Re:A better way to manage downloaded games?
on
Why Games Cost $60
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· Score: 1
Because they are 6-8 years old. And they wiped my characters...
A better way to manage downloaded games?
on
Why Games Cost $60
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I got turned off to downloading games after I downloaded Castle Crashers for the XBOX 360 and then got the red ring. Now the only person who can play the full version of the game is me. I bought the full game for my kids to play not for me to play, but they are locked out. I've tried unlocking it but nothing works.
Until the DRM is removed from downloaded games its not practical. Any of the kids can pick a game up off the shelf and play it, but if I'm not logged in my kids can't play the games I've bought for them. I don't want them to mess with my account and I don't want to pay to download the games again. I really don't want to spend hours on the phone with tech support to "reunlock" a game I already bought and paid for.
Tennis requires at least two people. Bouncing the ball off the wall != tennis. Finding two people with the same schedule to play and having a court in your living room in the AC. A virtual tennis partner is what is needed.
Then there is basketball. You need 9 other people to play with you? And once again you run into the issue of not having a court in your yard/living room.
The same goes for most other sports. Its fun to simulate because the equipment or space needed just doesn't exist.
For me, I built a soccer field in my backyard and spawned 4 players to play with me. Even then the skill isn't adjustable. The AI is still horrible since it ranges from 6-9. Maybe when the AI gets to 16-19 it may be a little better...
I guess as a slashdot reader I'm supposed to be for "net neutrality" however I trust profit grabbing companies more than I trust the FCC. If I don't like the way a company is routing their traffic I can at least switch companies. If the FCC gets involved and they do something stupid there is no alternative. The worst case for a business blocking/routing traffic is that someone else creates a competing ISP.
TARP1 and TARP2. They are just spending for the sake of spending. They could spend 100 Billion of the TARP dollars on NASA and it would have the same effect as spending 100 Billion on seeding the national mall. The point of TARP is to get money into the economy. It really doesn't matter how its spent as long as it is spent.
So yes we have a $9 Trillion budget deficit but 1.3 Trillion of that is in TARP funds which are just spending projects for the sake of spending money.
Everyone knows it's fucking ridiculous, and as the game-playing public ages I imagine it will get fixed eventually. It just results in stupid edge cases in the short term.
Naive much? Lets look at history to see how well thats worked out for us:
1. Alcohol: At first anyone could drink. Then nobody could drink, then 16 year olds could drink, then 18, then 21. Note that you can vote and be drafted at 18 but still can't buy a beer. So no the edge case did not get fixed.
2.Marijuana: A native weed that has been cultivated in the US for over 400 years. Only in the past 60 years has there been prohibition (thanks refer madness). Growing 1 plant in most states will land you with 5 years in prison. Growing more than 10 will get you 20. However in California it has been legalized for "medical use" and the US attorney general says he won't prosecute. So how well did that edge case work out?
3.Federal Taxes: Income tax is less than 100 years old. It was originally supposed to be a temporary tax on the wealthiest 1% of Americans to pay for the war. We're still paying for it today. How well as that edge case worked out? Now we all pay taxes.
Give me one example where some government restriction or prohibition has been "fixed eventually". I can't think of any.
And then like AOL, Google goes out of business (shocker I know) and all your data is lost forever. The cloud is good for a lot of stuff, but for data storage it should be part of the solution, not 100% of it.
The "barrier to entry" is complete and utter bull shit. Look at Tesla, they started up with a few million. The Big Autos, foreign and domestic, make it seem like you need 100 Billion to start a car company. That part of why they got bailout money from their respective countries, on the fallacy that a demand in the market wouldn't create competitors because of this fictional "barrier to entry". What would happen is people still need to get from point A to point B and smaller companies like Lotus, or even local garages would fill the gap. Eventually a new giant would emerge to dominate the market. The real barrier to entry is that the giant companies have practical monopolies that they use to squeeze out their smaller competitors.
Another factor of the cost of entry is government regulation. A small company can't just make a car and be good with it, they have to send it in for crash testing, emissions testing, and other testing. These shouldn't be a factor in production runs of less than 1,000 cars. This would allow more competitors into the market and would remove a lot of the fictional barrier.
The barrier to entry really only applies for large production runs where you need to tool a factory. Look at the custom motorcycle business, less regulation and almost anyone can open a shop. Why should cars be any different?
*Zune HD AV Dock and an HDTV (all sold separately) are required to view video at HD resolution. Supported 720p HD video files play on the player, downscaled to fit the screen at 480 x 272 â" not HD resolution. Zune Pass subscription required; streaming via wi-fi available in U.S. only. HD Radioâ is a proprietary trademark of iBiquity Digital Corp. Learn more about HD Radio here.
So does that mean I need a "zune pass" to play video on my zune? What the hell is a zune pass anyway? Ok, so I look it up, but now why do I need it again?
Why not get rid of newspapers and just have the journalists. The journalists write the stories where their market is. So the journalist writes for the customer. Then an aggrigator, like Google hosts the articles. Google is responsible for getting advertisers. They know exactly how many people are viewing the page and they know where they are viewing the page from so they can target the advertising. They then split the ad revenue with the journalist based on views and ad revenue from that location. They could even put up a subscriber base to support your journalists. No more newspapers screwing the journalists, advertisers and patrons. Its just a direct market.
I hope all newspapers die out, we don't need them anymore. We have the technology to support independent journalists directly. We don't need the buracracy of a newspaper anymore. We don't even need cable networks or cable news stations anymore either. We can directly support the programming and news we want now. There are enough fans of firefly that had it been produced independantly of the studio it could still be on air. There just needed to be a direct way for the fans to support the show. I.E. broadcast it over the internet tracking the number of users and adding directed advertising, if the fans wanted the show and it wasn't earning enough from ad revenue then they could add subscription fees to the show to support it. If the demand was there there would be no reason to cancel it, it would have been self supporting. We really don't need studios anymore. Studios could operate like venture capitalists and develop pilot shows for a percentage of the return. The show then supports itself, not all shows would succeed, but those that do would be enough to support the VCs. This would free us from the corporate bias and let the users have a direct control over their content.
I could find more examples, but I don't have time to find them for you. Needless to say there are a lot of Americans that aren't risk averse. Wait what am I saying, there are just a lot of stupid people who don't realize how dangerous the things they are doing really are.
The QWERTY keyboard doomed all languages that can't use basic characters to represent thought. The addition of accent marks and tones in addition to QWERTY characters has doomed all languages to the eventual fate of what can easily be expressed on a computer. The other languages may still be spoken widely but their written languages will/need to adapt to a "standard" keyboard to stay viable in the computer age.
Yes the silly guitar is not like learning to play guitar, however in Rock Band 2 (not Rock Band) you can actually learn the drums by playing the game and practicing in practice mode. You can even hook up real electronic drums sets instead of using the cheap set.
I got hooked on playing drums because of this game. I practice on it because its more fun then playing on a set by myself with no accompanying music. I'm thinking about buying an acoustic set because of it too. So I'd say mission accomplished to the Harmonix guys.
Also you should look up on you tube people playing the drums on expert, it is crazy insane.
I have a necessity. Something I want to do and build. The technology is available to make what I want to build. I can buy all the parts from different vendors and build the product I want, however I can't finish the product because it would violate someone else's patents and possibly some copyrights. This is for my personal use, but because someone else thought of it to and applied for a legal document saying that only they can supply this product I can not have it.
Now please explain to me why that is ok? If they made a better product I would just buy it from the patent holder, but since they don't I can't create a better product because they will sue me for infringement. They also refuse to lease the rights to the product. There is nothing I can do to stop them, and they have a right to make money off their "invention" even though it is somewhat obvious once the underlying technologies where created.
I have about 8 things off the top of my head that I want for my car and my home that fall into this category.
Ok, now this is a science fiction example, but it is exactly why patents and copyrights are wrong:
If you've seen the movie "Iron Man" he develops a power source that powers the suit. It is proprietary and he has the sole right to produce, sell and license the product. If he chooses not to allow anyone to use it, its within his rights. Now lets say that that power source, once discovered is fairly obvious, it just wasn't until he "discovered/invented" it. So Joe Schmo can build it, but he'd need a company and a few $100,000 to do it. Joe Schmo has this great idea that is dependent on the power source, lets say it is private Mars colonization. Well he can't because the the company that owns the technology for the power source won't sell him the rights, nor will they produce and sell him one to use with his invention which is Dependant on the prior work.
Technology has been effectively been halted by copyrights and patents. Information moves to quickly to believe that once a technology is created that 100's of people if not 1000's of people come up with novel uses, however only 1 of them gets the patent/copyright for it.
Lets also now say that the guy who first invents it and holds the patent does a crappy job in producing it. Yet someone else figures out how to make a much better version of it, but can't because the first inventor sues and therefore stops the better product from making it to market. Now everyone suffers because of the patent. Any delay on getting the better implementation to market stops all future technology based on the original work.
Anyway, so I hate patents and copyrights and I don't see there purpose. What matters is the quality of the product you bring to market, not the idea for the product. If you invent the mousetrap, and I can build a better one, I should be able to. With patents and copyrights I can't and your product is shit and we have to live with it.
Sorry about the rant but currently I'm trying to find a product that used to exist but has been discontinued by all vendors because of copyright and patent violations and nobody, not even the patent holder produces the product anymore.
We should drop the mega, giga, tera all together and just write 2^20, 2^30, 2^40 and so on. That is the actual size of the information. We could say the size of the file is four twenties in long hand.
Is there any way to create a new ISP that rejects the governments authority?
No we will not monitor our customers.
No we will not limit their bandwidth.
As long as they pay their bill they will receive service.
No we will not keep IP logs, and any we need to keep for connection purposes we will never divulge under any circumstances.
We maintain that we are nothing more than conduit of information, and we do not care what that information is.
Except that the government is a monopoly with the power to jail competitors and to block any companies that would choose to compete against it.
By leaving it in the hands of companies, even if it is only a small minority of people that understand what is happening they would always have the ability to create their own company to compete against the giants. When the government takes over it is there way or no way. There is no longer competition so if you have a problem you have no recourse or alternative.
We are talking about shipping cargo to space, not people. G-forces are not an issue. CERN's Large Hadron Collider moves atoms at close to the speed of light, use the same magnetic principles to accelerate a container and launch it into space. The trick is then catching the object. It wouldn't work for anything living, because they'd be crushed under the forces, but for materials like water it wouldn't be an issue. You could even possibly launch satellites in this manner.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they are 6-8 years old. And they wiped my characters...
I got turned off to downloading games after I downloaded Castle Crashers for the XBOX 360 and then got the red ring. Now the only person who can play the full version of the game is me. I bought the full game for my kids to play not for me to play, but they are locked out. I've tried unlocking it but nothing works.
Until the DRM is removed from downloaded games its not practical. Any of the kids can pick a game up off the shelf and play it, but if I'm not logged in my kids can't play the games I've bought for them. I don't want them to mess with my account and I don't want to pay to download the games again. I really don't want to spend hours on the phone with tech support to "reunlock" a game I already bought and paid for.
Tennis requires at least two people. Bouncing the ball off the wall != tennis. Finding two people with the same schedule to play and having a court in your living room in the AC. A virtual tennis partner is what is needed.
Then there is basketball. You need 9 other people to play with you? And once again you run into the issue of not having a court in your yard/living room.
The same goes for most other sports. Its fun to simulate because the equipment or space needed just doesn't exist.
For me, I built a soccer field in my backyard and spawned 4 players to play with me. Even then the skill isn't adjustable. The AI is still horrible since it ranges from 6-9. Maybe when the AI gets to 16-19 it may be a little better...
Intergalactic?
I guess as a slashdot reader I'm supposed to be for "net neutrality" however I trust profit grabbing companies more than I trust the FCC. If I don't like the way a company is routing their traffic I can at least switch companies. If the FCC gets involved and they do something stupid there is no alternative. The worst case for a business blocking/routing traffic is that someone else creates a competing ISP.
You know if you can download your own, like a ringtone, I'll just download the "silent" one.
TARP1 and TARP2. They are just spending for the sake of spending. They could spend 100 Billion of the TARP dollars on NASA and it would have the same effect as spending 100 Billion on seeding the national mall. The point of TARP is to get money into the economy. It really doesn't matter how its spent as long as it is spent.
So yes we have a $9 Trillion budget deficit but 1.3 Trillion of that is in TARP funds which are just spending projects for the sake of spending money.
Everyone knows it's fucking ridiculous, and as the game-playing public ages I imagine it will get fixed eventually. It just results in stupid edge cases in the short term.
Naive much? Lets look at history to see how well thats worked out for us:
1. Alcohol: At first anyone could drink. Then nobody could drink, then 16 year olds could drink, then 18, then 21. Note that you can vote and be drafted at 18 but still can't buy a beer. So no the edge case did not get fixed.
2.Marijuana: A native weed that has been cultivated in the US for over 400 years. Only in the past 60 years has there been prohibition (thanks refer madness). Growing 1 plant in most states will land you with 5 years in prison. Growing more than 10 will get you 20. However in California it has been legalized for "medical use" and the US attorney general says he won't prosecute. So how well did that edge case work out?
3.Federal Taxes: Income tax is less than 100 years old. It was originally supposed to be a temporary tax on the wealthiest 1% of Americans to pay for the war. We're still paying for it today. How well as that edge case worked out? Now we all pay taxes.
Give me one example where some government restriction or prohibition has been "fixed eventually". I can't think of any.
And then like AOL, Google goes out of business (shocker I know) and all your data is lost forever. The cloud is good for a lot of stuff, but for data storage it should be part of the solution, not 100% of it.
This is what the footnote was attached to.
The "barrier to entry" is complete and utter bull shit. Look at Tesla, they started up with a few million. The Big Autos, foreign and domestic, make it seem like you need 100 Billion to start a car company. That part of why they got bailout money from their respective countries, on the fallacy that a demand in the market wouldn't create competitors because of this fictional "barrier to entry". What would happen is people still need to get from point A to point B and smaller companies like Lotus, or even local garages would fill the gap. Eventually a new giant would emerge to dominate the market. The real barrier to entry is that the giant companies have practical monopolies that they use to squeeze out their smaller competitors.
Another factor of the cost of entry is government regulation. A small company can't just make a car and be good with it, they have to send it in for crash testing, emissions testing, and other testing. These shouldn't be a factor in production runs of less than 1,000 cars. This would allow more competitors into the market and would remove a lot of the fictional barrier.
The barrier to entry really only applies for large production runs where you need to tool a factory. Look at the custom motorcycle business, less regulation and almost anyone can open a shop. Why should cars be any different?
*Zune HD AV Dock and an HDTV (all sold separately) are required to view video at HD resolution. Supported 720p HD video files play on the player, downscaled to fit the screen at 480 x 272 â" not HD resolution. Zune Pass subscription required; streaming via wi-fi available in U.S. only. HD Radioâ is a proprietary trademark of iBiquity Digital Corp. Learn more about HD Radio here.
So does that mean I need a "zune pass" to play video on my zune? What the hell is a zune pass anyway? Ok, so I look it up, but now why do I need it again?
What if your customer was both?
Why not get rid of newspapers and just have the journalists. The journalists write the stories where their market is. So the journalist writes for the customer. Then an aggrigator, like Google hosts the articles. Google is responsible for getting advertisers. They know exactly how many people are viewing the page and they know where they are viewing the page from so they can target the advertising. They then split the ad revenue with the journalist based on views and ad revenue from that location. They could even put up a subscriber base to support your journalists. No more newspapers screwing the journalists, advertisers and patrons. Its just a direct market.
I hope all newspapers die out, we don't need them anymore. We have the technology to support independent journalists directly. We don't need the buracracy of a newspaper anymore. We don't even need cable networks or cable news stations anymore either. We can directly support the programming and news we want now. There are enough fans of firefly that had it been produced independantly of the studio it could still be on air. There just needed to be a direct way for the fans to support the show. I.E. broadcast it over the internet tracking the number of users and adding directed advertising, if the fans wanted the show and it wasn't earning enough from ad revenue then they could add subscription fees to the show to support it. If the demand was there there would be no reason to cancel it, it would have been self supporting. We really don't need studios anymore. Studios could operate like venture capitalists and develop pilot shows for a percentage of the return. The show then supports itself, not all shows would succeed, but those that do would be enough to support the VCs. This would free us from the corporate bias and let the users have a direct control over their content.
Have you been on YouTube lately? American's are anything but risk averse (at least as individuals).
Example One.
Example Two.
Example Three.
I could find more examples, but I don't have time to find them for you. Needless to say there are a lot of Americans that aren't risk averse. Wait what am I saying, there are just a lot of stupid people who don't realize how dangerous the things they are doing really are.
Yes.
Welcome to Calvinism.
My personal favorite: a teacup.
The QWERTY keyboard doomed all languages that can't use basic characters to represent thought. The addition of accent marks and tones in addition to QWERTY characters has doomed all languages to the eventual fate of what can easily be expressed on a computer. The other languages may still be spoken widely but their written languages will/need to adapt to a "standard" keyboard to stay viable in the computer age.
Hayden Panettiere ?
Ok, well thats the first thing that came to my mind...
Move to China.
Yes the silly guitar is not like learning to play guitar, however in Rock Band 2 (not Rock Band) you can actually learn the drums by playing the game and practicing in practice mode. You can even hook up real electronic drums sets instead of using the cheap set.
I got hooked on playing drums because of this game. I practice on it because its more fun then playing on a set by myself with no accompanying music. I'm thinking about buying an acoustic set because of it too. So I'd say mission accomplished to the Harmonix guys.
Also you should look up on you tube people playing the drums on expert, it is crazy insane.
Here is my problem with patents and copyrights:
I have a necessity. Something I want to do and build. The technology is available to make what I want to build. I can buy all the parts from different vendors and build the product I want, however I can't finish the product because it would violate someone else's patents and possibly some copyrights. This is for my personal use, but because someone else thought of it to and applied for a legal document saying that only they can supply this product I can not have it.
Now please explain to me why that is ok? If they made a better product I would just buy it from the patent holder, but since they don't I can't create a better product because they will sue me for infringement. They also refuse to lease the rights to the product. There is nothing I can do to stop them, and they have a right to make money off their "invention" even though it is somewhat obvious once the underlying technologies where created.
I have about 8 things off the top of my head that I want for my car and my home that fall into this category.
Ok, now this is a science fiction example, but it is exactly why patents and copyrights are wrong:
If you've seen the movie "Iron Man" he develops a power source that powers the suit. It is proprietary and he has the sole right to produce, sell and license the product. If he chooses not to allow anyone to use it, its within his rights. Now lets say that that power source, once discovered is fairly obvious, it just wasn't until he "discovered/invented" it. So Joe Schmo can build it, but he'd need a company and a few $100,000 to do it. Joe Schmo has this great idea that is dependent on the power source, lets say it is private Mars colonization. Well he can't because the the company that owns the technology for the power source won't sell him the rights, nor will they produce and sell him one to use with his invention which is Dependant on the prior work.
Technology has been effectively been halted by copyrights and patents. Information moves to quickly to believe that once a technology is created that 100's of people if not 1000's of people come up with novel uses, however only 1 of them gets the patent/copyright for it.
Lets also now say that the guy who first invents it and holds the patent does a crappy job in producing it. Yet someone else figures out how to make a much better version of it, but can't because the first inventor sues and therefore stops the better product from making it to market. Now everyone suffers because of the patent. Any delay on getting the better implementation to market stops all future technology based on the original work.
Anyway, so I hate patents and copyrights and I don't see there purpose. What matters is the quality of the product you bring to market, not the idea for the product. If you invent the mousetrap, and I can build a better one, I should be able to. With patents and copyrights I can't and your product is shit and we have to live with it.
Sorry about the rant but currently I'm trying to find a product that used to exist but has been discontinued by all vendors because of copyright and patent violations and nobody, not even the patent holder produces the product anymore.
We should drop the mega, giga, tera all together and just write 2^20, 2^30, 2^40 and so on. That is the actual size of the information. We could say the size of the file is four twenties in long hand.
Is there any way to create a new ISP that rejects the governments authority?
No we will not monitor our customers.
No we will not limit their bandwidth.
As long as they pay their bill they will receive service.
No we will not keep IP logs, and any we need to keep for connection purposes we will never divulge under any circumstances.
We maintain that we are nothing more than conduit of information, and we do not care what that information is.
Except that the government is a monopoly with the power to jail competitors and to block any companies that would choose to compete against it.
By leaving it in the hands of companies, even if it is only a small minority of people that understand what is happening they would always have the ability to create their own company to compete against the giants. When the government takes over it is there way or no way. There is no longer competition so if you have a problem you have no recourse or alternative.
We are talking about shipping cargo to space, not people. G-forces are not an issue. CERN's Large Hadron Collider moves atoms at close to the speed of light, use the same magnetic principles to accelerate a container and launch it into space. The trick is then catching the object. It wouldn't work for anything living, because they'd be crushed under the forces, but for materials like water it wouldn't be an issue. You could even possibly launch satellites in this manner.