Close, you're referring to the late Sid Sackson. He's perhaps one of the graeatest and most prolific American game designers. Of his titles, check out Acquire, I'm the Boss, Can't Stop, Metropolis, and his book, A Gamut of Games. He also produced another 50+ games, and influenced a whole generation of game designers.
When I was Christmas Shopping for the D&D freaks in my extended family.
Though it is now officially the stupidest board game idea I have ever seen, It probably has a better chance of getting good sales than runner-up: "Blood Bowl" http://boardgames.about.com/cs/bloodbowl/...because people will want the figurines.
Actually, from what I understand it's a much better game than you imagine. Board games based on video games have come a long, long way from the PacMan & Centipede adaptations that were sub-par recreations of the video gaming experience.
Personally, I would relish an a la carte cable system, if only for the few pennies I would save dropping channels I do not watch; and if the bonus was available to add other channels which aren't currently available in exchange I would be on board in a second.
Keep: Food Network Cartoon Network Comedy Central Music Channels (MTV, VH1) Bravo
Drop: Lifetime ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN^2, ESPN(X+1/2) CMT PAX Disney
Take board games as an example. How many ways can you move a playing piece from point A to point B? Isn't Life just the same as Monopoly, which is no different from Trivial Pursuit, which is an obvious ripoff of Chutes and Ladders?
Actually, as a board game player, I take umbrage at your analogy. While the examples you provide are indeed boardgames, they are perhaps some of the most disliked by people who play boardgames. In the rankings of the 1,491 rated games on BoardGameGeek.com, you named #1487 - Life, #1464 - Monopoly, #1351 - Trivial Pursuit, and Dead Last #1491 Snakes (Chutes) and Ladders.
There are actually quite a lot of games that have nothing to do with moving from point A to B, using dice to accomplish a move, or even moving at all. And board games continue to innovate, and there are a lot of great games that are unfamiliar to most people. Check out some of the German 'Spiel des Jahres' (Game of the Year) winners and nominees for examples of good and innovative games.
Frink: You've got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
"In other news French legislation against junk e-mail has been delayed until the French can come up with a French sounding substitute for the word spam."
f you get mail, try to always reply... on their dime. E.g. when they have business reply stuff.
No, sending stuff back in Business Reply Envelopes does not incur higher costs for the company. IANAPostal Expert, but as I understant it, the company purchases a license allowing them to have business replies processed. That is, they've paid a flat fee for all of their business replies, so if you send them extra junk it won't cost them more. And if you send them exra paperwork thinking it would slow productivity, remember that most of those envelopes are opened automatically, and the wheat is separated from the chaff.
I don't mean to criticize geeks' choices of televisions and where they shop, but why is Best Buy (or Circuit City, or Tweeter, or Good Guys, or Ultimate) held up as the bastion of where technology is located? I work for an independent audio/video retailer, and as a specialty shop we are allowed access to better products, and can offer them at lower prices. Best Buy is a mass-merchant big-box store who retails through an internet portal and through several hundred retail locations, but they don't and can't carry the best product lines from manufacturers, and they definately do not have the best prices. I wish that in the future, if Taco or any other geek would like to link to a product that they think is awesome, they should link to the manufacturer's page, such as this one for the actual product, rather than a retail page.
Incidentally, the model shown on the Best Buy page is for the PDP-5031, not the PDP-5030, which is the actual Pioneer Model. This is most likely a situation where Best Buy has a unique model number so that they cannot be price-shopped, but is also probably a lower-grade (and therefore cheaper) display than the acutal 5030 (for a better profit margin). In reality, if you are serious about a plasma display, especially the Pioneer or Sony models, then a specialty retailer is where you would want to look, because Best Buy does not and cannot carry Pioneer Elite products, such as the beautiful PRO-1000
In short, just because a retailer has a product, and it has a manufacturer's name on it, and it carries a hefty pricetag, does not necessarily mean that it is the best and (in this case both literally and figuratively) brightest that the manufacturer has to offer.
I do bookkeeping for an independent music retailer, and we buy from all 5 majors (Sony, BMG, UMVD, EMD, WEA) as well as a number of distributors and one-stops. I can attest that approximate wholesale (according to our computer which spits me out average cost whenever I invoice) as approximately $10.02. Now that's not to say that everything costs that, just that's the average from over time (several years worth of invoices). So a markup to $15, is actually ~50% up, rather than 100% (whereas actual retail list is somewhere around 100% at 19.95)
Is this an accurate representation of what it costs the music industry to make titles? No. As a matter of fact, one of the more egregious examples of bad pricing was that recently we could purchase Sony mid-line titles directly from Sony for $8.99... but we could buy those same titles from an overseas distributor--the same titles made by Sony, just across the Atlantic-- for $6.99. With taxes, freight, and import, we were still something like $1.75 cheaper per disc. Insanity, I tell you.
While I was studying in Germany ('99-'00) the local supermarket had shopping carts like this, with and LCD display at the front of the cart with an IR sensor on top... when you passed under hanging IR transmitters it would beep and tell you specials for what aisle you were in. Seemed a perfectly reasonable and simple solution..
LCDs weren't too fond of cold and wet weather, but since the carts were kept under cover in the parking lot, and since you had to put in a DM1,0 deposit in it (like the quarter keeper at american Aldi groceries) there was also little cart loss/misplacement.
In the movie, the character is played by a child. So there are scenes where there is implied sex, but in the movie it's between two adults, while the actual actor is actually a kid. Of course the child actor doesn't really do any sex acts, but it skirts right along the border.
Well, yes and no to the child parts. Yes he is a child, having been born in 1966, and the film released in 1979 would have made him 12-13 during filming, but no also because he's a little person and is at or close to his full adult size when they were filming. Additionally, in the film he portrays a character that refuses to grow after his third birthday... and it obviously would have been hard to get a performance like his out of a three to seven-year-old. I think some of the furor may have arisen because he's playing a character that is very young that has sexual relations with a sixteen-year-old.... who also falls under the eighteen-year-old line. (Oh, and the sixteen-year-old girl has sex with the protagonist's dad as well.. so that probably didn't go over so well either.)
-The Tin Drum - was and probably still is banned in OKC -Kids -American Pie I & II -Porkys I, II, and Revenge -In fact, pretty much all teen sex comedies -Lolita (old and new)
Do these films appeal to purient interests? Would we be better off without them because they portray characters that are under the age of 18?
Kind of odd though... nothing illegal about people under 18 having sex in most states, but to depict such is illegal... and before this ruling it was illegal to portray persons "acting" under the age of 18.
I disagree with the used-car analogy. When one purchases a book, the book is a means to an end in 99.99% of all occasions, and that end is to read it and be entertained or learn the information contained within. A car on the other hand is a tool that is purchased for the owner to utilize. A car has a finite life (albeit with the news story of the Volvo with 2,000,000 miles, that life can be long) whereas a book is a can last until the binding breaks down and the pages are lost. One cannot simply purchase a new page 87 and place it back in the book and have it perform almost exactly as new.
People are precisely right on CD costs. Whenever you look at a breakdown of the costs on a CD, companies throw in all these extra costs, like marketing/promotion, record company cut, and artists cut....
Here's how the marketing budget is being wasted: 1) On an average of at least once a week, the music shop where I work receives an OVERNIGHTED package of promo materials for us to put up in our store... usually consisting of 1 poster, and usually of someone mostly obscure, or of someone who would not move in sufficient quantity for us to warrant putting up a poster 2) We received probably 3-7 promotional packages a day containing posters, promo flats, giveaway CD samplers, value-adds and other things that cost the store $0, but instead come out of the marketing budget 3) Additionally, we also receive promos of a lot of things that usually go into a nice box to never be heard, or sold to another store for their used stock. All of these materials contribute to your higher CD costs, but you don't even like these bands.
Another question that's been on my mind for a while is: Well, once the CD has gone out of its initial print run, why don't prices drop because they don't need to promote it anymore, it's part of the back-catalog then? Well, not really... manufacturers are more keen on cutting-out and dropping from the catalog older releases by an artist rather than moving them to mid-price.
And one more thing: There are great artists out there on nice independent labels that know how to manage their money and don't squander it on useless promotion nor to line the executive's pockets. Case in point: The White Stripes, on Detroit's Sympathy for the Record Industry label... Releases ~$13, excellent rock reminiscent of early Zeppelin... Hell, there are a whole litany of these artists featured in Coalition of Independent Music Stores stores... find your local store at www.cimsmusic.com
Slashdot Mirror
Close, you're referring to the late Sid Sackson. He's perhaps one of the graeatest and most prolific American game designers. Of his titles, check out Acquire, I'm the Boss, Can't Stop, Metropolis, and his book, A Gamut of Games. He also produced another 50+ games, and influenced a whole generation of game designers.
When I was Christmas Shopping for the D&D freaks in my extended family.
...because people will want the figurines.
Though it is now officially the stupidest board game idea I have ever seen, It probably has a better chance of getting good sales than runner-up: "Blood Bowl" http://boardgames.about.com/cs/bloodbowl/
Actually, from what I understand it's a much better game than you imagine. Board games based on video games have come a long, long way from the PacMan & Centipede adaptations that were sub-par recreations of the video gaming experience.
Personally, I would relish an a la carte cable system, if only for the few pennies I would save dropping channels I do not watch; and if the bonus was available to add other channels which aren't currently available in exchange I would be on board in a second.
Keep:
Food Network
Cartoon Network
Comedy Central
Music Channels (MTV, VH1)
Bravo
Drop:
Lifetime
ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN^2, ESPN(X+1/2)
CMT
PAX
Disney
Add:
TechTV
Boomerang
MTV2
Fine Living
DIY
Take board games as an example. How many ways can you move a playing piece from point A to point B? Isn't Life just the same as Monopoly, which is no different from Trivial Pursuit, which is an obvious ripoff of Chutes and Ladders?
Actually, as a board game player, I take umbrage at your analogy. While the examples you provide are indeed boardgames, they are perhaps some of the most disliked by people who play boardgames. In the rankings of the 1,491 rated games on BoardGameGeek.com, you named #1487 - Life, #1464 - Monopoly, #1351 - Trivial Pursuit, and Dead Last #1491 Snakes (Chutes) and Ladders.
There are actually quite a lot of games that have nothing to do with moving from point A to B, using dice to accomplish a move, or even moving at all. And board games continue to innovate, and there are a lot of great games that are unfamiliar to most people. Check out some of the German 'Spiel des Jahres' (Game of the Year) winners and nominees for examples of good and innovative games.
Daleks are called things like Kev or Steve. And you know that they make excellent plumbers because they've got that plunger-arm. Death or plumbing!
Frink: You've got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
Seriously, don't these give you the willies?
So this is effectively the physical conterpart to a tracking cookie?
"In other news French legislation against junk e-mail has been delayed until the French can come up with a French sounding substitute for the word spam."
Curriel porc?
Eschew obfuscation.
f you get mail, try to always reply... on their dime. E.g. when they have business reply stuff.
No, sending stuff back in Business Reply Envelopes does not incur higher costs for the company. IANAPostal Expert, but as I understant it, the company purchases a license allowing them to have business replies processed. That is, they've paid a flat fee for all of their business replies, so if you send them extra junk it won't cost them more. And if you send them exra paperwork thinking it would slow productivity, remember that most of those envelopes are opened automatically, and the wheat is separated from the chaff.
My God, it's devoid of stars!
I don't mean to criticize geeks' choices of televisions and where they shop, but why is Best Buy (or Circuit City, or Tweeter, or Good Guys, or Ultimate) held up as the bastion of where technology is located? I work for an independent audio/video retailer, and as a specialty shop we are allowed access to better products, and can offer them at lower prices. Best Buy is a mass-merchant big-box store who retails through an internet portal and through several hundred retail locations, but they don't and can't carry the best product lines from manufacturers, and they definately do not have the best prices. I wish that in the future, if Taco or any other geek would like to link to a product that they think is awesome, they should link to the manufacturer's page, such as this one for the actual product, rather than a retail page.
Incidentally, the model shown on the Best Buy page is for the PDP-5031, not the PDP-5030, which is the actual Pioneer Model. This is most likely a situation where Best Buy has a unique model number so that they cannot be price-shopped, but is also probably a lower-grade (and therefore cheaper) display than the acutal 5030 (for a better profit margin). In reality, if you are serious about a plasma display, especially the Pioneer or Sony models, then a specialty retailer is where you would want to look, because Best Buy does not and cannot carry Pioneer Elite products, such as the beautiful PRO-1000
In short, just because a retailer has a product, and it has a manufacturer's name on it, and it carries a hefty pricetag, does not necessarily mean that it is the best and (in this case both literally and figuratively) brightest that the manufacturer has to offer.
...who was on "Facts of Life?"
Natalie Green, I think.
No, wait, that was Mindy Cohn
Forget I said anything.
Isn't this less of an issue there because you can just move your sims chip to a different phone?
I seem to recall a German roommate of mine doing this... and it was commical because he was looking to do SMS and his new phone did not have an ö.
Or a lot of 'Vacation Signups' (i.e. sign up for an AOL account when you're on vacation to have access , but then you cancel when you get home)
I do bookkeeping for an independent music retailer, and we buy from all 5 majors (Sony, BMG, UMVD, EMD, WEA) as well as a number of distributors and one-stops. I can attest that approximate wholesale (according to our computer which spits me out average cost whenever I invoice) as approximately $10.02. Now that's not to say that everything costs that, just that's the average from over time (several years worth of invoices). So a markup to $15, is actually ~50% up, rather than 100% (whereas actual retail list is somewhere around 100% at 19.95)
Is this an accurate representation of what it costs the music industry to make titles? No. As a matter of fact, one of the more egregious examples of bad pricing was that recently we could purchase Sony mid-line titles directly from Sony for $8.99... but we could buy those same titles from an overseas distributor--the same titles made by Sony, just across the Atlantic-- for $6.99. With taxes, freight, and import, we were still something like $1.75 cheaper per disc. Insanity, I tell you.
inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth
Any relation to Hubert Farnsworth, inventor of the Smell-o-Scope, the Fing-Longer, and the Death Clock?
Can you put the batteries in backward and have it make your feel young and foolish again?
Well, I guess you could get that with a few whacks to the head.
While I was studying in Germany ('99-'00) the local supermarket had shopping carts like this, with and LCD display at the front of the cart with an IR sensor on top... when you passed under hanging IR transmitters it would beep and tell you specials for what aisle you were in. Seemed a perfectly reasonable and simple solution..
LCDs weren't too fond of cold and wet weather, but since the carts were kept under cover in the parking lot, and since you had to put in a DM1,0 deposit in it (like the quarter keeper at american Aldi groceries) there was also little cart loss/misplacement.
Hmmm... what CD players does your station use? We use Denon DNC630s, and it played just fine...
Sony Super Audio CDs do 5.1, as does DVD Audio. We have them where I work, and they are very nice... give me goosebumps.
In the movie, the character is played by a child. So there are scenes where there is implied sex, but in the movie it's between two adults, while the actual actor is actually a kid. Of course the child actor doesn't really do any sex acts, but it skirts right along the border.
Well, yes and no to the child parts. Yes he is a child, having been born in 1966, and the film released in 1979 would have made him 12-13 during filming, but no also because he's a little person and is at or close to his full adult size when they were filming. Additionally, in the film he portrays a character that refuses to grow after his third birthday... and it obviously would have been hard to get a performance like his out of a three to seven-year-old. I think some of the furor may have arisen because he's playing a character that is very young that has sexual relations with a sixteen-year-old.... who also falls under the eighteen-year-old line. (Oh, and the sixteen-year-old girl has sex with the protagonist's dad as well.. so that probably didn't go over so well either.)
Off the top of my head:
-The Tin Drum - was and probably still is banned in OKC
-Kids
-American Pie I & II
-Porkys I, II, and Revenge
-In fact, pretty much all teen sex comedies
-Lolita (old and new)
Do these films appeal to purient interests? Would we be better off without them because they portray characters that are under the age of 18?
Kind of odd though... nothing illegal about people under 18 having sex in most states, but to depict such is illegal... and before this ruling it was illegal to portray persons "acting" under the age of 18.
I disagree with the used-car analogy. When one purchases a book, the book is a means to an end in 99.99% of all occasions, and that end is to read it and be entertained or learn the information contained within. A car on the other hand is a tool that is purchased for the owner to utilize. A car has a finite life (albeit with the news story of the Volvo with 2,000,000 miles, that life can be long) whereas a book is a can last until the binding breaks down and the pages are lost. One cannot simply purchase a new page 87 and place it back in the book and have it perform almost exactly as new.
People are precisely right on CD costs. Whenever you look at a breakdown of the costs on a CD, companies throw in all these extra costs, like marketing/promotion, record company cut, and artists cut....
Here's how the marketing budget is being wasted: 1) On an average of at least once a week, the music shop where I work receives an OVERNIGHTED package of promo materials for us to put up in our store... usually consisting of 1 poster, and usually of someone mostly obscure, or of someone who would not move in sufficient quantity for us to warrant putting up a poster 2) We received probably 3-7 promotional packages a day containing posters, promo flats, giveaway CD samplers, value-adds and other things that cost the store $0, but instead come out of the marketing budget 3) Additionally, we also receive promos of a lot of things that usually go into a nice box to never be heard, or sold to another store for their used stock. All of these materials contribute to your higher CD costs, but you don't even like these bands.
Another question that's been on my mind for a while is: Well, once the CD has gone out of its initial print run, why don't prices drop because they don't need to promote it anymore, it's part of the back-catalog then? Well, not really... manufacturers are more keen on cutting-out and dropping from the catalog older releases by an artist rather than moving them to mid-price.
And one more thing: There are great artists out there on nice independent labels that know how to manage their money and don't squander it on useless promotion nor to line the executive's pockets. Case in point: The White Stripes, on Detroit's Sympathy for the Record Industry label... Releases ~$13, excellent rock reminiscent of early Zeppelin... Hell, there are a whole litany of these artists featured in Coalition of Independent Music Stores stores... find your local store at www.cimsmusic.com