Square Enix uses Digipass Go 6 devices, same as Blizzard. Annoyingly, the manufacturer was lazy and didn't develop them to be able to be shared across multiple services using the same hardware (so you can't use the Blizzard tag with Square Enix's services)
You should see what they actually ship them in. Tiny little 3cm x 1cm boxes (two of them, Blizzard can't count and sends more than you order) inside a 40cm x 25cm Fedex Worldwide Express pack. It's like they're trying to beat HP's record (good luck - they ship individual mice on pallets).
If local government were to seize ownership and operation of the physical network layer -- the cabling and routing -- from the phone and cable companies under eminent domain, then any company that wanted to sell ISP, VOIP or TVIP service could do so by paying the city a simple access fee to use the public network infrastructure. We could stop wasting money running redundant cables to everyone's house, we could stop letting service providers leverage their networks to strongarm customers with unfair policies, and we could stop letting them use their existing regional monopolies to lock out competition and cherry pick their customers.
You do realise that a government ever actually invoking that right (and I can guarantee that they have laws stating specific circumstances under which it can be used) would cause a drastic loss of confidence in ability to do business in such an area and undoubtedly result in economic disaster right? No government in it's right might would ever seize the core assets of a business in such a fashion. Keep dreaming.
Cooperatives and other forms of public ownership are the most efficient way to run any form of natural monopoly.
Don't make me laugh. Here in New Zealand, the government owns the largest two electricity generators, and the national power grid. A trust owned by the residents of our largest city owns the municipal power grid within that city.
Generated prices are increased for no reason once every 3 months or so, with an increase in transmission costs added on by the grid operator, plus an additional increase by the municipal grid (sure, they issue dividend cheques to half the region they charge once every year, but wouldn't it benefit those residents more if they - oh, I don't know - charged less to start with?)
The Freedom of Speech clause applies only to Congress. A private company may choose to impair or prevent your freedom of speech on their own domain legally and in complete compliance with the constitution. Unless of course Comcast is now a branch of Congress? No?
(You can feel free to make the expected joke about Congress being a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast if you like).
Your ISP can't shape SSL traffic because they can't inspect the contents. They would have no way of knowing which bytes are going to which web site.
So they shape all of it. Problem solved. Generally speaking they could choose to just penalise any sustained encrypted connection, as a standard HTTP over SSL connection will be relatively short lived. And also, that gets those pesky encrypted torrents as well! Win/Win! Well, for them.
Twitter, what the fuck? "Non-free" solutions don't necessarily tend to "lock the sheep into centralised servers and charge a monthly fee for services" (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons Online, the game subscription is free after buying the box. PlayStation Network costs nothing to use. Wolfenstein lets me create a dedicated server for everyone I know who has it. The examples just go on and on).
People don't "need to embrace free software solutions" at all. Companies need to realise the limits of just what they should be able to do once they've got your money for their product, and people like you need to shut the fuck up and realise that people can make their own decisions whether they want to use "free software" or not.
EA dying would be a very bad thing. Not because they are a good company, but because there would no longer be any viable competition for Activision/Blizzard. The very thought of Activision with a monopoly scares me.
I liked (by which I mean feared) Burnout 3. The first thing you saw when you started it was "you need an EA account". You hit "Create Account" and were greeted by the message "Transferring your account information from Microsoft to EA". It didn't even ask first. Afterwards, they had your name, address, phone number, email, and everything else short of billing info. Yeah.
The Halo movie is slated for 2012 according to IMDB along with Mass Effect and Metal Gear Solid (can anyone with an IMDBPro subscription please check that Uwe Boll's name is nowhere near that?), with Warcraft in 2011.
This may come as a shock to you, but there are actually hundreds of countries on Earth, not just one. Fucking amazing, right?
Or did you miss where the majority of this film's income is from OUTSIDE the US? You know, the place that says "Here Be Dragons" on your map?
I expect that provided he lives long enough, they'll happily fund a couple more "Mega Blockbusters" since he's now known for movies that might cost a fortune to make but have incredible return on investment.
Who pays for the glasses, were they given to the cinemas, or were they bought as ink is for printers.
Assuming they're using RealD or Dolby 3D, they already paid for them as part of the 3D setup they know they are going to need quite frequently from now on. I see a lot of folks referring to the glasses as "cheap" and "a rounding error", but this depends again on which technology the cinema uses - Dolby 3D glasses are much more expensive (and cinemas even go to the trouble of security tagging them to prevent removal) but the screen itself is cheaper, while RealD uses a more expensive screen but dirt cheap glasses. Fuck knows what an IMAX setup costs.
Cameron has succeeded hugely in the past, of course, with films that were/are technically impressive but also greatly enjoyable otherwise, and which people still admire and watch regularly (particularly Terminator 2 and Aliens, but True Lies, The Abyss, and the first Terminator are not exactly slouches either). Who knows if he'll get back on track in the future, now that he's got Avatar out of his system:)
Actually, I heard he promised sequels. He's also working on Terminator 5, and I've heard rumours of Dark Angel - The Movie (which might actually be fucking awesome, that was a pretty good TV show).
Except that movie tickets aren't an essential good. People disagree with oil companies making billions because they do it by charging extortionate prices for goods they know people have no choice but to buy.
Try telling me you have no choice but to buy a movie ticket?
Semi-correct. Though technically it can still be named Unobtainium, it wouldn't seem right linguistically (root word unobtainable, but it actually is obtainable). It would become Unaffordium instead.
Also, 98% of the movie was the work of Weta Digital, head quartered in Wellington, New Zealand. The credits even thank our government (by which they mean the Inland Revenue Department for the immense tax breaks offered to big budget movies done here)
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Square Enix uses Digipass Go 6 devices, same as Blizzard. Annoyingly, the manufacturer was lazy and didn't develop them to be able to be shared across multiple services using the same hardware (so you can't use the Blizzard tag with Square Enix's services)
You should see what they actually ship them in. Tiny little 3cm x 1cm boxes (two of them, Blizzard can't count and sends more than you order) inside a 40cm x 25cm Fedex Worldwide Express pack. It's like they're trying to beat HP's record (good luck - they ship individual mice on pallets).
Elects? Noone elects them.
Besides, they still have to turn a massive profit so they can return multi-million dollar dividends.
The board, and the government that persists in demanding multi-million dollar dividends from the board.
They provide brilliant customer service...
to the really big spenders. They get their own account manager and everything.
I'm not sure if "No Service" is better than "Bad Service" to be honest.
The lack of AT&T in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim would disprove that.
Google Checkout has pretty universally bad service too.
In fact, Google doesn't run a single division with decent customer service.
Go figure.
And shitty service they've been providing with THAT.
If local government were to seize ownership and operation of the physical network layer -- the cabling and routing -- from the phone and cable companies under eminent domain, then any company that wanted to sell ISP, VOIP or TVIP service could do so by paying the city a simple access fee to use the public network infrastructure. We could stop wasting money running redundant cables to everyone's house, we could stop letting service providers leverage their networks to strongarm customers with unfair policies, and we could stop letting them use their existing regional monopolies to lock out competition and cherry pick their customers.
You do realise that a government ever actually invoking that right (and I can guarantee that they have laws stating specific circumstances under which it can be used) would cause a drastic loss of confidence in ability to do business in such an area and undoubtedly result in economic disaster right? No government in it's right might would ever seize the core assets of a business in such a fashion. Keep dreaming.
Cooperatives and other forms of public ownership are the most efficient way to run any form of natural monopoly.
Don't make me laugh. Here in New Zealand, the government owns the largest two electricity generators, and the national power grid. A trust owned by the residents of our largest city owns the municipal power grid within that city.
Generated prices are increased for no reason once every 3 months or so, with an increase in transmission costs added on by the grid operator, plus an additional increase by the municipal grid (sure, they issue dividend cheques to half the region they charge once every year, but wouldn't it benefit those residents more if they - oh, I don't know - charged less to start with?)
Every bloody 3 months.
Yes, because publicly owned is so much better.
The Freedom of Speech clause applies only to Congress. A private company may choose to impair or prevent your freedom of speech on their own domain legally and in complete compliance with the constitution. Unless of course Comcast is now a branch of Congress? No?
(You can feel free to make the expected joke about Congress being a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast if you like).
Your ISP can't shape SSL traffic because they can't inspect the contents. They would have no way of knowing which bytes are going to which web site.
So they shape all of it. Problem solved. Generally speaking they could choose to just penalise any sustained encrypted connection, as a standard HTTP over SSL connection will be relatively short lived. And also, that gets those pesky encrypted torrents as well! Win/Win! Well, for them.
Point taken.
Twitter, what the fuck? "Non-free" solutions don't necessarily tend to "lock the sheep into centralised servers and charge a monthly fee for services" (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons Online, the game subscription is free after buying the box. PlayStation Network costs nothing to use. Wolfenstein lets me create a dedicated server for everyone I know who has it. The examples just go on and on).
People don't "need to embrace free software solutions" at all. Companies need to realise the limits of just what they should be able to do once they've got your money for their product, and people like you need to shut the fuck up and realise that people can make their own decisions whether they want to use "free software" or not.
EA dying would be a very bad thing. Not because they are a good company, but because there would no longer be any viable competition for Activision/Blizzard. The very thought of Activision with a monopoly scares me.
I liked (by which I mean feared) Burnout 3. The first thing you saw when you started it was "you need an EA account". You hit "Create Account" and were greeted by the message "Transferring your account information from Microsoft to EA". It didn't even ask first. Afterwards, they had your name, address, phone number, email, and everything else short of billing info. Yeah.
The Halo movie is slated for 2012 according to IMDB along with Mass Effect and Metal Gear Solid (can anyone with an IMDBPro subscription please check that Uwe Boll's name is nowhere near that?), with Warcraft in 2011.
This may come as a shock to you, but there are actually hundreds of countries on Earth, not just one. Fucking amazing, right?
Or did you miss where the majority of this film's income is from OUTSIDE the US? You know, the place that says "Here Be Dragons" on your map?
I expect that provided he lives long enough, they'll happily fund a couple more "Mega Blockbusters" since he's now known for movies that might cost a fortune to make but have incredible return on investment.
Who pays for the glasses, were they given to the cinemas, or were they bought as ink is for printers.
Assuming they're using RealD or Dolby 3D, they already paid for them as part of the 3D setup they know they are going to need quite frequently from now on. I see a lot of folks referring to the glasses as "cheap" and "a rounding error", but this depends again on which technology the cinema uses - Dolby 3D glasses are much more expensive (and cinemas even go to the trouble of security tagging them to prevent removal) but the screen itself is cheaper, while RealD uses a more expensive screen but dirt cheap glasses. Fuck knows what an IMAX setup costs.
Cameron has succeeded hugely in the past, of course, with films that were/are technically impressive but also greatly enjoyable otherwise, and which people still admire and watch regularly (particularly Terminator 2 and Aliens, but True Lies, The Abyss, and the first Terminator are not exactly slouches either). Who knows if he'll get back on track in the future, now that he's got Avatar out of his system :)
Actually, I heard he promised sequels. He's also working on Terminator 5, and I've heard rumours of Dark Angel - The Movie (which might actually be fucking awesome, that was a pretty good TV show).
Except that movie tickets aren't an essential good. People disagree with oil companies making billions because they do it by charging extortionate prices for goods they know people have no choice but to buy.
Try telling me you have no choice but to buy a movie ticket?
Semi-correct. Though technically it can still be named Unobtainium, it wouldn't seem right linguistically (root word unobtainable, but it actually is obtainable). It would become Unaffordium instead.
Also, 98% of the movie was the work of Weta Digital, head quartered in Wellington, New Zealand. The credits even thank our government (by which they mean the Inland Revenue Department for the immense tax breaks offered to big budget movies done here)
the profitability of said plot was established through the huge book sales.
From the British author.