He's forgetting that the option to sell a game once the consumer has finished it or if he doesn't like it effectively lowers the cost of buying the game new.
For example, if I'd heard that Outlaw was fun, but only 10 hours long, I probably wouldn't pay $50 for it. If, on the other hand, I knew I could sell the game back for $35 in a week, the actual cost of Outlaw to me was only $15.
So, in reality a healthy secondary market for games should encourage developers to take risks, since consumers will be more likely to take a chance on titles in turn. On the other hand, as other posters have pointed out, serial games (like the yearly Madden & NBA releases) have the least resale value since a slightly better version will be out in short order. So the effective cost of buying new the latest sports game or Dead or Alive edition will be higher than for an original game with more staying power.
If you do bird's eye view for my office , there are tons of people in the street on 5th avenue. It's too disorganized to be a parade, and Madison has traffic on it, so it wasn't the blackout. There are also two circles of people in the northern part of the image. Anyone know what gives?
Considering its subject, Video Game Art (Assouline, 300 pp., $29.95) is surprisingly thick with text. That's because it's the brainchild of a novelist, 28-year-old Nic Kelman, who strives to make the case for this ever expanding genre as a genuine art form, drawing analogies to film, myth, and literary epics. Even for the gaming averse, though, a flip through these pages is revelatory, suggesting the sheer range of intricate dream-scapes and brain-tickling phantasms buried amid the clichéd ghouls and fembots.
Now since the demand for the product has gone up the price will naturally go up which means that even if the guy can afford to waste water/energy he probably should be mindful of the fact that he's driving the price up even for the people who are careful about the impact they make.
You could apply the same argument to Americans using less fuel-efficient cars, or energy-guzzling high clock-speed processors. Our wealth permits us to consume more energy and resources than, say, a Vietnamese subsistence farmer, and simultaneously drives up prices world-wide for fungible commodities like oil and industrial metals.
Be careful how strongly you push this idea, because the developing world could turn it around on you just as easily.
I remember upgrading a locally-assembled 386 33, and realizing that only the display was hooked up to the button. It didn't connect to the motherboard at all; all the button did was change a display on the front from '33' to '16'. I kept that case up to a Pentium 133 because of that display...
I think it's important to make the distinction between broadband penetration and the actual use of broadband in people's daily lives. As has been pointed out elsewhere in these comments, countries which subsidise high speed connections will have a higher percentage of people with access to the internet, but not necessarily of internet use.
Rather than a 'PR' stunt this is a different look at internet use. I don't thinki the Census Bureau really has an agenda to promote the US over other nations.
Anecdotally, I work in a fairly international and technologically savvy industry and I'd say Europeans are much more likely to use cell phone services where Americans would use the internet. The gap has certainly narrowed a great deal, but I'd say the Americans were generally much faster at picking up new internet phenomena (and again, this is just from my personal experience).
Overall, it would almost certainly be more cost effective for everybody to abolish drug and medical device patents altogether, have government and scientists set the goals for what to develop, and have all research, development, and testing of such devices paid for by the tax payer. Private companies can still get involved through contract work and work-for-hire.
The assumption being that since government monopolies have failed to produce cost-effective innovation so many times before, the model is due for a success?
Honestly, I think most of them do. I don't know what all you people are talking about. All the banks currently advertising up here in NYC offer identity theft protection. In fact, I lost my wallet several years ago, had several hundred dollars charged off it, then managed to reclaim the money from my bank (Wachovia at the time). I suggest you guys go check your policies before you start complaining too loudly about careless megacorporations ripping off the little guy.
They did try before, and got screwed when OPEC increased production. It doesn't make sense to put a lot of investment on the assumption that prices will remain artificially high. This time, prices are high because of increased demand, which is much stickier.
Grinding up large patches of land to extract oil isn't popular.
If you'd RTFA, this is an alternative to grinding up the shale. Also, I think you'll find that local environmentalism is a luxury, while oil is a necessity. If oil goes to $100 a barrel, you might find popular opinion more in favor of mining.
why isn't the oil industry building new refineries?
Mainly because of the environmental lobby (I'm looking at you, California), and historically low prices last decade. It takes time to build refineries, but I think you'll find a lot more coming on line in the next few years, especially after the debacle in Louisiana. Interestingly, a lot of the gulf coast refineries were geared to handle Venezuela's relatively heavy crude, so the opportunity to rebuild and repair them might also reduce Chavez's near term leverage over the US. (Oil is a fungible commodity, so his threat to stop shipments to America would have driven up prices mainly because of the cost of converting refineries, not because of a shortage-- he would just be selling the oil somewhere else.)
There are many ways to cook the books to show profit and loss.
In the short term, yes, but you have to pay the piper eventually. In any case, anything a decent analyst couldn't discover would constitute fraud. You might as well say that Microsoft's business plan is doomed to failure because Gates could embezzle their cash, burn the company headquarters, and piss off to Fiji.
If there was $.01 per barrel profit would that be worth it? By definition yes. Would they bother? These companies want big profits, not small ones
These companies want an acceptable return on investment. No, a penny a barrel on $30 capital investment per barrel would not be worth it. However, one might assume that a lot of the cost of this technology is fixed. Once you have the infrastructure in place, each additional barrel might not cost $30 to make. Hence, if they pay for the start-up cost now, while prices are high, it may still be worth their while to pump at a much lower marginal profit.
any projection based on todays price is out of context for 2010 regardless of impending oil shortage, if it doesn't know where inflation will go.
Dear Christ, don't quit your day job. The price of oil is not intrinsically linked to the value of the dollar-- you may have noticed that the two rise and fall quite independently. Consider $30 a real price, as opposed to a nominal one. Moreover, 5 year Treasury notes are currently yielding 4.05%, so the market as a whole doesn't see massive inflation in our near future.
No, it doesn't. OPEC, even the Saudis, have been pumping at full capacity for some time now.
Given time to invest in more infrastructure, they could maybe squeeze some more production out, but then we're looking at a similar time horizon for how long it would take to ramp up Alberta and Colorado.
MS can go on about 'educating' the consumer all they want (and the line from some MS guy along the lines of 'the consumer doesn't know what they want until we show them' really was a perfect example of that company's arrogance)
Just Microsoft? This is precisely my problem with a lot of open source software. I ask how to do something specific, and am told that the software can't do it, and moreover never will because I ought to do it this way instead. E.g. a command line interface is more efficient for many tasks provide one learns the correct syntax and commands to use it effectively.
I think the problem with a lot of new technology is the same. People need to be convinced that something is worth it before they invest the time to learn to use it, not after. Maybe this is the definitive difference between geeks and non-geeks.
There's an old Dilbert cartoon mocking this idea (no link b/c Scott Adams doesn't keep up older comics). Connecting the Earth and the Moon would eliminate the tides, destroying multiple animal habitats, killing Mt. Saint Michel's tourist business, and ending surfing as we know it.
HD-DVD's only clear advantage is that it will be easier to modify existing DVD production lines to produce HD-DVDs. So there's a short term cost advantage to HD-DVD. Assuming an appropriately retooled production line, Blu-Ray disks won't be any more expensive to produce, and may be cheaper.
Yes, and I'm sure the producers will only temporarily pass on the extra costs of manufacturing blu-ray to the consumer, then lower them once the new factories are paid for, just like they said they would with cds.
Maybe it's the mephamphetamine S. Korean video parlors occasionally get busted for adding to their drinks. Heart condition, addictive behavior... wait and see if they investigate the proprietor.
Of course, a Japanese person will pronounce "damacy" as "damashi" anyway, so maybe they thought it was a fair transliteration. I don't know hiragana, but I thought it was 'tamashi', anyway, making the title 'katamari tamashi' mean 'spirit ball'.
Re:That's just what our accounting system VAR told
on
The Future of the Net
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· Score: 1
Out of curiosity, what does 'data mining' mean to you? It's a bad word in my line of work (hedge fund), synonymous with crunching numbers using different time periods, factor inputs, and bases of comparison until you come up with the answer you want. I.e. Using statistics "as a drunk uses a lamp-post, more for support than illumination."
I'd agree philosophically that an informed, paying patient should be able to take whatever risk he or she chooses. However, should the treatment be covered by insurance? What about Medicare? I'd assume that most of the candidates will be old enough to be eligible.
In either case, the surgery will cost you more money, either in higher premiums or higher taxes, whether you ever need it or not. Wouldn't it be nice if it worked more than half the time, or prolonged life for more than a year?
The fact is that in return for the safety net of medicare and medicaid, we gave up the right to receive whatever treatment we like. The case isn't as simple as Person A and Person B trading goods and services, because Person B won't pay all the bill.
Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Spitzer has a habit of bullying executives into settling with the company's money rather than face a personal criminal trial. He lost his one high profile case that actually made it to court.
I'd guess this'll be a settlement, too. Spitzer will get publicity, NY State will get some money, but very little in terms of actual penalties will be imposed.
Slashdot Mirror
For example:Umami
'Savory'?
The Hiptop 1, at least, would check for new messages from the server every 5 minutes or so. It wasn't true push.
For example, if I'd heard that Outlaw was fun, but only 10 hours long, I probably wouldn't pay $50 for it. If, on the other hand, I knew I could sell the game back for $35 in a week, the actual cost of Outlaw to me was only $15.
So, in reality a healthy secondary market for games should encourage developers to take risks, since consumers will be more likely to take a chance on titles in turn. On the other hand, as other posters have pointed out, serial games (like the yearly Madden & NBA releases) have the least resale value since a slightly better version will be out in short order. So the effective cost of buying new the latest sports game or Dead or Alive edition will be higher than for an original game with more staying power.
If you do bird's eye view for my office , there are tons of people in the street on 5th avenue. It's too disorganized to be a parade, and Madison has traffic on it, so it wasn't the blackout. There are also two circles of people in the northern part of the image. Anyone know what gives?
(text from this week's Village Voice)
You could apply the same argument to Americans using less fuel-efficient cars, or energy-guzzling high clock-speed processors. Our wealth permits us to consume more energy and resources than, say, a Vietnamese subsistence farmer, and simultaneously drives up prices world-wide for fungible commodities like oil and industrial metals.
Be careful how strongly you push this idea, because the developing world could turn it around on you just as easily.
I remember upgrading a locally-assembled 386 33, and realizing that only the display was hooked up to the button. It didn't connect to the motherboard at all; all the button did was change a display on the front from '33' to '16'. I kept that case up to a Pentium 133 because of that display...
I think it's important to make the distinction between broadband penetration and the actual use of broadband in people's daily lives. As has been pointed out elsewhere in these comments, countries which subsidise high speed connections will have a higher percentage of people with access to the internet, but not necessarily of internet use.
Rather than a 'PR' stunt this is a different look at internet use. I don't thinki the Census Bureau really has an agenda to promote the US over other nations.
Anecdotally, I work in a fairly international and technologically savvy industry and I'd say Europeans are much more likely to use cell phone services where Americans would use the internet. The gap has certainly narrowed a great deal, but I'd say the Americans were generally much faster at picking up new internet phenomena (and again, this is just from my personal experience).
The assumption being that since government monopolies have failed to produce cost-effective innovation so many times before, the model is due for a success?
I take it nationalist stereotypes and name-calling are still fair game in your free open source software?
Honestly, I think most of them do. I don't know what all you people are talking about. All the banks currently advertising up here in NYC offer identity theft protection. In fact, I lost my wallet several years ago, had several hundred dollars charged off it, then managed to reclaim the money from my bank (Wachovia at the time). I suggest you guys go check your policies before you start complaining too loudly about careless megacorporations ripping off the little guy.
Grinding up large patches of land to extract oil isn't popular.
If you'd RTFA, this is an alternative to grinding up the shale. Also, I think you'll find that local environmentalism is a luxury, while oil is a necessity. If oil goes to $100 a barrel, you might find popular opinion more in favor of mining.
why isn't the oil industry building new refineries?
Mainly because of the environmental lobby (I'm looking at you, California), and historically low prices last decade. It takes time to build refineries, but I think you'll find a lot more coming on line in the next few years, especially after the debacle in Louisiana. Interestingly, a lot of the gulf coast refineries were geared to handle Venezuela's relatively heavy crude, so the opportunity to rebuild and repair them might also reduce Chavez's near term leverage over the US. (Oil is a fungible commodity, so his threat to stop shipments to America would have driven up prices mainly because of the cost of converting refineries, not because of a shortage-- he would just be selling the oil somewhere else.)
In the short term, yes, but you have to pay the piper eventually. In any case, anything a decent analyst couldn't discover would constitute fraud. You might as well say that Microsoft's business plan is doomed to failure because Gates could embezzle their cash, burn the company headquarters, and piss off to Fiji.
If there was $.01 per barrel profit would that be worth it? By definition yes. Would they bother? These companies want big profits, not small ones
These companies want an acceptable return on investment. No, a penny a barrel on $30 capital investment per barrel would not be worth it. However, one might assume that a lot of the cost of this technology is fixed. Once you have the infrastructure in place, each additional barrel might not cost $30 to make. Hence, if they pay for the start-up cost now, while prices are high, it may still be worth their while to pump at a much lower marginal profit.
any projection based on todays price is out of context for 2010 regardless of impending oil shortage, if it doesn't know where inflation will go.
Dear Christ, don't quit your day job. The price of oil is not intrinsically linked to the value of the dollar-- you may have noticed that the two rise and fall quite independently. Consider $30 a real price, as opposed to a nominal one. Moreover, 5 year Treasury notes are currently yielding 4.05%, so the market as a whole doesn't see massive inflation in our near future.
Given time to invest in more infrastructure, they could maybe squeeze some more production out, but then we're looking at a similar time horizon for how long it would take to ramp up Alberta and Colorado.
Just Microsoft? This is precisely my problem with a lot of open source software. I ask how to do something specific, and am told that the software can't do it, and moreover never will because I ought to do it this way instead. E.g. a command line interface is more efficient for many tasks provide one learns the correct syntax and commands to use it effectively.
I think the problem with a lot of new technology is the same. People need to be convinced that something is worth it before they invest the time to learn to use it, not after. Maybe this is the definitive difference between geeks and non-geeks.
There's an old Dilbert cartoon mocking this idea (no link b/c Scott Adams doesn't keep up older comics). Connecting the Earth and the Moon would eliminate the tides, destroying multiple animal habitats, killing Mt. Saint Michel's tourist business, and ending surfing as we know it.
Yes, and I'm sure the producers will only temporarily pass on the extra costs of manufacturing blu-ray to the consumer, then lower them once the new factories are paid for, just like they said they would with cds.
Maybe it's the mephamphetamine S. Korean video parlors occasionally get busted for adding to their drinks. Heart condition, addictive behavior... wait and see if they investigate the proprietor.
Of course, a Japanese person will pronounce "damacy" as "damashi" anyway, so maybe they thought it was a fair transliteration. I don't know hiragana, but I thought it was 'tamashi', anyway, making the title 'katamari tamashi' mean 'spirit ball'.
Out of curiosity, what does 'data mining' mean to you? It's a bad word in my line of work (hedge fund), synonymous with crunching numbers using different time periods, factor inputs, and bases of comparison until you come up with the answer you want. I.e. Using statistics "as a drunk uses a lamp-post, more for support than illumination."
Wait for the figure to be announced and make your own call.
In either case, the surgery will cost you more money, either in higher premiums or higher taxes, whether you ever need it or not. Wouldn't it be nice if it worked more than half the time, or prolonged life for more than a year?
The fact is that in return for the safety net of medicare and medicaid, we gave up the right to receive whatever treatment we like. The case isn't as simple as Person A and Person B trading goods and services, because Person B won't pay all the bill.
I'd guess this'll be a settlement, too. Spitzer will get publicity, NY State will get some money, but very little in terms of actual penalties will be imposed.