I would prefer paying $400 with no monthly fee for World of Warcraft instead of $40 with a $13 monthly fee. Why? Because in the two and a half years that it has been out, you've accumulated a price of $40 + $13*30 = $420 and we all know it won't end there.
Yes, but if you were selling software, which would be a safer bet? That your target audience would have $400 lying around, or that they would have $40 lying around plus an extra $13/month? Most people are far more likely to be able to put up the smaller monthly amounts.
You could put the $400 on a credit card and pay it off little by little. But assuming a 10% interest rate (VERY generous here, most are over 15%) and assuming you pay $40 the first month and $13 after that just like on the subscription plan, it would take you 32 months to pay it off, with $56 interest. Considering that not every person who plays a game is going to play it that long, and many people don't know when they start a game whether they'll be playing it that far in the future, it makes more sense for many people to have the monthly plan where they can cancel it if they need or want to rather than to buy it upfront and have to pay the full amount whether or not they still play it two years from now - and whether or not they can still afford it two years from now.
if it's appealing 'to the minor's morbid interest in violence.'
So, then, anything rated Mature should be exempt from this part. Right? Oh wait, I forgot, only children play video games so any game made with any violence or sex must be marketed entirely at ten-year-olds.
Considering that my husband and I will be living separately next year and we only have one functioning computer, yeah, a new computer is a priority in the next few months.
Who said I was getting a Wii? At least, this year. I just got a GameCube, I'm good til the price drops to $100. I only got the GC because I was finally running out of games on my SNES. I may be a fangirl, but I'm a cheapass fangirl.
And so you have absolutely no idea how much tax you're paying, making it much easier to sneak new taxes in since few people are going to actually know whether the price went up or the taxes did.
I recently saw some gas stations (in the US) that listed how much of the price of gas was state and federal taxes. I wish they all did this, I had absolutely no idea before that how much of my gas prices were tax. Turned out it was something like 80 cents out of the $2.50 a gallon.
I would much rather have my taxes out in the open.
work on getting some food on your table and a roof over your head first if you're poor enough that $1,000 for five years or more worth of entertainment is unaffordable.
Uh, maybe spread out over those five years. However, if I were going to drop $1000 on anything at once (whether it's a computer or a HDTV and console), it's going to take some saving up. I have no problem keeping a roof over my head, but I also don't have $1000 sitting there with no strings attached ready to be spent. Which leads to...
I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.
Out of context, this is one of the truest things ever said on Slashdot. In context, it is one of the silliest.
Maybe their priorities just don't include these items. I have no desire for an HDTV. I'd eventually like to replace my little 13" with something like a 30" (maybe even one with more than just coax input), but even that is low on my list of priorities. Sure, I *could* save up for an HDTV and PS3 in a few months, but right now that money is going into savings for travel, a house, pet care, a new laptop, among other things that are higher on my priority list than these.
Domestic dogs have been reclassified as a supspecies of wolves - Canis lupus familiaris. Mainly *because* they can reproduce. Of course, coyotes can also reproduce with dogs and still are a separate species, so the whole thing still isn't clear. But dogs and wolves are now the same species.
Nintendo is going to make a KILLING this Christmas.
No kidding. Forget the adults who might actually be able and willing to spend $600 on a console. What parent is going to spend that? Only a small percentage of parents actually spend that much per child for Christmas to start with. Hm, what is my 16-year-old brother more likely to want/get? A card saying "We put all your Christmas money in a CD and will combine it with next year's to get you a PS3" or a Wii with a couple games?
Yeah, I think if you're buying anything with the name "Lipton" on it, you're not worrying about getting the highest quality. The cold brew's only real use is to have convenient iced tea at a moment's notice.
Yes, I'm sure they were planning on taking this and immediately making the same changes to human DNA. Good thing you're here to tell us all how genetics work and warn us of the dangers of immediately applying a finding in one species to all species without further research, or else we'd be in big trouble.
If making hot tea and then icing it is too inconvenient, Lipton now makes cold-brew teabags. They come in cup or pitcher-sized, and brew fine in cold water. They only come in one flavor - straight black orange pekoe - so if you want green tea etc it won't work for you. But you can always spice it up with a little lemon, mint, honey, etc. I've always got a pitcher of it in my fridge, which I usually drink straight (no sugar or flavorings).
The "I don't like the taste" argument against diet soft drinks is nothing more than a bullshit excuse. If it isn't sweet enough for you, that means you're drinking so much high-fructose corn syrup that your taste buds are desensitized to sweetness.
What if we actually find diet sodas to taste sweeter than regular sodas, to the point of being sickeningly sweet? Coupled with a chemical aftertaste that makes us gag?
For some reason, I can only tolerate nutrasweet in citrus drinks - Fresca or lemonade, for example. The sour cuts the fake-sweetness enough.
Well, it matters in that certain political and/or media figures try to paint all "gamers" as lazy teenagers with no lives, goals, or aspirations who can't distinguish fantasy gameplay from reality. And a certain portion of the population, who don't play games and who don't personally know many gamers, believe them.
The more statistics like this get out, the more these people are challenged by the fact that "gamers", in fact, are normal everyday people - including *gasp* adults with jobs and families. And that, while keeping small children from witnessing graphic sex and violence is one thing, it's quite another to censor an entire category of media that is widely enjoyed by adults who can make their own decisions.
When I bought my eMac, it had a bad stick of RAM. When I called Apple about it, the guy on the phone talked me through how to open the machine up so I could test each of the sticks separately to see which it was. Then when I figured it out, I just took the bad stick to the Apple store where they gave me a new one back, which I then installed myself. At no point was there any mention of any this activity voiding my warranty (if it did, I assume I would have had to pay for the new RAM).
I also added in more RAM just a year ago, and had no trouble doing that either.
True, if you want to change out something more complicated than the RAM, you're probably facing a bigger challenge - but RAM has never been untouchable.
Ahh, that makes sense. Though they could still make it all flesh-colored with no nipples. Although if the post below is correct and someone used a male skin to fake a nude female... That's just beyond anyone's control and would be ridiculous for the ESRB to use for a rating.
If the model was just there for the shape/physics of things that go over it (bras, armor, whatever), why couldn't it just be all-white? I'm guessing that an all-white female form wouldn't spark much outrage, it'd be just like a store mannequin. You don't need to see the color of nipples when you're deciding how armor will fit over something. (And yes, some store mannequins have "nipples" - but they're not painted!)
(I think it's silly to slap an M rating on something for breasts - but I also think that in the current political climate game designers should really be more careful if they don't intend nudity.)
why don't they start suing domain registrars for allowing websites with questionable content to register domains.
While they are at it, let's sue the ISP on the other end of the server the content sits on for allowing the data to pass through it.
Because most of the people doing the suing don't know their ass from an ethernet jack. They've never heard of a "domain registrar" and have no idea that there is a "server" somewhere with data passing through it. But they've heard of Google, and they know it can lead people to kiddie porn. This guy didn't even know that Google had filters, and he didn't know whether or not he had any filtering software on his own computer.
I'm amazed they aren't suing Microsoft, since they're using Internet Explorer to access the porn. Shouldn't it automatically block that sort of thing?
Man, my first 2-3 years of college were great. Constant $10 off any purchase of $10 or more certificates from Buy.com (got lots of free CDs that way). Some website that would refund you $45 on any $75 purhcase at B&N.com... There was just free shit flowing from every ethernet drop. Of course it couldn't last, but what a great couple of years.
I still shed a tear when I think about the demise of Kozmo, though. Now THAT was a great service. A movie and a pint of Ben & Jerry's right to your door, whenever you wanted. *sigh*
Those adverts are acctually quite funny. They joke about the current situation of the Windows PCs... But how long? Vista is peeping around the corner...
Which is exactly why now is the PERFECT time to launch something like this. Even assuming that Vista really does solve all of Windows' problem, most Windows don't know anything about it at this point and have no clue that it will be significantly different from what they use now. If Apple can get some of those people to buy Macs *before* Vista comes out, there's a good chance they *won't* be buying a new PC with Vista on it later.
Mac OSX with Intel platform is a hi-security risk because PPC was a platform no virus makers where even targetting. Now they have ability to attack macs too.
This is such an erroneous statement I don't know where to start with it. It's almost trollish. I'll just say, please see elsewhere in this and many other threads for arguments against this statement.
There's even a nod to "what this guy can do with spreadsheets" - this guy being the PC. And that they can talk easily together and share files and run a lot of the same programs, etc etc. It looks a lot more like an attempt to get Windows users to buy a Mac in addition to their current PC than to get them to ditch Windows altogether. (Probably with the unspoken assumption that, once they get hooked on OS X, they'll ditch Windows anyhow.) It's lighthearted, funny, dispells some Mac myths (yes, you CAN run Office on a Mac!), and doesn't demonize Windows at all.
The virus one does worry me a bit, because as someone else says lower in the comments it sounds a bit like a challenge to virus-writers. But, of course, until Macs get up into the 20% or so market share range (which isn't happening soon), it would be hard for a virus to spread even if it was out in the wild. So that probably won't backfire too badly for at least a couple more years.
there's nothing new since... Shakespeare's body of work.
Ha! You show me one plot line Shakespeare didn't steal from somebody else (whether a published work or a mythology/folk tale/oral tradition). He just did it better than most other versions that had been written down at the time - that we know of. There's been nothing new under the sun for millennia.
. Safari supports system services, because it uses the default text handling APIs, while Firefox uses its own included ones. That means by installing a few services
See, I'm enough of a nerd to read/., but not enough of one that this actually made sense to me, or that I have any clue how to do that. (A good example of my level of nerdiness: I had Linux for several years, but had to keep the instructions for how to install a new program written down.)
In FF, I noticed an "add engines" option at the bottom of the search box dropdown. I clicked it, got a webpage with a bunch of things to chose from, and clicked on them and wow! I have more searches!
Whatever it is you got Safari to do sounds pretty darn cool, but for the 90% of people who are even less computer literate than me, it's probably not happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but if you were selling software, which would be a safer bet? That your target audience would have $400 lying around, or that they would have $40 lying around plus an extra $13/month? Most people are far more likely to be able to put up the smaller monthly amounts.
You could put the $400 on a credit card and pay it off little by little. But assuming a 10% interest rate (VERY generous here, most are over 15%) and assuming you pay $40 the first month and $13 after that just like on the subscription plan, it would take you 32 months to pay it off, with $56 interest. Considering that not every person who plays a game is going to play it that long, and many people don't know when they start a game whether they'll be playing it that far in the future, it makes more sense for many people to have the monthly plan where they can cancel it if they need or want to rather than to buy it upfront and have to pay the full amount whether or not they still play it two years from now - and whether or not they can still afford it two years from now.
So, then, anything rated Mature should be exempt from this part. Right? Oh wait, I forgot, only children play video games so any game made with any violence or sex must be marketed entirely at ten-year-olds.
Who said I was getting a Wii? At least, this year. I just got a GameCube, I'm good til the price drops to $100. I only got the GC because I was finally running out of games on my SNES. I may be a fangirl, but I'm a cheapass fangirl.
I recently saw some gas stations (in the US) that listed how much of the price of gas was state and federal taxes. I wish they all did this, I had absolutely no idea before that how much of my gas prices were tax. Turned out it was something like 80 cents out of the $2.50 a gallon.
I would much rather have my taxes out in the open.
(Ok, I guess British credit card companies probably aren't all centered in Wilmington. But I bet a few are.)
Uh, maybe spread out over those five years. However, if I were going to drop $1000 on anything at once (whether it's a computer or a HDTV and console), it's going to take some saving up. I have no problem keeping a roof over my head, but I also don't have $1000 sitting there with no strings attached ready to be spent. Which leads to...
I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.
Out of context, this is one of the truest things ever said on Slashdot. In context, it is one of the silliest.
Maybe their priorities just don't include these items. I have no desire for an HDTV. I'd eventually like to replace my little 13" with something like a 30" (maybe even one with more than just coax input), but even that is low on my list of priorities. Sure, I *could* save up for an HDTV and PS3 in a few months, but right now that money is going into savings for travel, a house, pet care, a new laptop, among other things that are higher on my priority list than these.
Domestic dogs have been reclassified as a supspecies of wolves - Canis lupus familiaris . Mainly *because* they can reproduce. Of course, coyotes can also reproduce with dogs and still are a separate species, so the whole thing still isn't clear. But dogs and wolves are now the same species.
No kidding. Forget the adults who might actually be able and willing to spend $600 on a console. What parent is going to spend that? Only a small percentage of parents actually spend that much per child for Christmas to start with. Hm, what is my 16-year-old brother more likely to want/get? A card saying "We put all your Christmas money in a CD and will combine it with next year's to get you a PS3" or a Wii with a couple games?
Yeah, I think if you're buying anything with the name "Lipton" on it, you're not worrying about getting the highest quality. The cold brew's only real use is to have convenient iced tea at a moment's notice.
Yes, I'm sure they were planning on taking this and immediately making the same changes to human DNA. Good thing you're here to tell us all how genetics work and warn us of the dangers of immediately applying a finding in one species to all species without further research, or else we'd be in big trouble.
If making hot tea and then icing it is too inconvenient, Lipton now makes cold-brew teabags. They come in cup or pitcher-sized, and brew fine in cold water. They only come in one flavor - straight black orange pekoe - so if you want green tea etc it won't work for you. But you can always spice it up with a little lemon, mint, honey, etc. I've always got a pitcher of it in my fridge, which I usually drink straight (no sugar or flavorings).
What if we actually find diet sodas to taste sweeter than regular sodas, to the point of being sickeningly sweet? Coupled with a chemical aftertaste that makes us gag?
For some reason, I can only tolerate nutrasweet in citrus drinks - Fresca or lemonade, for example. The sour cuts the fake-sweetness enough.
The more statistics like this get out, the more these people are challenged by the fact that "gamers", in fact, are normal everyday people - including *gasp* adults with jobs and families. And that, while keeping small children from witnessing graphic sex and violence is one thing, it's quite another to censor an entire category of media that is widely enjoyed by adults who can make their own decisions.
Hey, lookit that! F5 reloads! Neato. The only thing I've ever used function keys for is Expose. I thought most of them didn't really do anything.
Heh, no, I'm not joking. I hit F5 to see what would happen.
I also added in more RAM just a year ago, and had no trouble doing that either.
True, if you want to change out something more complicated than the RAM, you're probably facing a bigger challenge - but RAM has never been untouchable.
Ahh, that makes sense. Though they could still make it all flesh-colored with no nipples. Although if the post below is correct and someone used a male skin to fake a nude female... That's just beyond anyone's control and would be ridiculous for the ESRB to use for a rating.
(I think it's silly to slap an M rating on something for breasts - but I also think that in the current political climate game designers should really be more careful if they don't intend nudity.)
While they are at it, let's sue the ISP on the other end of the server the content sits on for allowing the data to pass through it.
Because most of the people doing the suing don't know their ass from an ethernet jack. They've never heard of a "domain registrar" and have no idea that there is a "server" somewhere with data passing through it. But they've heard of Google, and they know it can lead people to kiddie porn. This guy didn't even know that Google had filters, and he didn't know whether or not he had any filtering software on his own computer.
I'm amazed they aren't suing Microsoft, since they're using Internet Explorer to access the porn. Shouldn't it automatically block that sort of thing?
change the minimum age from 14 to 18
Er, make that 30 million members. If they raise the age to 21, they're screwed.
Yes! Down with laws! Let anarchy reign supreme!
I still shed a tear when I think about the demise of Kozmo, though. Now THAT was a great service. A movie and a pint of Ben & Jerry's right to your door, whenever you wanted. *sigh*
Which is exactly why now is the PERFECT time to launch something like this. Even assuming that Vista really does solve all of Windows' problem, most Windows don't know anything about it at this point and have no clue that it will be significantly different from what they use now. If Apple can get some of those people to buy Macs *before* Vista comes out, there's a good chance they *won't* be buying a new PC with Vista on it later.
Mac OSX with Intel platform is a hi-security risk because PPC was a platform no virus makers where even targetting. Now they have ability to attack macs too.
This is such an erroneous statement I don't know where to start with it. It's almost trollish. I'll just say, please see elsewhere in this and many other threads for arguments against this statement.
The virus one does worry me a bit, because as someone else says lower in the comments it sounds a bit like a challenge to virus-writers. But, of course, until Macs get up into the 20% or so market share range (which isn't happening soon), it would be hard for a virus to spread even if it was out in the wild. So that probably won't backfire too badly for at least a couple more years.
Ha! You show me one plot line Shakespeare didn't steal from somebody else (whether a published work or a mythology/folk tale/oral tradition). He just did it better than most other versions that had been written down at the time - that we know of. There's been nothing new under the sun for millennia.
See, I'm enough of a nerd to read /., but not enough of one that this actually made sense to me, or that I have any clue how to do that. (A good example of my level of nerdiness: I had Linux for several years, but had to keep the instructions for how to install a new program written down.)
In FF, I noticed an "add engines" option at the bottom of the search box dropdown. I clicked it, got a webpage with a bunch of things to chose from, and clicked on them and wow! I have more searches!
Whatever it is you got Safari to do sounds pretty darn cool, but for the 90% of people who are even less computer literate than me, it's probably not happening.