9.0 Maxima is useless. (Large prime patterns, and making video (2D) and audio from them.)
i.e.
PRIME (n)
gives the nth prime. MAXPRIME[489318] is the largest number accepted as argument. Note: The PRIME command does not work in maxima, since it required a large file of primes, which most users do not want. PRIMEP does work however.
--
The "Book of Enoch" is directly quoted in the Bible's New Covenent at Jude (vs 6, 14 and 15) and II Peter 2:4, yet it is not in the "official" cannon?!?!
> Have you actually used the software
I should of clarified that I meant between Mathematica (5) and Maxima (not sure what version I used last year, sorry, didn't keep it around.)
And yes, I've tried both. I had a specific number theory / graphics problem that I wanted to work out. Couldn't do it in Maxima. I even took a look at the source to see what the problem was. Unimplemented functionality. Nice! NOT.
I tried Mathematica, and found my answers in about half a day.
(The help system rocks, especially for someone not used to the system.)
> or are you just making a general "OSS programs suck compared to commercial ones" statement?
I've used quality apps of both sides. Open or Closed-source has nothing to do with quality. That's about design. In the long-run OSS will "win", but we still have a ways to get there. Which means I need to use stuff that "works" *today*.
Peace
--
"My Karma killed my Dogma"
(Paraphrasing Sister Dawn)
> does Maxima compare well to Mathematica and does Octave compare well to Matlab?
Not even in the same league.
Peace
--
ALL governments and civilizations eventually collapse.
Or are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
What Should I Do with My Life?
> plasma TVs are a waste of money
:)
That's ok, I had the money to waste
> Those white dots might have been the "Weaving the Web" pop-up factoids that are part of the special features of the first movie.
No, for
1) they were much too small. We're talkig a few "pixels" at most.
2) They only lasted 1/24 of a second. Pop-ups last 1 or 2 seconds.
3) They were more of them then actual factoids.
Peace
--
"The difference between Religion and Philosophy, is that one is put into practise."
-- Emmanuel
As much as I love the first movie, the DVD transfer has to be one the WORST I have ever seen. I stopped counting at the number of times a white dot would show up for a single frame, all through-out the movie, which sticks out like a sore thumb on the Plasma.
The story changes however, I liked (and I was a big fan of the orginal comic book.) The story was updated "for the times" to have it make more sense. Radiation -> Genetic Engineering, etc.
Peace
The problem is customers are co-creators of their character, due to the time they put in, and the money they pay.
A better licencese is needed, where both parties can agree to what is "fair"
Peace
--
"Ideas are dime a dozen. Good ones are a little rarer.
But the Great ones are ones that were acted upon, proving them Great.
Don't worry about the guy who never makes any mistakes, he's never done anything."
- Michaelangelo
Oh brother...not THAT old topic again..
"FallOut On-Line" aka FOOL
Part of what makes Fallout, Fallout, is its turn-based strategy. That goes away in a MMORPG.
--
The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live.
When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law."
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
ALL civilizations eventually collapse. Are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?
> The best of the matrix is the Annimatrix.
:)", but you know, you have a point, because you're probably including all 3 movies. I'm kind of curious as what you think makes the Animatrix *better* then the 1st matrix movie?
I was read to mod this "Heretic
I would say the visual styles and the story (both on a micro and macro level) of Animatrix is not better or worse then the 1st Matix, it is just in a league of its own.
Peace
Hero (Jet Li) is better the CTHD, which says a lot, because I have the SuperBit (and normal) version of CTHD.
Browsing forums. Each main window is a different forum, with all the threads I'm interested in reading, in a new "tab"
--
"It is better to aim for the stars and hit the tops of the trees than to aim for nothing and hit it dead on."
FireFox is looking & running sweeting.
.exe use/share the same copy in memory? Basically bypass the semaphore code.
:(
;-)
Is there a command-line paramater to NOT have the
i.e.
I have a *lot* of windows open, usually 4 browsers with 20 tabs each. When 1 window crashes, ALL of them crash. (I copied an url from Mozilla into OpenOffice and had them both stall
Each time you run IE, it starts up a new thread. If one browser window crashes, you can just start fire up another copy. (Of course stability of the system is another issuem with the integration of the OS, but that's another story.)
It sure would be nice to be able to have the user decide if he wants a new instance as a stand-alone, or shared thread.
Yeah, Yeah, I can hack the code, but if someone already has done this...
> I have never heard of a dual CPU machine with different architectures
The PS2 for one.
The MIPS cpu in the orginal CPU is the IOP in the PS2, which also doubles for the main CPU when playing PS1 games on it.
--
The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live,
but the fact remains it is unconstitutional to homogenize community by its own standards.
When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law."
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
ALL civilizations eventually collapse. Are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?
> A single gene can contain up to three overlapping reading frames, a
Now that's cool.
Got any links or references so I can show others this?
Boy, I can't wait till they find out that genes are multi-dimensional, the same way a fugue is. :)
--
The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live, but the fact remains it is unconstituational to homogenize community by its own standards. When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law."
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerious the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
ALL civilizations eventualy collapse. Are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?