1) If they're overselling their capacity and pocketing the difference now, what makes you think they won't equally overcharge and under-serve customers in a pay per megabyte system.
2) As bandwidth increases and the bandwidth necessary to run XYZ application increases steadily over time, when am I assured that prices will change accordingly? A pay per megabyte system on my current DSL line would look significantly different if I was being offered FIOS or a competing fiber service. And 5 years from now, this will look different again. Without competition forcing providers to price down, I could agree to a per-megabyte price that is excellent for YouTube, but is going to blow when I start downloading movies on my 360. Or I could get a plan that's great for downloading movies on my 360 today, and next year is going to seriously hurt when I have a device to download HD quality video. You think the big telco's are complaining now about streaming video, wait until Youtube is regularly serving H264 and beyond.
I have about 100 objections to what the realities of this type of pricing would entail, but those two are good for starters.
You're quite the cynic, which is great and all. But... for example - if it was in fact the ozone generated by high voltage nodes - wouldn't this still be a successful experiment? They didn't indicate causation, merely correlation. Looking deeper to find WHY that might be the case would be for further studies to determine.
And you do not even have to sack to post under your screen-name, so what does that say about you? I may have my opinions, but I don't cower behind anonymous postings to call people names on the internets.
Not sure if I missed another comment, but can anyone please explain to me how this system would KNOW for a fact that a movie I was downloading wasn't coming from a legitimate source? Is it strictly a white-list? If so, how could they possibly keep track? Sure, knowing when traffics coming from Apple or Amazon is easy enough, but there are far smaller carriers of copyrighted digital materials. Maybe I'm wrong. And if there are not any currently, are we resigning ourselves to a world where there are exactly 2 (or 5) outlets for digital, copyrighted entertainment?
If a school gets permission for their students to log in and view a video online - will their filter flag this as violating traffic?
Is this the end game? No more FYEs, no more Record & Tape Traders (insert your local music shop,) no more middlemen whatsoever (except Apple who snuck in the back door?) Just major content owners, restrictive rights management (many if not all major companies opposing mere cross-device interoperability,) and 'the rest of us' who must do their bidding thanks to our wonderful friends at AT&T, Cisco, et al?
If somebody doesn't step up and put an end to it all, this will be one of the greatest business coups of modern times. Sorry, just pissed, don't mean to be preachy, but srsly.
Let's face it, if you're using linux, you probably aren't getting your news from Fox. So yea, add me and about 100 people that are either family, classmates, business colleagues, etc into your official tally.
Actually, the mobile phone service can be connected to your laptop or any other computer so that you have internet access without being at home. So turn your bitchslap on yourself.
I'm a student, and I have plenty of professors who use send us videos to watch, etc. So I shouldn't be allowed to do that at my local Starbucks with the mobile internet service I pay for? I should also be restricted from streaming internet radio while I work?
Speaking as a computer enthusiast, but the kind that knows absolutely no code whatsoever and relies entirely on the collective wisdom of sites like ubuntuforums and google groups, I've had a more than satisfactory experience with the Ubuntu desktop, and before that SuSE, and prior to that Red Hat. My current desktop running on my Thinkpad T42 rivals even MacOSX in terms of both functionality and looks, and really wasn't THAT difficult to set up.
The only thing holding linux back from a desktop platform that could easily be chosen over competing products are 1) hardware support approaching universality, 2) driver support from day 1 from hw manufacturers (see #1), and 3) simplified/universal/or cross-distro package installation.
I've been using linux for quite a while, and I like to play around alot with it, but it seems now like its just one short breath away from being an obvious alternative for anyone that does not REQUIRE that they run some very Windows-centric software like anything made by Adobe or any latest and greatest PC games. (Which COULD run just as effectively had they been developed with linux users in mind from the start.) Or linux could be one short breath from being doomed to servers and mainframes and hobbyists for another 10-15 years.
If linux is going to finally rise to the mainstream, it better happen in the next 2 years while MS is reeling from the fail that is Vista. I think the software side from linux kernel and desktop developers will be ready, the question will be whether or not the AMD/ATI's, Broadcoms, and Adobe Apollo's of the world (even Google to some degree) will prevent it from ever becoming a reality because they refused to take the platform serious enough to stop giving driver/software compatibility development anything more than scraps from their dev schedules.
Agree fully - a friend of mine got a new Dell the other day that arrived DOA (frozen on the BIOS info screen) - despite the obvious "linguistic" issues that arise when using Dell tech support - before he got off the phone he asked how long the typical support call lasted. His response? TWO HOURS.
Ask yourself, if it takes on average 2 hours to walk your typical support center caller through what are probably most often simple mundane tasks, how do you think those calls would go if they were supporting a typical linux distro?
"ok, now grep glxinfo for the following..." - yea right.
Playing Wii in large groups during parties isn't gaming now? Gaming is defined by a fat, lazy, Rockstar chugging, "hardcore" fanboy sitting on his couch all day smelling up his living room? Or did you move your PS3 on top of the mini-fridge in your bedroom?
Nintendo doesn't need to do lengthy press briefings, etc to sell Mario. Mario Galaxy could be awful and it would sell millions (see Mario Sunshine), Zelda could be a GameCube port (see Twilight Princess), etc. Putting big financing behind titles like Smash Bros, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc it is pretty difficult to make the argument that Nintendo is neglecting anything. They've finally just realized that they can give Retro Studios, Masahiro Sakurai, and whoever is actually directing Mario Galaxy and the recently whispered about follow-up to Zelda for Shigeru Miyamoto big budgets and total control over their projects and gamers will snatch them up without even thinking twice about it.
Meanwhile Miyamoto and Iwata can scout out new talent in untested and unproven areas of the gaming market, bringing millions of new players into the fold that will one-day be relied upon to automatically pick up Wii Fit: Twilight Fitness, Brain Age Galaxy, and Super Wii Sports Brawl a decade or so from now. Thus doubling their bankable properties on hand, and in turn doubling the size of their massive cash holdings.
I think we'll likely see a radically different Zelda as the next installment anyways. After Ocarina came Majora's Mask - which was really just more of Ocarina. Then for the Gamecube they went a somewhat new direction with Windwaker. Most likely Nintendo never thought the GameCube would have such a short life span, so in mid-development (as we know) they rushed Twilight onto the Wii.
I would say Nintendo probably planned Twilight as a late stage Gamecube game, and already had given some thought to a "revolutionary" new design for their Wii system. Twilight just sewed up Ocarina basically - Ocarina on crack... The next game should be new(ish). At least thats my prediction for what its worth.
I've seen Firefox punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at it and hit nothing but air, yet its strength and its popularity are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as Opera can be.
I'm just annoyed that everyone quoting piracy never says how many items they estimate on the black market, but always say - we lose $XXX BILLION DOLLARS every year,' etc... That is a red herring. You are first assuming that legitimate paying customers are reaching the market and choosing the cheap 3rd party knock off over the official product. People who pirate to pirate generally do not intend to buy - therefore reducing that figure by 1/2 to 3/4 as I think its safe to say half or more would not buy the official product if piracy was not an option. I agree that the piracy has to stop, but to pretend as though the RIAA or Nintendo would be the recipient of billions of dollars in added revenue if piracy stopped tomorrow is ludicrous.
No one complained when Halo 2 maps came with a charge for the 1st few months, and I imagine that after this story has left the front pages of your favorite web sites, no one will be complaining afterwards. The maps are free after a month or two... if you don't want to pay, then don't. You can still have the maps.
My main complaint with downloadable content is when games are shipped INCOMPLETE and then charge you for the content that you should have had to begin with. This happened IMO with the 1st GRAW. The game was incredibly short, and then a few short months later they offered a 2nd campaign for around $15. The 2nd example I can think of would be Lumines Live!, which was a completely gimped download at the regular price with primary game functions available for additional download. MS and Q (I think was the publisher) caught holy hell for that.
But to argue that Gears of War was an incomplete game at launch would be ridiculous as evidenced by the fact that it is still (one of the) top played games on Xbox Live today. Add the first TWO FREE MAPS to that package and its more than complete. Four more maps that will eventually be free and a new free gameplay mode is far more than you could have ever hoped for from any publisher, and certainly not the kind of enhanced experience you would have received in the pre-marketplace days (not counting PC gamers.)
While I obviously don't agree with the outcome of the question, and it is straightforward to me. It is in truth, a compound question. It requires acceptance of both premises in order to provide a yes answer. Whereas disagreement with either statement could elicit a no. I'm just saying...
Yes, Wii Sports is the pinnacle of the graphical power of Nvidia's chipset technology. After making the GPU that powered games like Resident Evil for GameCube they sat down to create a GPU more powerful and that could handle rendering Fisher-Price lookalike balloon-headed guys with almost no textures. I think its safe to say we'll not see a game with better graphics than the free pack-in multi-game title Wii Sports on this console.
Yes, I'm sure a company like EA who could give a crap about quality games and is entirely focused on the bottom line, is having a 'war' over who to develop for. On the one hand you can develop for a product that is inexpensive and showing signs of increasing demand, done on the cheap with higher margins of profitability per game sold. On the other hand you could consider that to be just a "distraction" from your desire to make money and focus all development on extremely expensive titles, made with extreme difficulty, for higher consumer prices with lower marginal returns, with a current installed base of 200,000 or so and apparently experiencing decreasing demand as negative press piles up around system reviews.
I'm not telling you the PS3 is going to outright flop, but it certainly isn't going to ever do the numbers that PS2 did that garnered such 3rd party loyalty to their brand. Deciding whether to focus on a system w/ 70% market share, at the exclusion of other systems - not a tough call. But if Sony only captures 33-40% of the market share this round, there won't be a war over which system to develop for, they'll all get equal treatment no matter how many Sony fanboys work at EA.
With all due respect, adding paper trails or patching security holes is hardly a redeployment of a delivered product. One is an addition, and they would be well within their rights to charge FOR that very conceivable project, and the other is patching security flaws, which should be fully expected. Pulling out of an entire project b/c you are asked to add printers is not exactly my idea of a show-stopping request. Most contractors you'd think would be happy for the add-on sales.
In cases where counties have demanded paper trails Diebold has fought them tooth and nail, even suing to have their machines re-certifed after being decertified - rather than complying with the security requirements set forth (CA). They have also threatened to renege on other portions of their contract if counties or states passed laws requiring the machines to have paper trails. Doesn't exactly say much for democracy when if you're lucky enough to have a state or local legislature that actually DOES something, but a company can essentially veto legislation. And states/locals DO NOT have the kind of funds available to blow tens of millions on Diebold and then chalk it up as a loss when they found out the product was faulty after-the-fact.
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1) If they're overselling their capacity and pocketing the difference now, what makes you think they won't equally overcharge and under-serve customers in a pay per megabyte system.
2) As bandwidth increases and the bandwidth necessary to run XYZ application increases steadily over time, when am I assured that prices will change accordingly? A pay per megabyte system on my current DSL line would look significantly different if I was being offered FIOS or a competing fiber service. And 5 years from now, this will look different again. Without competition forcing providers to price down, I could agree to a per-megabyte price that is excellent for YouTube, but is going to blow when I start downloading movies on my 360. Or I could get a plan that's great for downloading movies on my 360 today, and next year is going to seriously hurt when I have a device to download HD quality video. You think the big telco's are complaining now about streaming video, wait until Youtube is regularly serving H264 and beyond.
I have about 100 objections to what the realities of this type of pricing would entail, but those two are good for starters.
There really is no spoon?
You're quite the cynic, which is great and all. But... for example - if it was in fact the ozone generated by high voltage nodes - wouldn't this still be a successful experiment? They didn't indicate causation, merely correlation. Looking deeper to find WHY that might be the case would be for further studies to determine.
When I logged in to GoogleReader after they made these changes:
a) I was informed that changes had been made
b) I was asked if I wanted to clear my share folder to start from scratch now that I had been informed that anyone could view it.
Is this not true for others?
And you do not even have to sack to post under your screen-name, so what does that say about you? I may have my opinions, but I don't cower behind anonymous postings to call people names on the internets.
Not sure if I missed another comment, but can anyone please explain to me how this system would KNOW for a fact that a movie I was downloading wasn't coming from a legitimate source? Is it strictly a white-list? If so, how could they possibly keep track? Sure, knowing when traffics coming from Apple or Amazon is easy enough, but there are far smaller carriers of copyrighted digital materials. Maybe I'm wrong. And if there are not any currently, are we resigning ourselves to a world where there are exactly 2 (or 5) outlets for digital, copyrighted entertainment?
If a school gets permission for their students to log in and view a video online - will their filter flag this as violating traffic?
Is this the end game? No more FYEs, no more Record & Tape Traders (insert your local music shop,) no more middlemen whatsoever (except Apple who snuck in the back door?) Just major content owners, restrictive rights management (many if not all major companies opposing mere cross-device interoperability,) and 'the rest of us' who must do their bidding thanks to our wonderful friends at AT&T, Cisco, et al?
If somebody doesn't step up and put an end to it all, this will be one of the greatest business coups of modern times. Sorry, just pissed, don't mean to be preachy, but srsly.
Let's face it, if you're using linux, you probably aren't getting your news from Fox. So yea, add me and about 100 people that are either family, classmates, business colleagues, etc into your official tally.
Actually, the mobile phone service can be connected to your laptop or any other computer so that you have internet access without being at home. So turn your bitchslap on yourself.
I'm a student, and I have plenty of professors who use send us videos to watch, etc. So I shouldn't be allowed to do that at my local Starbucks with the mobile internet service I pay for? I should also be restricted from streaming internet radio while I work?
Speaking as a computer enthusiast, but the kind that knows absolutely no code whatsoever and relies entirely on the collective wisdom of sites like ubuntuforums and google groups, I've had a more than satisfactory experience with the Ubuntu desktop, and before that SuSE, and prior to that Red Hat. My current desktop running on my Thinkpad T42 rivals even MacOSX in terms of both functionality and looks, and really wasn't THAT difficult to set up.
The only thing holding linux back from a desktop platform that could easily be chosen over competing products are 1) hardware support approaching universality, 2) driver support from day 1 from hw manufacturers (see #1), and 3) simplified/universal/or cross-distro package installation.
I've been using linux for quite a while, and I like to play around alot with it, but it seems now like its just one short breath away from being an obvious alternative for anyone that does not REQUIRE that they run some very Windows-centric software like anything made by Adobe or any latest and greatest PC games. (Which COULD run just as effectively had they been developed with linux users in mind from the start.) Or linux could be one short breath from being doomed to servers and mainframes and hobbyists for another 10-15 years.
If linux is going to finally rise to the mainstream, it better happen in the next 2 years while MS is reeling from the fail that is Vista. I think the software side from linux kernel and desktop developers will be ready, the question will be whether or not the AMD/ATI's, Broadcoms, and Adobe Apollo's of the world (even Google to some degree) will prevent it from ever becoming a reality because they refused to take the platform serious enough to stop giving driver/software compatibility development anything more than scraps from their dev schedules.
Agree fully - a friend of mine got a new Dell the other day that arrived DOA (frozen on the BIOS info screen) - despite the obvious "linguistic" issues that arise when using Dell tech support - before he got off the phone he asked how long the typical support call lasted. His response? TWO HOURS.
Ask yourself, if it takes on average 2 hours to walk your typical support center caller through what are probably most often simple mundane tasks, how do you think those calls would go if they were supporting a typical linux distro?
"ok, now grep glxinfo for the following..." - yea right.
Playing Wii in large groups during parties isn't gaming now? Gaming is defined by a fat, lazy, Rockstar chugging, "hardcore" fanboy sitting on his couch all day smelling up his living room? Or did you move your PS3 on top of the mini-fridge in your bedroom?
Nintendo doesn't need to do lengthy press briefings, etc to sell Mario. Mario Galaxy could be awful and it would sell millions (see Mario Sunshine), Zelda could be a GameCube port (see Twilight Princess), etc. Putting big financing behind titles like Smash Bros, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc it is pretty difficult to make the argument that Nintendo is neglecting anything. They've finally just realized that they can give Retro Studios, Masahiro Sakurai, and whoever is actually directing Mario Galaxy and the recently whispered about follow-up to Zelda for Shigeru Miyamoto big budgets and total control over their projects and gamers will snatch them up without even thinking twice about it. Meanwhile Miyamoto and Iwata can scout out new talent in untested and unproven areas of the gaming market, bringing millions of new players into the fold that will one-day be relied upon to automatically pick up Wii Fit: Twilight Fitness, Brain Age Galaxy, and Super Wii Sports Brawl a decade or so from now. Thus doubling their bankable properties on hand, and in turn doubling the size of their massive cash holdings.
I think we'll likely see a radically different Zelda as the next installment anyways. After Ocarina came Majora's Mask - which was really just more of Ocarina. Then for the Gamecube they went a somewhat new direction with Windwaker. Most likely Nintendo never thought the GameCube would have such a short life span, so in mid-development (as we know) they rushed Twilight onto the Wii. I would say Nintendo probably planned Twilight as a late stage Gamecube game, and already had given some thought to a "revolutionary" new design for their Wii system. Twilight just sewed up Ocarina basically - Ocarina on crack... The next game should be new(ish). At least thats my prediction for what its worth.
I've seen Firefox punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at it and hit nothing but air, yet its strength and its popularity are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as Opera can be.
I'm just annoyed that everyone quoting piracy never says how many items they estimate on the black market, but always say - we lose $XXX BILLION DOLLARS every year,' etc... That is a red herring. You are first assuming that legitimate paying customers are reaching the market and choosing the cheap 3rd party knock off over the official product. People who pirate to pirate generally do not intend to buy - therefore reducing that figure by 1/2 to 3/4 as I think its safe to say half or more would not buy the official product if piracy was not an option. I agree that the piracy has to stop, but to pretend as though the RIAA or Nintendo would be the recipient of billions of dollars in added revenue if piracy stopped tomorrow is ludicrous.
No one complained when Halo 2 maps came with a charge for the 1st few months, and I imagine that after this story has left the front pages of your favorite web sites, no one will be complaining afterwards. The maps are free after a month or two... if you don't want to pay, then don't. You can still have the maps. My main complaint with downloadable content is when games are shipped INCOMPLETE and then charge you for the content that you should have had to begin with. This happened IMO with the 1st GRAW. The game was incredibly short, and then a few short months later they offered a 2nd campaign for around $15. The 2nd example I can think of would be Lumines Live!, which was a completely gimped download at the regular price with primary game functions available for additional download. MS and Q (I think was the publisher) caught holy hell for that. But to argue that Gears of War was an incomplete game at launch would be ridiculous as evidenced by the fact that it is still (one of the) top played games on Xbox Live today. Add the first TWO FREE MAPS to that package and its more than complete. Four more maps that will eventually be free and a new free gameplay mode is far more than you could have ever hoped for from any publisher, and certainly not the kind of enhanced experience you would have received in the pre-marketplace days (not counting PC gamers.)
While I obviously don't agree with the outcome of the question, and it is straightforward to me. It is in truth, a compound question. It requires acceptance of both premises in order to provide a yes answer. Whereas disagreement with either statement could elicit a no. I'm just saying...
Let's not forget the irony that they are now being led by the nuking side of the aging CEO community...
The Marketing Guru- Crafitly coerce your customers to be more loyal, buy more games, rent more games, and continually re-up your Live Gold account
I just went from "might buy Bomberman '93" to firing up the Wii to add points now... Bomberman w/ 5 players is sheer madness and great fun.
Yes, Wii Sports is the pinnacle of the graphical power of Nvidia's chipset technology. After making the GPU that powered games like Resident Evil for GameCube they sat down to create a GPU more powerful and that could handle rendering Fisher-Price lookalike balloon-headed guys with almost no textures. I think its safe to say we'll not see a game with better graphics than the free pack-in multi-game title Wii Sports on this console.
Or four. But who's counting.
Yes, I'm sure a company like EA who could give a crap about quality games and is entirely focused on the bottom line, is having a 'war' over who to develop for. On the one hand you can develop for a product that is inexpensive and showing signs of increasing demand, done on the cheap with higher margins of profitability per game sold. On the other hand you could consider that to be just a "distraction" from your desire to make money and focus all development on extremely expensive titles, made with extreme difficulty, for higher consumer prices with lower marginal returns, with a current installed base of 200,000 or so and apparently experiencing decreasing demand as negative press piles up around system reviews.
I'm not telling you the PS3 is going to outright flop, but it certainly isn't going to ever do the numbers that PS2 did that garnered such 3rd party loyalty to their brand. Deciding whether to focus on a system w/ 70% market share, at the exclusion of other systems - not a tough call. But if Sony only captures 33-40% of the market share this round, there won't be a war over which system to develop for, they'll all get equal treatment no matter how many Sony fanboys work at EA.
With all due respect, adding paper trails or patching security holes is hardly a redeployment of a delivered product. One is an addition, and they would be well within their rights to charge FOR that very conceivable project, and the other is patching security flaws, which should be fully expected. Pulling out of an entire project b/c you are asked to add printers is not exactly my idea of a show-stopping request. Most contractors you'd think would be happy for the add-on sales.
In cases where counties have demanded paper trails Diebold has fought them tooth and nail, even suing to have their machines re-certifed after being decertified - rather than complying with the security requirements set forth (CA). They have also threatened to renege on other portions of their contract if counties or states passed laws requiring the machines to have paper trails. Doesn't exactly say much for democracy when if you're lucky enough to have a state or local legislature that actually DOES something, but a company can essentially veto legislation. And states/locals DO NOT have the kind of funds available to blow tens of millions on Diebold and then chalk it up as a loss when they found out the product was faulty after-the-fact.