Because very few real-world scientists have the kind of generalized skills needed to be on the show. Most scientists and engineers are pretty specialized. Good luck with finding a physicist who can also put together a circuit board, weld, and handle explosives.
Excuse me Miss, I speak Corporatespeak. What he's saying is "We have no fucking clue what this service will look like at this point. We just know that it will involve videogames, because we hear they're hip. We don't know enough about videogames at this point to say what form those videogames will take, or even how they'll be distributed--but we hope to get some companies to partner with us soon who do know something about videogames, how they work, and how we can make money off them."
I think that would be a huge mistake for MS and Sony. What you would end up with would be three companies all competing for the finicky, half-hearted casual gamer. That would leave a big opening for a company like Apple or Sega to come along with an out-of-the-blue hardcore system that could end up completely dominating the console market. By the time MS and Sony realized that grandma really doesn't buy that many videogames (certainly not enough to support three separate casual consoles), they could find themselves too far behind the hot new console to catch up again without a major struggle (the same way Nintendo found themselves usurped by a technologically superior Sony in the mid 90's).
Yeah, that's true (particularly when you have jackasses driving big trucks too fast in front of you--throwing up rocks like hail). They help out the car wash industry a lot too.
If you go back all the way to the Atari 2600, you'll notice a consistent pattern of 5 year console "lifespans" (most recently, the Xbox and PS2 broke the pattern a little at 4 and 6 years respectively, but not by much).
Of course, no one wants to admit that they have a new console just around the corner until they're pretty damn close to having it ready (within a year or so), lest it kill current-gen sales. But there is NO WAY it's going to be 2015 before we see a new Xbox 720 or PS4 (as some are trying to claim). Even with the economic downturn, there is no way we're no going to start seeing see ten year gaps between generations, when it's been 5 year gaps for the last three decades.
I grew up in a rural area with a lot of gravel and dirt roads. Gravel roads aren't so bad. They're cheap to build, but they require a lot more maintenance that people think. They get rutting and nasty potholes pretty quickly if they're not consistently maintained (and they deteriorate a LOT faster than asphalt). So I think some of these areas may be jumping the gun on thinking this is a catch-all solution for their cash-strapped transportation departments, counties, and cities. They'll save a lot of money in the short term, but you've got to have a real solid maintenance plan in place or you'll pretty quickly end up with impassable roads. It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
A well-maintained gravel road isn't so bad physically. Rain doesn't wash them out as bad as dirt roads and they stay passable in about any kind of weather. The main downside is that you just can't drive as fast on them as asphalt. But, then again, you can't drive very fast on poorly maintained asphalt either (because of the potholes). So it's probably a wash on most of these roads (particularly since a colder state like Michigan probably goes trough asphalt roads a lot faster than warmer areas). But, if they don't have a plan to maintain them any better than they maintained them when they were asphalt, this solution is going to be a wash-out (literally) pretty quickly.
As a console gamer (you know, one of the guys who helped make KOTOR a big success in the first place), I'm most disappointed that Bioware chose to basically turn their backs on us with a PC-only MMO sequel to the KOTOR series. Bioware has a strange way of saying "thank you."
You could charge players with non-jedi chracters $10 a month and those with jedi $30 a month. You might also have strict requirements for jedi to perform a bunch of crap in-game duties to maintain their jedi's (taking regular mini's from the "jedi council"/"sith council" or face expulsion). That would allow those who REALLY want to play as jedi to do it, while at the same time having a little balance. Personally I wouldn't want to be a jedi anyway. I always found them to be douchebags in the movies (with the exception of Luke). I would take a sumggler or bounty hunter role any day over that.
I fail to see how not including your competitor's browsers in your own OS is "abusing" anything. I've never seen evidence that they ever told OEM's that they couldn't include alternative default browsers on their systems, or willfully disabled other browsers on their OS, or done anything to keep anyone from installing whatever the hell browser they wanted to in Windows. Now had they pulled some stuff like that, THAT would be "abusing their monopoly."
No, it's about people being JEALOUS of MS's monopoly position and about some (like the guy at Opera) who want to advance their own market position by government force (since they don't have the wherewithal to do it by actually winning over customers and OEM's). These aren't people wanting to level the playing field so they can compete fairly with MS. These are people who want the government to give THEM an unfair advantage over MS, to unlevel the playing field in THEIR favor and force MS to do things that no other competitor is burdened with. They're essentially asking for the business world equivalent of Harrison Bergeron, the handicapping of MS so that MS's competitors can enjoy an artificial advantage.
But they're doing the same thing--they just haven't done it as successfully as the other guy. What you're describing is two people doing VERY different things--one killing, the other just sitting at home with a gun. But Apple and MS are, in fact doing the EXACT same thing. Apple just hasn't been as successful at it. So at what percentage point of the market share does Apple become the evil serial killer too? 15%, %25%, 51%?
Disney is more stuck in the "evil" mindset. They have a long-standing knack for taking good and/or pure things, exploiting them, and eventually turning them into money-printing filthy whores. Even Satan has more scruples than the average Disney exec.
The funny thing is that I would actually gladly *pay* for those kind of downloads. When Amazon opened its DRM-free music store selling mp3's, I actually started *buying* all my music (or everything I wanted in their catalog). It wasn't about the money nearly as much as it was about the freedom. I don't mind dropping $1 for a song in mp3 format that I can play anywhere--but I'll be damned if I would pay even 1 cent for a song loaded with DRM that actually PUNISHES me for trying to be honest.
Wow, it's new's to me that MS gave me no choice but to use IE. I always just installed Netscape or Firefox and used that. I shall desist immediately.
And yes, it is true that you don't need a browser to download another browser. You can always use an ftp client--assuming you know Mozilla's ftp IP address off the top of your head with no way to look it up (and assuming that the EC doesn't prohibit MS from bundling ftp with Windows too).
So the EC is punishing them for their success? Is there anything stopping people from going out and buying Apples or installing Linux and making THEM the dominant OS?
Except the OEM's already HAVE that freedom and have from day one. OEM's are, in fact, free to ship their OS's with whatever configuration they wish, and with whatever default browser they wish. Just look at all the crapware and adware most of them bundle in on top of Windows already, if you don't believe me. This has been true as long as I can remember. My first PC was a 1994 Packard Bell that booted up with Packard Bell's own awful "Navigator" interface instead of the default Windows 3.11 screen (and loaded with a bunch of their crapware that it took me forever to get rid of). OEM's don't refuse to install other browsers because MS doesn't *let* them. They apprently just don't feel it's worth the bother (since odds are that anyone who wants to use Firefox or Opera probably already knows how to get it for themselves).
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Because very few real-world scientists have the kind of generalized skills needed to be on the show. Most scientists and engineers are pretty specialized. Good luck with finding a physicist who can also put together a circuit board, weld, and handle explosives.
I miss the Tick. He was always there with a heaping spoonful of kick-ass to help the justice go down.
Excuse me Miss, I speak Corporatespeak. What he's saying is "We have no fucking clue what this service will look like at this point. We just know that it will involve videogames, because we hear they're hip. We don't know enough about videogames at this point to say what form those videogames will take, or even how they'll be distributed--but we hope to get some companies to partner with us soon who do know something about videogames, how they work, and how we can make money off them."
I think that would be a huge mistake for MS and Sony. What you would end up with would be three companies all competing for the finicky, half-hearted casual gamer. That would leave a big opening for a company like Apple or Sega to come along with an out-of-the-blue hardcore system that could end up completely dominating the console market. By the time MS and Sony realized that grandma really doesn't buy that many videogames (certainly not enough to support three separate casual consoles), they could find themselves too far behind the hot new console to catch up again without a major struggle (the same way Nintendo found themselves usurped by a technologically superior Sony in the mid 90's).
On Apple's, malware just works.
My apologies to the hedgehog.
I thought I would give Nintendo a break on that one, but okay:
NES - 1986
SNES - 1991
N64NES - 1986
SNES - 1991
N64 - 1996
Gamecube - 2001
Wii - 2006
Yeah, that's true (particularly when you have jackasses driving big trucks too fast in front of you--throwing up rocks like hail). They help out the car wash industry a lot too.
If you go back all the way to the Atari 2600, you'll notice a consistent pattern of 5 year console "lifespans" (most recently, the Xbox and PS2 broke the pattern a little at 4 and 6 years respectively, but not by much).
Atari 2600 -1977
Atari 5200 - 1982
NES - 1986
SNES - 1991
N64 - 1996
PS1 - 1995
PS2 - 2000
PS3 - 2006
Xbox - 2001
Xbox360 - 2005
Of course, no one wants to admit that they have a new console just around the corner until they're pretty damn close to having it ready (within a year or so), lest it kill current-gen sales. But there is NO WAY it's going to be 2015 before we see a new Xbox 720 or PS4 (as some are trying to claim). Even with the economic downturn, there is no way we're no going to start seeing see ten year gaps between generations, when it's been 5 year gaps for the last three decades.
I grew up in a rural area with a lot of gravel and dirt roads. Gravel roads aren't so bad. They're cheap to build, but they require a lot more maintenance that people think. They get rutting and nasty potholes pretty quickly if they're not consistently maintained (and they deteriorate a LOT faster than asphalt). So I think some of these areas may be jumping the gun on thinking this is a catch-all solution for their cash-strapped transportation departments, counties, and cities. They'll save a lot of money in the short term, but you've got to have a real solid maintenance plan in place or you'll pretty quickly end up with impassable roads. It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
A well-maintained gravel road isn't so bad physically. Rain doesn't wash them out as bad as dirt roads and they stay passable in about any kind of weather. The main downside is that you just can't drive as fast on them as asphalt. But, then again, you can't drive very fast on poorly maintained asphalt either (because of the potholes). So it's probably a wash on most of these roads (particularly since a colder state like Michigan probably goes trough asphalt roads a lot faster than warmer areas). But, if they don't have a plan to maintain them any better than they maintained them when they were asphalt, this solution is going to be a wash-out (literally) pretty quickly.
I would raise both hands and my legs too.
You had *screens*?
As a console gamer (you know, one of the guys who helped make KOTOR a big success in the first place), I'm most disappointed that Bioware chose to basically turn their backs on us with a PC-only MMO sequel to the KOTOR series. Bioware has a strange way of saying "thank you."
You could charge players with non-jedi chracters $10 a month and those with jedi $30 a month. You might also have strict requirements for jedi to perform a bunch of crap in-game duties to maintain their jedi's (taking regular mini's from the "jedi council"/"sith council" or face expulsion). That would allow those who REALLY want to play as jedi to do it, while at the same time having a little balance. Personally I wouldn't want to be a jedi anyway. I always found them to be douchebags in the movies (with the exception of Luke). I would take a sumggler or bounty hunter role any day over that.
I fail to see how not including your competitor's browsers in your own OS is "abusing" anything. I've never seen evidence that they ever told OEM's that they couldn't include alternative default browsers on their systems, or willfully disabled other browsers on their OS, or done anything to keep anyone from installing whatever the hell browser they wanted to in Windows. Now had they pulled some stuff like that, THAT would be "abusing their monopoly."
No, it's about people being JEALOUS of MS's monopoly position and about some (like the guy at Opera) who want to advance their own market position by government force (since they don't have the wherewithal to do it by actually winning over customers and OEM's). These aren't people wanting to level the playing field so they can compete fairly with MS. These are people who want the government to give THEM an unfair advantage over MS, to unlevel the playing field in THEIR favor and force MS to do things that no other competitor is burdened with. They're essentially asking for the business world equivalent of Harrison Bergeron, the handicapping of MS so that MS's competitors can enjoy an artificial advantage.
I believe monopoly in this case is when market share >90%.
Well, good news then! Microsoft is no longer a monopoly. I guess they're not a serial killer anymore and are free to do as they wish. Hooray!
But they're doing the same thing--they just haven't done it as successfully as the other guy. What you're describing is two people doing VERY different things--one killing, the other just sitting at home with a gun. But Apple and MS are, in fact doing the EXACT same thing. Apple just hasn't been as successful at it. So at what percentage point of the market share does Apple become the evil serial killer too? 15%, %25%, 51%?
Disney is more stuck in the "evil" mindset. They have a long-standing knack for taking good and/or pure things, exploiting them, and eventually turning them into money-printing filthy whores. Even Satan has more scruples than the average Disney exec.
The funny thing is that I would actually gladly *pay* for those kind of downloads. When Amazon opened its DRM-free music store selling mp3's, I actually started *buying* all my music (or everything I wanted in their catalog). It wasn't about the money nearly as much as it was about the freedom. I don't mind dropping $1 for a song in mp3 format that I can play anywhere--but I'll be damned if I would pay even 1 cent for a song loaded with DRM that actually PUNISHES me for trying to be honest.
Wow, it's new's to me that MS gave me no choice but to use IE. I always just installed Netscape or Firefox and used that. I shall desist immediately.
And yes, it is true that you don't need a browser to download another browser. You can always use an ftp client--assuming you know Mozilla's ftp IP address off the top of your head with no way to look it up (and assuming that the EC doesn't prohibit MS from bundling ftp with Windows too).
Oh yes, because there is CERTAINLY no corruption in any European government--or many centuries of history absolutely brimming with it.
So the EC is punishing them for their success? Is there anything stopping people from going out and buying Apples or installing Linux and making THEM the dominant OS?
Except the OEM's already HAVE that freedom and have from day one. OEM's are, in fact, free to ship their OS's with whatever configuration they wish, and with whatever default browser they wish. Just look at all the crapware and adware most of them bundle in on top of Windows already, if you don't believe me. This has been true as long as I can remember. My first PC was a 1994 Packard Bell that booted up with Packard Bell's own awful "Navigator" interface instead of the default Windows 3.11 screen (and loaded with a bunch of their crapware that it took me forever to get rid of). OEM's don't refuse to install other browsers because MS doesn't *let* them. They apprently just don't feel it's worth the bother (since odds are that anyone who wants to use Firefox or Opera probably already knows how to get it for themselves).
In 2009 a browser is MOST CERTAINLY basic functionality. No way would any consumer accept an OS without one.