I didn't say that scientific discoveries can't be serendipitous. I said that counting on serendipity instead of active research for discoveries is foolish. One needs only look at how many discoveries were sought versus simply found for proof.
Seriously? "Stumble upon" science? Man, I'm glad you had no authority in the Apollo program.
The idea is that you don't wait for these technologies to serendipitously come along, you go research and find them. Maybe your success will be limited, but in the process, you will probably stumble upon things that will be useful in other fields. In this day and age when we're approaching ecological disasters and energy crises, I think that a lot of the technology researched in working on a manned mission to Mars would be very useful in other fields.
You know, whenever I see someone quip how corrupt the US government is, I secretly wish that they could live for a year or two in a place where the government really is corrupt. Methinks they'd come back and never flippantly make such a comment again.
Exactly. I run several hobbyist sites for gaming and such. I don't run ads, I don't charge for it, it's just for fun for games I play. The free version of Google Apps was absolutely perfect for us as a free alternative to paying for hosting our own e-mail services. Plus, everyone was pretty much familiar with the Gmail interface. I've set up several gaming "guilds" with basic sites and e-mail addresses.
Back when you could have up to 50 or so accounts, this was absolutely perfect. When they reduced it to 10, that put a serious dent in our ability to host all but the smallest of our guilds. Now that it's zero, well, I suppose I'll be finding and alternate solution because I simply cannot afford $50 per user per year for something that's just a hobby.
I don't understand why Google doesn't come up with some happy medium. For example, have a more limited free tier, something that allows you to manage 50 or 100 free e-mail accounts and calendars (with Google ads on them) with access to Gtalk, a total of 100 Google Docs (or 10 MB or some other limitation), and a few pages. If you want all of the full suite of hosting services, access to discussion groups, metrics, advertising, a larger site layout, etc. then you charge the $50 per user per year.
As it is, might get Google a few more paying customers, but more likely than not, it will just drive a lot of people away from Google and to another service. That's too bad, because I'd really like to continue using Google for these groups I set up.
I don't have time to respond to trolls, but I'll just point this out. From my OP above:
The average City of Heroes launch day veteran has probably spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on this game, many much more.
And then from your post:
The average launch day veteran actually probably spent a lot more than that.
That's the average launch day veteran, not the average player veteran - now you're starting to move the goal posts away from your original statement.
Yeah. Moving those goalposts... I'll read the rest of your post some other time, but if this is how it starts, I'm not feeling very encouraged that it will provide much insight.
- $15 per month for 8 years, 2 months = $1,470. Plus around $120 to $150 for the initial purchase and major expansions, and that puts you around $1,590 to $1,620 just for owning the game with one account. The average launch day veteran actually probably spent a lot more than that. Count in around an additional $40 or so for collector's editions, $100 for various add-on packs, $100 to $200 for microtransactions, and it's easily upwards of $2,000. If someone has two accounts, double all of that. If someone paid airfare and hotel costs to attend a convention or Player Summit, that could easily add between $500 and $1,000 almost at a minimum. Multiple trips, multiple outlays of cash. Run a fan site? Hosting costs, domain name registration, etc. could easily run up a few hundred bucks more. The average launch day veteran spent $1,500 to $2,000 on the game. A few might have spent less if they paid by the year and didn't buy any expansions or add-on packs. A few might be in the neighborhood of $10,000. So whatever math you're using, you're way off.
- First of all, you'd have to be pretty dense to have so many people claiming first-hand and second-hand knowledge of these negotiations and yet still believe that they didn't happen. You sound like the idiotic birthers who still don't believe that Obama was born in Hawaii in that there is no standard of "proof" that you will accept as real. Second of all, I defy you to explain why millions are required to be ponied up to acquire the game. Frankly, you sound like an NCsoft shill, given that they put out a statement halfway through October saying that they had "exhausted all options" in selling the game. Um... Really? I have a 5-year-old Honda Accord that I'll sell you for $100,000. It's even in pretty good shape. What? You don't want to buy it? Well, I guess I've exhausted all options in trying to sell my car then, and it's really your fault for not ponying up the arbitrarily hugely inflated price I pulled out of my ass. No, actually I call it being damned greedy and disingenuous, and completely disrespectful of people making good faith offers and screwing over your customers.
- I'm not even going to dignify the claim that the game wasn't making money or stable with a response. It's already been addressed by the Korea Times article and thoroughly debunked in other venues. Again, you either don't know what you're talking about or you're deliberately misrepresenting facts to troll.
I take it you're one of the forum trolls that was naysaying the crap every step of the way? Because you're spouting their party/propaganda line almost word-for-word, and you clearly either have no clue what you're talking about, or worse, you do and you're deliberately misrepresenting the truth to troll people.
Etc... etc... indeed.
As for the "tempest in a teapot," it's gotten national attention from several high-profile names, made virtually all gaming journalism sites of note, even hit the radar of mainstream news organizations like CNN and CNBC, and now there's a blisteringly negative article about them plastered on the front page of the Money section of one of the largest Korean news sites right in their own back yard. I'm not sure how much publicity you consider something to have needed getting before you consider it more than a "tempest in a teapot," but to most people, that's a pretty damn significant uproar, especially given the topic at hand.
This is true, we always knew that the game would shut down at some point. However...
The MMO genre of game is especially conducive to getting people to invest enormous amounts of time, effort, and money into the product. The average City of Heroes launch day veteran has probably spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on this game, many much more. And many have spent thousands of hours playing--not just mashing buttons, but coming up with creative stories, even contributing to user-generated content areas such as the Mission Architect system that allowed players to create their own custom enemies, contacts, mission objectives, dialog, etc. In other words, what NCsoft doesn't realize is that at this point, we have just as much stake in the game as they do (some would argue more), yet they hold the ultimate authority to unilaterally declare, "Okay, game over, we're going to destroy years of your effort and a large monetary investment." Not because the game wasn't making money--it was--but because they're undergoing a corporate "realignment".
Not only that, but in the process, they laid off over 80 employees at Paragon Studios, the Mountain View, California development studio that built and maintained City of Heroes. Before the shutdown announcement, a group of employees and investors tried to acquire the IP from NCsoft to keep the game running, but NCsoft wouldn't sell it. After the shutdown announcement, thanks to the SaveCoH movement, another attempt was made, but again, NCsoft wouldn't play ball, even releasing a statement that they had "exhausted all options" in trying to sell the game. Excuse me? Exhausted all options? They hold the IP. Now that the shutdown has come and gone and the community has largely dispersed, practically speaking, it's worth zero. It's impossible for them to have "exausted all options" unless and until the ink is dried on the page transferring the game and its IP to another company or organization that can run it.
Not only that, but this isn't the first time that NCsoft has done this. This is the fifth game in as many years. Auto Assault. Exteel. Dungeon Runners. Tabula Rasa. Now City of Heroes. Clearly to me, the company is an MMO killer. The players of City of Heroes aren't the first group of people to have their hard work and investment destroyed, and apparently, NCsoft doesn't really care very much that it's systematically destroying communities and the output of people's creative expression. As a gamer, why the hell would I ever want to buy a game like Guild Wars 2 or any of NCsoft's other games? Answer: I wouldn't, and they won't be seeing any money from me again.
So does NCsoft have the legal right to shut down City of Heroes, lay off everyone at Paragon Studios, and carry on as if nothing happened even though the company's own investor relations statements indicate that the game was steadily profitable and it had the overwhelming support of its development staff and management? Sure, no one is disputing that. However, I do firmly believe that NCsoft, and MMO game companies in particular, have an ethical obligation to do everything they can to plan for a game's sunset ahead of time and be willing to release the game property to another company or third-party organization willing to take over running it if one is willing to (which, in this case, there were multiple parties interested in doing so). To not do so shows an immense amount of disrespect for your customers, and you run the risk of generating the negative publicity and outcry such as the one NCsoft is facing right now.
The charges leveled are probably simply to hold him on till they dig through his life.
Personally, I think that the charges leveled have little to do with this guy; they are to teach everyone else a lesson: Don't do this, or we'll make your life mighty inconvenient. They don't want people with wires and fuses hanging off of them constantly trying to get through airports because they think it's clever or funny, causing massive logjams in security so that the people who just want to get from point A to point B can go their merry way.
It's the same reason why if you joke about, "It's not like I have a BOMB in my briefcase!", they'll haul your ass off to jail. Not because they actually believe that you have a bomb in your briefcase, but because if someone actually does think that someone has a bomb, they want that person treated with the utmost of seriousness.
I don't like the situation the way it is, and I'm sure that there could be more sanity around the whole issue, but I also think that what they do is not completely without merit and I do kinda understand where they're coming from. People shouldn't engage in assholery with people who are responsible for protecting the security and lives of others. Most sane people wouldn't pull out a realistic-looking toy gun, point it at a police officer, and laugh and say, "Ha ha! I'm just kidding! No need to get all upset about a simple joke..." But then we have people who think it's perfectly fine to engage in such tomfoolery with TSA agents.
I hear that there's a vast conspiracy to load up every airplane that flies with a highly flammable and explosive material, that sometimes this material even makes up the bulk of the weight of the aircraft in flight. It's everywhere on the plane and people doesn't even realize it, even stored in vast quantities inside the wings of most commercial airliners. The rumor I heard, and I know this sounds a bit outlandish, is that it's even pumped into the engines, where it's actually very common for it to cause small explosions that most people don't even realize or think about.
The thought of it scared me so much that I decided that I would only drive places in my car instead.
Did you see the part where it says, "First time accepted submitter mbeckman writes..."?
I suppose that mbeckman could be a buddy of Timothy, who greenlit the article for him to make him feel good on his first try. But I find a much simpler explanation much more plausible: Timothy was probably browsing the submissions and saw mbeckman's first and greenlit it because at the time he was browsing, he didn't see whoever57's. I know it's not as conspiracy theorish, but there you are.
Really though, is this a thing now? Grousing because you don't get your article greenlit on Slashdot? I've had several that I thought should have been and weren't, even things that got greenlit later with what I thought was an inferior write-up. I've also had some that were greenlit. I had probably three or four that I thought were really good turned down before I got my first one greenlit. After that, I didn't care so much. If I submit something and it gets greenlit, great; if not, oh well. I like Slashdot, but I don't particularly need it to validate my self-worth.
As a Georgian, I'm sorry we're on that list. If it goes through, I'll do my best to make sure that Atlanta (which is actually a bit more liberal than the podunk villages out in the sticks where most of these people live) promptly secedes from the New Confederacy and rejoins the Union. We'll be like the Andorra or Lesotho of the South. Please don't burn down my house when Civil War II starts, I really like my stuff...
Really? This tired old joke yet again? You're going with "Computer geeks can't get girls!" in this age when the name "Bill" is almost always followed by "and Melinda"? When Mark Zuckerberg is married, but if he weren't, he could probably walk into a room and pick any girl he wants? When geek girl is the new chic, and the goddess Felicia Day proudly proclaims, "I'm the One That's Cool"?
The 1980s John Hughes geek caricatures called and want their stereotypes back, because I've got news for you: Nowadays, we are the rich and sexually jaded.
If you can prove how you voted, to anybody, you can demonstrate to some interested third party that you voted the way they wanted you to. Which means you could sell your vote, or be coerced into voting a certain way.
That's also why any voting proposals that involve a receipt showing that your vote for Smith rather than Jones are a bad idea, as are any proposals involving a way to look up your own vote online after the election.
You're right, that is a good reason, and as I sit here, I can't say that I hope they change the law. There's too much opportunity for employers to, for example, demand that an employee show proof that they voted one way or another or else be fired. (Or vice versa, and be rewarded.)
Nevertheless, if I were to see something like this, I'd willingly break the law and record it. They can charge me if they want to, but it's too important to get the news out that it's happening than to worry about what would probably be a slap on the wrist. Even if I faced major penalties, people are dying for our right to vote, and whatever they charge me with, it would be worth it to do what I can to ensure that that right is not violated.
Since posting his video, he has been contacted by NBC news and other media. His act, although technically illegal, is making a HUGE difference. If it were me, I know I would feel justified in breaking the law. I hope that he feels the same, and that no DA would even think of prosecuting him for anything.
why do we keep calling tablets "ipad knockoffs" you DO know that tablets existed for a good 10 years before the ipad do you not?
Not only that, but the Android tablets I have kick the crap out of iPads. I also think that it's interesting that Apple is now going to come out with a 7" tablet after the Kindle Fire and Asus Nexus 7 have been proven to hit a sweet spot in the market. Look at who is making ripoffs now...
I don't think the kind of consultant you are talking about and the kind of consultant referred to in the summary are the same kind of consultant:
Teams of consultants from McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group are reportedly swarming headquarters to advise the CEO Rory Read...
These are the kind of consultants that tell the CEO that he doesn't need those expensive engineers with health benefits and unemployment insurance. For a reasonable fee (that will end up costing AMD even more money in the long run), these consultants will be able to bring in some of their company's other consultants and not have to worry about silly little things like benefits, thus reducing costs. For the next financial quarter or two--certainly long enough to cash out your stock options and find another job at a company that will pay you more because of your success here--it's win-win!
I'm serious. Consultants are nothing but leeches, and they will almost always give you advice on how you can make your company just like every other company in your industry. I yearn for the days when companies looked for ways to set themselves apart, to stand out from the crowd, instead of trying desperately to follow lockstep in line with everyone else. Other companies have massive layoffs, so hey, let's do it too!
Especially the engineers. You need engineers to keep doing what you do. This really bodes badly for AMD, because without engineers, they're basically slitting their company's wrists. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that they're getting rid of the ones with seniority at that to try to save a few bucks on salary while simultaneously bleeding themselves out of knowledge and experience.
But hey, it's their funeral, so whatever gets the stock price up a little bit so that they can cash out their options, right?
Public education? Some of the content does that, but a lot of it is very partisan.
...Says someone who probably thinks that Fox News is "Fair and Balanced." MSNBC? THAT is partisan. Fox News? THAT is partisan. People who think that PBS is partisan either don't watch PBS or they consider stuff like teaching evolution as a commie takeover of education. They think that factual reporting is partisan if it's inconvenient to their position. Did you watch PBS during, say, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal? I did, and believe me, they were not cheerleaders. The news shows are as objective as any I've seen, with the possible exception of some international news sources aren't aren't so U.S.-centric. In fact, they're so objective that a lot of people don't like watching their news shows due to the lack of excitement that comes from injecting partisan politics into the stories like most other news networks do. Some of us like getting news from a source that isn't beholden to corporations and that depend on sensationalist ratings for their monetary lifeblood.
They claim to be non-partisan because they don't accept advertising, which is rediculoust. At this point, I'd rather they get off the government teat and run ads.
And this is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever read. Like I said, you stop giving oil companies subsidies and tax breaks, raise the capital gains rate, increase the top marginal income tax rate, cut defense spending, and then we can start talking about getting people off the government teat. Otherwise, shut the hell up and leave the federal subsidy to public broadcasting alone.
Oh wait that's right, it's only the government teat when it's services for the poor and middle class, isn't it?
Romney doesn't call for NPR, actually PBS, to be eliminated,
He is calling for public subsidies to public broadcasting to be eliminating. This includes both PBS and NPR.
...he thinks there is no reason for the Federal government to supply it with 12% of its budget.
...And he's wrong. There is an excellent reason for the Federal government to supply them with money. These stations are non-profits specifically dedicated to public education. I get so sick of this attitude that it's not government's job to promote the general welfare of this country. Go re-read the Constitution sometime, it's in the first sentence.
Public radio and public television have done more to educate pre-schoolers than any other education program. Here's a list of bullet points that I ran across recently:
PBS is the number one source of media content for pre-school teachers.
The American public has named PBS the most trusted public institution for nine consecutive years.
Children who watched Sesame Street in pre-school spend more time reading for fun in high school and obtain higher grades in English, math, and science.
Kids who played the Martha Speaks app for two weeks had a 31% gain in vocabulary tested.
Last year, PBS offered more than 500 hours of arts and cultural programming watched by more than 121 million people.
While the federal appropriation equals about 15% of the system's revenue, that's an aggregate number. For many PBS stations, including those that serve people who may need it most, this counts for as much as 50%.
...And there were a few other bullet points, but you get the idea. Whether you're on the left or the right of center, almost everyone agrees that PBS and NPR are worthwhile.
But if you cut the federal subsidy, the end result is that a lot of the smaller stations serving poorer areas that can't raise as much money as those in more prosperous areas will go under. Of course, that seems to be the MO of Republicans these days--we want all of our benefits, and to hell with the poor people.
If the Federal government no longer provides PBS with 12% of its budget, what happens? It either finds someone else to replace that money, or it continues to operate at 88% of current funding.
As I said above, a lot of stations in poorer areas will go under. You seem to be under the impression that anyone who wants to can just cut their budget by 12%. If you're decently well-off, you probably can, but this is why people like me get so frustrated. You have no idea what it's like when people tell you, "Just cut 12%!" when you're barely scraping by.
So, your post is not only wrong, but grossly misleading. That is pretty much the picture for the rest of your post - false or misleading, at best. I don't know who finds that "informative", but you obviously duped someone.
No, the only thing that's misleading is your attempt to justify Romney's brilliant plan to solve our budget problems by eliminating the government subsidy to PBS and NPR. It will most definitely kill its availability in a lot of areas, especially more rural communities and poor communities, the very places where it's needed most.
You've also effectively proved yet again why people like me get so frustrated at Republicans. Look, I understand we have a large deficit. I'm not oblivious to the fact that we're overspending in this country. But why is Romney picking on public broadcasting? I've heard the rationale that, well, you have to go after everything--everyone has to tighten their belts. But it's just awful convenient that to Republicans, everyone having to tighten their belts means that poor and middle class people, p
I just hope they don't get discouraged at the number of downloads and installations that don't receive donations. I suspect that a lot of people are like me--they don't mind throwing a few bucks their way (or even a few dozen), but we tend to install, reinstall, set up virtual machines, install yet again, and so on across dozens of machines. I might give a one-off donation, but I'm not going to donate every time I install a copy of Ubuntu.
That's one of the things that's so damn frustrating about Windows and why Ubuntu (or really, any Linux distribution) is so useful. Windows is an awesome OS and I don't mind paying the license fee to run it, but I don't have a few thousand dollars to install it on each of my hobbyist VMs I use for development and testing stuff. Back in the days when I could just use my product code to install it willy-nilly on a few dozen machines, each of which I probably run for a few days and then reinstall for some new reason, it's not that big a deal. But now that everything phones home and nags the hell out of you and denies you service to what you bought, it's not such an appealing option. Hopefully Microsoft will someday realize that they're actively driving people like me away from Windows, but until then, I'll happily cast my lot with Ubuntu instead.
That's what experiments like the Biosphere are for, to test the feasibility of completely self-contained self-sustaining miniature ecosystems. If you just sent up some bacteria and a whale, you might be right. But if you sent up some plants that can live in the thin atmosphere and photosynthesize the sunlight there and add in some bacteria that can digest the dead plant matter and release nutrients that the plants can use as food, then within a few centuries, you might have a jungle. At that point, you might be able to send up other lifeforms that can live and thrive in the new ecosystem without destroying it. Keep iterating this process, and the planet might just be habitable to us in some not-insurmountable period of time. Even if not, who knows, it might be more conducive to using for various resources.
No, he did not answer "yes." This is from the transcript of the voir dire:
THE COURT:The next question is, have you or a family member or someone very close to you ever been involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness?
Let's see. On the first row, who would raise their hand to that question? All right. let's go to Mr. Hogan.
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: In 2008, after my company went belly up, the programmer that worked for me filed a lawsuit against me and ultimately, across the next few months, it was dismissed and in such a fashion that neither one of us could sue the other one for that matter.
THE COURT: What was his -- what was the employee's claim?
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: It was a dispute over the software that we had developed, whether it belonged to the company or to him, and I had documents that showed it belonged to the company. Ultimately, as I said, it would -- we settled out of court and it was dismissed.
See what he did there? Instead of saying "yes," he answered as if that were the only case. By omitting the other two cases he was involved in, he effectively misrepresented that this was the only case. I'm sorry, but it is extremely foreseeable that being sued by Seagate is a material fact that should have been disclosed. He also lied later in this exchange:
THE COURT: Okay. All right. Thank you.... So I want to make sure that both Mr. Hogan, and Ms. Rougieri, that you would apply the law as I instruct you and not based on your understanding of the law based on your own cases. Is that correct, Mr. Hogan?
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes.....
THE COURT: Okay. All right. Would that in any way -- you'll be instructed on what the law is and would you be able to follow the instructions I give you on the law, even if it may not completely correspond to what you may know about the patent system or the intellectual property laws?
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes, I follow your instructions.
He said months ago that his own experiences relating to patents helped him decide how he should rule, and then he proceeded to "help" other jurors understand based on that information--NOT the judge's instruction. And his statements since have indicated that he was going out of his way to be on this jury so that he could be a part of this big case.
It all looks pretty straight-forward to me. The guy borrowed $25,000 from Seagate in 1991, didn't pay it back, got sued, declared bankruptcy to dodge his financial obligation, and apparently still is buttsore about it. In 2012, he had an ax to grind against Seagate, he hid relevant information to get on the jury so that he could grind it, and then he proceeded to trash Samsung--the currently majority owners of Seagate--to get back at them. And now he's going out to the press and lying about the questions and instructions to not look like the tool he is.
I hope they nail his ass to the wall for juror misconduct and that Samsung gets an actual fair and impartial trial out of it.
I think you meant "the price has dropped by 2/3rds" or "prices today are 1/3rd what they were 3 years ago".
You're wrong. I bought an SSD the other day that used to sell for $200, but now they're selling it for $600 off. I'd post a link, but I--hopefully understandably--don't want everyone else to ruin my supply.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't say that scientific discoveries can't be serendipitous. I said that counting on serendipity instead of active research for discoveries is foolish. One needs only look at how many discoveries were sought versus simply found for proof.
Oxygen means either the oxygen atom or the O2 molecule. Stop playing semantics.
Gee, if only there were some way to convert one to the other, maybe even have a fuel source as a byproduct, wouldn't that be a wonderful dream?
Seriously? "Stumble upon" science? Man, I'm glad you had no authority in the Apollo program.
The idea is that you don't wait for these technologies to serendipitously come along, you go research and find them. Maybe your success will be limited, but in the process, you will probably stumble upon things that will be useful in other fields. In this day and age when we're approaching ecological disasters and energy crises, I think that a lot of the technology researched in working on a manned mission to Mars would be very useful in other fields.
So, much like the USA then.
You know, whenever I see someone quip how corrupt the US government is, I secretly wish that they could live for a year or two in a place where the government really is corrupt. Methinks they'd come back and never flippantly make such a comment again.
Exactly. I run several hobbyist sites for gaming and such. I don't run ads, I don't charge for it, it's just for fun for games I play. The free version of Google Apps was absolutely perfect for us as a free alternative to paying for hosting our own e-mail services. Plus, everyone was pretty much familiar with the Gmail interface. I've set up several gaming "guilds" with basic sites and e-mail addresses.
Back when you could have up to 50 or so accounts, this was absolutely perfect. When they reduced it to 10, that put a serious dent in our ability to host all but the smallest of our guilds. Now that it's zero, well, I suppose I'll be finding and alternate solution because I simply cannot afford $50 per user per year for something that's just a hobby.
I don't understand why Google doesn't come up with some happy medium. For example, have a more limited free tier, something that allows you to manage 50 or 100 free e-mail accounts and calendars (with Google ads on them) with access to Gtalk, a total of 100 Google Docs (or 10 MB or some other limitation), and a few pages. If you want all of the full suite of hosting services, access to discussion groups, metrics, advertising, a larger site layout, etc. then you charge the $50 per user per year.
As it is, might get Google a few more paying customers, but more likely than not, it will just drive a lot of people away from Google and to another service. That's too bad, because I'd really like to continue using Google for these groups I set up.
I don't have time to respond to trolls, but I'll just point this out. From my OP above:
And then from your post:
Yeah. Moving those goalposts... I'll read the rest of your post some other time, but if this is how it starts, I'm not feeling very encouraged that it will provide much insight.
- $15 per month for 8 years, 2 months = $1,470. Plus around $120 to $150 for the initial purchase and major expansions, and that puts you around $1,590 to $1,620 just for owning the game with one account. The average launch day veteran actually probably spent a lot more than that. Count in around an additional $40 or so for collector's editions, $100 for various add-on packs, $100 to $200 for microtransactions, and it's easily upwards of $2,000. If someone has two accounts, double all of that. If someone paid airfare and hotel costs to attend a convention or Player Summit, that could easily add between $500 and $1,000 almost at a minimum. Multiple trips, multiple outlays of cash. Run a fan site? Hosting costs, domain name registration, etc. could easily run up a few hundred bucks more. The average launch day veteran spent $1,500 to $2,000 on the game. A few might have spent less if they paid by the year and didn't buy any expansions or add-on packs. A few might be in the neighborhood of $10,000. So whatever math you're using, you're way off.
- First of all, you'd have to be pretty dense to have so many people claiming first-hand and second-hand knowledge of these negotiations and yet still believe that they didn't happen. You sound like the idiotic birthers who still don't believe that Obama was born in Hawaii in that there is no standard of "proof" that you will accept as real. Second of all, I defy you to explain why millions are required to be ponied up to acquire the game. Frankly, you sound like an NCsoft shill, given that they put out a statement halfway through October saying that they had "exhausted all options" in selling the game. Um... Really? I have a 5-year-old Honda Accord that I'll sell you for $100,000. It's even in pretty good shape. What? You don't want to buy it? Well, I guess I've exhausted all options in trying to sell my car then, and it's really your fault for not ponying up the arbitrarily hugely inflated price I pulled out of my ass. No, actually I call it being damned greedy and disingenuous, and completely disrespectful of people making good faith offers and screwing over your customers.
- I'm not even going to dignify the claim that the game wasn't making money or stable with a response. It's already been addressed by the Korea Times article and thoroughly debunked in other venues. Again, you either don't know what you're talking about or you're deliberately misrepresenting facts to troll.
I take it you're one of the forum trolls that was naysaying the crap every step of the way? Because you're spouting their party/propaganda line almost word-for-word, and you clearly either have no clue what you're talking about, or worse, you do and you're deliberately misrepresenting the truth to troll people.
Etc... etc... indeed.
As for the "tempest in a teapot," it's gotten national attention from several high-profile names, made virtually all gaming journalism sites of note, even hit the radar of mainstream news organizations like CNN and CNBC, and now there's a blisteringly negative article about them plastered on the front page of the Money section of one of the largest Korean news sites right in their own back yard. I'm not sure how much publicity you consider something to have needed getting before you consider it more than a "tempest in a teapot," but to most people, that's a pretty damn significant uproar, especially given the topic at hand.
This is true, we always knew that the game would shut down at some point. However...
The MMO genre of game is especially conducive to getting people to invest enormous amounts of time, effort, and money into the product. The average City of Heroes launch day veteran has probably spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on this game, many much more. And many have spent thousands of hours playing--not just mashing buttons, but coming up with creative stories, even contributing to user-generated content areas such as the Mission Architect system that allowed players to create their own custom enemies, contacts, mission objectives, dialog, etc. In other words, what NCsoft doesn't realize is that at this point, we have just as much stake in the game as they do (some would argue more), yet they hold the ultimate authority to unilaterally declare, "Okay, game over, we're going to destroy years of your effort and a large monetary investment." Not because the game wasn't making money--it was--but because they're undergoing a corporate "realignment".
Not only that, but in the process, they laid off over 80 employees at Paragon Studios, the Mountain View, California development studio that built and maintained City of Heroes. Before the shutdown announcement, a group of employees and investors tried to acquire the IP from NCsoft to keep the game running, but NCsoft wouldn't sell it. After the shutdown announcement, thanks to the SaveCoH movement, another attempt was made, but again, NCsoft wouldn't play ball, even releasing a statement that they had "exhausted all options" in trying to sell the game. Excuse me? Exhausted all options? They hold the IP. Now that the shutdown has come and gone and the community has largely dispersed, practically speaking, it's worth zero. It's impossible for them to have "exausted all options" unless and until the ink is dried on the page transferring the game and its IP to another company or organization that can run it.
Not only that, but this isn't the first time that NCsoft has done this. This is the fifth game in as many years. Auto Assault. Exteel. Dungeon Runners. Tabula Rasa. Now City of Heroes. Clearly to me, the company is an MMO killer. The players of City of Heroes aren't the first group of people to have their hard work and investment destroyed, and apparently, NCsoft doesn't really care very much that it's systematically destroying communities and the output of people's creative expression. As a gamer, why the hell would I ever want to buy a game like Guild Wars 2 or any of NCsoft's other games? Answer: I wouldn't, and they won't be seeing any money from me again.
So does NCsoft have the legal right to shut down City of Heroes, lay off everyone at Paragon Studios, and carry on as if nothing happened even though the company's own investor relations statements indicate that the game was steadily profitable and it had the overwhelming support of its development staff and management? Sure, no one is disputing that. However, I do firmly believe that NCsoft, and MMO game companies in particular, have an ethical obligation to do everything they can to plan for a game's sunset ahead of time and be willing to release the game property to another company or third-party organization willing to take over running it if one is willing to (which, in this case, there were multiple parties interested in doing so). To not do so shows an immense amount of disrespect for your customers, and you run the risk of generating the negative publicity and outcry such as the one NCsoft is facing right now.
The charges leveled are probably simply to hold him on till they dig through his life.
Personally, I think that the charges leveled have little to do with this guy; they are to teach everyone else a lesson: Don't do this, or we'll make your life mighty inconvenient. They don't want people with wires and fuses hanging off of them constantly trying to get through airports because they think it's clever or funny, causing massive logjams in security so that the people who just want to get from point A to point B can go their merry way.
It's the same reason why if you joke about, "It's not like I have a BOMB in my briefcase!", they'll haul your ass off to jail. Not because they actually believe that you have a bomb in your briefcase, but because if someone actually does think that someone has a bomb, they want that person treated with the utmost of seriousness.
I don't like the situation the way it is, and I'm sure that there could be more sanity around the whole issue, but I also think that what they do is not completely without merit and I do kinda understand where they're coming from. People shouldn't engage in assholery with people who are responsible for protecting the security and lives of others. Most sane people wouldn't pull out a realistic-looking toy gun, point it at a police officer, and laugh and say, "Ha ha! I'm just kidding! No need to get all upset about a simple joke..." But then we have people who think it's perfectly fine to engage in such tomfoolery with TSA agents.
I hear that there's a vast conspiracy to load up every airplane that flies with a highly flammable and explosive material, that sometimes this material even makes up the bulk of the weight of the aircraft in flight. It's everywhere on the plane and people doesn't even realize it, even stored in vast quantities inside the wings of most commercial airliners. The rumor I heard, and I know this sounds a bit outlandish, is that it's even pumped into the engines, where it's actually very common for it to cause small explosions that most people don't even realize or think about.
The thought of it scared me so much that I decided that I would only drive places in my car instead.
Did you see the part where it says, "First time accepted submitter mbeckman writes..."?
I suppose that mbeckman could be a buddy of Timothy, who greenlit the article for him to make him feel good on his first try. But I find a much simpler explanation much more plausible: Timothy was probably browsing the submissions and saw mbeckman's first and greenlit it because at the time he was browsing, he didn't see whoever57's. I know it's not as conspiracy theorish, but there you are.
Really though, is this a thing now? Grousing because you don't get your article greenlit on Slashdot? I've had several that I thought should have been and weren't, even things that got greenlit later with what I thought was an inferior write-up. I've also had some that were greenlit. I had probably three or four that I thought were really good turned down before I got my first one greenlit. After that, I didn't care so much. If I submit something and it gets greenlit, great; if not, oh well. I like Slashdot, but I don't particularly need it to validate my self-worth.
As a Georgian, I'm sorry we're on that list. If it goes through, I'll do my best to make sure that Atlanta (which is actually a bit more liberal than the podunk villages out in the sticks where most of these people live) promptly secedes from the New Confederacy and rejoins the Union. We'll be like the Andorra or Lesotho of the South. Please don't burn down my house when Civil War II starts, I really like my stuff...
And without that Texas district doling out billions to every idiotic patent troll, maybe we can finally get some patent reform, too.
Really? This tired old joke yet again? You're going with "Computer geeks can't get girls!" in this age when the name "Bill" is almost always followed by "and Melinda"? When Mark Zuckerberg is married, but if he weren't, he could probably walk into a room and pick any girl he wants? When geek girl is the new chic, and the goddess Felicia Day proudly proclaims, "I'm the One That's Cool"?
The 1980s John Hughes geek caricatures called and want their stereotypes back, because I've got news for you: Nowadays, we are the rich and sexually jaded.
You probably already have and don't even know it.
If you can prove how you voted, to anybody, you can demonstrate to some interested third party that you voted the way they wanted you to. Which means you could sell your vote, or be coerced into voting a certain way.
That's also why any voting proposals that involve a receipt showing that your vote for Smith rather than Jones are a bad idea, as are any proposals involving a way to look up your own vote online after the election.
You're right, that is a good reason, and as I sit here, I can't say that I hope they change the law. There's too much opportunity for employers to, for example, demand that an employee show proof that they voted one way or another or else be fired. (Or vice versa, and be rewarded.)
Nevertheless, if I were to see something like this, I'd willingly break the law and record it. They can charge me if they want to, but it's too important to get the news out that it's happening than to worry about what would probably be a slap on the wrist. Even if I faced major penalties, people are dying for our right to vote, and whatever they charge me with, it would be worth it to do what I can to ensure that that right is not violated.
Since posting his video, he has been contacted by NBC news and other media. His act, although technically illegal, is making a HUGE difference. If it were me, I know I would feel justified in breaking the law. I hope that he feels the same, and that no DA would even think of prosecuting him for anything.
why do we keep calling tablets "ipad knockoffs" you DO know that tablets existed for a good 10 years before the ipad do you not?
Not only that, but the Android tablets I have kick the crap out of iPads. I also think that it's interesting that Apple is now going to come out with a 7" tablet after the Kindle Fire and Asus Nexus 7 have been proven to hit a sweet spot in the market. Look at who is making ripoffs now...
I don't think the kind of consultant you are talking about and the kind of consultant referred to in the summary are the same kind of consultant:
Teams of consultants from McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group are reportedly swarming headquarters to advise the CEO Rory Read...
These are the kind of consultants that tell the CEO that he doesn't need those expensive engineers with health benefits and unemployment insurance. For a reasonable fee (that will end up costing AMD even more money in the long run), these consultants will be able to bring in some of their company's other consultants and not have to worry about silly little things like benefits, thus reducing costs. For the next financial quarter or two--certainly long enough to cash out your stock options and find another job at a company that will pay you more because of your success here--it's win-win!
How about laying off the consultants instead?
I'm serious. Consultants are nothing but leeches, and they will almost always give you advice on how you can make your company just like every other company in your industry. I yearn for the days when companies looked for ways to set themselves apart, to stand out from the crowd, instead of trying desperately to follow lockstep in line with everyone else. Other companies have massive layoffs, so hey, let's do it too!
Especially the engineers. You need engineers to keep doing what you do. This really bodes badly for AMD, because without engineers, they're basically slitting their company's wrists. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that they're getting rid of the ones with seniority at that to try to save a few bucks on salary while simultaneously bleeding themselves out of knowledge and experience.
But hey, it's their funeral, so whatever gets the stock price up a little bit so that they can cash out their options, right?
Public education? Some of the content does that, but a lot of it is very partisan.
...Says someone who probably thinks that Fox News is "Fair and Balanced." MSNBC? THAT is partisan. Fox News? THAT is partisan. People who think that PBS is partisan either don't watch PBS or they consider stuff like teaching evolution as a commie takeover of education. They think that factual reporting is partisan if it's inconvenient to their position. Did you watch PBS during, say, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal? I did, and believe me, they were not cheerleaders. The news shows are as objective as any I've seen, with the possible exception of some international news sources aren't aren't so U.S.-centric. In fact, they're so objective that a lot of people don't like watching their news shows due to the lack of excitement that comes from injecting partisan politics into the stories like most other news networks do. Some of us like getting news from a source that isn't beholden to corporations and that depend on sensationalist ratings for their monetary lifeblood.
They claim to be non-partisan because they don't accept advertising, which is rediculoust. At this point, I'd rather they get off the government teat and run ads.
And this is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever read. Like I said, you stop giving oil companies subsidies and tax breaks, raise the capital gains rate, increase the top marginal income tax rate, cut defense spending, and then we can start talking about getting people off the government teat. Otherwise, shut the hell up and leave the federal subsidy to public broadcasting alone.
Oh wait that's right, it's only the government teat when it's services for the poor and middle class, isn't it?
Romney doesn't call for NPR, actually PBS, to be eliminated,
He is calling for public subsidies to public broadcasting to be eliminating. This includes both PBS and NPR.
...And he's wrong. There is an excellent reason for the Federal government to supply them with money. These stations are non-profits specifically dedicated to public education. I get so sick of this attitude that it's not government's job to promote the general welfare of this country. Go re-read the Constitution sometime, it's in the first sentence.
Public radio and public television have done more to educate pre-schoolers than any other education program. Here's a list of bullet points that I ran across recently:
...And there were a few other bullet points, but you get the idea. Whether you're on the left or the right of center, almost everyone agrees that PBS and NPR are worthwhile.
But if you cut the federal subsidy, the end result is that a lot of the smaller stations serving poorer areas that can't raise as much money as those in more prosperous areas will go under. Of course, that seems to be the MO of Republicans these days--we want all of our benefits, and to hell with the poor people.
If the Federal government no longer provides PBS with 12% of its budget, what happens? It either finds someone else to replace that money, or it continues to operate at 88% of current funding.
As I said above, a lot of stations in poorer areas will go under. You seem to be under the impression that anyone who wants to can just cut their budget by 12%. If you're decently well-off, you probably can, but this is why people like me get so frustrated. You have no idea what it's like when people tell you, "Just cut 12%!" when you're barely scraping by.
So, your post is not only wrong, but grossly misleading. That is pretty much the picture for the rest of your post - false or misleading, at best. I don't know who finds that "informative", but you obviously duped someone.
No, the only thing that's misleading is your attempt to justify Romney's brilliant plan to solve our budget problems by eliminating the government subsidy to PBS and NPR. It will most definitely kill its availability in a lot of areas, especially more rural communities and poor communities, the very places where it's needed most.
You've also effectively proved yet again why people like me get so frustrated at Republicans. Look, I understand we have a large deficit. I'm not oblivious to the fact that we're overspending in this country. But why is Romney picking on public broadcasting? I've heard the rationale that, well, you have to go after everything--everyone has to tighten their belts. But it's just awful convenient that to Republicans, everyone having to tighten their belts means that poor and middle class people, p
I just hope they don't get discouraged at the number of downloads and installations that don't receive donations. I suspect that a lot of people are like me--they don't mind throwing a few bucks their way (or even a few dozen), but we tend to install, reinstall, set up virtual machines, install yet again, and so on across dozens of machines. I might give a one-off donation, but I'm not going to donate every time I install a copy of Ubuntu.
That's one of the things that's so damn frustrating about Windows and why Ubuntu (or really, any Linux distribution) is so useful. Windows is an awesome OS and I don't mind paying the license fee to run it, but I don't have a few thousand dollars to install it on each of my hobbyist VMs I use for development and testing stuff. Back in the days when I could just use my product code to install it willy-nilly on a few dozen machines, each of which I probably run for a few days and then reinstall for some new reason, it's not that big a deal. But now that everything phones home and nags the hell out of you and denies you service to what you bought, it's not such an appealing option. Hopefully Microsoft will someday realize that they're actively driving people like me away from Windows, but until then, I'll happily cast my lot with Ubuntu instead.
That's what experiments like the Biosphere are for, to test the feasibility of completely self-contained self-sustaining miniature ecosystems. If you just sent up some bacteria and a whale, you might be right. But if you sent up some plants that can live in the thin atmosphere and photosynthesize the sunlight there and add in some bacteria that can digest the dead plant matter and release nutrients that the plants can use as food, then within a few centuries, you might have a jungle. At that point, you might be able to send up other lifeforms that can live and thrive in the new ecosystem without destroying it. Keep iterating this process, and the planet might just be habitable to us in some not-insurmountable period of time. Even if not, who knows, it might be more conducive to using for various resources.
It was a yes or no question. He answered yes.
No, he did not answer "yes." This is from the transcript of the voir dire:
See what he did there? Instead of saying "yes," he answered as if that were the only case. By omitting the other two cases he was involved in, he effectively misrepresented that this was the only case. I'm sorry, but it is extremely foreseeable that being sued by Seagate is a material fact that should have been disclosed. He also lied later in this exchange:
He said months ago that his own experiences relating to patents helped him decide how he should rule, and then he proceeded to "help" other jurors understand based on that information--NOT the judge's instruction. And his statements since have indicated that he was going out of his way to be on this jury so that he could be a part of this big case.
It all looks pretty straight-forward to me. The guy borrowed $25,000 from Seagate in 1991, didn't pay it back, got sued, declared bankruptcy to dodge his financial obligation, and apparently still is buttsore about it. In 2012, he had an ax to grind against Seagate, he hid relevant information to get on the jury so that he could grind it, and then he proceeded to trash Samsung--the currently majority owners of Seagate--to get back at them. And now he's going out to the press and lying about the questions and instructions to not look like the tool he is.
I hope they nail his ass to the wall for juror misconduct and that Samsung gets an actual fair and impartial trial out of it.
I think you meant "the price has dropped by 2/3rds" or "prices today are 1/3rd what they were 3 years ago".
You're wrong. I bought an SSD the other day that used to sell for $200, but now they're selling it for $600 off. I'd post a link, but I--hopefully understandably--don't want everyone else to ruin my supply.