There's some confusion here because I was not suggesting an anti-piracy measure. Anti-piracy measures are futile. Spending the same money encouraging the folks who do pay to spend more will yield a better ROI.
Long time paying customer here. Just a quick note to let you know that I would buy more games if your prices were lower (because you weren't pissing money away on stupid schemes like this) and you spent more time focusing on how to get money out of me (by offering value) rather than trying to get money out of people who have proven they are not able to/going to pay.
Anyway, thanks for letting me know about TPM. I'll be sure not to purchase hardware from vendors including it on their MBs, since I obviously cannot trust them.
It would make more sense just to sell the video at a price point where renting does not make sense for the consumer (e.g. $15).
Renting introduces overhead which would drive down profits pretty heavily unless he was able to spread that overhead out over a large number of rentals. Even assuming this was somewhat viable for the poster, the other party presumably rents other videos as well and can better absorb the overhead, meaning he can set lower and lower price points until he breaks the poster.
On the other hand, if the poster sells the video for $15, it makes no sense for the consumer to rent it at the same price. The other party still has the option of reducing the rental price, but the poster is in a much better position. For many consumers, buying at $15 would make more sense than renting the video for (say) $10. And with less overhead, the poster may be able to lower the price further if the other party does reduce prices.
In 1998 Blockbuster started paying a royalty. I don't think they would if they didn't have to.
Why not? Building a closer relationship with the studio and paying royalties in exchange for things like a license to produce copies on site as needed, promotional materials, first shot at new releases, free or discounted movies, etc. would give them a huge advantage over shops not paying the royalties.
1. It's well established that it is more difficult for people to tune out one-sided conversations. 2. People use louder voices when talking on their cellphones than when talk to someone next to them. 3. Talking on the cellphone brings the focus outside their current environment, making cell-phone users less considerate of those around them. 4. People traveling alone generally don't talk with other people on the flight since they don't know anyone. So more people are going to be talking.
About the only positive cellphones can bring to airplanes in terms of annoyance is that the single travelers who feel they must talk to the person sitting next to them will finally have someone else to talk to.
Yes, the one who rejects the idea of a vote as a privilege and sees it as a right and a duty is an 'elitist' because he acknowledges the fact that the majority of people don't see it as a duty.
Thanks for offering me control over your vote, though.
The poster's argument requires the premise that it is in the best interest of intelligent people to have more offspring or to limit the offspring of the less intelligent. If we accept the poster's premise and your premise that people are selfish regardless of their level of intelligence then we must conclude that either it is not in the best interest of intelligent people to have more offspring or the poster's definitions are reversed and intelligence of parents should be directly proportional to the number of offspring. In both cases it suggests the problem the poster is arguing about does not currently exist.
Of course, my point was that there is more than one way to change the breeding ratio between any two arbitrary groups of people. Want to increase offspring? More sex, fertility drugs, etc. Want to decrease offspring? Start a eugenics program is an option, but so is starting a war, hording resources, taxing offspring, etc., etc.
As horrific as it may be, the only way to keep this from happening is to indeed introduce some means of population control.
Option A: Give the government control over a human experiment which will cause untold suffering, be vulnerable to abuse, is ethically and morally anathema to everyone I know, and is doomed to failure. Option B: Have more unprotected sex with a clean partners.
The thought of them arguing is much less frightening to me than the thought of them holding hands and skipping through a field of daisies together....for a couple reasons.
The article is schizophrenic. Rather than presenting a balanced view of SP1, it leads with unsubstantiated complaints as if that is the story, then talks about some facts (which are mostly positive) with some more complaints mixed in. Does it suck or not? This article says yes, but doesn't make a very good case for it.
"Dozens" of users of unknown levels of technical knowledge (out of millions of users) issued anecdotal complaints.
"Bikkja" said that "after installing SP1 things seem to go really slow, even though my computer shouldn't have any problems."
Firstly, is 'seem' a technical term? How do we know whether it went slower or not? Secondly a little reading would have told this guy that SuperFetch was basically rebooted by the install, which will make things slower for those using it until it catches back up.
Other troubles reported by Vista SP1 users ranged from a simple inability to download the software from Microsoft's Windows Update site...
There are several reasons for this, the most important that a previous update allows Windows to scan for drivers incompatible with SP1 and prevent download so as not to break the system (which TFA mentions).
...to sudden spikes in memory usage. "Went from using 650 MB RAM idle to 1 Gig... I'll be switching back," said "Kurrier."
So? What is with this obsession with memory usage? Idle RAM has a slightly negative value - it does nothing while still consuming a non-zero amount of energy. How RAM is used is much more important than whether or not it is used. Now, it may be that this guy only has 1 GB of RAM. It could be that this is the result of a problem. But who knows? Not the author.
Some had 'insightful' comments complaining about increased memory usage. Memory usage is a worthless metric! How memory is usage is more important than how much - and really, would you rather have that RAM in use making your system respond faster, or would you rather have it sit there doing nothing? There's some give and take here, but complaining about memory usage without context is meaningless.
The feature was plagued by false alarms that flagged thousands of legitimate Vista users as software pirates.
A legitimate (if unsubstantiated by the article) complaint, but well known before SP1 and really even before Vista.
While the European Union does have federalist traits, it is in fact a supranational entity and has more in common with NAFTA than with the United States. You are conflating nation states with states as a political subdivision of a country. The Netherlands is not a state in the sense that California is a state. The Netherlands is a state in the sense that the United States is a state.
Even excluding these differences, comparing the United States to the whole of the European Union is also unreasonable due to vast economic differences between European states. Eastern Europe economies are still recovering from the collapse of communism, among other things.
If you must include more than one nation in your comparison with the United States (why?), then Western Europe would be a much more reasonable choice. We share similar forms of government and comparable economies over a period of time long enough to reach some level of parity.
Slashdot Mirror
Spellcheckers are for the week.
There's some confusion here because I was not suggesting an anti-piracy measure. Anti-piracy measures are futile. Spending the same money encouraging the folks who do pay to spend more will yield a better ROI.
We make more money by selling fewer games at a higher price.
How do you make more money by reducing your margins with poor investments?
Long time paying customer here. Just a quick note to let you know that I would buy more games if your prices were lower (because you weren't pissing money away on stupid schemes like this) and you spent more time focusing on how to get money out of me (by offering value) rather than trying to get money out of people who have proven they are not able to/going to pay.
Anyway, thanks for letting me know about TPM. I'll be sure not to purchase hardware from vendors including it on their MBs, since I obviously cannot trust them.
It would make more sense just to sell the video at a price point where renting does not make sense for the consumer (e.g. $15).
Renting introduces overhead which would drive down profits pretty heavily unless he was able to spread that overhead out over a large number of rentals. Even assuming this was somewhat viable for the poster, the other party presumably rents other videos as well and can better absorb the overhead, meaning he can set lower and lower price points until he breaks the poster.
On the other hand, if the poster sells the video for $15, it makes no sense for the consumer to rent it at the same price. The other party still has the option of reducing the rental price, but the poster is in a much better position. For many consumers, buying at $15 would make more sense than renting the video for (say) $10. And with less overhead, the poster may be able to lower the price further if the other party does reduce prices.
In 1998 Blockbuster started paying a royalty. I don't think they would if they didn't have to.
Why not? Building a closer relationship with the studio and paying royalties in exchange for things like a license to produce copies on site as needed, promotional materials, first shot at new releases, free or discounted movies, etc. would give them a huge advantage over shops not paying the royalties.
A tie = a slave collar. The tie is otherwise the singular, most useless, garment on Earth.
I'm sorry, but nothing that draws attention to my penis is useless.
What's the problem? It sounds like you've just found a place you don't want to work and a friend you no longer want to have. Win-win.
Yeah, thanks for paying for our bridge, pal.
Now, about the other 99.9% of the money...
Duh, she'll go by P. E. F. N. Taylor Doctorow. That's what I'd do if I had a fucked up first name.
Well, sharks can't breath in the atmosphere, so they'd also have to be zombies.
Is there anything cooler or more deadly than lightning-generating flying zombie sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?
Your conclusions are correct, but you're a bit off in your definition of the yellow. At least here in California, a yellow light means, "...stop if you can do so safely. If you can't stop safely, enter the intersection cautiously."
All I know is that for Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, it's a shorter trip than for anyone else!So is this older than the Kessel Run, or simply faster?
Yes, for a few reasons:
1. It's well established that it is more difficult for people to tune out one-sided conversations.
2. People use louder voices when talking on their cellphones than when talk to someone next to them.
3. Talking on the cellphone brings the focus outside their current environment, making cell-phone users less considerate of those around them.
4. People traveling alone generally don't talk with other people on the flight since they don't know anyone. So more people are going to be talking.
About the only positive cellphones can bring to airplanes in terms of annoyance is that the single travelers who feel they must talk to the person sitting next to them will finally have someone else to talk to.
Dear god, even the GUI has dupes!
(Check out the "Cancel Reply" and "Cancel" buttons with the same exact functionality.
Yes, the one who rejects the idea of a vote as a privilege and sees it as a right and a duty is an 'elitist' because he acknowledges the fact that the majority of people don't see it as a duty.
Thanks for offering me control over your vote, though.
Don't get caught up in that horrible 'privilege' word.
Voting is right, but voting wisely is a duty. It's the duty part that those aptly dubbed "the sheeple" regularly forget.
The poster's argument requires the premise that it is in the best interest of intelligent people to have more offspring or to limit the offspring of the less intelligent. If we accept the poster's premise and your premise that people are selfish regardless of their level of intelligence then we must conclude that either it is not in the best interest of intelligent people to have more offspring or the poster's definitions are reversed and intelligence of parents should be directly proportional to the number of offspring. In both cases it suggests the problem the poster is arguing about does not currently exist.
Of course, my point was that there is more than one way to change the breeding ratio between any two arbitrary groups of people. Want to increase offspring? More sex, fertility drugs, etc. Want to decrease offspring? Start a eugenics program is an option, but so is starting a war, hording resources, taxing offspring, etc., etc.
Option A: Give the government control over a human experiment which will cause untold suffering, be vulnerable to abuse, is ethically and morally anathema to everyone I know, and is doomed to failure.
Option B: Have more unprotected sex with a clean partners.
I'll take Option B. Thanks.
You've never met a Lexus owner, I see.
It doesn't quite fit, but my brain has already started parsing it as "Sacagawea".
The thought of them arguing is much less frightening to me than the thought of them holding hands and skipping through a field of daisies together. ...for a couple reasons.
"Dozens" of users of unknown levels of technical knowledge (out of millions of users) issued anecdotal complaints.
Firstly, is 'seem' a technical term? How do we know whether it went slower or not? Secondly a little reading would have told this guy that SuperFetch was basically rebooted by the install, which will make things slower for those using it until it catches back up.
There are several reasons for this, the most important that a previous update allows Windows to scan for drivers incompatible with SP1 and prevent download so as not to break the system (which TFA mentions).
So? What is with this obsession with memory usage? Idle RAM has a slightly negative value - it does nothing while still consuming a non-zero amount of energy. How RAM is used is much more important than whether or not it is used. Now, it may be that this guy only has 1 GB of RAM. It could be that this is the result of a problem. But who knows? Not the author.
Some had 'insightful' comments complaining about increased memory usage. Memory usage is a worthless metric! How memory is usage is more important than how much - and really, would you rather have that RAM in use making your system respond faster, or would you rather have it sit there doing nothing? There's some give and take here, but complaining about memory usage without context is meaningless.
A legitimate (if unsubstantiated by the article) complaint, but well known before SP1 and really even before Vista.
While the European Union does have federalist traits, it is in fact a supranational entity and has more in common with NAFTA than with the United States. You are conflating nation states with states as a political subdivision of a country. The Netherlands is not a state in the sense that California is a state. The Netherlands is a state in the sense that the United States is a state.
Even excluding these differences, comparing the United States to the whole of the European Union is also unreasonable due to vast economic differences between European states. Eastern Europe economies are still recovering from the collapse of communism, among other things.
If you must include more than one nation in your comparison with the United States (why?), then Western Europe would be a much more reasonable choice. We share similar forms of government and comparable economies over a period of time long enough to reach some level of parity.