The problem is that this is very difficult to do in a democracy. You will not win the next election. People don't like having their cars or homes messed with!
What you can do is mandate that all new cars after a certain date will be electric, or better still, will not use petrol (since there may be better technologies that come along that break the letter of the law.) Then the government makes it economic to buy a new car perhaps with tax breaks, and uneconomic to drive a petrol car perhaps by increasing the cost of fuel or registration.
They did a similar thing in Australia in the mid-eighties to introduce unleaded petrol. All new cars after 1986 had to run on unleaded. My car was made in 1983, bought by me in 1994 and sold in 2003. It was a few cents a litre more expensive for petrol than an unleaded vehicle.
The Japanese as I understand it, used a method of increasing registration costs for older cars. The first rego for a new car cost $2000 for 3 years, then the next time cost $2000 for 2 years, and then $2000 a year after that.
In the meantime, governments need to consider other means to reduce fuel consumption. Better public transport anyone?
I agree. Even replacing every toilet in the nation would likely take a few decades. It's not normally the first thing that people do when they move in to a new house. In fact there are alot of things that people don't replace every few years that need to be replaced in his scenario.
The only way that his predictions can become a reality in the next ten years is for a super efficient and extremely inexpensive means for manufacturing these products comes into use.
If a black hole is 'black' simply because it has enough gravity to prevent light from escaping once past the event horizon, then wouldn't an singularity with the mass of the moon, not be massive enough to prevent light from escaping. Thus we should be able to see the actual singularity (if we could observe something that small.)
I definitely agree about the quality. I've bought way too many games that I've had to download a patch just to start. The worst case was Dungeon Keeper 2. After thoroughly enjoying DK1, I bought DK2 and installed it. Got to the fourth level and part way through it hung, reboot, restart... hang. Every PC I have owned, I've tried DK2 on. Every PC, DK2 hangs the game in the fourth level. That is not a problem with the system... it's a poor quality game. That's just one example.
I work in the SW industry, and the companies I've worked for have had clients that would not tolerate the sort of sloppy QA that gamers put up with. It's not impossible to produce a quality game, maybe game publishers need a few clients who are prepared to sue!
As for people not being inherently malicious... Well, you haven't played too many MMORPGS now have you?;-) I figure a good way to find out what someone is really like is to put them in a situation where their actions have no real consequences and they can benefit from being malicious. Some of the things people say and do in a game just to piss off someone are incredible. Even people on slashdot wouldn't dream of saying some of the things that they say here to someones face!
Civilisation is a very thin veneer, and easily rubbed off!
As for the links. Thanks for those, I'll have a good look.
3.5" floppys? In my day we had nothin' but 5.25" and no hard disk!
Hah! That's nuthin'! When I was a lad just starting out in the computer game... we had eight inche floppies. We'd have to get up in the mornin' walk 800 miles to work in a blizzard and carry these monsters another 200 miles to the backup centre.
5.25"... 3.5"... The computer industry needs a good does of Viagra!!!
Yes, true, there are economic reasons for a black market to exist with games, but I still doubt if it would dry up with the lowering of prices. I definitely believe that if game prices were lowered by a substantial amount, then more sales would result. Some who would have pirated would now buy a copy, but there will still be a large number who would simply copy and not pay. There are a lot of people out there who, if they could get away without paying, would do so.
The problem, at least with the big publisher games (or even the small publisher games) is that the price that is being asked isn't just pulled out of someones hat. There is a formula used to determine the price to set goods at, that maximises the return to the company. Set the price too high and sales drop and the company loses money. Set the price too low, and while you pick up extra sales, they aren't enough and the company loses money. Most companies (not just games) aim for that sweet spot where they can maximise their profits.
Couple that with the fact that there are generally a lot of links in the supply chain. Developer to Publisher to Wholesaler to Retail Store. And that with boxed games there are a lot of fixed costs that apply in that chain. Well, that US$50, isn't really that much in the scheme of things.
Now, lets say that a break-through in production occurs and the cost of producing a game drops to a level where the box can be sold for US$25. Our would-be pirate can now afford Doom 3 quite easily. But wait! Half-Life 2 has been just been released. What a dilemma! He can't afford both, so he heads to the warez site to get HL2, but he hasn't bought D3 yet, so he downloads that too. The justification? They were too expensive.
I really, really doubt if dropping prices will make much of an effect on the warez scene. Short of ten dollars, or the cost of incovenience, people will pirate games. And with those sort of prices, there won't be any games released that have million dollar budgets (with all that entails.)
Really, in the end, games are luxury products. They aren't essential to quality of life or health. They are entertainment products, and the excuse of them being priced too high is simply that... just an excuse. If someone wants to play Doom 3 when it first comes out and can't afford it, well tough, not having it isn't going to ruin their life. Wait for a few months and buy it cheaper, or look on ebay... or find a decent indie game for half the price and play that! Just don't pirate it.
If the cost is sufficiently low enough people will simply buy it because it isn't worth their time to pirate it.
Sorry, but that really doesn't track with the evidence.
You can go to any number of warez sites and find games developed by indie game developers and sold for under $20 to under $10. Visit their forums and you'll see post after post asking for codes, links, and cracks for these games.
The excuse that pirates use, that games are too expensive, just simply doesn't hold water when they are pirating low priced games. The simple fact of the matter is that they don't want to pay for something that they want to use. They want something for nothing. Ironically, sometimes they spend a lot of time trying to get something for nothing. Lame.
Maybe your friend would start buying legit copies of games if they were cheaper. Then again, maybe he'd still claim they were too expensive or come up with some other excuse for not paying for legitimate copies.
2 - Illegal workers willing to work below minimum wage take jobs away from others who would rather be a part of the system.
3 - Anybody who works off the books is essentially welching off the rest of us who do pay taxes. This is especially true if they work off the books and still expect to collect unemployment, welfare, social security, and other social services. They are also not paying for the fire and police services.
Except that they are absolutely necessary to the US economy. If all of the jobs filled by underpaid illegals were instead filled by minimum wage workers, consumers in the US would be paying a hell of a lot more for farm produce, cleaning services, city taxes (yes, those illegals do dig ditches and fix roads.) These increased costs would flow on across the board in the need for higher wages to pay for the basics, as well as other product cost increases.
They also do the jobs that no one else wants to do, at a tiny rate of pay. My guess would be that if a US citizen had to do that sort of job, they would require more than minimum wage.
As for not paying taxes. Well, they are earning such a small amount the taxes collected would be negligable. They still have to buy things though, and the state collects sales tax on purchases, so the government still gets its cut.
All in all, it's a trade off. I'm personally disgusted that these people are paid so poorly, and can't complain about the abuses for fear of deportation. IMO, it creates a type of slave trade. But if Americans don't want illegal immigrants working in their country they have to be prepared to pay the price for that decision.
I had just joined the game during this event, so I was too low level to see any of the fighting. I'm not sure if the players brought the spires down, or if it was something that happened as part of the story. I vaguely remember that Asheron himself, and the female leader (she was an archer, but I can't quite remember the name,) may have been involved.
I did want to see them, so I made the journey out through treacherous country to see one of the fallen spires soon after. I visited the town of Arwic soon after it was destroyed. It was such a great adventure.
The shadows appeared around then, but I don't quite remember if it was that event. I do remember they were tough critters, especially for my gimped archer.
One of the best story influencing events was the defence of the crystals that bound the demonic Bael Zh'aron (pardon my spelling, I'm going from memory here and it's been a few years.) A group of players wanted to prevent the release of BZ, and set up to defend the crystal. Another set of players tried to destroy the crystal (of course.)
I think that all of the servers put up a defence, but only one, Thistledown, managed to prevent the attackers from destroying the crystal. It was quite the effort. They maintained a round the clock vigil IIRC.
There was an attempt to have a different story line on TD, but it wasn't possible. They did get a memorial erected to commemorate their efforts.
Unfortunately, I was on Australian time, so all of the events tended to fall outside of my play hours. It was a great game though, and gave a real sense of history and depth to the world. Even though you weren't, you felt like you were making a difference. Lots of fun!
I always thought that the first Asherons Call made a decent attempt at telling a story. Every month the game was updated with new content and advanced the worlds story arc. I've definitly missed that with the other MMORPGs.
So it's not impossible. The big challenge, as I see it, is to give each character the possibility of a personal story that eventually affects the state of the world.
I always understood the Vulcans represented the Japanese. It was stated in (one of) the series that the Vulcans and Romulans shared a common ancestry. However, they mastered their emotions while the Romulans did not.
I'm not sure about an "outcry" but the game would probably be panned. Personally, a game that allowed me to try out terrorist tactics sounds interesting. I imagine that the US government would not censor it, but if it were done well enough, might strike a contract with the developer to use the game for training/simulations with soldiers. They've done it before.
This topic is interesting. But to take it further.
How would the American government and media react if a game like Full Spectrum Warrior was created by a Middle East developer in a Middle Eastern country (doesn't matter which one.) Full Spectrum Warrior is a squad based game (by the looks, I have't played it, only seen the TV ads) where the player controls a force against a Middle Eastern enemy. Let's say the game reversed the roles so that the player took on the role of a military/militia team or a terrorist cell and the missions involved removing 'The American Threat' from Iraq?
What if those missions involved suicide bombings? Or capturing and executing US civilian workers. Do you think we'd see senators and reporters getting all up in arms?
Just after signing up I've only received one call from the Police Malevolency Association. Here's how it went.
Caller: Hi, I'm from the Police Malevolency Association and I'm calling on beh....
Me: Oh, wait a minute, I signed up to the do not call list.
Caller: Yes, but that doesn't apply to charities like us.
Me: Hmmm. But the reason I signed up on a do not call list was that I don't want to be called by telemarketers. Do you think it makes a difference to me what sort of telemarketer you are?
Caller: But... click!
Haven't heard back from them since. It's been a while now.
There aren't really that many super rich around. Most of the stats I've seen indicate that only a tiny few percent of the population earn huge incomes. Even if you closed the loopholes and forced the mega rich to pay their share, the middle class would still be responsible for most of the nations tax receipts. I believe it follows the classic bell curve with the poor and the rich contributing the least, and the middle class contributing the most.
But, I do agree with you. The wealthy should pay their share.
The basic cable package that I receive does of course have the local channels as well as CBS, ABC, etc. But I've noticed heavy censorship of TV and movies on channels like SciFi, SpikeTV, AMC, and the other channels that I wouldn't have thought broadcast over the air.
Of course the digital package with HBO and the like isn't censored at all, but it surprised me when I arrived here that so much was.
Not being a US citizen, even though I currently reside in the US, I'm not sure of where the constitution does and does not apply. I thought that unhindered free speech was something that Americans proudly adhere to.
How then can the FCC fine ClearChannel for Howard Stern exercising his constitutionally protected rights?
All of the current games that I mentioned above have sold very well for the PC. I noticed that you thought a few of the games were 'stale'. Regardless of that, the fact is that not only did they sell well, they received good reviews. A reasonable portion of the gaming demographic must have thought they were pretty good.
Neverwinter Nights in particular had rave reviews inspite of its 'unimpressive graphics.' Personally, I didn't think the graphics were that bad, and I don't tend to rate a game on its graphics much anyway. Lots of people are still playing it. That must say something about its 'killerness.'
The other thing to mention is that a game can be available for a number of platforms and still be a big PC game. Doom 3 in particular will do incredibly well on both PC and XBox. (I'll probably go PC for this one, even though I have an XBox. I prefer using a mouse to play a FPS. Much more efficient.)
What you are describing is akin to the rise of multicelled organisms from single celled organisms. It takes quite a while, and a lot of energy to get to that stage.
Mother natures current motto... "Been there. done that."
My laughter was directed at the comment that software development was as easy as connecting up some black boxes.
It's not, never has been, and despite all the predictions (and there have been many over the years,) I don't think it will be. At least not until there is a medium level AI capable of understanding natural language, with the ability to think about a problem abstractly, and to refine those abstractions into a concrete solution. That's a long way off I think.
but you should see the new generation of.Net jocks coming through the pipe. Its just horrible. I've met one that can't even fathom how a binary tree works. Dr. Dobbs was warning of Computer Aided Software Engineering tool techs coming down the pipe in the 80's, and its finally here.
I've also met folks like these. People who haven't learned (or understood) simple algorithms like trees and linked lists. I agree that it's scary to see them involved in large scale projects. The thing is that it is not new. It's certainly not 'finally here'. It's been here for a long time. I've run across this for many years. It's not just.NET that is the cause.
Also, for the record, I'm not against languages and libraries like C#,.NET, or Python, or whatever, making life easier for software developers. It's not just plug and play though. I firmly believe that there should be some understanding there.
You're uninformed. Actually designing software involves drawing up an interconnect of black boxes and picking a language to write the boxes in. The actual coding can be done anywhere by anyone, as long as the black boxes and interconnects can work.
ROFLMAO!!!!
That is the funniest thing I have ever heard in my twenty something years as a software developer. I must have been doing software design completely wrong all these years. Hmmm. Must go and study up on connecting up all those black boxes. If I'd known that twenty years ago, my life would have been much easier!
Slashdot Mirror
What you can do is mandate that all new cars after a certain date will be electric, or better still, will not use petrol (since there may be better technologies that come along that break the letter of the law.) Then the government makes it economic to buy a new car perhaps with tax breaks, and uneconomic to drive a petrol car perhaps by increasing the cost of fuel or registration.
They did a similar thing in Australia in the mid-eighties to introduce unleaded petrol. All new cars after 1986 had to run on unleaded. My car was made in 1983, bought by me in 1994 and sold in 2003. It was a few cents a litre more expensive for petrol than an unleaded vehicle.
The Japanese as I understand it, used a method of increasing registration costs for older cars. The first rego for a new car cost $2000 for 3 years, then the next time cost $2000 for 2 years, and then $2000 a year after that.
In the meantime, governments need to consider other means to reduce fuel consumption. Better public transport anyone?
The only way that his predictions can become a reality in the next ten years is for a super efficient and extremely inexpensive means for manufacturing these products comes into use.
Good answer. Why not?
If a black hole is 'black' simply because it has enough gravity to prevent light from escaping once past the event horizon, then wouldn't an singularity with the mass of the moon, not be massive enough to prevent light from escaping. Thus we should be able to see the actual singularity (if we could observe something that small.)
I work in the SW industry, and the companies I've worked for have had clients that would not tolerate the sort of sloppy QA that gamers put up with. It's not impossible to produce a quality game, maybe game publishers need a few clients who are prepared to sue!
As for people not being inherently malicious... Well, you haven't played too many MMORPGS now have you? ;-) I figure a good way to find out what someone is really like is to put them in a situation where their actions have no real consequences and they can benefit from being malicious. Some of the things people say and do in a game just to piss off someone are incredible. Even people on slashdot wouldn't dream of saying some of the things that they say here to someones face!
Civilisation is a very thin veneer, and easily rubbed off!
As for the links. Thanks for those, I'll have a good look.
cheers
Hah! That's nuthin'! When I was a lad just starting out in the computer game... we had eight inche floppies. We'd have to get up in the mornin' walk 800 miles to work in a blizzard and carry these monsters another 200 miles to the backup centre.
5.25"... 3.5"... The computer industry needs a good does of Viagra!!!
The problem, at least with the big publisher games (or even the small publisher games) is that the price that is being asked isn't just pulled out of someones hat. There is a formula used to determine the price to set goods at, that maximises the return to the company. Set the price too high and sales drop and the company loses money. Set the price too low, and while you pick up extra sales, they aren't enough and the company loses money. Most companies (not just games) aim for that sweet spot where they can maximise their profits.
Couple that with the fact that there are generally a lot of links in the supply chain. Developer to Publisher to Wholesaler to Retail Store. And that with boxed games there are a lot of fixed costs that apply in that chain. Well, that US$50, isn't really that much in the scheme of things.
Now, lets say that a break-through in production occurs and the cost of producing a game drops to a level where the box can be sold for US$25. Our would-be pirate can now afford Doom 3 quite easily. But wait! Half-Life 2 has been just been released. What a dilemma! He can't afford both, so he heads to the warez site to get HL2, but he hasn't bought D3 yet, so he downloads that too. The justification? They were too expensive.
I really, really doubt if dropping prices will make much of an effect on the warez scene. Short of ten dollars, or the cost of incovenience, people will pirate games. And with those sort of prices, there won't be any games released that have million dollar budgets (with all that entails.)
Really, in the end, games are luxury products. They aren't essential to quality of life or health. They are entertainment products, and the excuse of them being priced too high is simply that... just an excuse. If someone wants to play Doom 3 when it first comes out and can't afford it, well tough, not having it isn't going to ruin their life. Wait for a few months and buy it cheaper, or look on ebay... or find a decent indie game for half the price and play that! Just don't pirate it.
Sorry, but that really doesn't track with the evidence.
You can go to any number of warez sites and find games developed by indie game developers and sold for under $20 to under $10. Visit their forums and you'll see post after post asking for codes, links, and cracks for these games.
The excuse that pirates use, that games are too expensive, just simply doesn't hold water when they are pirating low priced games. The simple fact of the matter is that they don't want to pay for something that they want to use. They want something for nothing. Ironically, sometimes they spend a lot of time trying to get something for nothing. Lame.
Maybe your friend would start buying legit copies of games if they were cheaper. Then again, maybe he'd still claim they were too expensive or come up with some other excuse for not paying for legitimate copies.
They also do the jobs that no one else wants to do, at a tiny rate of pay. My guess would be that if a US citizen had to do that sort of job, they would require more than minimum wage.
As for not paying taxes. Well, they are earning such a small amount the taxes collected would be negligable. They still have to buy things though, and the state collects sales tax on purchases, so the government still gets its cut.
All in all, it's a trade off. I'm personally disgusted that these people are paid so poorly, and can't complain about the abuses for fear of deportation. IMO, it creates a type of slave trade. But if Americans don't want illegal immigrants working in their country they have to be prepared to pay the price for that decision.
I did want to see them, so I made the journey out through treacherous country to see one of the fallen spires soon after. I visited the town of Arwic soon after it was destroyed. It was such a great adventure.
The shadows appeared around then, but I don't quite remember if it was that event. I do remember they were tough critters, especially for my gimped archer.
One of the best story influencing events was the defence of the crystals that bound the demonic Bael Zh'aron (pardon my spelling, I'm going from memory here and it's been a few years.) A group of players wanted to prevent the release of BZ, and set up to defend the crystal. Another set of players tried to destroy the crystal (of course.)
I think that all of the servers put up a defence, but only one, Thistledown, managed to prevent the attackers from destroying the crystal. It was quite the effort. They maintained a round the clock vigil IIRC.
There was an attempt to have a different story line on TD, but it wasn't possible. They did get a memorial erected to commemorate their efforts.
Unfortunately, I was on Australian time, so all of the events tended to fall outside of my play hours. It was a great game though, and gave a real sense of history and depth to the world. Even though you weren't, you felt like you were making a difference. Lots of fun!
So it's not impossible. The big challenge, as I see it, is to give each character the possibility of a personal story that eventually affects the state of the world.
Man, it's scary that I remember that!!!
This topic is interesting. But to take it further.
How would the American government and media react if a game like Full Spectrum Warrior was created by a Middle East developer in a Middle Eastern country (doesn't matter which one.) Full Spectrum Warrior is a squad based game (by the looks, I have't played it, only seen the TV ads) where the player controls a force against a Middle Eastern enemy. Let's say the game reversed the roles so that the player took on the role of a military/militia team or a terrorist cell and the missions involved removing 'The American Threat' from Iraq?
What if those missions involved suicide bombings? Or capturing and executing US civilian workers. Do you think we'd see senators and reporters getting all up in arms?
I reckon we'd see a hell of a fuss.
Caller: Hi, I'm from the Police Malevolency Association and I'm calling on beh....
Me: Oh, wait a minute, I signed up to the do not call list.
Caller: Yes, but that doesn't apply to charities like us.
Me: Hmmm. But the reason I signed up on a do not call list was that I don't want to be called by telemarketers. Do you think it makes a difference to me what sort of telemarketer you are?
Caller: But... click!
Haven't heard back from them since. It's been a while now.
There aren't really that many super rich around. Most of the stats I've seen indicate that only a tiny few percent of the population earn huge incomes. Even if you closed the loopholes and forced the mega rich to pay their share, the middle class would still be responsible for most of the nations tax receipts. I believe it follows the classic bell curve with the poor and the rich contributing the least, and the middle class contributing the most.
But, I do agree with you. The wealthy should pay their share.
Of course the digital package with HBO and the like isn't censored at all, but it surprised me when I arrived here that so much was.
So, it appears that the FCC "owns" the airwaves and leases them on the condition that they are not used in certain ways.
Still strange with basic cable though. I didnt think that was broadcast through the airwaves. Unless the FCC owns cable bandwith as well?
How then can the FCC fine ClearChannel for Howard Stern exercising his constitutionally protected rights?
Neverwinter Nights in particular had rave reviews inspite of its 'unimpressive graphics.' Personally, I didn't think the graphics were that bad, and I don't tend to rate a game on its graphics much anyway. Lots of people are still playing it. That must say something about its 'killerness.'
The other thing to mention is that a game can be available for a number of platforms and still be a big PC game. Doom 3 in particular will do incredibly well on both PC and XBox. (I'll probably go PC for this one, even though I have an XBox. I prefer using a mouse to play a FPS. Much more efficient.)
What you are describing is akin to the rise of multicelled organisms from single celled organisms. It takes quite a while, and a lot of energy to get to that stage.
Mother natures current motto... "Been there. done that."
PREY should have been titled "Pray for a good novel by Michael Crichton."
In no particular order...
Neverwinter Nights
Morrowind
City of Heroes
UT2004
Farcry
Serious Sam
Empire Earth
Rise of Nations
To be released (probably before the next set of consoles comes out)...
Doom 3
Half-Life 2
The Matrix Online
Everquest 2
Evil Genius
To be released just after the heat death of the universe (in about 10^(10^72) years.)
Duke Nukem Forever
It's not, never has been, and despite all the predictions (and there have been many over the years,) I don't think it will be. At least not until there is a medium level AI capable of understanding natural language, with the ability to think about a problem abstractly, and to refine those abstractions into a concrete solution. That's a long way off I think.
I've also met folks like these. People who haven't learned (or understood) simple algorithms like trees and linked lists. I agree that it's scary to see them involved in large scale projects. The thing is that it is not new. It's certainly not 'finally here'. It's been here for a long time. I've run across this for many years. It's not just .NET that is the cause.
Also, for the record, I'm not against languages and libraries like C#, .NET, or Python, or whatever, making life easier for software developers. It's not just plug and play though. I firmly believe that there should be some understanding there.
Mmmmmmm.... Soylent Green.