It doesn't matter what my console "runs," because it'll run any title I put into it.
The only way you can still play titles is to use Win98, which is 5 years old. At that point I might as well buy a new computer every 5 years and live with each one as its own gaming console. Even old DirectX games don't work on new DirectX.
So your Linux magically has SB emulation and VGA emulation for a program which expects a real (protectei) mode DOS environment it can change to flat addressing?
Or your Windows XP has SB emulation and VGA emulation, etc?
I can't play DOOM anymore than I can play Genecyst and get my Shinning Force state files. Luckily my Sega Smash pack on Dreamcast isn't on a platform that's a moving target.
as your reply is longer than one sentence, I can see you're just another nit-picky, "has to be correct" nerd. To spend time reading your response would be a waste.
Electronics Boutique offers extended service agreements on everything. It's basically insurance, since they cover everything except theft.
But you need to ask yourself what's worth the insurance, and what's not. Is it worth another 50$ to have your PS2 replaced with no questions asked for 2 years? How about little GBA game holders? (A pack is 5$, the ESA is 3$).
On some items it really makes sense, on others it doesn't. I'm glad I paid the extra 100$ on my TV, because I get it fixed for free. I bought an ESA on my Xbox, and am happily on #5 (2 motherboard failures, 2 bad DVD rom drives). The failure rates on the first gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft are scary.
Games don't expire. But, without a lot of effort on my part, I can't just go and play Doom like I did in 1995. I need to go get a 486 or a P1 around 100Mhz in speed if I want to play Doom the way I did.
OTOH, I can still play SMB3 off of my SNES Mario Allstars cart, and that's older than Doom by a couple of years. In PC gaming, games may not expire, but targetted architectures do. This classic interview contains some insight into this (Glide/Verite vs. OpenGL targetting).
I can't remember which magazine it was in, but I remember reading an interview with you an J. Carmack which talked about OpenGL vs. DirectX. A very good read.
You like 3 hours of battery life on your handhelds?
Maybe you're not following the same things everyone else is. It's not portable if I have to recharge it for as much as I play it (3 on, 3 off, etc). Nor did the Turbo Express even have rechargables as an option unless you bought a very large battery pack for it. Yes, the games on it look pretty. And? Pretty is nice, but the black of an off screen is not pretty.
To summarize, Nintendo is still the #1 in the handheld market because they are selling a supperior product. Maybe to you it is not supperior, but to more people it is supperior for reasons like game selection, battery life, connectivity, etc.
You ignore several consoles, and combine generations to suit your whim. I don't think you quite have the handle on the subject.
Between the 4th gen Saturn and PSX and N64 and 2nd gen SNES, Genesis, etc, you forget entirely the 3rd generation 32X, NEO*GEO home (non-CD version), 3DO, CDi, and Jaguar. It's easy to forget an unloved generation.
You also lump the PS2 and Dreamcast in with the Xbox and GameCube for no good reason -- they are very different generations. The PS2 may still be out now, but it and the Dreamcast don't have such features as single-pass multitexturing. The Xbox and GCN are 6th gen consoles, with 5th gen being DC/PS2.
Note I count from NES, since pre NES games usually didn't have any sort of story line (even Quest on the Atari). Frankly, I don't find games without some story line to be interesting.
All the major retail chains jumped the street date. Gamestop, EB, etc.
I'm perhaps not so surpised that/. gets a PR from the Gamespy people about it, when places like PlanetGamecube had a story about it being out early as of Wednesday.
"Why is competition not stealing if it causes me to make a loss?"
It doesn't cause a loss as your products are being substituted for products from another vendor. Stealing is not the same as this since it is the willful deprivation of a product from a vendor without compensation. Copyright infringement is a special case since, while you aren't depriving a vendor of a specific copy of the product, you are depriving them of a sale. It's like cigarettes -- they don't kill you immediately, but you will live a shorter life.
"Never said stealing was okay. Just have an issue that the loss is the amount that you assume someone will pay."
Well, if the person's not willing to pay for the product, they can live without. The opprotunity cost is obviously too high for them -- otherwise they would buy it.
"but I'm not going to foool myself into believing that that thief would have spent $40 on the item he stole when he may not have paid for it at all."
Ahh, but you don't know that. The only way you could know that is to cook up a specific example with the values fixed so that you already knew the outcome anyway, which would make the conversation academic.
"So, if I put a price tag of $1 000 000 on a loaf of bread, and someone steals it, I've lost $1 000 000 even if I can replace it for 30c? Nobody was ever going to give me that much for the loaf. "
In a world where no one else has bread, you could quite possibly get that money. You're ignoring scarcity and the price elasticity of demand in this contrived example (you really should stop using them, they only cloud the issue).
"Yes they are. If you set a price, you pick arbitrarily. You choose that amount you think people will pay."
Maybe to someone who hasn't studied economics these seem arbitrary, the same way that people who haven't studied biology think that creatures look very arbitrary (inshead of being shaped by the environment).
"My understanding of basic economics statres that if I have $36 more than when I started, I've made a profit." This would be why you won't be making any guest speaking appearances at universities that teach economics:)
"No. I'm just resigned to the idea that stealing is something that happens." So do a lot of things in life. The best thing to do is reduce it (and its influence) as much as possible, and that's what the legislation proposed is all about.
"Stealing is also something that cannot be adjusted by the business model." That's why the government is involved in the system. Basic laws and law enforcement are a big part of the underpinnings of a proper economic system. Business can't be conducted without some basic agreements.
Where is this magic market where there is 0 copyright infringement? I'd like to see the numbers of this control group to compare with the normal market.
You can't make assertations unless you have numbers to back them up. Otherwise you're only sharing your opinion, not a measured truth.
"XBox' problem is that it can't support itself, that means because of the braindead x86-nVidia architecture, it will die a quick painless death the moment Microsoft stops spending a billion/year on it."
Guess what! Game consoles don't die because of what's inside them!
Most people buy them to play games, not discuss the architecture like stupid nerds!
I said that this was an interesting way for the government to balance out loss from copyright infringement. You've been arguining all along with me, not realizing this.
You also make mistakes. "Copyright infringement does not involve taking anything. It involves creating something." -- incorrect. It involves copying something without permission.
In no way am I ignoring fair use. I've not mentioned it once. I merely said that, "So even if computers have legit uses, and even if you don't break the law, there are enough people out there misusing computers and breaking the law that bottoms lines are being affected. Naturally, businesses don't like this and are working to change it." That's the whole point of the legistlation, and something you still don't understand after several replies.
You also are trying to justify copyright infringement: "Copyright infringement is not theft." Copyright infringement is theft.
Any time you take something or get something which has a ticket price set on the economy without paying for it, you are stealing.
If you download files online which are not yours and which you haven't been given permission to, you are infringing on copyright.
Any time you reduce the number of possible sales, through things like copying items which you feel "shouldn't be scarce," you are stealing. In capitalism, people either pay for it, or they don't get it.
Economics is a science where the seller and buyer try to negotiate the fairist and most efficient price. Like any good experiment, the pricing set in economics needs proper control variables in place. When you steal or copy items without paying for them, you throw off the balance of the experiment.
The market can't find the proper spot when things like crime are affecting it. Copying stuff without permission is a crime. Just ask any writer if plagarism isn't a crime.
When someone competes on price, they're not coming into my store and stealing something. Competition != stealing. Nor does that in any way justify stealing. Would you justify that homicide is ok? Just because there is doctor assisted suicide, that means it's ok for you to go to someone's house and murder them?
If the thief didn't want to pay for something, they shouldn't be stealing it. The cost was the possible profit you could've had.
The amounts are very not arbitrary. As I pointed out, you have no understanding of basic economics. You also seem to be in love with the idea that stealing isn't stealing. I'll leave you to smooch with that idea, since it's very ugly to me.
"Doesn't really sound like a good idea, does it ?"
Antibiotics don't sound like a good idea, if you present it the wrong way. Do you want the cast off poisons of molds injected directly into your circulatory system, where these fluids can interact with your most precious organs? No? Whyever not?
I'm interested to see if this works you. If it does, it's a model for something that other governments can apply. If, however, the producers do just produce crap music, then other countries can see to not apply that model.
Don't be so cynical about something that's not been tried. You can't go to the stars if you think you will fail.
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It doesn't matter what my console "runs," because it'll run any title I put into it.
The only way you can still play titles is to use Win98, which is 5 years old. At that point I might as well buy a new computer every 5 years and live with each one as its own gaming console. Even old DirectX games don't work on new DirectX.
So your Linux magically has SB emulation and VGA emulation for a program which expects a real (protectei) mode DOS environment it can change to flat addressing?
Or your Windows XP has SB emulation and VGA emulation, etc?
I can't play DOOM anymore than I can play Genecyst and get my Shinning Force state files. Luckily my Sega Smash pack on Dreamcast isn't on a platform that's a moving target.
as your reply is longer than one sentence, I can see you're just another nit-picky, "has to be correct" nerd. To spend time reading your response would be a waste.
Electronics Boutique offers extended service agreements on everything. It's basically insurance, since they cover everything except theft.
But you need to ask yourself what's worth the insurance, and what's not. Is it worth another 50$ to have your PS2 replaced with no questions asked for 2 years? How about little GBA game holders? (A pack is 5$, the ESA is 3$).
On some items it really makes sense, on others it doesn't. I'm glad I paid the extra 100$ on my TV, because I get it fixed for free. I bought an ESA on my Xbox, and am happily on #5 (2 motherboard failures, 2 bad DVD rom drives). The failure rates on the first gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft are scary.
I can't just plonk in my DOOM floppies and play the game. How do I play the game with no difference in methods after all these years?
I don't.
A feature that can't be turned off is a bug. Like in the GBA SP -- you can't set it to default to having its light off when you power on the unit.
What the hell is wrong with you? It's a signature.
Games don't expire. But, without a lot of effort on my part, I can't just go and play Doom like I did in 1995. I need to go get a 486 or a P1 around 100Mhz in speed if I want to play Doom the way I did.
OTOH, I can still play SMB3 off of my SNES Mario Allstars cart, and that's older than Doom by a couple of years. In PC gaming, games may not expire, but targetted architectures do. This classic interview contains some insight into this (Glide/Verite vs. OpenGL targetting).
Oh, you mean the PC gaming scene. I enjoy Rez, Mario Party 4, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Xenosaga, Shenmue 2, etc, very much, thanks.
And teenagers with too much time on their hands.
These are the same people who nibble away at industry profits, and are the people who can and will be affected by this tax.
I can't remember which magazine it was in, but I remember reading an interview with you an J. Carmack which talked about OpenGL vs. DirectX. A very good read.
You like 3 hours of battery life on your handhelds?
Maybe you're not following the same things everyone else is. It's not portable if I have to recharge it for as much as I play it (3 on, 3 off, etc). Nor did the Turbo Express even have rechargables as an option unless you bought a very large battery pack for it. Yes, the games on it look pretty. And? Pretty is nice, but the black of an off screen is not pretty.
To summarize, Nintendo is still the #1 in the handheld market because they are selling a supperior product. Maybe to you it is not supperior, but to more people it is supperior for reasons like game selection, battery life, connectivity, etc.
You ignore several consoles, and combine generations to suit your whim. I don't think you quite have the handle on the subject.
Between the 4th gen Saturn and PSX and N64 and 2nd gen SNES, Genesis, etc, you forget entirely the 3rd generation 32X, NEO*GEO home (non-CD version), 3DO, CDi, and Jaguar. It's easy to forget an unloved generation.
You also lump the PS2 and Dreamcast in with the Xbox and GameCube for no good reason -- they are very different generations. The PS2 may still be out now, but it and the Dreamcast don't have such features as single-pass multitexturing. The Xbox and GCN are 6th gen consoles, with 5th gen being DC/PS2.
Note I count from NES, since pre NES games usually didn't have any sort of story line (even Quest on the Atari). Frankly, I don't find games without some story line to be interesting.
All the major retail chains jumped the street date. Gamestop, EB, etc.
/. gets a PR from the Gamespy people about it, when places like PlanetGamecube had a story about it being out early as of Wednesday.
I'm perhaps not so surpised that
"Why is competition not stealing if it causes me to make a loss?"
:)
It doesn't cause a loss as your products are being substituted for products from another vendor. Stealing is not the same as this since it is the willful deprivation of a product from a vendor without compensation. Copyright infringement is a special case since, while you aren't depriving a vendor of a specific copy of the product, you are depriving them of a sale. It's like cigarettes -- they don't kill you immediately, but you will live a shorter life.
"Never said stealing was okay. Just have an issue that the loss is the amount that you assume someone will pay."
Well, if the person's not willing to pay for the product, they can live without. The opprotunity cost is obviously too high for them -- otherwise they would buy it.
"but I'm not going to foool myself into believing that that thief would have spent $40 on the item he stole when he may not have paid for it at all."
Ahh, but you don't know that. The only way you could know that is to cook up a specific example with the values fixed so that you already knew the outcome anyway, which would make the conversation academic.
"So, if I put a price tag of $1 000 000 on a loaf of bread, and someone steals it, I've lost $1 000 000 even if I can replace it for 30c? Nobody was ever going to give me that much for the loaf. "
In a world where no one else has bread, you could quite possibly get that money. You're ignoring scarcity and the price elasticity of demand in this contrived example (you really should stop using them, they only cloud the issue).
"Yes they are. If you set a price, you pick arbitrarily. You choose that amount you think people will pay."
Maybe to someone who hasn't studied economics these seem arbitrary, the same way that people who haven't studied biology think that creatures look very arbitrary (inshead of being shaped by the environment).
"My understanding of basic economics statres that if I have $36 more than when I started, I've made a profit."
This would be why you won't be making any guest speaking appearances at universities that teach economics
"No. I'm just resigned to the idea that stealing is something that happens."
So do a lot of things in life. The best thing to do is reduce it (and its influence) as much as possible, and that's what the legislation proposed is all about.
"Stealing is also something that cannot be adjusted by the business model."
That's why the government is involved in the system. Basic laws and law enforcement are a big part of the underpinnings of a proper economic system. Business can't be conducted without some basic agreements.
Where is this magic market where there is 0 copyright infringement? I'd like to see the numbers of this control group to compare with the normal market.
You can't make assertations unless you have numbers to back them up. Otherwise you're only sharing your opinion, not a measured truth.
Fair use is implied permission that is recognized by law.
MS has a never, better Lara.
Phantasy Star Online is an extra 8.95$ USD/mont from Sega. This spoils their single-payment argument, effectively ruining the point of single-billing.
"XBox' problem is that it can't support itself, that means because of the braindead x86-nVidia architecture, it will die a quick painless death the moment Microsoft stops spending a billion/year on it."
Guess what! Game consoles don't die because of what's inside them!
Most people buy them to play games, not discuss the architecture like stupid nerds!
I said that this was an interesting way for the government to balance out loss from copyright infringement. You've been arguining all along with me, not realizing this.
You also make mistakes. "Copyright infringement does not involve taking anything. It involves creating something." -- incorrect. It involves copying something without permission.
In no way am I ignoring fair use. I've not mentioned it once. I merely said that, "So even if computers have legit uses, and even if you don't break the law, there are enough people out there misusing computers and breaking the law that bottoms lines are being affected. Naturally, businesses don't like this and are working to change it." That's the whole point of the legistlation, and something you still don't understand after several replies.
You also are trying to justify copyright infringement: "Copyright infringement is not theft." Copyright infringement is theft.
Any time you take something or get something which has a ticket price set on the economy without paying for it, you are stealing.
If you download files online which are not yours and which you haven't been given permission to, you are infringing on copyright.
Any time you reduce the number of possible sales, through things like copying items which you feel "shouldn't be scarce," you are stealing. In capitalism, people either pay for it, or they don't get it.
Economics is a science where the seller and buyer try to negotiate the fairist and most efficient price. Like any good experiment, the pricing set in economics needs proper control variables in place. When you steal or copy items without paying for them, you throw off the balance of the experiment.
The market can't find the proper spot when things like crime are affecting it. Copying stuff without permission is a crime. Just ask any writer if plagarism isn't a crime.
When someone competes on price, they're not coming into my store and stealing something. Competition != stealing. Nor does that in any way justify stealing. Would you justify that homicide is ok? Just because there is doctor assisted suicide, that means it's ok for you to go to someone's house and murder them?
If the thief didn't want to pay for something, they shouldn't be stealing it. The cost was the possible profit you could've had.
The amounts are very not arbitrary. As I pointed out, you have no understanding of basic economics. You also seem to be in love with the idea that stealing isn't stealing. I'll leave you to smooch with that idea, since it's very ugly to me.
"Doesn't really sound like a good idea, does it ?"
Antibiotics don't sound like a good idea, if you present it the wrong way. Do you want the cast off poisons of molds injected directly into your circulatory system, where these fluids can interact with your most precious organs? No? Whyever not?
I'm interested to see if this works you. If it does, it's a model for something that other governments can apply. If, however, the producers do just produce crap music, then other countries can see to not apply that model.
Don't be so cynical about something that's not been tried. You can't go to the stars if you think you will fail.
Some 14-year-old goes on a shooting spree, the government tries to make it harder for guns to get into 14-year-old hands.
Some 14-year-old goes on a copying spree, the government tries to make the loss offset by the cost of the computer involved.
Granted they aren't direct matches, but you should understand the gist of it.