I disagree that MS has enjoyed governmental help to achieve thier monopoly.
For the government's use of MS products, I think they are victims of MS's monopoly, not creators of it. I don't see any collusion between MS and the gov to install MS products exclusively on gov computers. The majority of gov computers use MS because it is the de facto industry standard. Everyone uses MS Word, so you better use software that can read MS Word docs. The majority of off the shelf software runs on Windows, so if you want to use off the shelf software, you better run Windows. The government is no different in this respect than the rest of the country. The gov didn't buy MS products exclusively early on, helping to create the monopoly. They gradually moved to it as the corporate and private worlds did.
As for tax breaks and writeoffs, I am unaware that MS gets any different treatment in that respect than any other large software manufacturer.
basically all you need is a bit of code that only lets people view so many pages before it stops them...
Well, it depends on your target demographic. In addition to code on your webpage, you need to have a readership that is both loyal and has credit cards. Also, you need to deal in monetary amounts that are worth the trouble and cost of accepting credit cards. But if you are a web comic with a teenage readership, most of your readership won't have credit cards. And if you are charging a penny or two for a page view, it might cost you that much in credit card transaction fees.
I think the current implementation of micropayments works for some sites, but I don't think it scales very well. I think people will pay to support a site to which they feel they belong. Sites with a sense of community make people feel like they are contributing to something that they have a hand in creating. But once a site gets too big, whatever that point is, asking people for donations and using the honor system don't work. People feel like suckers for bankrolling a "big corporation" that doesn't appreciate or acknowledge the contributions of the readership. A brouhaha like the slashdot moderation controversy could decimate a site's paying user base.
But to talk out of both sides of my mouth, the micropayments system is evolving in internet time. Since Penny Arcade posted their comic slamming Mr. McCloud's viewpoint, they went to a donation/reward system that has apparently been working well for them. Perhaps webcomic publishers will pick up the torch dropped by the venture capatilists, and drive innovation on the internet for a while.
Penny Arcade had a comic on Scott McCloud's take on micropayment systems. Basically they said micropayments are a nice idea, but they don't work now, and that's when artists need them. Bandwidth isn't free, and most sites don't sell enough merchandise to make a profit. So now, it is confined mainly to people who have a passion about it or people for whom it is just a hobby.
They should include the old arcade video game as a DVD-ROM extra! That'd make my buy it. Actually 4 mediocre games in 1, that became more than the sum of it's parts, it was kinda fun. There was a light cycle game, a game where you shot spiders (though I don't think they were internet spiders back then), a breakout-esque game where you had to break through the cylinder to the MCP, and one more that I can't remember right now. It had the movie soundtrack, and that was kind of cool for a video game back in the day.
Is there really that much that they can put on here that beats out the plain edition? It's not like this is Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Is there that big a fan market for this movie? I have the plain edition DVD, and that's enough.
I can't imagine after all these years that there is a lot of extra material to add. The movie wasn't so popular that people sqirrelled away stuff from it for this eventuality. I don't see them coming up with much interesting footage, either "extra" or "making of".
Framemaker can handle the large documents without the weird problems of Word (losing formatting, text disappearing, crashing, etc). It can format your docs nicely for pretty printouts. And Framemaker documents nicely convert to PDF, since Adobe makes both formats.
The downsides are that it's expensive (~$800), and it's made by the people who sicced the FBI on Dimitry Sklyarov.
That case was about something called "trade dress," not trademark. Some background here. Haagen-Dazs claimed their "Swedish themed" advertising/packaging/promotional campaign was being ripped off. They could've conceivably won, as you can protect that sort of thing. The court ruled in that case that Fruzen Gladje's Swedish theme was different enough that "only the most obtuse consumer" would be confused.
That "obtuse consumer" standard sure sounds like a good one. If this were a perfect world, it would apply to this Moblix case as well.
That figures... The news media (TV in particular) is largely liberal, and believes in govt. as our protector.
Well, I would sorta agree with you. I think that news media are largely liberal. But I think that there is a large conservative element out there that champions this exact same issue. The concept of "Family Values" is a conservative one, and government censorship, be it a ban on flag burning, keeping evolution from being taught in schools, or what have you, is not an unknown idea among conservatives.
I think the violent video games issue is neither exclusively liberal or conservative. This is probably an issue that has crossover appeal.
Maybe the extra footage won't interest most people, but for fan boys like me, it sure as hell will. There are lots of reasons stuff doesn't make it into a movie. FOTR has to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, because it cost so damn much. So a lot was left out to keep the running time friendly to the mainstream audience.
Fanboys and cinemaphiles love the kind of extras in DVD's. While the general public might not care about missing scenes or directors commentary, there is definetley a niche market that does, and I think in the case of FOTR, much of/. readership is part of that niche.
In Seattle, we have had several high speed car chases in the last couple weeks, two ending with people dead. Last night on the news, they blamed GTA3 for this crime wave. Of course, they didn't know if any of the people involved in any of the chases have ever played the game.
The media can be quick to sensationalize violent video games because it gets good ratings, but it also gives the public the false impression that there must be some evidence linking violence and violent entertainment.
Re:Ease of copying killed the Dreamcast...
on
Sony vs Modchips
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· Score: 2
Pirating may be trivial on the DC, but that's not what did in the console. Nobody bought the freaking thing. This was due to a number of factors, none of which was piracy.
Retailers were skittish about Sega, because Sega had screwed them before by pulling support early on the Saturn and leaving them with tons of inventory and no games for them, so no buyers for them. 3rd party game companies felt similiarly. And the public wanted to wait and see the PS2 and the GameCube and the XBox, so they stayed away. The DC didn't die because everyone was getting free games, it died because nobody bought it.
Well yeah, you never heard of them 3 days ago, and now you've heard from Wired, FCompany and Slashdot that they are a bunch of idiots who seem to know nothing about how the internet works. In my book, that's not "brilliant" marketing.
GTA3 lets you pretend to steal cars and run down animated people on a tv screen. It doesn't promote really stealing cars or running down people in actuality. My son plays good guys/bad guys with his friends, and he pretends his finger is a gun and pretends to shoot his friends with it. Is his game one that "promotes" the shooting of people? Should the government be able to regulate my child's imagination?
I always prefered gift cerificates anyways, else my mom will be me a copy of "Who wants to be a billionare (but not really), the video game. Whee, I just looove those gifts
What do you mean? The nice salesman at CompUSA said this game with Regis is so popular. All the kids love it these days. And I know how much you like your computer thing-a-ma-jigs, so I knew you'd love it too.
Sony claims 20 million units. Of course, that's what's been shipped to retailers worldwide, not sold through to consumers. This is their press release. I realize Sony's numbers aren't the most trustworthy, but I think that with 20 million shipped, 10 million sold is not unrealistic. That's worldwide, not just in the US.
I don't think this was as calculated as you imagine. The launch date is Sunday, but because of the work week, initial shipments are going to be at stores on Friday. Retailers don't want to wait, and Nintendo wants to keep on the good side of retailers. Not all retailers will get shipments on Friday, and the ones that do may not receive their full alotment of units. Depending on individual retailers and their pre-order schemes, some may want to claim they have GameCube first, others may want to wait until Sunday so they can guarantee everyone with a pre-order gets their unit.
The available games (with the exception of Rogue Squadron) have been out in Japanese version since early September. Except for language localization, they have been done for months. Rouge is a third party game, and originally, Factor 5 was told to have it ready be a certain date or it would not be on the shelves for launch. Then the launch slipped from the 5th to the 18th, but they were already on a schedule to meet the original deadline. Since the games were ready, it makes sense to have them on the shelves a few days early, to avoid any last minute problems.
I don't think the holiday season is going to make or break either console. Demand is going to exceed supply until next year for both. The PS2 has sold over 10 million units. Neither Nintendo nor Microsoft will be able to ship more than 1.5 million units this year.
A combination of Microsoft leveraging Windows (the DirectX API), a monopoly, into establishing a new monopoly through market dumping, should make this a no brainer.
They aren't including an X-Box with each copy of Windows. I think your argument about leveraging the DirectX API is weak. Microsoft claims that you won't be able to play X-Box games on a Windows PC. What they are leveraging is huge cash reserves, not the Windows monopoly.
Here's a link that discusses the losses on the X-Box. It is not the norm in the industry to lose money on the hardware. Nintendo has never lost money on hardware. With GameCube, they are probably breaking even. Some companies have gone that route, to gain market share and sell more games, which provide a higher profit.
Sega Dreamcast, PS2, and particularly the X-Box have gone this way. I don't know when this started to be considered the "norm." Atari didn't lose money on the 2600. Nintendo didn't lose money on the N64. I think this may be a more prevelant practice with companies that don't have huge market share, and are trying to break into the game.
Cost is another factor. Nintendo doesn't have to pay a DVD license fee for every GameCube sold. Some of that money would have gone to Sony, so that was a definite incentive.
While it's true that the some game manufacturers lose money on the hardware and try to make it up on games, that is not the case with Nintendo. Nintendo has never lost money on a console it has sold. With the purchase price of the GameCube at $200, this is the first time they have come close, and there's speculation that they are only breaking even.
However, the money-losing formula changes down the line, as production costs go down and the fabrication plants get paid for. I believe Sony is now close to breaking even or making a profit on the PS2, and in a year, Nintendo will be making money on each console sold.
University of Tokyo professor, who developed the TRON open architecture, a real-time operating system specification for embedded systems. TRON stands for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus. You may have know another version, ITRON, or Industrial TRON. Do a search on TRON and Sakamura and you'll find more info than you need.
This award is not for excellent work in open source software. It is for "research achievements that began with a concern for human needs, and which have made an outstanding contribution to the industrial technologies intended to satisfy those needs."
There are 3 catagories: social/economic, individual/humanity, and world/environmental.
Research and engineering that produces benefits in each of these three catagories are acknowledged with the prize. This year, open source software got the nod for research that had social/economic benefit.
I couldn't find the article you are citing, although I found this, which indicates that 150 people are being held, some in Europe and some in some in the US. It makes no mention of whether or not these suspects are being denied an attorney or other rights.
However, I have heard of many people, suspected of involvment in the 9/11 attacks, being held in the US on immigration violations. Currently, there are some pretty messed up US immigration laws that allow people to be caught in a legal limbo, in jail, but with no trial, sometimes for years. It is a messed up situation, but it is not new since 9/11. Also, it only affects non-US citizens who have not dotted the i's and crossed the t's with regard to their immigration status.
While I certainly am not supportive of this situation, it is very different than the broad, sinister powers you are ascribing to the government. The government is not locking up US citizens, but it is taking advantage of poorly written immigration laws to hold suspects indefinitely.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree that MS has enjoyed governmental help to achieve thier monopoly.
For the government's use of MS products, I think they are victims of MS's monopoly, not creators of it. I don't see any collusion between MS and the gov to install MS products exclusively on gov computers. The majority of gov computers use MS because it is the de facto industry standard. Everyone uses MS Word, so you better use software that can read MS Word docs. The majority of off the shelf software runs on Windows, so if you want to use off the shelf software, you better run Windows. The government is no different in this respect than the rest of the country. The gov didn't buy MS products exclusively early on, helping to create the monopoly. They gradually moved to it as the corporate and private worlds did.
As for tax breaks and writeoffs, I am unaware that MS gets any different treatment in that respect than any other large software manufacturer.
basically all you need is a bit of code that only lets people view so many pages before it stops them...
Well, it depends on your target demographic. In addition to code on your webpage, you need to have a readership that is both loyal and has credit cards. Also, you need to deal in monetary amounts that are worth the trouble and cost of accepting credit cards. But if you are a web comic with a teenage readership, most of your readership won't have credit cards. And if you are charging a penny or two for a page view, it might cost you that much in credit card transaction fees.
I think the current implementation of micropayments works for some sites, but I don't think it scales very well. I think people will pay to support a site to which they feel they belong. Sites with a sense of community make people feel like they are contributing to something that they have a hand in creating. But once a site gets too big, whatever that point is, asking people for donations and using the honor system don't work. People feel like suckers for bankrolling a "big corporation" that doesn't appreciate or acknowledge the contributions of the readership. A brouhaha like the slashdot moderation controversy could decimate a site's paying user base.
But to talk out of both sides of my mouth, the micropayments system is evolving in internet time. Since Penny Arcade posted their comic slamming Mr. McCloud's viewpoint, they went to a donation/reward system that has apparently been working well for them. Perhaps webcomic publishers will pick up the torch dropped by the venture capatilists, and drive innovation on the internet for a while.
Penny Arcade had a comic on Scott McCloud's take on micropayment systems. Basically they said micropayments are a nice idea, but they don't work now, and that's when artists need them. Bandwidth isn't free, and most sites don't sell enough merchandise to make a profit. So now, it is confined mainly to people who have a passion about it or people for whom it is just a hobby.
They should include the old arcade video game as a DVD-ROM extra! That'd make my buy it. Actually 4 mediocre games in 1, that became more than the sum of it's parts, it was kinda fun. There was a light cycle game, a game where you shot spiders (though I don't think they were internet spiders back then), a breakout-esque game where you had to break through the cylinder to the MCP, and one more that I can't remember right now. It had the movie soundtrack, and that was kind of cool for a video game back in the day.
Is there really that much that they can put on here that beats out the plain edition? It's not like this is Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Is there that big a fan market for this movie? I have the plain edition DVD, and that's enough.
I can't imagine after all these years that there is a lot of extra material to add. The movie wasn't so popular that people sqirrelled away stuff from it for this eventuality. I don't see them coming up with much interesting footage, either "extra" or "making of".
Framemaker can handle the large documents without the weird problems of Word (losing formatting, text disappearing, crashing, etc). It can format your docs nicely for pretty printouts. And Framemaker documents nicely convert to PDF, since Adobe makes both formats.
The downsides are that it's expensive (~$800), and it's made by the people who sicced the FBI on Dimitry Sklyarov.
That case was about something called "trade dress," not trademark. Some background here. Haagen-Dazs claimed their "Swedish themed" advertising/packaging/promotional campaign was being ripped off. They could've conceivably won, as you can protect that sort of thing. The court ruled in that case that Fruzen Gladje's Swedish theme was different enough that "only the most obtuse consumer" would be confused.
That "obtuse consumer" standard sure sounds like a good one. If this were a perfect world, it would apply to this Moblix case as well.
That figures... The news media (TV in particular) is largely liberal, and believes in govt. as our protector.
Well, I would sorta agree with you. I think that news media are largely liberal. But I think that there is a large conservative element out there that champions this exact same issue. The concept of "Family Values" is a conservative one, and government censorship, be it a ban on flag burning, keeping evolution from being taught in schools, or what have you, is not an unknown idea among conservatives.
I think the violent video games issue is neither exclusively liberal or conservative. This is probably an issue that has crossover appeal.
Maybe the extra footage won't interest most people, but for fan boys like me, it sure as hell will. There are lots of reasons stuff doesn't make it into a movie. FOTR has to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, because it cost so damn much. So a lot was left out to keep the running time friendly to the mainstream audience.
/. readership is part of that niche.
Fanboys and cinemaphiles love the kind of extras in DVD's. While the general public might not care about missing scenes or directors commentary, there is definetley a niche market that does, and I think in the case of FOTR, much of
In Seattle, we have had several high speed car chases in the last couple weeks, two ending with people dead. Last night on the news, they blamed GTA3 for this crime wave. Of course, they didn't know if any of the people involved in any of the chases have ever played the game.
The media can be quick to sensationalize violent video games because it gets good ratings, but it also gives the public the false impression that there must be some evidence linking violence and violent entertainment.
Pirating may be trivial on the DC, but that's not what did in the console. Nobody bought the freaking thing. This was due to a number of factors, none of which was piracy.
Retailers were skittish about Sega, because Sega had screwed them before by pulling support early on the Saturn and leaving them with tons of inventory and no games for them, so no buyers for them. 3rd party game companies felt similiarly. And the public wanted to wait and see the PS2 and the GameCube and the XBox, so they stayed away. The DC didn't die because everyone was getting free games, it died because nobody bought it.
Well yeah, you never heard of them 3 days ago, and now you've heard from Wired, FCompany and Slashdot that they are a bunch of idiots who seem to know nothing about how the internet works. In my book, that's not "brilliant" marketing.
GTA3 lets you pretend to steal cars and run down animated people on a tv screen. It doesn't promote really stealing cars or running down people in actuality. My son plays good guys/bad guys with his friends, and he pretends his finger is a gun and pretends to shoot his friends with it. Is his game one that "promotes" the shooting of people? Should the government be able to regulate my child's imagination?
I always prefered gift cerificates anyways, else my mom will be me a copy of "Who wants to be a billionare (but not really), the video game. Whee, I just looove those gifts
What do you mean? The nice salesman at CompUSA said this game with Regis is so popular. All the kids love it these days. And I know how much you like your computer thing-a-ma-jigs, so I knew you'd love it too.
Sony claims 20 million units. Of course, that's what's been shipped to retailers worldwide, not sold through to consumers. This is their press release. I realize Sony's numbers aren't the most trustworthy, but I think that with 20 million shipped, 10 million sold is not unrealistic. That's worldwide, not just in the US.
I don't think this was as calculated as you imagine. The launch date is Sunday, but because of the work week, initial shipments are going to be at stores on Friday. Retailers don't want to wait, and Nintendo wants to keep on the good side of retailers. Not all retailers will get shipments on Friday, and the ones that do may not receive their full alotment of units. Depending on individual retailers and their pre-order schemes, some may want to claim they have GameCube first, others may want to wait until Sunday so they can guarantee everyone with a pre-order gets their unit.
The available games (with the exception of Rogue Squadron) have been out in Japanese version since early September. Except for language localization, they have been done for months. Rouge is a third party game, and originally, Factor 5 was told to have it ready be a certain date or it would not be on the shelves for launch. Then the launch slipped from the 5th to the 18th, but they were already on a schedule to meet the original deadline. Since the games were ready, it makes sense to have them on the shelves a few days early, to avoid any last minute problems.
I don't think the holiday season is going to make or break either console. Demand is going to exceed supply until next year for both. The PS2 has sold over 10 million units. Neither Nintendo nor Microsoft will be able to ship more than 1.5 million units this year.
A combination of Microsoft leveraging Windows (the DirectX API), a monopoly, into establishing a new monopoly through market dumping, should make this a no brainer.
They aren't including an X-Box with each copy of Windows. I think your argument about leveraging the DirectX API is weak. Microsoft claims that you won't be able to play X-Box games on a Windows PC. What they are leveraging is huge cash reserves, not the Windows monopoly.
Here's a link that discusses the losses on the X-Box. It is not the norm in the industry to lose money on the hardware. Nintendo has never lost money on hardware. With GameCube, they are probably breaking even. Some companies have gone that route, to gain market share and sell more games, which provide a higher profit.
Sega Dreamcast, PS2, and particularly the X-Box have gone this way. I don't know when this started to be considered the "norm." Atari didn't lose money on the 2600. Nintendo didn't lose money on the N64. I think this may be a more prevelant practice with companies that don't have huge market share, and are trying to break into the game.
Cost is another factor. Nintendo doesn't have to pay a DVD license fee for every GameCube sold. Some of that money would have gone to Sony, so that was a definite incentive.
While it's true that the some game manufacturers lose money on the hardware and try to make it up on games, that is not the case with Nintendo. Nintendo has never lost money on a console it has sold. With the purchase price of the GameCube at $200, this is the first time they have come close, and there's speculation that they are only breaking even.
However, the money-losing formula changes down the line, as production costs go down and the fabrication plants get paid for. I believe Sony is now close to breaking even or making a profit on the PS2, and in a year, Nintendo will be making money on each console sold.
University of Tokyo professor, who developed the TRON open architecture, a real-time operating system specification for embedded systems. TRON stands for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus. You may have know another version, ITRON, or Industrial TRON. Do a search on TRON and Sakamura and you'll find more info than you need.
This award is not for excellent work in open source software. It is for "research achievements that began with a concern for human needs, and which have made an outstanding contribution to the industrial technologies intended to satisfy those needs."
There are 3 catagories: social/economic, individual/humanity, and world/environmental.
Research and engineering that produces benefits in each of these three catagories are acknowledged with the prize. This year, open source software got the nod for research that had social/economic benefit.
The money (aprox $825,000.00 US) is split three ways, so RMS, Linus and Mr. Sakamura will each be getting about $275,000.00 US.
User Friendly has been doing a storyline about this all summer. It all started when they needed some more office space...
I couldn't find the article you are citing, although I found this, which indicates that 150 people are being held, some in Europe and some in some in the US. It makes no mention of whether or not these suspects are being denied an attorney or other rights.
However, I have heard of many people, suspected of involvment in the 9/11 attacks, being held in the US on immigration violations. Currently, there are some pretty messed up US immigration laws that allow people to be caught in a legal limbo, in jail, but with no trial, sometimes for years. It is a messed up situation, but it is not new since 9/11. Also, it only affects non-US citizens who have not dotted the i's and crossed the t's with regard to their immigration status.
While I certainly am not supportive of this situation, it is very different than the broad, sinister powers you are ascribing to the government. The government is not locking up US citizens, but it is taking advantage of poorly written immigration laws to hold suspects indefinitely.