EA and Midway will alternate years with their arcade-style games, "NBA Street" and "NBA Ballers" respectively.
Alternate years? That sounds like a restriction on competition to me. I'm sure EA and Midway won't be too heartbroken. When NBA Ballers 2 comes out, they'll have 12 months of arcade-style basketball monopoly until NBA Street V4!
According to economic theory, the price game companies charge for their games are independent of the costs. Once they've paid these costs, all the companies want to do is maximize revenue.
If they aren't constrained (i.e., they aren't forced to charge at least $X per game), they'll charge whatever price they think maximizes their revenue. That could be $19.95 (as in Sega's series) or $49.95 (as in EA's series before last year).
In other words, I don't think this deal will affect the price consumers would have paid without such a deal.
The following terms and conditions apply to all users who either registered for AIM services or downloaded AIM updates or software on or after February 5, 2004. AIM users who do not register for AIM services or download AIM updates or software on or after February 5, 2004 and are members of the Netscape Network will remain bound by Netscape's terms and conditions. All other AIM users are bound by the aol.com terms and conditions.
I suspect the vast majority of Slashdot users signed up for AIM years ago, if they did at all. This shouldn't affect them.
In Trillian 3.1 Basic:
Open up your Connection Preferences for the AIM connection. Click on the Miscellaneous tab. At the bottom, check the following: "Activate SecureIM capabilities", and "When possible, make a best effort to automatically maintain a SecureIM session with my contacts."
HTH.
My rule of thumb is not to tell any woman born before 1980 that I even know what a computer is.
The good news is that the general public is much more open to computer/Internet/technology usage than it was ten years ago. I was in high school in the mid-90's, and I was widely considered the computer geek of the class because I used email, the web, and I knew how to code. My older brother used to ridicule me mercilessly for being a geek.
Now, nearly everyone I know, including those same people from high school (and my brother) all use email and the web for hours a day, everyday. My parents finally jumped on board in the late-90's. I expect this trend to continue, as more older people become exposed to more tech stuff.
Soon you'll be able to tell a woman born before 1920 that you know what a computer is. And you still might score with her!
Camera - Xenon will have a USB 2.0 camera. It's capable of 1.2 megapixel still shots and VGA video. Photos can be used in-game and for gamer profiles. The camera can also be used for video chat. It's unknown if the Xenon camera will allow for EyeToy-like gameplay. Developers are currently using a simulated camera driver.
Maybe I'm behind the times, but this is the first I've heard of a camera as a part of the Xbox2. If they make the hard drive optional, it seems they should make the camera optional.
I can't believe that more people would want a camera in their Xbox2 than a hard drive.
Great. Now I'm going to have to watch idiots taunt me over Live rather than just hear them.
I have a TI-86, which has the capability of graphing differential equations of up to 9th-order.
It really cranks away when graphing DiffEq's. It often takes more than a minute to finish graphing! Needless to say, bumping up the clock speed of the calculator 2-3X helps significantly here... especially when I'm taking an exam and every minute counts!
While all this is true, the more important question is:
Would all of this have happened WITHOUT the presence of Microsoft (or some single dominant OS maker)?
If the answer is No, then Microsoft has a legitimate claim to causing all of those things you mentioned. If the answer is Yes, then perhaps Microsoft's ubiquity really hasn't helped the computing world.
I think that for a lot of people here at Slashdot, the answer is Yes, and the computing world would've gotten to where it is today without MS's so-called "help."
From what I've read over at the steampowered forums, it looks like quite a few people who were banned originally tried to use a 'warez' CD-key before buying the game.
When that didn't work, they purchased the game, entered a legit CD-key, had no problems playing for awhile, and then their accounts were disabled.
Apparently Valve must keep logs of all the CD-keys a certain account/IP address has tried. I don't know if I agree with this. If someone has actually purchased the game, should they be penalized because they tried stealing it previously?
Is there any advantage to playing this over the version at BSW? BSW is free, has a great community, AND you get to learn German while gaming. How can you beat that?
If you don't mind divulging details, what happened to you? She seems -really- worried about it. I feel sorry for her because she'll have to stand outside the embassy all night, but I keep telling her it won't be a problem. I'm pissed off about it, but I don't yet see it as a huge problem. If I heard enough bad stories, though, I might.
Actually, according to this site (right above 'Conclusions'), the Earth can support the following:
- Everyone at the current U.S. standard of living: 2 billion
- Everyone at the same affluence level as above, but with few restrictions on commerce, pollution, land use, personal behavior: 0.5 billion
- Everyone at the same affluence as indicated in the first situation, but with many and onerous restrictions on freedoms relative to behaviors leading to environmental degradation: 4 billion
- Only people in the U.S. and Europe at current level of affluence. Everyone else at the current prosperity level of Mexico: 6 billion
- Everyone in the world at Mexico's current prosperity level: 20 billion
- Everyone in the world at the current "prosperity" level of Northwest Africa: 40 billion
So, if everyone in the world is willing to live like Northwest Africans, we still have more than 30 billion people to give birth to!
...but those people are starving to death over there.
This makes it sound like all Chinese people are impoverished across the country. China != North Korea. Many people in the coastal region and Beijing live fine and aren't even close to starving to death.
The people in the rural areas, of course, are the ones who are impoverished. But Beijing is giving them the shaft in all ways imaginable anyway. After all, in China, if you're born in a rural area, then in most cases you aren't allowed to move into the city, thus keeping your family poor for generations.
Actually, the most pressing thing pissing me off about the Chinese government now is that they recently closed down the call center where people could make appointments to get visas to come to the US. As a result, people have to line up outside the embassy for hours before it even opens up in the hope that they'll be allowed inside that day. Given that I have a Chinese girlfriend who's going home for the Summer, I'm a bit upset about this situation. For more info...
Re:The real object of the game...
on
Google IPO Swami
·
· Score: 0
The day-trader investors who ususually love IPOs hate this Dutch Auction system because it gives them less room to try to buy up the early shares and then sell them the same day to people who wished they had gotten in on the IPO and are now willing to pay more to get their shares at market prices.
Your average Joe Daytrader cannot do this. The only people who are able to get shares during the immediate beginning of an IPO are insiders, investment banks, friends of the company, etc.
Let me preface this by saying that as a staunch libertarian, these types of stories offend me. I dislike the PATRIOT Act as much as the next slashdotter.
What I'm curious about is the parallels between our situation and 1930's Germany. A lot of people here compare the Bush government with the Nazis. Some similarities are clear. But what I can't quite figure out is this:
What is the motive for the Bush government to institute these acts of censorship?
In 1933 the Nazis cited the burning of the Reichstag (likely engineered by the Nazis, of course) as proof that Hitler's government needed more control to ensure safety. But that was a totally different place and time. 1920's-1930's Germany was a pretty unstable place, what with two completely different governments, a famous hyperinflation, etc. Therefore, given the instabilities, it was pretty easy for Hitler to convince people that he needed more control. He then leveraged that into a total police state.
Obviously Bush isn't going to do that here. Why is the government doing this? What do they stand to gain? They're all going to be gone relatively soon (4 years at the most!) anyway. If, on the other hand, they revoke the 2-term limit, THEN I'll become really worried.
Slashdot Mirror
Instructions
Worked for me!
EA and Midway will alternate years with their arcade-style games, "NBA Street" and "NBA Ballers" respectively.
Alternate years? That sounds like a restriction on competition to me. I'm sure EA and Midway won't be too heartbroken. When NBA Ballers 2 comes out, they'll have 12 months of arcade-style basketball monopoly until NBA Street V4!
If they aren't constrained (i.e., they aren't forced to charge at least $X per game), they'll charge whatever price they think maximizes their revenue. That could be $19.95 (as in Sega's series) or $49.95 (as in EA's series before last year).
In other words, I don't think this deal will affect the price consumers would have paid without such a deal.
The following terms and conditions apply to all users who either registered for AIM services or downloaded AIM updates or software on or after February 5, 2004. AIM users who do not register for AIM services or download AIM updates or software on or after February 5, 2004 and are members of the Netscape Network will remain bound by Netscape's terms and conditions. All other AIM users are bound by the aol.com terms and conditions.
I suspect the vast majority of Slashdot users signed up for AIM years ago, if they did at all. This shouldn't affect them.
In Trillian 3.1 Basic: Open up your Connection Preferences for the AIM connection. Click on the Miscellaneous tab. At the bottom, check the following: "Activate SecureIM capabilities", and "When possible, make a best effort to automatically maintain a SecureIM session with my contacts." HTH.
However, I believe it's true that SecureIM only works if both you -and- your chat partner are using Trillian.
Also, if you and your chat partner are both using Trillian, you have the option of turning on 128-bit encryption.
The good news is that the general public is much more open to computer/Internet/technology usage than it was ten years ago. I was in high school in the mid-90's, and I was widely considered the computer geek of the class because I used email, the web, and I knew how to code. My older brother used to ridicule me mercilessly for being a geek.
Now, nearly everyone I know, including those same people from high school (and my brother) all use email and the web for hours a day, everyday. My parents finally jumped on board in the late-90's. I expect this trend to continue, as more older people become exposed to more tech stuff.
Soon you'll be able to tell a woman born before 1920 that you know what a computer is. And you still might score with her!
Maybe I'm behind the times, but this is the first I've heard of a camera as a part of the Xbox2. If they make the hard drive optional, it seems they should make the camera optional.
I can't believe that more people would want a camera in their Xbox2 than a hard drive.
Great. Now I'm going to have to watch idiots taunt me over Live rather than just hear them.
It really cranks away when graphing DiffEq's. It often takes more than a minute to finish graphing! Needless to say, bumping up the clock speed of the calculator 2-3X helps significantly here... especially when I'm taking an exam and every minute counts!
Would all of this have happened WITHOUT the presence of Microsoft (or some single dominant OS maker)?
If the answer is No, then Microsoft has a legitimate claim to causing all of those things you mentioned. If the answer is Yes, then perhaps Microsoft's ubiquity really hasn't helped the computing world.
I think that for a lot of people here at Slashdot, the answer is Yes, and the computing world would've gotten to where it is today without MS's so-called "help."
When that didn't work, they purchased the game, entered a legit CD-key, had no problems playing for awhile, and then their accounts were disabled.
Apparently Valve must keep logs of all the CD-keys a certain account/IP address has tried. I don't know if I agree with this. If someone has actually purchased the game, should they be penalized because they tried stealing it previously?
Is there any advantage to playing this over the version at BSW? BSW is free, has a great community, AND you get to learn German while gaming. How can you beat that?
This is merely a mirror of bi-torrent.com, which is a mirror of suprnova.org's links.
If you don't mind divulging details, what happened to you? She seems -really- worried about it. I feel sorry for her because she'll have to stand outside the embassy all night, but I keep telling her it won't be a problem. I'm pissed off about it, but I don't yet see it as a huge problem. If I heard enough bad stories, though, I might.
- Everyone at the current U.S. standard of living: 2 billion
- Everyone at the same affluence level as above, but with few restrictions on commerce, pollution, land use, personal behavior: 0.5 billion
- Everyone at the same affluence as indicated in the first situation, but with many and onerous restrictions on freedoms relative to behaviors leading to environmental degradation: 4 billion
- Only people in the U.S. and Europe at current level of affluence. Everyone else at the current prosperity level of Mexico: 6 billion
- Everyone in the world at Mexico's current prosperity level: 20 billion
- Everyone in the world at the current "prosperity" level of Northwest Africa: 40 billion
So, if everyone in the world is willing to live like Northwest Africans, we still have more than 30 billion people to give birth to!
This makes it sound like all Chinese people are impoverished across the country. China != North Korea. Many people in the coastal region and Beijing live fine and aren't even close to starving to death.
The people in the rural areas, of course, are the ones who are impoverished. But Beijing is giving them the shaft in all ways imaginable anyway. After all, in China, if you're born in a rural area, then in most cases you aren't allowed to move into the city, thus keeping your family poor for generations.
Actually, the most pressing thing pissing me off about the Chinese government now is that they recently closed down the call center where people could make appointments to get visas to come to the US. As a result, people have to line up outside the embassy for hours before it even opens up in the hope that they'll be allowed inside that day. Given that I have a Chinese girlfriend who's going home for the Summer, I'm a bit upset about this situation. For more info...
Your average Joe Daytrader cannot do this. The only people who are able to get shares during the immediate beginning of an IPO are insiders, investment banks, friends of the company, etc.
I thought Deep Thought was the 2nd greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space?
What I'm curious about is the parallels between our situation and 1930's Germany. A lot of people here compare the Bush government with the Nazis. Some similarities are clear. But what I can't quite figure out is this:
What is the motive for the Bush government to institute these acts of censorship?
In 1933 the Nazis cited the burning of the Reichstag (likely engineered by the Nazis, of course) as proof that Hitler's government needed more control to ensure safety. But that was a totally different place and time. 1920's-1930's Germany was a pretty unstable place, what with two completely different governments, a famous hyperinflation, etc. Therefore, given the instabilities, it was pretty easy for Hitler to convince people that he needed more control. He then leveraged that into a total police state.
Obviously Bush isn't going to do that here. Why is the government doing this? What do they stand to gain? They're all going to be gone relatively soon (4 years at the most!) anyway. If, on the other hand, they revoke the 2-term limit, THEN I'll become really worried.
Warning to all: Do not click on that link. Ackbar says, "It's a trap!"
People in glass houses... yada yada yada.
Did that guy show up at E3 in his Tron outfit?
Is it possible to use this tool to implant an RFID chip in one of my alcoholic Sims?