Well, she didn't need to agree in advance of showing up, if at the time she had said she would pay him back then she's entered a verbal contract to do so. IANAL, but I doubt it gets much more straightforward than that (other than an actual written contract).
Did she actually say she'd pay him back, or did he just say I'll lend you the money, without clarifying that means she'll pay him back by Monday or he'll sue? If she's expecting him to pay for it, then he needed to explicitly say that when he says "borrow" he doesn't mean just that he's paying for it like she expected, but that this is actually a loan. Let's say you and your friend decide to get a big TV to play games on at his house, and then when you guys get the TV at the store your friend and the cashier look at you expecting you to pay, but you say I don't have my checkbook, and he says that's ok, you can borrow it, would you be kinda shocked if as you were leaving after playing some Halo he said "so when am I getting my money back?" Dates aren't TVs, but if you invite someone on a date there's the assumption that you'll cover it, so you need to be clear if you're not before you get there, otherwise you can't expect them to cover it or pay you back.
Great idea, a speech that achieves nothing positive and only serves to alienate people you are trying to win over. OP provides a clear example of why geeks are seldom successful in the political realm.
Everything he said was factual and needs to be said. In fact, the only reason why it isn't is that games are a lot easier of a subject for politicians (and, well, everyone) than Iraq, than the economy, or any other important issue going on. Other than games, the Democrats basically have a platform of "Bush sucks". They agree that the Iraq war, the economy, insert issue here, is going terribly, they agree that it's Bush's fault, but what do they do about it? They talk about games instead.
You might like walking everywhere (and I hate driving, too) but the American Dream involves a big house with a big yard (which creates sprawl) and a big car (to get around the sprawl comfortably). Your time in San Fran sounds like a better life to me, but it's not luxury. Some people like to cook, that doesn't make cooking a luxury.
If I buy one of these, and add a wireless network adapter, does Dell help me get it configured? I'd pay $500 just for that.
You're better off buying a computer with a wireless adapter from a company that preinstalls Linux. System76, Koobox, and Groovix sell Linux PCs, so you should check them out.
OK, so we have a chicken-and-egg situation. What do you suggest for authors of shareware, freeware, and free software games, who have no access to consoles due to their lockout chip business model, to break out of it?
Make an awesome game for PC that people can play on their monitors, but think "This would be so much better on my TV". Make setting up multiplayer as easy as plugging in another usb gamepad, and make sure your gamers know this (have that as a selling point on your website, if you have tips on a loading screen put it there, etc). If geeks have a good reason to connect their PC to their TV, they will, you just need to give them a good enough reason. Also, if you'd like to develop for handheld consoles, check out the GP2x. It doesn't have the greatest marketshare, but the platform is open.
I'd like to plug my latest joural entry, which describes a way cities could transition gradually to less sprawl, without tedious regulation, government-run services, and invasive control over people's lives. In short: put up tolls heavy enough to clear congestion. This creates the financial incentives necessary for market-driven mass transit, which in turn makes denser development more economical and desirable to live in.
I've read your journal entry, and it's an interesting idea, but I don't think it would work. People already hate driving in rush hour, hate paying for expensive gas, and they'd either add tolls as another thing they hate, or if it's $30 each way as you suggest that'll just make things worse. People would either quit their jobs (I don't know about you, but $60 a day is 3/4 of my take home income, I'd have more money if I avoided the toll by working at the local grocery store for $6/hr instead of driving) or they'd take side streets with the thought that they'd figure out bus routes later, but then the bus companies have no incentive to make more routes because everyone is still driving. I'm not sure what would fix things, but just putting an expensive toll on highways won't do it.
The real test of urban spaces is whether they are used. Once built, the pretty designs of planners are often lonely places. On the other hand, sometimes the least attractive spaces are great successes (think of skate parks).
No even skate parks are safe. In my city, skate parks are overdesigned things with trendy flame decals that no one uses because they're miles away from where people actually live and go to school.
I'm not sure if we know anymore how to have cities that grow out of usefullness and what people actually want/will use and not just designed like pretty places we'd put our Sims in.
Sprawl is one of the comforts of our lives that make us fat. We no longer have to walk anywhere to get any distance, we all have cars just outside our front door ready to take us anywhere with minimal physical effort. Living in a community where you can and are expected to walk/bike to school/work/etc instead of driving everywhere counteracts that and it just makes sense that those people would be thinner.
All I want is to be able to install applications on my GNU/Linux in a similar way as I do on Mac OS X. I want a self contained.app bundle type system. I don't want installer programs in the form of CNR, apt-get, portage, or "./configure && make && sudo make install". Is there a distro out there that can do that?
The plus about apt-get, CNR, etc, is that they get the application for you. If you want to install some wierd program for Mac you hear of, you have to track down their website and download the installer, making sure its the right version. If I want to install some wierd program for Ubuntu, I just type "sudo apt-get install wierd_program" and a couple minutes later, with no further action from me, it's in my applications menu. In fact, if I need to install a number of programs (let's say I just reinstalled the OS, or something) I just need to type out all their names, and no more interaction from me. No hunting down a dozen websites and downloading a dozen programs, just type the names. Also, if I don't know the name of a program, I just need, say, a good html editor, then I just open Synaptic (or now CNR), click "search" and type "html editor" and I get a list of all the html editors I can install. With Mac, I guess you'd have to hunt around google for that list, and then hunt around for the websites. I guess that doesn't really answer your question, but I guess my question is why don't you like apt-get and other package managers?
Not make your mom's head explode when you show her Linux? At least it sounds like their goal is to make Linux more user-friendly. Also, it means that if a commercial software developer wants to make a program for Linux, they can just dump it to CNR instead of making a.deb, a.rpm, a.tar.gz, etc, and hope Linux users show up to their website.
I think it is a chicken and egg situation. Companies don't make living room PC games because people don't have PCs in their living rooms. People don't have PCs in their living rooms because they don't have things on their PC they'd like to use with their TV. More than that though, I think people have a resistance to putting their PC in the living room. People are now downloading movies and TV shows to their PCs (though iTunes, Pirate Bay, etc) yet they play the video on their tiny monitors and not on TVs. Apple is making a dedicated box that's sole purpose is to stream video from a PC to a TV because no one's going to connect them directly. I think the reason is that is people think of PCs and TVs seperately. PCs are for work, typing up papers, reading websites, etc. If you connected your PC to your TV, it would be harder to do that. I've tried surfing the web with my Wii browser, and that's an exercise in frustration. Affordable TVs don't have the resolution to display text well, and sitting at a comfortable distance from the TV makes it even more illegible. Even if you do get a TV that allows you to see text fine, that still moves your PC from your "work" space to your "play" space, so you'd probably want another PC so you can continue to be productive in your "work" space. Then you have the hassle of setting up your living room PC, installing and maintaning the OS (if it's Linux you have to learn that, if it's Windows you have to get and run anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc), finding games that support it and making sure all the drivers play well. With a console, you just plug it in, stick in the game, and go. To most people, even fairly geeky people, that wins out. Maybe if you make cool enough games and stuff for a living room PC then geeks will do that too, but until PCs are much easier than they are now, you're not going to see average people doing stuff like that.
Game retailers make almost nothing on consoles, as companies advertise prices so heavilly, retailers are practically forced to sell them at break-even prices, and then make money on games (sort of like the hardware manufacturers themselves, sans Nintendo).
Actually, game stores make very little on new games as well. The real profit-maker for dedicated gamestores is used games. They give out about $20 for recent/popular games traded in, and then sell them for $45. That's more 50% profit, which is kinda hard to get for a retail business. But, they can only do that for console games. When they try to do that to PC games, they can't have a warranty, because getting a no-cd crack for a PC game and returning it because it's "broken" is trivial compared to doing the same for a console game, and they have no way of testing games because they don't keep PCs laying around like they have used and demo consoles everywhere, and no one wants to buy something used without a warranty, so they stop selling them.
If you go into stores without used games (Walmart, Bestbuy), you'll find the PC section is about equal in size to the console section.
I was using the term broadly to refer to any PC connected to a monitor larger than 24 inches, such as a television set. Why is this use case still so rare? Is there any popular set-top gaming machine that allows for shareware, freeware, and free software?
People don't connect their PCs to TVs because most of what they do with PCs makes more sense at a desk, working, writing papers, browsing slashdot (TVs with a resolution high enough to read webpages are still rather expensive) as opposed to things that make sense in a living room, watching video, playing games that don't use a keyboard and mouse. Many TVs don't even have VGA inputs, so many people would have to buy expensive new ones to do that. Even if you did connect you PC to your monitor and got some USB gamepads, can you name one game that plays 4 player on one TV? Sure it would be good if PCs running free software could replace consoles (I do love my GP2x, which is a handheld console running Linux) but Americans don't care about free software. If we did, Linux and BSD would be the dominant OSs, but instead, Americans like simple, shiney, and what everyone else has, so we get Windows and proprietary consoles.
I was talking more about the systems rather than the games, but you're right, the PC does have a wealth of free games to play, and a good MMO will satisfy your gaming needs for much cheaper than buying a new game every month, if you're into that sort of thing (though there are MMOs on consoles, too). But upgrading your PC constantly for the newest games is a hassle that I don't like, which is why I dropped PC gaming. My husband bought a PC about two years ago (granted, it was bottom of the barrel), and we had to build him a whole new computer to play Oblivion (it had integrated video and no AGP or PCI-E slots). It would have been cheaper just to buy him a 360 (but he wanted a new computer). And of course, there's already games out that he'd need to upgrade his computer to play well. The nice thing about consoles is that new games come out for them for 5 years (unless you got a Dreamcast...) without having to worry about upgrades. I'm also not fond of PC games because I run Linux, and Wine doesn't handle the newest games well (or often at all) and I don't want to dual-boot. But that's me, not PC games. I think it does really come down to what your looking for. If you want to play WoW, then even a Wii or a PS2 is a terrible deal, but if you want to play FFXII or Wii Sports or Zelda, then even the best deal on a gaming PC/upgrades is a terrible value for you. I don't think console gamers and PC gamers will ever agree, because we like different kinds of games and we like to play in different ways.
What the hell are you smoking? PCs are the "home" of MMO, FPS, RTS, Puzzle and -real- adventure games, and probably several genres I'm forgetting. Consoles don't come close for any of said genres, and where they make an attempt, they are second-rate(eg. Halo. Yes, compared to its PC counterparts, Halo sucks. Yes, I had an Xbox. Yes, I had Halo.).
I didn't count FPSs as PC games because they're just as popular on console. No, I don't know why, I don't play FPSs, but acording to Wikipedia, the best selling PC FPS - Halflife - sold the same (8 million) as the best selling console FPSs - Halo 2 and GoldenEye. I didn't count RTSs because I always forget about them - sorry. And Trace Memory was an awesome adventure game, so you can take your "real" adventure games and go home.
I don't see consoles usurping PC gaming's top genres anytime soon.
Yeah, yeah, tell me when PC has games that compare to the best console games. Until then, I'll stick with my Final Fantasy, and you can stick with your Halflife or whatever you play.
Yes, consoles and PC have different strengths and weaknesses. No, one is not going to kill the other. I did not say PC games are dying. They're just not going to kill consoles.
BS. Most of the major action titles and RPGs are ported to the PC as well, so they are hardly console exclusives,
Uh, sure. I'm playing Final Fantasy XII on my PC right now. Oh wait, I'm not. Dragon Quest? No. Xenosaga? No. Legend of Zelda? No. Super Mario? No. Dead or Alive? No. God of War? No. Wii Sports? No. Do I have to go on?
and there are more genres you can basically get only on the PC: realistic simulation games,
Sims have been ported. Plus, we have Nintendogs.
turn based strategy games,
Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emplem, Tactics Ogre, etc.
RTSes,
Alright, you got me. Even IGN doesn't have a section for RTSs
most adventure games.
The best PC adventure games get to Xbox (Myst series, Siberia, Dreamfall) and the DS has gotten/is getting some interesting ones that won't make it to PC (Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk, etc.)
Also moddable games such as NWN2.
I should have added modding to the PC's strengths of MMOs and simple games.
I get so freaking annoyed with people proclaiming the death of PC gaming.
If you noticed, I didn't proclaim the death of PC gaming. I said that people weren't giving up their consoles any time soon because someone was proclaiming the death of console gaming. I'm also aware that, as much as the PC gaming market doesn't interest me, no one's giving up their WoW and other PC favorites either.
I figured that playing soccer was a pretty tame thing for a seven year-old to do. Of course, soccer with profane jerks wasn't quite what I was hoping for.
He's seven and he still doesn't know how to read yet? Get him off the games and buy him some books!
I won't specify, but consider that the smart PC gamer recognizes that it doesn't take a $1000 or often even a $500 upgrade to play the latest games, unless your really behind in the hardware or wish to play the latest games at the greatest settings.
Or, you could spend half that and get a Wii. Or, you could spend $100 and get a PS2 and access to hundreds of games never released for the PC. Consoles are really the more frugal choice over PC gaming.
As PCs get cheaper I think they will take market share from the consoles, until the PC becomes the de facto single console. I think there are already more PC game titles than console titles, and the penetration of PC's is higher than that of game consoles.
PCs are the home of MMOs and simple puzzle games, but everything else is on console. The console market is booming because they are simplier, you don't have to run anti-virus on your PS3 and setting up 4 people in the living room to play games is a lot more comfortable and easier with a 360 than a PC. I don't think people are giving up their consoles any time soon.
Share information with your friends and family, don't let monopolies stay that way, ideas should be free, help improve technology not only for the rich but for the poor too (which means FOSS, but still, pirate for the sake of the poor)!:)
Pirating doesn't help the poor. Piracy just gives large companies an "excuse" to raise prices and take on draconian anti-piracy measures. Using FOSS shows that there is a alternative that will *always* be free.
I don't know how Canada and Europe do things, but America has never regulated movies and books outside of pornography, because of the First Amendment (that's also why every law regulating games has been overturned). I don't understand why anyone wants change that for games. Sure, other countries might do that, but why should we?
Cable companies rent out cable boxes with DVR functionality, but I've not heard of one that rents out DVRs built around TiVo's software. Calling a cable-company DVR a TiVo is like calling a Ford Pinto a Porsche 911.
My dad's DVR from his cable company (or satellite TV? I don't know) says "Tivo" on it. Anyways, why does it matter if it's a Tivo DVR or another kind, they're still giving out a device that records the shows they give out, same as in XM's case.
So what you're saying is that current policies need to be taken a little more seriously?
Why do they need to be taken any more seriously than for movies?
Oh, and "lazy high schoolers" aren't allowed to sell things they're not allowed to buy.
M rated games are for 17 and up. I was 19 when I graduated high school. There's plenty of high schoolers selling DVDs and games.
It makes it illegal to sell material to children that the makers themselves agree shouldn't be sold freely to children.
Again, we don't do it for movies, so why for games? Also, it's kinda more complicated to regulate sales of "inappropriate" games or movies than it is to merely say that things with nicotine or alcohol can't be sold to children. It's easy to say that M rated games shouldn't be sold to children, but what if the ESRB changes its system? What if the ESRB goes on crack and rates GTA IV E for everyone? Would we have to pass laws preventing the ESRB from doing that? As I understand, the way other countries are able to restrict inappropriate games and movies from children is because their versions of the ESRB and MPAA (rating department, not sue pirates department) are actual government offices, so they don't have to worry about a private company deciding what movies and games count as inappropriate under the law. I don't think that America should make the ESRB and MPAA a part of the government, but the only other way to restrict inappropriate movies and games without relying on a private company is to have the laws detail what is and is not appropriate for minors (which is what every game law has done). The problem with that is expecting clerks making minimum wage to read the bill and judge each and every game in the store, whether they've played the game or not. This bill in particular mentions "illegal drug or alcohol use". So, if a clerk sells a fifteen year old a T rated game that has teens drinking alcohol (the Final Fantasy series often has 17 and 18 year olds drink alcohol or go to bars, and invariably gets a T rating) then that clerk would get fined. Is that fair? Is that sane? Would anyone suggest that for DVDs? No. Which is why I think games should continue to be self-regulated just like movies are.
And what about books? When I was 12 I got a book from the library thats first chapter involved the 9 year old protagonist having sex with his sister. It only got worse from there. I've obviously never seen a video game that is anywhere close to that level, yet no one argues that the government should protect our kids from books. Video games have ratings to help parents, and you can see what they're playing just by glancing at the living room TV every now and then. Why can't people just get over video games and realize there's so much worse in the world to worry about?
In the case of radio broadcasting, the radio station did not give you the technology to make the recording. They just made the broadcast.
So, if a radio station sells cassette recorders or radios that record to SD cards (I have one, it's sweet) that's illegal, but if I pick one up at Best Buy, it's completely not copyright infringement? Even though I'm copying the same thing from the same people in both cases?
And wouldn't that apply to tivos, since most people get tivos from their cable company?
Slashdot Mirror
You might like walking everywhere (and I hate driving, too) but the American Dream involves a big house with a big yard (which creates sprawl) and a big car (to get around the sprawl comfortably). Your time in San Fran sounds like a better life to me, but it's not luxury. Some people like to cook, that doesn't make cooking a luxury.
I'm not sure if we know anymore how to have cities that grow out of usefullness and what people actually want/will use and not just designed like pretty places we'd put our Sims in.
I think it is a chicken and egg situation. Companies don't make living room PC games because people don't have PCs in their living rooms. People don't have PCs in their living rooms because they don't have things on their PC they'd like to use with their TV. More than that though, I think people have a resistance to putting their PC in the living room. People are now downloading movies and TV shows to their PCs (though iTunes, Pirate Bay, etc) yet they play the video on their tiny monitors and not on TVs. Apple is making a dedicated box that's sole purpose is to stream video from a PC to a TV because no one's going to connect them directly. I think the reason is that is people think of PCs and TVs seperately. PCs are for work, typing up papers, reading websites, etc. If you connected your PC to your TV, it would be harder to do that. I've tried surfing the web with my Wii browser, and that's an exercise in frustration. Affordable TVs don't have the resolution to display text well, and sitting at a comfortable distance from the TV makes it even more illegible. Even if you do get a TV that allows you to see text fine, that still moves your PC from your "work" space to your "play" space, so you'd probably want another PC so you can continue to be productive in your "work" space. Then you have the hassle of setting up your living room PC, installing and maintaning the OS (if it's Linux you have to learn that, if it's Windows you have to get and run anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc), finding games that support it and making sure all the drivers play well. With a console, you just plug it in, stick in the game, and go. To most people, even fairly geeky people, that wins out. Maybe if you make cool enough games and stuff for a living room PC then geeks will do that too, but until PCs are much easier than they are now, you're not going to see average people doing stuff like that.
How was voting day the day we forgot 9/11? Because we voted out some useless republicans who've just made things worse?
If you go into stores without used games (Walmart, Bestbuy), you'll find the PC section is about equal in size to the console section.
I was talking more about the systems rather than the games, but you're right, the PC does have a wealth of free games to play, and a good MMO will satisfy your gaming needs for much cheaper than buying a new game every month, if you're into that sort of thing (though there are MMOs on consoles, too). But upgrading your PC constantly for the newest games is a hassle that I don't like, which is why I dropped PC gaming. My husband bought a PC about two years ago (granted, it was bottom of the barrel), and we had to build him a whole new computer to play Oblivion (it had integrated video and no AGP or PCI-E slots). It would have been cheaper just to buy him a 360 (but he wanted a new computer). And of course, there's already games out that he'd need to upgrade his computer to play well. The nice thing about consoles is that new games come out for them for 5 years (unless you got a Dreamcast...) without having to worry about upgrades. I'm also not fond of PC games because I run Linux, and Wine doesn't handle the newest games well (or often at all) and I don't want to dual-boot. But that's me, not PC games. I think it does really come down to what your looking for. If you want to play WoW, then even a Wii or a PS2 is a terrible deal, but if you want to play FFXII or Wii Sports or Zelda, then even the best deal on a gaming PC/upgrades is a terrible value for you. I don't think console gamers and PC gamers will ever agree, because we like different kinds of games and we like to play in different ways.
Yeah, yeah, tell me when PC has games that compare to the best console games. Until then, I'll stick with my Final Fantasy, and you can stick with your Halflife or whatever you play.
Yes, consoles and PC have different strengths and weaknesses. No, one is not going to kill the other. I did not say PC games are dying. They're just not going to kill consoles.
Sims have been ported. Plus, we have Nintendogs.
Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emplem, Tactics Ogre, etc.
Alright, you got me. Even IGN doesn't have a section for RTSs
The best PC adventure games get to Xbox (Myst series, Siberia, Dreamfall) and the DS has gotten/is getting some interesting ones that won't make it to PC (Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk, etc.)
I should have added modding to the PC's strengths of MMOs and simple games.
If you noticed, I didn't proclaim the death of PC gaming. I said that people weren't giving up their consoles any time soon because someone was proclaiming the death of console gaming. I'm also aware that, as much as the PC gaming market doesn't interest me, no one's giving up their WoW and other PC favorites either.
I don't know how Canada and Europe do things, but America has never regulated movies and books outside of pornography, because of the First Amendment (that's also why every law regulating games has been overturned). I don't understand why anyone wants change that for games. Sure, other countries might do that, but why should we?
M rated games are for 17 and up. I was 19 when I graduated high school. There's plenty of high schoolers selling DVDs and games.
Again, we don't do it for movies, so why for games? Also, it's kinda more complicated to regulate sales of "inappropriate" games or movies than it is to merely say that things with nicotine or alcohol can't be sold to children. It's easy to say that M rated games shouldn't be sold to children, but what if the ESRB changes its system? What if the ESRB goes on crack and rates GTA IV E for everyone? Would we have to pass laws preventing the ESRB from doing that? As I understand, the way other countries are able to restrict inappropriate games and movies from children is because their versions of the ESRB and MPAA (rating department, not sue pirates department) are actual government offices, so they don't have to worry about a private company deciding what movies and games count as inappropriate under the law. I don't think that America should make the ESRB and MPAA a part of the government, but the only other way to restrict inappropriate movies and games without relying on a private company is to have the laws detail what is and is not appropriate for minors (which is what every game law has done). The problem with that is expecting clerks making minimum wage to read the bill and judge each and every game in the store, whether they've played the game or not. This bill in particular mentions "illegal drug or alcohol use". So, if a clerk sells a fifteen year old a T rated game that has teens drinking alcohol (the Final Fantasy series often has 17 and 18 year olds drink alcohol or go to bars, and invariably gets a T rating) then that clerk would get fined. Is that fair? Is that sane? Would anyone suggest that for DVDs? No. Which is why I think games should continue to be self-regulated just like movies are.
And what about books? When I was 12 I got a book from the library thats first chapter involved the 9 year old protagonist having sex with his sister. It only got worse from there. I've obviously never seen a video game that is anywhere close to that level, yet no one argues that the government should protect our kids from books. Video games have ratings to help parents, and you can see what they're playing just by glancing at the living room TV every now and then. Why can't people just get over video games and realize there's so much worse in the world to worry about?
And wouldn't that apply to tivos, since most people get tivos from their cable company?