Actually I believe summer is bad for sales. They don't release a lot of new games around that time they save them for Nov - Dec. like you said before.
People go on vacations and kids might play outside more during the summer? or just because it's better to wait a few months for the holidays? I dunno.
Consoles and PC games might be hard to sell in the summer because of what you have mentionned. However, portable games can see quite an increase in sales as people go on vacation, and the kids need something to kill time during the hours long car rides.
Wars like the Iraq and Vietnam wars may be a little different, since the US's sovereignty doesn't seem to have been immediately threatened, but in those wars, the PR payoff with saving lives would similarly be almost priceless.
It's probably way too late for Iraq... "We went over there and killed thousands of innocent civilians, but look, we saved the lives of dozens of our soldiers that would have died otherwise". You can bet they won't use that technology to save the lives of the innocent civilians killed though.
I presume you're refering to figures on this page [wikipedia.org] that puts MS's net income at US$12.25 billion (EU 9.63 billion) - Around 26m euros/day.
So, it would take them a little over 10 days to recover it, furthermore, you're comparing the fine for a single region to their world wide profits.
And you're confusing income with profit. 10 days of income will indeed pay for the fine, but during those 10 days, they have other bills to pay, like salaries, taxes, electricity, and whatever they need to keep their infrastructure running. If they put all their revenue for 10 days into paying the fine, then they get behind on all those payments. I don't know how much profit they make per day, but it is way less than 26 million euros.
Yes, at least in the US, we have the "right" of free speech, and you are free to insist whatever you want. However, "fair use" tells me that I am free to slice up your comments (much as I have already done while replying) in the way I see fit.
You do indeed have the right to slice up comments under "fair use", but then you have no right to sell those sliced up comments for profit. If you want a sliced up version, buy the whole thing, and slice it up yourself.
Dunkin Donut is pretty much invisible here in Quebec, after a revolt and lawsuit by franchisees over bad advertising, etc. It was REALLY AWFUL advertising that featured two "employees" - an old pencil-neck guy who would look more at home sleeping on a park bench, and an ugly woman... I mean ugly. It ran for years, and just killed their brand. You'd look at the commercial and go "no way do I want them touching my stuff!"
They're actually pretty bad indeed with their advertising. I've never seen the ads you mentionned, but I've heard about their history of bad ads. And those that they run on TV these days (the ugly guy with a mustache dressed as a woman, I think it's mostly on LCN channel) is just plain terrible. One would think they would learn eventually.
It's pretty sad though, I always found their donuts to be better than Tim Horton's. Luckily for me, there's still a couple of Dunkin Donuts locations in the Longueuil area, but I fear they won't last long anymore.
Seriously, can anyone think of spam that doesn't convert to sex?
Seriously, if you're a hetero man, can you think of anything you do that doesn't have "a slight probability of having sex" as a motive? The whole point of living is sex, no?
I'm going to be nit-picky here and refute your argument on the grounds that you unfairly claim that Ubuntu is a poor distro for gaming when the game examples you cite are for another platform.
[...]
Before saying that linux/ubuntu is a bad system for games, why don't you actually try some linux games first?
I did not *claim* Ubuntu was a bad system for games, I just said that my attempts so far were unconclusive, and I was actually seeking advice. I know some commercial games are only available on Windows, and it does suck that the publishers don't want to support Linux. I won't keep me from wanting to play those games, and to try to do so on Linux if possible.
but let's say you're a carpenter and that you want to hammer in nails but the tool you've selected is a saw. Then you go on to say that the saw is a poor tool compared to the hammer.
I was replying to someone who said he was a gamer and he switched to Ubuntu. So I figured that gamering is easier now on Ubuntu than it was in the past, and I was inquiring about his experience. Using your analogy, he said "I hammered some nails with a saw", and I replied "What kind of saw? So far, my saw has failed to hammer a nail".
Why ?
Why should there be one tool that does everything ?
Do you actually need your box to do something else while you play a game ? Does it matter that you have to wait 90 seconds for the machine to shutdown and reboot ?
Dual-booting is not only about having to wait for the machine to reboot. Having a full install of WinXP whose sole purpose is to play games means that quite a big chunk of my hard drive needs to be dedicated to the OS. Plus, everytime I reboot, I lost my bragging rights about uptime;-)
And as mentionned in another reply, rebooting sometimes interrupts a long download or such.
I am one of these switchers as well. I am a gamer and developer, and had been a long term Apple user.
What kind of gamer are you that your needs are satisfied on Ubuntu? I recently switched to Ubuntu (Dapper), and yesterday installed vmware-player with a WinXP virtual machine, and then installed 2 games (first is PopCap's Dynomite and the second is Civ4), and although both of them installed, neither would actually play. Maybe I'm missing something, but Ubuntu looks to me as underwhelming as any other distro when it comes to gaming (although overwhelming on everything else).
What's the best way to get games to play on Ubuntu? I still need to dual-boot with Windows because of games, and I would really, really like to get rid of that.
Could Vincent Ferrari be subject to a law-suit? At no point did Vincent tell the rep he was being recorded, I thought you had to mention that at the beginning of the conversation.
Chances are that during the first 15 minutes of speaking to machines (before reaching a human), one of them told Vincent that his call would be recorded (for training purposes and whatnot). It is only fair to guess that the people at AOL know that they are being recorded.
True, but sometimes the nuances of language can be important ("it depends on what you definition of 'is' is"), so if we want to be able to rely on it as a tool, it behooves us to maintain it in good working order.
Indeed. I won't take credit for this one, but I once saw somewhere :
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse" and...
Sometimes, subtleties in the language can make one hell of a difference.
It's not just the OS. Then take your SW packages you want to run on it. After all, you have to be putting something on it, right? I seem to be required to compile a lot of the things I end up putting on servers. I've never had to compile anything for a Windows install.
Wow, it really has been a while since you tried Linux. I never had to compile anything to get a Linux server running. Unless you have some very state-of-the-art uber-specific needs, everything comes in precompiled binaries that are but a simple command line away, be it apt-get or yum.
Just yesterday, I had to install a Fedora web server, with Apache, Perl, PHP, MySQL, cURL and mcrypt. All I needed are 6 lines in a command prompt (one per install). I never tried the equivalent on Windows, but I doubt it can be done in less than 200 mouse clicks.
While it was done at the MPAA's influence, it was a US Government action. That's what I'd like to see exposed.
Expect to see this tagged as a "national security" issue and therefore not releasable under any freedom of information act whatsoever. Very few things are not about national security in the US anymore...
Why should I assume that this would kill only Free Software?
Wouldn't proprietary software be more vulnerable to liability? People only sue those with deep pockets.
Plus, most free software is in a perpetual beta version 0.99.9.999 and very rarely in a version 1.0+... You can hardly blame a developer if you have been using the not-ready-to-be-released version. Does that mean Microsoft would sell Windows Vista Beta v 0.99 too though...?
The Xbox was far from a failure. Unlike the Gamecube, it actually had games that adults wanted to play and could feel good doing it.
Why should an adult not want to play a Mario game and feel good doing it? Does every game one plays need to involve shooting at stuff and lots and lots of violence in order for him to enjoy them?
People who can enjoy simple games like Wario Ware, Mario Party and Mario Kart are probably more psychologically and socially stable than people needing violent games to satisfy their impulses. Because a game is rated "M for Mature" doesn't mean the person playing it is mature.
The problem isn't that Windows XP ships with only the most common drivers, it's that Windows XP shipped 5 years ago.
If you bought a CD of Windows XP 5 years ago, then yes, you can indeed say that it was released 5 years ago and that it is a valid reason for not supporting hardware that was released 3 years ago. However, if you buy a Windows XP CD today, it is a recent version of Windows XP, it even includes SP2, so it no longer is something that was released 5 years ago... at worst, it was released 18 to 24 months ago (I don't even remember when SP2 was).
Still... We installed a very fresh version of WinXP last week at the office, with that SP2 preloaded and all, on a 4 years old computer, and it still couldn't get a network connection without us downloading the drivers from another computer and then burning it to a CD (because network drivers these days don't fit on a floppy).
Microsoft really makes no effort at all in providing even generic drivers for hardware.
Printer drivers, etc add 4GB to an OSX installation, I would assume Vista requires double that for an updated set of drivers for an even larger variety of perhirials & junk.
You mean that, for once, I would be able to install a version of Windows that would actually detect my ethernet card and not require me to download the driver without an access to the network? That would be good for a change. Somehow, I doubt it though.
Market forces will keep ISPs in line. If an ISP starts throtling Wikipedia, then users will switch ISP.
The same way that if an operating system gets all buggy and filled with viruses and vulnerabilities, then the users will switch operating system...
Unfortunately, that's not going to happen either. The users will keep using what they have always been using and what they are comfortable with, and they will tolerate, even enjoy, any raping that the big corporations will shove up their butt, and then they'll demand more.
Cell phones, ISP's, operating systems, WalMarts, gas... the average customer doesn't want to make the effort to vote with its dollars.
"Letting" companies sell things like software with nasty licensing is called capitalism. Socialism would be a system under which governments can dictate what can and cannot be sold.
I'm not suggesting government shoud dictate what can or cannot be sold. What I'm saying is, if you buy a car and the brakes fail every now and then for no apparent reason, the car manufacturer is responsible and they need to take action, either by fixing what they sold you or by giving you your money back. Consumer laws protect consumers from salesmen who sell crap.
However, when it comes to software, crap is the norm, and nobody is ever held responsible when whatever piece of software you bought (erhm... "licensed" actually) doesn't deliver what it was promised. When someone sells you a drill and the manual says this drill has such and such specifications, and you can you it to do such and such, you can take the drill back for a refund. When a piece of software advertises a bunch of features, and nothing actually works, you're out of luck, and you can't return an open box.
Capitalism vs. Socialism has nothing to do with it.
The problem is that we all, as consumers, already accept this kind of shit as acceptable. I wish I knew a way to reverse this, but realistically, I don't see this mindset changing any time soon.
The problem is that we let companies sell software with licenses that give them all the rights, while at the same time they waive all responsibility... I don't think I've ever seen a software piece that didn't come with a disclaimer of the type "This is provided as is and we are not responsible for whatever happens when you use it".
I didn't think the US did racial profiling - this is quite sad for Muslims
Sometimes it's not on purpose, they just freak out when they hear or see certain things... a guy over here started taking the required action to have his name legally changed a couple of years ago... his first name being Jihad, you can guess the reaction he gets in airports when they ask his name.
So yeah, some people are flagged just based on their name.
Slashdot Mirror
People go on vacations and kids might play outside more during the summer? or just because it's better to wait a few months for the holidays? I dunno.
Consoles and PC games might be hard to sell in the summer because of what you have mentionned. However, portable games can see quite an increase in sales as people go on vacation, and the kids need something to kill time during the hours long car rides.
It's probably way too late for Iraq... "We went over there and killed thousands of innocent civilians, but look, we saved the lives of dozens of our soldiers that would have died otherwise". You can bet they won't use that technology to save the lives of the innocent civilians killed though.
So, it would take them a little over 10 days to recover it, furthermore, you're comparing the fine for a single region to their world wide profits.
And you're confusing income with profit. 10 days of income will indeed pay for the fine, but during those 10 days, they have other bills to pay, like salaries, taxes, electricity, and whatever they need to keep their infrastructure running. If they put all their revenue for 10 days into paying the fine, then they get behind on all those payments. I don't know how much profit they make per day, but it is way less than 26 million euros.
You do indeed have the right to slice up comments under "fair use", but then you have no right to sell those sliced up comments for profit. If you want a sliced up version, buy the whole thing, and slice it up yourself.
They're actually pretty bad indeed with their advertising. I've never seen the ads you mentionned, but I've heard about their history of bad ads. And those that they run on TV these days (the ugly guy with a mustache dressed as a woman, I think it's mostly on LCN channel) is just plain terrible. One would think they would learn eventually.
It's pretty sad though, I always found their donuts to be better than Tim Horton's. Luckily for me, there's still a couple of Dunkin Donuts locations in the Longueuil area, but I fear they won't last long anymore.
Seriously, if you're a hetero man, can you think of anything you do that doesn't have "a slight probability of having sex" as a motive? The whole point of living is sex, no?
[...]
Before saying that linux/ubuntu is a bad system for games, why don't you actually try some linux games first?
I did not *claim* Ubuntu was a bad system for games, I just said that my attempts so far were unconclusive, and I was actually seeking advice. I know some commercial games are only available on Windows, and it does suck that the publishers don't want to support Linux. I won't keep me from wanting to play those games, and to try to do so on Linux if possible.
but let's say you're a carpenter and that you want to hammer in nails but the tool you've selected is a saw. Then you go on to say that the saw is a poor tool compared to the hammer.
I was replying to someone who said he was a gamer and he switched to Ubuntu. So I figured that gamering is easier now on Ubuntu than it was in the past, and I was inquiring about his experience. Using your analogy, he said "I hammered some nails with a saw", and I replied "What kind of saw? So far, my saw has failed to hammer a nail".
Why should there be one tool that does everything ?
Do you actually need your box to do something else while you play a game ? Does it matter that you have to wait 90 seconds for the machine to shutdown and reboot ?
Dual-booting is not only about having to wait for the machine to reboot. Having a full install of WinXP whose sole purpose is to play games means that quite a big chunk of my hard drive needs to be dedicated to the OS. Plus, everytime I reboot, I lost my bragging rights about uptime ;-)
And as mentionned in another reply, rebooting sometimes interrupts a long download or such.
What kind of gamer are you that your needs are satisfied on Ubuntu? I recently switched to Ubuntu (Dapper), and yesterday installed vmware-player with a WinXP virtual machine, and then installed 2 games (first is PopCap's Dynomite and the second is Civ4), and although both of them installed, neither would actually play. Maybe I'm missing something, but Ubuntu looks to me as underwhelming as any other distro when it comes to gaming (although overwhelming on everything else).
What's the best way to get games to play on Ubuntu? I still need to dual-boot with Windows because of games, and I would really, really like to get rid of that.
Chances are that during the first 15 minutes of speaking to machines (before reaching a human), one of them told Vincent that his call would be recorded (for training purposes and whatnot). It is only fair to guess that the people at AOL know that they are being recorded.
Indeed. I won't take credit for this one, but I once saw somewhere :
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse" and...
Sometimes, subtleties in the language can make one hell of a difference.
Wow, it really has been a while since you tried Linux. I never had to compile anything to get a Linux server running. Unless you have some very state-of-the-art uber-specific needs, everything comes in precompiled binaries that are but a simple command line away, be it apt-get or yum.
Just yesterday, I had to install a Fedora web server, with Apache, Perl, PHP, MySQL, cURL and mcrypt. All I needed are 6 lines in a command prompt (one per install). I never tried the equivalent on Windows, but I doubt it can be done in less than 200 mouse clicks.
Who are YOU to decide what's a matter of national security and what isn't? I think it's up to the President to decide that... quite unfortunately...
Expect to see this tagged as a "national security" issue and therefore not releasable under any freedom of information act whatsoever. Very few things are not about national security in the US anymore...
Plus, most free software is in a perpetual beta version 0.99.9.999 and very rarely in a version 1.0+... You can hardly blame a developer if you have been using the not-ready-to-be-released version. Does that mean Microsoft would sell Windows Vista Beta v 0.99 too though...?
Lo and behold: they've already done it.
Would you mind sharing such a list with us?
Why should an adult not want to play a Mario game and feel good doing it? Does every game one plays need to involve shooting at stuff and lots and lots of violence in order for him to enjoy them?
People who can enjoy simple games like Wario Ware, Mario Party and Mario Kart are probably more psychologically and socially stable than people needing violent games to satisfy their impulses. Because a game is rated "M for Mature" doesn't mean the person playing it is mature.
If you bought a CD of Windows XP 5 years ago, then yes, you can indeed say that it was released 5 years ago and that it is a valid reason for not supporting hardware that was released 3 years ago. However, if you buy a Windows XP CD today, it is a recent version of Windows XP, it even includes SP2, so it no longer is something that was released 5 years ago... at worst, it was released 18 to 24 months ago (I don't even remember when SP2 was).
Still... We installed a very fresh version of WinXP last week at the office, with that SP2 preloaded and all, on a 4 years old computer, and it still couldn't get a network connection without us downloading the drivers from another computer and then burning it to a CD (because network drivers these days don't fit on a floppy).
Microsoft really makes no effort at all in providing even generic drivers for hardware.
You mean that, for once, I would be able to install a version of Windows that would actually detect my ethernet card and not require me to download the driver without an access to the network? That would be good for a change. Somehow, I doubt it though.
The same way that if an operating system gets all buggy and filled with viruses and vulnerabilities, then the users will switch operating system...
Unfortunately, that's not going to happen either. The users will keep using what they have always been using and what they are comfortable with, and they will tolerate, even enjoy, any raping that the big corporations will shove up their butt, and then they'll demand more.
Cell phones, ISP's, operating systems, WalMarts, gas... the average customer doesn't want to make the effort to vote with its dollars.
For your son... riiiiigggghhhtt....
I'm not suggesting government shoud dictate what can or cannot be sold. What I'm saying is, if you buy a car and the brakes fail every now and then for no apparent reason, the car manufacturer is responsible and they need to take action, either by fixing what they sold you or by giving you your money back. Consumer laws protect consumers from salesmen who sell crap.
However, when it comes to software, crap is the norm, and nobody is ever held responsible when whatever piece of software you bought (erhm... "licensed" actually) doesn't deliver what it was promised. When someone sells you a drill and the manual says this drill has such and such specifications, and you can you it to do such and such, you can take the drill back for a refund. When a piece of software advertises a bunch of features, and nothing actually works, you're out of luck, and you can't return an open box.
Capitalism vs. Socialism has nothing to do with it.
The problem is that we let companies sell software with licenses that give them all the rights, while at the same time they waive all responsibility... I don't think I've ever seen a software piece that didn't come with a disclaimer of the type "This is provided as is and we are not responsible for whatever happens when you use it".
Sometimes it's not on purpose, they just freak out when they hear or see certain things... a guy over here started taking the required action to have his name legally changed a couple of years ago... his first name being Jihad, you can guess the reaction he gets in airports when they ask his name.
So yeah, some people are flagged just based on their name.
Vista probably won't be "current" in 2010... it'll be "coming soon"...