That's a complete joke and I'm not sure it'd even work against dumb payload (bunch of 300 pound bombs dropped from high altitude?). It doesn't work against MIRV, that much is known. It's great for hitting airplanes. Maybe Tesla's Teleforce would work for munitions, supposedly the US has a working prototype of that thing.
I don't know about other countries but in Germany we have the points system, 18 points and your license is gone. There are penalties associated with lower point counts but I don't recall all of them. Those are in addition to the fines.
If WMV wasn't so heavily entrenched already retailers could use the M version to ask for "sponsoring fees" from the various companies offering media playback software. So MS would have to pay them extra to have WMP included, otherwise they might risk ending up with e.g. Dells shipping only with Quicktime installed.
1.4 billion is nothing to sneeze about, but in perspective it's also nothing they can't pay.
I recall reading a story a few years ago that MS's profits went down by a billion a year* so they had to cut costs. A corporation has shareholders and they hate it when a corp isn't as profitable as it can be.
Now, the greater likelyhood is that they'll spend 100 million on good lawyers who will tie up the EU ruling for as long as possible
They've already done that, this ruling was the result of a lawsuit that started somewhen in the nineties. Delays only delay, they can't cancel.
while shifting responsibilities away from Microsoft Europe to a new subsidiary wholly owned by Microsoft USA, then declare Microsoft Europe bankrupt and liquidate one or two token offices.
Don't underestimate the EU's protection of its market. The import fees could cost MS more than the judgement.
*=I'm guessing that was the Games Division's fault.
AFAIK software patents were possible in the EU even before the debate came up but the procedures were more complicated. Also the standards for getting a patent on software are very high, the goal of the pro-swp side was to make patents like Amazon's one-click possible in the EU.
I mean it's pretty hard for Microsoft to defend themselves in this circumstance, where the group they are in dispute with is also the judge and jury.
Have you thought perhaps maybe just maybe the EU has decided it'd like a slice of Microsoft war chest and has just decided it'll make up whatever excuse and take some.
Separation of powers. The court is independent of the politicians and the judge is required to be unbiased (you know, just how a justice system works). Of course a judge could be corrupt but such a problem exists everywhere. Comparison: Do you see the SCOTUS ignore the constitution because the ruling party would prefer a specific outcome?
But even FF and DQ will suffer lower sales as a result of the high system price. Square Enix is supporting the DS a lot right now and I think they're doing some games for the Wii as well. Not their main series (merely spinoffs of those) but I'm getting the impression that everyone's trying to get a few games on the Wii because it's the big unknown factor and because it's not as risky to do so.
Of course there's also the fact that the former lead designer of FF is making games for the XBox 360 but overall I think the PS3 will still get the majority of the RPG market (although less than last time). What happens with the rest of the gaming population is less certain, though.
Children's teeth are much softer than adults', I've regularly undergone drilling without painkillers as a kid and it never hurt as much as the one time I've done it without as an adult. That excludes the root canal surgery I got as a kid where the painkillers didn't work right. Didn't help that the doc told me "you were very brave" after I tried to scream the whole time.
The thing is, the trouble you get with running homebrew is included in the price, the alternatives where homebrew is encouraged are more expensive and many people are going the cheap route and subsequently complaining that they don't get the ease of using homebrew the pricier products offer.
AFAIK the Sony game division did make money in the past but Nintendo's strategy of "profit everywhere" resulted in Nintendo having twice SCE's profits. Of course I expect Nintendo is still selling stuff cheaper than they would if they didn't have the game revenue to count on, they've got tiny profit margins on the hardware, those would easily go to 50-150% manufacturing cost if they were Nintendo's primary source of income.
I seem to recall DRM including things like media that expires at a given date to replace rentals with downloads. Of course the latter isn't going to happen as long as DRM remains as breakable as it is.
Downloading an ISO will show you the beginning of the game and maybe that's not very representative of the final product. A good demo will be adjusted to make you experience a lot of stuf in a much shorter timeframe than in the full version. Granted that may be considered cheating but for e.g. the Prey demo I'd have appreciated had they showed a bit of the later game's combat and puzzles (obviously removing the story bits to prevent spoilers).
No but Windows wasn't sold at a loss with the plan to make up for it with game license fees so MS doesn't care what you do on it. Sony does care because it prevents their PSP from being profitable. If the PSP was sold at a price that makes a good profit for Sony it would be ~300-400$. But it isn't and that's why it's only slightly more expensive than the much cheaper to build DS.
presently there is NO way to run ISO's without kernel access.
Yes but few people care about the PSP's meager game offerings, I was talking about throwing all kinds of emulators and hundreds of ROMs on there. Sony doesn't want that since that means people don't buy PSP games and Nintendo even used a patent to fight handheld emulators because they don't want people buying their competitor's system to play illegal copies of their games.
What most people want to do with the system is to make it run illegally downloaded games, most of them meant for other systems and many still being made and sold by their rightsholders. This hacking is also contraproductive since it makes sure there is no real market for a handheld without these restrictions since people just buy a PSP and crack it.
Now get a few friends to do that along with you, post on many different websites and if this conversation had never happened Homeland Security would at least raise an eyebrow.
Slashdot Mirror
Christians and Jews only object to making babies and cutting them up
Wait, I thought for Jews circumcision is mandatory?
Sample size of one. Now try D&D Gold Box game vs. Metal Slug 6.
That's a complete joke and I'm not sure it'd even work against dumb payload (bunch of 300 pound bombs dropped from high altitude?). It doesn't work against MIRV, that much is known. It's great for hitting airplanes. Maybe Tesla's Teleforce would work for munitions, supposedly the US has a working prototype of that thing.
This fine was exactly because the courts ordered MS to document their interfaces and MS not doing so.
I don't know about other countries but in Germany we have the points system, 18 points and your license is gone. There are penalties associated with lower point counts but I don't recall all of them. Those are in addition to the fines.
If WMV wasn't so heavily entrenched already retailers could use the M version to ask for "sponsoring fees" from the various companies offering media playback software. So MS would have to pay them extra to have WMP included, otherwise they might risk ending up with e.g. Dells shipping only with Quicktime installed.
This wasn't a bunch of politicians making a decision, it was a judgement. If MS tried bribing judges they'd end up with a MUCH bigger problem.
1.4 billion is nothing to sneeze about, but in perspective it's also nothing they can't pay.
I recall reading a story a few years ago that MS's profits went down by a billion a year* so they had to cut costs. A corporation has shareholders and they hate it when a corp isn't as profitable as it can be.
Now, the greater likelyhood is that they'll spend 100 million on good lawyers who will tie up the EU ruling for as long as possible
They've already done that, this ruling was the result of a lawsuit that started somewhen in the nineties. Delays only delay, they can't cancel.
while shifting responsibilities away from Microsoft Europe to a new subsidiary wholly owned by Microsoft USA, then declare Microsoft Europe bankrupt and liquidate one or two token offices.
Don't underestimate the EU's protection of its market. The import fees could cost MS more than the judgement.
*=I'm guessing that was the Games Division's fault.
AFAIK software patents were possible in the EU even before the debate came up but the procedures were more complicated. Also the standards for getting a patent on software are very high, the goal of the pro-swp side was to make patents like Amazon's one-click possible in the EU.
I mean it's pretty hard for Microsoft to defend themselves in this circumstance, where the group they are in dispute with is also the judge and jury.
Have you thought perhaps maybe just maybe the EU has decided it'd like a slice of Microsoft war chest and has just decided it'll make up whatever excuse and take some.
Separation of powers. The court is independent of the politicians and the judge is required to be unbiased (you know, just how a justice system works). Of course a judge could be corrupt but such a problem exists everywhere. Comparison: Do you see the SCOTUS ignore the constitution because the ruling party would prefer a specific outcome?
I think the 3d was an improvement for GTA since it meant better sight of where you are going and the ability to have stunts in the game.
What I do remember about GTA2 was when my computer was too slow so it ran in slow motion and I was dodging bullets like Neo in the matrix.
They've been around for years already!
http://www.joecartoon.com/pages/lump_anim
But even FF and DQ will suffer lower sales as a result of the high system price. Square Enix is supporting the DS a lot right now and I think they're doing some games for the Wii as well. Not their main series (merely spinoffs of those) but I'm getting the impression that everyone's trying to get a few games on the Wii because it's the big unknown factor and because it's not as risky to do so.
Of course there's also the fact that the former lead designer of FF is making games for the XBox 360 but overall I think the PS3 will still get the majority of the RPG market (although less than last time). What happens with the rest of the gaming population is less certain, though.
No, Nintendo UNDERcuts the competition on prices and Nintendo puts a lot of emphasis on games.
Hell, even if you don't do that I've seen much text heavier titles translated into various european languages in less than two months.
Children's teeth are much softer than adults', I've regularly undergone drilling without painkillers as a kid and it never hurt as much as the one time I've done it without as an adult. That excludes the root canal surgery I got as a kid where the painkillers didn't work right. Didn't help that the doc told me "you were very brave" after I tried to scream the whole time.
The thing is, the trouble you get with running homebrew is included in the price, the alternatives where homebrew is encouraged are more expensive and many people are going the cheap route and subsequently complaining that they don't get the ease of using homebrew the pricier products offer.
AFAIK the Sony game division did make money in the past but Nintendo's strategy of "profit everywhere" resulted in Nintendo having twice SCE's profits. Of course I expect Nintendo is still selling stuff cheaper than they would if they didn't have the game revenue to count on, they've got tiny profit margins on the hardware, those would easily go to 50-150% manufacturing cost if they were Nintendo's primary source of income.
So are non-root user accounts on Linux DRM as well?
I seem to recall DRM including things like media that expires at a given date to replace rentals with downloads. Of course the latter isn't going to happen as long as DRM remains as breakable as it is.
Downloading an ISO will show you the beginning of the game and maybe that's not very representative of the final product. A good demo will be adjusted to make you experience a lot of stuf in a much shorter timeframe than in the full version. Granted that may be considered cheating but for e.g. the Prey demo I'd have appreciated had they showed a bit of the later game's combat and puzzles (obviously removing the story bits to prevent spoilers).
No but Windows wasn't sold at a loss with the plan to make up for it with game license fees so MS doesn't care what you do on it. Sony does care because it prevents their PSP from being profitable. If the PSP was sold at a price that makes a good profit for Sony it would be ~300-400$. But it isn't and that's why it's only slightly more expensive than the much cheaper to build DS.
presently there is NO way to run ISO's without kernel access.
Yes but few people care about the PSP's meager game offerings, I was talking about throwing all kinds of emulators and hundreds of ROMs on there. Sony doesn't want that since that means people don't buy PSP games and Nintendo even used a patent to fight handheld emulators because they don't want people buying their competitor's system to play illegal copies of their games.
What most people want to do with the system is to make it run illegally downloaded games, most of them meant for other systems and many still being made and sold by their rightsholders. This hacking is also contraproductive since it makes sure there is no real market for a handheld without these restrictions since people just buy a PSP and crack it.
1'm prty sre u cn undrstnd ths as wll. Stll isnt fun 2 rd ths. Thr is a rsn spllng rls hv bn estblshd.
Now get a few friends to do that along with you, post on many different websites and if this conversation had never happened Homeland Security would at least raise an eyebrow.