If I recall, the 14th Amendment applies. States are not allowed to pass laws which remove these basic rights. The Constitution and Bill of Rights state these rights are inalienable. They aren't granted by the government when they see fit. They are inherent and can't be removed.
That's the theory anyway. Reality is entirely different.
Penn has spoken in defense of Teller on this. And apparently the copyright claim was made in 1983. I assume they've copyrighted a few of their tricks as performances this way, and have for years.
Teller knows you can't copyright an idea. He has copyrighted the performance itself, and you can copyright a specific pantomime routine. His claim is that by performing the exact same steps, you are infringing on a copyrighted pantomime routine.
There is legal precedent for that, but I can see this going either way.
First off, Godwin's Law. I think it's pretty disrespectful to lump the FBI and Nazi Germany together.
Secondly, if they were just abusing absolute power and intended to strong-arm everyone, then why bother studying the science of interrogation? You clearly missed my point. The fact that they want to study the science of interrogation pretty much speaks to the opposite of your suggestion.
Quite the opposite. Torture tends to be counter-intuitive. You condition people to tell you what they think you want to hear, which isn't necessarily the truth.
Interrogation however is critical for law enforcement on any level. Questioning how interrogations are handled and looking for better methods to gain information should steer away from torture.
Two days after BluRay basically won the format war and all six studios decided to back BluRay exclusively, I was in Best Buy. I saw a woman who had a $500 HD-DVD player in her cart and a bunch of HD-DVD movies. They weren't on clearance. I listened to the employee tell this woman that HD-DVD was the future and that she wouldn't regret her purchase. So I interrupted and asked if they had heard the news about BluRay because I didn't want her to throw a bunch of money away.
The Best Buy employee called me a liar and said the exact opposite had happened, that every studio abandoned BluRay and that they had all swore exclusive support of HD-DVD.
Another time, my wife decided to purchase a netbook before a trip. We didn't have time to ship one from NewEgg, so we were making a last second purchase at Best Buy. The employee was trying to talk me into the Acer One I believe, and he was swearing it was twice as fast as all the other netbooks we were looking at. So I asked him why it was twice as fast, and he gave me a bullshit line about how all Acer products are made for gamers, and that you could run the latest games on that netbook. So I pointed out to him that it had the exact same chipset as all the other $300 netbooks Best Buy had there. They pretty much all had identical hardware.
And he kept insisting that this model was twice as fast just because it had the Acer name.
That appears to be another issue where you don't get any signal at all, unless the cable is coiled. That is a particularly defective cable on the whole. Either the cable works completely, or it doesn't. That is the nature of digital cables.
Analog cables could introduce signal loss if not properly shielded, so there was an argument for more expensive cables. But that logic doesn't extend to digital cables.
I've always used $6 HDMI cables with no problem, though it is possible a few cheap ones are completely defective by design as you ran into it. That doesn't mean an $80 HDMI cable is justified.
Hugo made $179 million. If that is your best example of a 3D movie not making money it is a poor one given that Hugo turned a profit (estimated $155 million budget).
I'm not sure I'm spoken to a Best Buy employee once without them lying to me. My most recent purchase was a new 3D TV. I made the purchase at Best Buy because they had the lowest price, despite how much I normally despise that store. The employee was insisting that I needed to buy high-end HDMI cables as well (despite the fact that digital cables don't have signal degradation in the way that analog cables can) and he insisted I needed a new 3D BluRay player. I told him I had a PS3 and he was adamant that PS3's couldn't play 3D BluRays, so I had to buy a new one. I pointed to his demo unit which was using a PS3 to play 3D BluRays.
I also know people who have worked at Best Buy in the past who admitted it is official company policy to lie to customers. They are trained to claim to own whatever item a customer is looking at, so they can recommend it.
Given Best Buy's business practices, frankly I expect them to fail over time.
Small electronics sales will likely move to Amazon, and people will just buy TVs and large items elsewhere (department stores, Walmart, Target, etc).
Bill Gate's Embrace, Extend and then Extinguish philosophy didn't include suing over patents. Under Gate's reign, they never once used patents offensively.
However, under Ballmer it has been a different story, so I don't know.
That being said, if Netscape had browser patents that AOL was sitting on that could be monetized, I'm assuming they would have done so.
Poorly rushed crappy post-production 3D has failed. Movies filmed in 3D have made bank. I just hope Hollywood identifies this trend and stops with the crappy post-production 3D.
Because Wasteland 2 is going to be developed with a skeleton staff, largely like a indie game. Wasteland 2 isn't a AAA game from a big publisher.
You can doubt the $20 million figure all you want, but that is the norm for a AAA title. Really big games cost even more.
Obsidian didn't get $300 million in revenue. They got paid a flat fee for developing the game. They were only slated to get a percentage of sales revenue if the game received a Metacritic score of 85, and it got an 84. Oddly enough, all the negative reviews were based on how buggy the engine was that the publisher forced on them. So the publisher got to keep that much more money, and the developer had to lay off 30 people.
Even then, $300 in retail revenue doesn't mean the publisher received $300 million either.
Bethesda payed Obsidian to develop the game. Let's say they paid $20 million. But Bethesda also paid for physically boxing and producing the copies. Those copies need to be shipped to retailers. And on console versions, you have to pay licensing costs to Microsoft and Sony. Let's say Bethesda got $45 out of each $60, and that may be generous. Even then, that would make that particular title very profitable. But New Vegas certainly wasn't the only game produced. You cited 5 million sales, and yet New Vegas isn't listed as reaching 1 million PS3 or 360 sales.
I didn't say that you need $20 million for an iOS game, or an indie game. I said you'd need $20 million for a AAA title, and that statement is still true. Not all games are AAA titles, which is why I stipulated that.
"gamers that spend $20 a month on used games will only buy a new game every 3 months"
You miss that people who only buy $20 used games aren't suddenly going to be 1 new game instead. This move doesn't generate new revenue because it doesn't make any new customers. They'll just keep buying $20 used games for the current gen of consoles rather than moving to the next gen.
Publishers don't make money off used games currently, but this approach will not increase profits. It will decrease them.
I interviewed Brian Fargo recently, and he cited $20 million dollars as the price point to get in the AAA market.
There are only 25 PS3 titles to ever reach 1 million sales. Most games will not sell 1 million copies. When I look at a practical business model, I'm assuming a relatively low budget ($20 million as opposed to $100 million for titles like Max Payne 3) but also assuming I'm not selling 1 million copies.
And funny that you cite Fallout: New Vegas, but Obsidian just ended up laying off 30 people. The owner of the company hasn't taken any salary in over six months and they're fighting bankruptcy. But surely, they're making too much money and should lay off the rest of their staff.
They can't sell a game for $10 retail. There is the cost to ship it to a retailer. There is retailer markup. There is the licensing cost to the console maker. A brand new retail game that costs $20 might only send $5 back to the publisher per copy. If the game cost $20 million to produce (again, entry level for a AAA title) then they'd have to sell 4 million copies to break even.
Top selling games aspire to sell 1 million copies. Only 25 PS3 games have ever sold 1 million copies. Even if sales should increase at the lower cost, if you need 4 million copies to break even, then that isn't a good business model.
You also have to realize that people think less of items that are priced cheaper. There was someone who tried unseating Madden with a $20 football video game (NFL2k series? Can't remember) and they failed miserably. They didn't sell more copies at the lower price point because people assume a cheaper game is inherently a lesser game.
The carts still weren't that expensive to produce. And I was mistaken. NES games were $50 at launch, which is akin to over $100 today. And the best estimate I can find online for the development cost for Super Mario Bros. is $1.4 million. Even that sounds high given that it was a fairly small development team, and cheap art assets.
Compare that to $100+ million to make Max Payne 3 today, but selling the game for $60, which is cheaper comparatively than NES games that are inflation adjusted.
The main point remains that people who insist AAA games should be $20 or less aren't being reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
If I recall, the 14th Amendment applies. States are not allowed to pass laws which remove these basic rights. The Constitution and Bill of Rights state these rights are inalienable. They aren't granted by the government when they see fit. They are inherent and can't be removed.
That's the theory anyway. Reality is entirely different.
Why would a dance performance be covered under patents when all other artistic performances are covered by copyright?
Penn has spoken in defense of Teller on this. And apparently the copyright claim was made in 1983. I assume they've copyrighted a few of their tricks as performances this way, and have for years.
Teller knows you can't copyright an idea. He has copyrighted the performance itself, and you can copyright a specific pantomime routine. His claim is that by performing the exact same steps, you are infringing on a copyrighted pantomime routine.
There is legal precedent for that, but I can see this going either way.
But he did lump them together, which is what I said. I didn't claim he said they were exactly the same.
First off, Godwin's Law. I think it's pretty disrespectful to lump the FBI and Nazi Germany together.
Secondly, if they were just abusing absolute power and intended to strong-arm everyone, then why bother studying the science of interrogation? You clearly missed my point. The fact that they want to study the science of interrogation pretty much speaks to the opposite of your suggestion.
Quite the opposite. Torture tends to be counter-intuitive. You condition people to tell you what they think you want to hear, which isn't necessarily the truth.
Interrogation however is critical for law enforcement on any level. Questioning how interrogations are handled and looking for better methods to gain information should steer away from torture.
Best Buy trained employees to say that you can't connect digital cameras, webcams, etc. to Linux which is an outright lie.
Oddly enough, at the time Microsoft was pushing Windows 7 where there was a possibility your old webcam wouldn't have new Windows 7 drivers.
Adam Melroy who works here with me at PayPal. Though it would be pretty rude of me to distribute his contact info publicly.
However, since you are trusting Best Buy over me, I'd rather give you documented evidence of Best Buy paying to train their employees to lie.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/09/microsoft-yep-we-teach-best-buy-to-trash-linux/
Feel free to apologize to me as necessary.
The sales guy called me a liar. I walked away before I go too irate. I didn't see if she ended up purchasing the stuff.
Thanks for the example. Now I'm required by law to post this.
http://xkcd.com/272/
I did interrupt a Best Buy employee lying once.
Two days after BluRay basically won the format war and all six studios decided to back BluRay exclusively, I was in Best Buy. I saw a woman who had a $500 HD-DVD player in her cart and a bunch of HD-DVD movies. They weren't on clearance. I listened to the employee tell this woman that HD-DVD was the future and that she wouldn't regret her purchase. So I interrupted and asked if they had heard the news about BluRay because I didn't want her to throw a bunch of money away.
The Best Buy employee called me a liar and said the exact opposite had happened, that every studio abandoned BluRay and that they had all swore exclusive support of HD-DVD.
Another time, my wife decided to purchase a netbook before a trip. We didn't have time to ship one from NewEgg, so we were making a last second purchase at Best Buy. The employee was trying to talk me into the Acer One I believe, and he was swearing it was twice as fast as all the other netbooks we were looking at. So I asked him why it was twice as fast, and he gave me a bullshit line about how all Acer products are made for gamers, and that you could run the latest games on that netbook. So I pointed out to him that it had the exact same chipset as all the other $300 netbooks Best Buy had there. They pretty much all had identical hardware.
And he kept insisting that this model was twice as fast just because it had the Acer name.
That appears to be another issue where you don't get any signal at all, unless the cable is coiled. That is a particularly defective cable on the whole. Either the cable works completely, or it doesn't. That is the nature of digital cables.
Analog cables could introduce signal loss if not properly shielded, so there was an argument for more expensive cables. But that logic doesn't extend to digital cables.
I've always used $6 HDMI cables with no problem, though it is possible a few cheap ones are completely defective by design as you ran into it. That doesn't mean an $80 HDMI cable is justified.
Hugo made $179 million. If that is your best example of a 3D movie not making money it is a poor one given that Hugo turned a profit (estimated $155 million budget).
I'm not sure I'm spoken to a Best Buy employee once without them lying to me. My most recent purchase was a new 3D TV. I made the purchase at Best Buy because they had the lowest price, despite how much I normally despise that store. The employee was insisting that I needed to buy high-end HDMI cables as well (despite the fact that digital cables don't have signal degradation in the way that analog cables can) and he insisted I needed a new 3D BluRay player. I told him I had a PS3 and he was adamant that PS3's couldn't play 3D BluRays, so I had to buy a new one. I pointed to his demo unit which was using a PS3 to play 3D BluRays.
I also know people who have worked at Best Buy in the past who admitted it is official company policy to lie to customers. They are trained to claim to own whatever item a customer is looking at, so they can recommend it.
Given Best Buy's business practices, frankly I expect them to fail over time.
Small electronics sales will likely move to Amazon, and people will just buy TVs and large items elsewhere (department stores, Walmart, Target, etc).
Bill Gate's Embrace, Extend and then Extinguish philosophy didn't include suing over patents. Under Gate's reign, they never once used patents offensively.
However, under Ballmer it has been a different story, so I don't know.
That being said, if Netscape had browser patents that AOL was sitting on that could be monetized, I'm assuming they would have done so.
Poorly rushed crappy post-production 3D has failed. Movies filmed in 3D have made bank. I just hope Hollywood identifies this trend and stops with the crappy post-production 3D.
Shipping 5 million copies to retailers and selling 5 million copies are another story.
Again, the game is not listed as reaching the 1 million sales mark on the PS3 or 360.
And yet my post was originally in response to someone claiming games should cost $15.
If games were $50 in 1985, then why should they cost $15 now when development costs have skyrocketed?
Even if games only matched the growth rate of income, then a $50 game should cost $65 today. Stop trying to claim that $60 is ridiculous.
Because Wasteland 2 is going to be developed with a skeleton staff, largely like a indie game. Wasteland 2 isn't a AAA game from a big publisher.
You can doubt the $20 million figure all you want, but that is the norm for a AAA title. Really big games cost even more.
Obsidian didn't get $300 million in revenue. They got paid a flat fee for developing the game. They were only slated to get a percentage of sales revenue if the game received a Metacritic score of 85, and it got an 84. Oddly enough, all the negative reviews were based on how buggy the engine was that the publisher forced on them. So the publisher got to keep that much more money, and the developer had to lay off 30 people.
Even then, $300 in retail revenue doesn't mean the publisher received $300 million either.
Bethesda payed Obsidian to develop the game. Let's say they paid $20 million. But Bethesda also paid for physically boxing and producing the copies. Those copies need to be shipped to retailers. And on console versions, you have to pay licensing costs to Microsoft and Sony. Let's say Bethesda got $45 out of each $60, and that may be generous. Even then, that would make that particular title very profitable. But New Vegas certainly wasn't the only game produced. You cited 5 million sales, and yet New Vegas isn't listed as reaching 1 million PS3 or 360 sales.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games
Are you sure it sold 5 million copies?
And what about all the other titles that cost $20+ million to produce but never sell 500k copies?
I didn't say that you need $20 million for an iOS game, or an indie game. I said you'd need $20 million for a AAA title, and that statement is still true. Not all games are AAA titles, which is why I stipulated that.
You can develop XBox Live, PSN and WiiWare titles for digital delivery today.
"gamers that spend $20 a month on used games will only buy a new game every 3 months"
You miss that people who only buy $20 used games aren't suddenly going to be 1 new game instead. This move doesn't generate new revenue because it doesn't make any new customers. They'll just keep buying $20 used games for the current gen of consoles rather than moving to the next gen.
Publishers don't make money off used games currently, but this approach will not increase profits. It will decrease them.
http://www.destructoid.com/max-payne-3-potentially-cost-105-million-to-develop-211058.phtml
I interviewed Brian Fargo recently, and he cited $20 million dollars as the price point to get in the AAA market.
There are only 25 PS3 titles to ever reach 1 million sales. Most games will not sell 1 million copies. When I look at a practical business model, I'm assuming a relatively low budget ($20 million as opposed to $100 million for titles like Max Payne 3) but also assuming I'm not selling 1 million copies.
And funny that you cite Fallout: New Vegas, but Obsidian just ended up laying off 30 people. The owner of the company hasn't taken any salary in over six months and they're fighting bankruptcy. But surely, they're making too much money and should lay off the rest of their staff.
They can't sell a game for $10 retail. There is the cost to ship it to a retailer. There is retailer markup. There is the licensing cost to the console maker. A brand new retail game that costs $20 might only send $5 back to the publisher per copy. If the game cost $20 million to produce (again, entry level for a AAA title) then they'd have to sell 4 million copies to break even.
Top selling games aspire to sell 1 million copies. Only 25 PS3 games have ever sold 1 million copies. Even if sales should increase at the lower cost, if you need 4 million copies to break even, then that isn't a good business model.
You also have to realize that people think less of items that are priced cheaper. There was someone who tried unseating Madden with a $20 football video game (NFL2k series? Can't remember) and they failed miserably. They didn't sell more copies at the lower price point because people assume a cheaper game is inherently a lesser game.
The carts still weren't that expensive to produce. And I was mistaken. NES games were $50 at launch, which is akin to over $100 today. And the best estimate I can find online for the development cost for Super Mario Bros. is $1.4 million. Even that sounds high given that it was a fairly small development team, and cheap art assets.
Compare that to $100+ million to make Max Payne 3 today, but selling the game for $60, which is cheaper comparatively than NES games that are inflation adjusted.
The main point remains that people who insist AAA games should be $20 or less aren't being reasonable.