if someone can provide a REAL business model that doesn't involve making every game subscription based (MMO) or based on 90% multiplayer (COD4) to keep people from selling them over and over and over again, I'd love to hear it.
Ask any book author. They solved the problem centuries ago.
If you don't buy the game in protest of the DRM the developer will decide that PC games have no market any longer
So? It's not my problem if they come to a stupid conclusion. There will always be someone who wants money, and is smart enough to avoid pulling defeat from the jaws of victory.
They really have all the angles covered now.
If they forgot the angle for obtaining revenue, then I wouldn't say they have all the angles just yet. They can't have my money unless they change. They are paying developers and office rent, and then not bothering to try to sell me the game. I can out-wait them.
The only issue there is getting it to be supported on Windows. Grandma wants to plug her memory card/flash drive into any computer and have it "just work".
If every OS except Windows is able to
use a modern filesystem for flash and have it "just work"
connect to the internet and not become virus-infected unless the user is an expert
then Windows isn't the right OS for Grandma.
I know Windows still has major market penetration in many segments of society, but Grandmas just aren't where it should be. Get 'er a Mac. Or if you'll install it for her, get her Linux.
Clearly an actor reading a book is a performance... it was determined that the use of player piano rolls were performances. That's not really much different here. The player piano changed the holes in the paper to sound.
Good and interesting observation. But I can't accept that so broadly.
Is an actor reading a book to one single person, a performance?
If rendering as voice is performance, then isn't rendering on a screen also performance? If I show a movie to a theater full of hundreds of people, the MPAA will surely say so. At some point, though, the audience size starts to matter. Rendering a movie on a screen that only one person can conveniently view, is something the MPAA wouldn't try to call performance, nor does RIAA say that playing a song on a portable music player is a performance. Why wouldn't audiobooks parallel this?
Sure, you can turn up the volume on your Kindle, but you can turn up the volume on your music-player too. That doesn't mean the device or device's manufacturer would be infringing. The user would be.
The intended use is what distinguishes a portable audio device from 19th century player piano.
And yes, the analogy between the Kindle 2 and reading a book at home to your kids does not work because a reading of the book at home is not a commercial use. Reading a book to your kids is clearly different from selling audio books without a license.
The Kindle reading a book at your home is not a commercial use. The user owns this tool, and no money passes hands whenever the user uses the tool. If you're going to say that whenever a Kindle operates, a commercial activity is happening, then who are the parties to that? Who got paid for this performance?
The only reason you got confused about that, is that the same party who sells the Kindle, also happens to sell the books. If Amazon sold the books and Micropple sold the Kindle, who then would be the copyright infringer?
Would people feel better if the Kindle were actually Android-shaped, and picked up a dead tree book, held it up to its camer-- um I mean -- face, and recited the book that way?
If technology renders your business model obsolete, tough luck.
It doesn't even obsolete their business; it merely obsoletes their previously negotiated prices for e-books and audiobooks. Sell the audiobooks for less, or sell the e-books for more, and the entire issue vanishes.
Some people are saying that authors deserve to be paid for the audio. They're right. What they're forgetting, though, is that the authors are paid. Amazon paid for the e-book. The author whatever piece of that that they agreed would be fair. (Had they not agreed, all this talk about "copyright infringement" would be a hell of a lot less theoretical and Amazon's lawyers would already be scrambling and asking their client, "You did what?")
It's not Amazon's fault that the writers sell the e-book so cheaply compared to audiobooks, just as it's not hulu's or boxee's fault that the video content providers sell video with a web browser framed around it, more cheaply that the same exact video without the web browser framed around it.
Market segmentation is about fucking with people. Computers transforming the information you bought into a way that is easiest for you to use, is about getting un-fucked.
I think it's much more likely that the Republicans try to recast themselves as the party of small government
Now that we have a Democrat president, that will almost certainly happen, like it did in the mid 1990s. Out-of-power Republicans are great at talking tough. The question is: will people still believe their act?
I don't know about you.. but I don't cherish salmonella in my peanut butter, Melamine in my milk, lead in my kids toys, arsenic in my shrimp, or salmonella in my peppers... So far that seems to have gotten us poison in our food supply, the mortgage crisis, and blackouts in California.
Geez, if you're going to complain about Libertarians, at least don't use real life examples of things that happened within the society of no responsibility that the Republicrats have graced us with.
Everything you complain about, happened on the watch of people opposed to libertarian ideals and practices. In the case of the "mortgage crisis" those people even rewarded the irresponsible behavior, so that we can experience it again some day.
The idea of small government=good is not so bad in itself, but experience shows that "smaller" governments gouge us for at least as much money in taxes as bigger governments, while delivering fewer services.
What experience? Just how many centuries old are you, sorcerer?
And even if he can manage to somehow do it, what are you going to do, introduce these logs as evidence in a criminal court?
Introduce logs stored on a computer belonging to the kind of people who execute any malware you ask them to? As evidence, these logs have no integrity and are worthless.
If you like software and hardware transparency, DON'T USE AN IPHONE!
What you are engaging in, is called persuasion. I happen to agree with you: I advise against buying iPhones.
What Apple is engaging in, is far more hostile (and threatening) than your post. They are unsatisfied with saying, "If your desires are such-and-such, you might not like this product." They are saying, "If your desires are such-and-such and foolishly buy our product, we will go out of our way to harm you."
See the difference?
Attempt to put a nitrous injection kit into a Prius, and Honda isn't going to be on your ass. The issue isn't whether or not doing this to a Prius is smart; the issue is freedom. Who gets to decide what you're allowed to do with your Prius or iPhone? It's distasteful that we're even seriously talking about what is allowed.
Microsoft has never been as litigious as Apple. Apple may make vastly overwhelmingly superior products to MS, but they have also always been more evil.
The only way Apple can become the new Microsoft, is if they stop suing people so much, and also make their stuff crash a lot more often. As things are right now, there's just no comparison. The two companies' suckiness are totally different.
But broadband, once thought to be in line for $100 billion as part of the stimulus legislation, ended up a low priority, set to get well under $10 billion in the package of over $800 billion.
Even $10 billion is a mind-numbing overwhelming fucking shitload of money. I don't really believe that what Congress and the President are doing right now is going to help many people (except maybe their campaign contributors) and it's fine to talk about how those 10 gigabucks aren't going to be spent wisely. But don't diss the magnitude or claim that decimating the dollar amount means it can't work. The actual reason it can't work is that it isn't meant to. The still-incomprehensibly-huge amount has nothing to do with it.
Maybe we should resolve the ethical concerns before we perform the science..
[emphasis mine]
Maybe theyhave resolved those concerns. Maybe they even tried to put those "concerns" into words, and once they did (they tried to explicitly state the problem that you (and everyone else on slashdot, whenever biotech stories come up) neglected to state but merely cryptically aluded to) they realized they had little to be concerned about.
Web applications encourage a thin-client approach: the client handles UI rendering and user input, while the real processing happens on servers. What sense does that make when any modern laptop packs enough CPU and GPU power to put yesterday's Cray supercomputer to shame?
...
3. Browser technologies are too limiting. Why give up the full range of languages, tools, and methodologies that systems programming has to offer?
But I thought you were just complaining about running on the server, not a browser. You can still write your code in Fortran77 on the server if you want to; it doesn't have to be javascript. No you can't use f77 on the browser, but hey, at least you got immense distributed resources over there.
and will be able to produce over 1,000 horsepower, powering the vehicle from 0-60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds
That sounds awesome, doesn't it? The funny thing is, when I see that, I think, "Oh, this is a high-powered car, analogous to a gasoline-powered car that uses a V-8. I don't buy those kind of cars; I buy the cheapest stuff that Toyota and Honda make. Ergo, I don't want this particular electric car."
Yes, it's irrational. I know that high-performance doesn't necessarily really mean expensive to run. And electric cars all tend to all have really good acceleration. I don't actually, consciously and rationally consider a slow car to be "better" than a fast car. That's just been the historical tendency of gasoline-powered cars (the faster it is, the less likely it's the car that I want).
But here's a marketing hint: Stress the convenience of plug-in. Stress the economy of efficiency. Shhhh on performance; I don't want to know. I do, but I don't. Know what I mean?
Not sure I get the submitter's point about FLAC and speex, unless Mozilla has put some strings on the money (TFA doesn't exactly say) and told Xiph that they can only use these bucks for working on some specific codecs.
But, if that's true, then the focus on Theora still makes sense. Dirac may hold more promise long-term, but Theora is here and usable right now, even if its competitors technically beat it. Throwing money into improving the reference Theora encoder, knowing that if the project suddenly aborts (the money runs out or whatever) you still have a working product, isn't exactly stupid. It's just a bit more pragmatic than what FOSS people want (and expect, given Vorbis' asskickingness).
Slashdot Mirror
Ask any book author. They solved the problem centuries ago.
So? It's not my problem if they come to a stupid conclusion. There will always be someone who wants money, and is smart enough to avoid pulling defeat from the jaws of victory.
If they forgot the angle for obtaining revenue, then I wouldn't say they have all the angles just yet. They can't have my money unless they change. They are paying developers and office rent, and then not bothering to try to sell me the game. I can out-wait them.
You're going to say the nanotech revolution (if it ever happens) wasn't innovative, because it was just a hardware upgrade. :(
Why are there so many bitter ancient geezers on /.?
oGMo, you used to know what's cool, but they changed what cool is. Now what you know, isn't cool. And what's cool, seems lame and stupid to you.
Some day, it will happen to the Google and Apple fanbois.
(acknowledgments to Abe Simpson.)
If every OS except Windows is able to
then Windows isn't the right OS for Grandma.
I know Windows still has major market penetration in many segments of society, but Grandmas just aren't where it should be. Get 'er a Mac. Or if you'll install it for her, get her Linux.
Good and interesting observation. But I can't accept that so broadly.
Is an actor reading a book to one single person, a performance?
If rendering as voice is performance, then isn't rendering on a screen also performance? If I show a movie to a theater full of hundreds of people, the MPAA will surely say so. At some point, though, the audience size starts to matter. Rendering a movie on a screen that only one person can conveniently view, is something the MPAA wouldn't try to call performance, nor does RIAA say that playing a song on a portable music player is a performance. Why wouldn't audiobooks parallel this?
Sure, you can turn up the volume on your Kindle, but you can turn up the volume on your music-player too. That doesn't mean the device or device's manufacturer would be infringing. The user would be.
The intended use is what distinguishes a portable audio device from 19th century player piano.
The Kindle reading a book at your home is not a commercial use. The user owns this tool, and no money passes hands whenever the user uses the tool. If you're going to say that whenever a Kindle operates, a commercial activity is happening, then who are the parties to that? Who got paid for this performance?
The only reason you got confused about that, is that the same party who sells the Kindle, also happens to sell the books. If Amazon sold the books and Micropple sold the Kindle, who then would be the copyright infringer?
Would people feel better if the Kindle were actually Android-shaped, and picked up a dead tree book, held it up to its camer-- um I mean -- face, and recited the book that way?
It doesn't even obsolete their business; it merely obsoletes their previously negotiated prices for e-books and audiobooks. Sell the audiobooks for less, or sell the e-books for more, and the entire issue vanishes.
Some people are saying that authors deserve to be paid for the audio. They're right. What they're forgetting, though, is that the authors are paid. Amazon paid for the e-book. The author whatever piece of that that they agreed would be fair. (Had they not agreed, all this talk about "copyright infringement" would be a hell of a lot less theoretical and Amazon's lawyers would already be scrambling and asking their client, "You did what?")
It's not Amazon's fault that the writers sell the e-book so cheaply compared to audiobooks, just as it's not hulu's or boxee's fault that the video content providers sell video with a web browser framed around it, more cheaply that the same exact video without the web browser framed around it.
Market segmentation is about fucking with people. Computers transforming the information you bought into a way that is easiest for you to use, is about getting un-fucked.
I vote for the computer.
Now that we have a Democrat president, that will almost certainly happen, like it did in the mid 1990s. Out-of-power Republicans are great at talking tough. The question is: will people still believe their act?
Geez, if you're going to complain about Libertarians, at least don't use real life examples of things that happened within the society of no responsibility that the Republicrats have graced us with.
Everything you complain about, happened on the watch of people opposed to libertarian ideals and practices. In the case of the "mortgage crisis" those people even rewarded the irresponsible behavior, so that we can experience it again some day.
What experience? Just how many centuries old are you, sorcerer?
Nice DoS target.
And even if he can manage to somehow do it, what are you going to do, introduce these logs as evidence in a criminal court?
Introduce logs stored on a computer belonging to the kind of people who execute any malware you ask them to? As evidence, these logs have no integrity and are worthless.
Documented here.
What you are engaging in, is called persuasion. I happen to agree with you: I advise against buying iPhones.
What Apple is engaging in, is far more hostile (and threatening) than your post. They are unsatisfied with saying, "If your desires are such-and-such, you might not like this product." They are saying, "If your desires are such-and-such and foolishly buy our product, we will go out of our way to harm you."
See the difference?
Attempt to put a nitrous injection kit into a Prius, and Honda isn't going to be on your ass. The issue isn't whether or not doing this to a Prius is smart; the issue is freedom. Who gets to decide what you're allowed to do with your Prius or iPhone? It's distasteful that we're even seriously talking about what is allowed.
Microsoft has never been as litigious as Apple. Apple may make vastly overwhelmingly superior products to MS, but they have also always been more evil.
The only way Apple can become the new Microsoft, is if they stop suing people so much, and also make their stuff crash a lot more often. As things are right now, there's just no comparison. The two companies' suckiness are totally different.
Yes. While I don't see any appeal to JSON, I really doubt anyone can exploit my parser.
Either that, or it needs to have a reply butto-- hey wait, I think I found something!
Even $10 billion is a mind-numbing overwhelming fucking shitload of money. I don't really believe that what Congress and the President are doing right now is going to help many people (except maybe their campaign contributors) and it's fine to talk about how those 10 gigabucks aren't going to be spent wisely. But don't diss the magnitude or claim that decimating the dollar amount means it can't work. The actual reason it can't work is that it isn't meant to. The still-incomprehensibly-huge amount has nothing to do with it.
We're talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation, not Blake's 7 or $YOUR_FAVORITE_NERDY_SHOW. It's not exactly obscure and only seen by geeks.
[emphasis mine]
Maybe they have resolved those concerns. Maybe they even tried to put those "concerns" into words, and once they did (they tried to explicitly state the problem that you (and everyone else on slashdot, whenever biotech stories come up) neglected to state but merely cryptically aluded to) they realized they had little to be concerned about.
But I thought you were just complaining about running on the server, not a browser. You can still write your code in Fortran77 on the server if you want to; it doesn't have to be javascript. No you can't use f77 on the browser, but hey, at least you got immense distributed resources over there.
One of these two arguments doesn't belong.
That sounds awesome, doesn't it? The funny thing is, when I see that, I think, "Oh, this is a high-powered car, analogous to a gasoline-powered car that uses a V-8. I don't buy those kind of cars; I buy the cheapest stuff that Toyota and Honda make. Ergo, I don't want this particular electric car."
Yes, it's irrational. I know that high-performance doesn't necessarily really mean expensive to run. And electric cars all tend to all have really good acceleration. I don't actually, consciously and rationally consider a slow car to be "better" than a fast car. That's just been the historical tendency of gasoline-powered cars (the faster it is, the less likely it's the car that I want).
But here's a marketing hint: Stress the convenience of plug-in. Stress the economy of efficiency. Shhhh on performance; I don't want to know. I do, but I don't. Know what I mean?
For audio: sometimes I think you're right. For video: no way.
Not sure I get the submitter's point about FLAC and speex, unless Mozilla has put some strings on the money (TFA doesn't exactly say) and told Xiph that they can only use these bucks for working on some specific codecs.
But, if that's true, then the focus on Theora still makes sense. Dirac may hold more promise long-term, but Theora is here and usable right now, even if its competitors technically beat it. Throwing money into improving the reference Theora encoder, knowing that if the project suddenly aborts (the money runs out or whatever) you still have a working product, isn't exactly stupid. It's just a bit more pragmatic than what FOSS people want (and expect, given Vorbis' asskickingness).