Well, you guessed right, I wasn't restricting it to the U.S. market. In fact I haven't seen volume based offers for a while now, so I suppose they're on their way out, not on their way in.
So you can't complain about not getting the usage information easily if they don't offer Volume deals anyway.
1. Get Digital receivers to decode only the channels you want them to watch. 2. Hook up the outputs to some UHF modulators. 3. Output the signals to your existing Television cabels. 4. Re-tune the TV's
Obviously YMMV, but generally and for most people, DTV provides better quality reception and more channels. Of course it depends on the transmitter you're tuned to, and antenna you're receiving with and there can be difficulties particularly when switching the broadcast systems like now. But this happened all the time with analog aswell, with channels going lost and having to re-tune your TV.
OK, you can get by by building your own system with new hardware but reusing the same old CD drive, providing it still works. You are obviously a minority though.
A DVD drive is considered the standard for optical drives on a PC and has been for years. A PC without one is more of an obscurity.
AFAIK, content providers already pay to send data to other networks. And AFAIK, net neutrality is about descriminating against certain companies and certain types of traffic, in order to allow the to add surcharges based on how profitable they consider the data to be. I.e., they might decide that they want a share of the online-gaming subscriptions despite the fact that their operating costs are no different than if the were browsing the web
Most ISPs give you free DSL hardware when you sign up. For a Volume-based charging, they give you a modem that tells you detailed information about your bandwidth usage.
It's not about computers writing the music, but allowing for vriations depending on the game situation. Getting sad? Change to a minor scale. In a hurry? Increase tempo. Want to add an instrument by an in-game trigger? MIDI's your man.
Actually, none of this is new. It's all been done years ago and even in the past few years many games have opted for sound synthesizers than prerecorded tracks and have achieved CD-quality sound.
Your comments about older games are so shockingly far-off. The classic Music-A in Tetris is what made that game, even if it was sublimible for most people. And even despite the limitations of NES hardware with a pulse wave and a triangle wave, we still got Final Fantasy, Zelda and Castlevania.
Multi-chanel sound sure is nice. But it doesn't make good audio great, if you know what I mean. Good 48 kHz sampled stereo is more than enough for me personally. And only a very small percentage of the gaming population bother to go beyond that anyway as they have the sound coming from TV loudspekers.
It is more interesting to me if the composer has done something new like implemented gameplay-dependant variations to the score or tried something other than the usual fade-in and -outs when changing areas. And the care to variation even when sequencing a synthesized track is much more important in my opinion than whether or not a developer has payed for the latest dolby codec with all the bells and whistles that come with it.
Considering that it's at least four years since I've seen a CD drive on sale at a major retailer and I haven't seen them in complete system for about 2 years more than that, I honestly wonder what kind of new and boxed software you were buying that would still run on 4+ year old harware.
Amazon flipped the whole sitution round. Back when the only option was to go to a big bookstore and hope to find something in the "foreign books" section, the stores would like to charge twice the price or more, they just knew you'd be appy if you found what you were looking for.
As for duties it doesn't really apply to good ol books. I believe there is no duty on importing books to europe, but I can't be assed to back this up. And even if there were, they could buy the UK edition and avoid customs completely. Another contributing factor is, like you say, that the sales tax on books is only 7% as opposed to the normal 19%.
But that's one very specific situation in the game and even for experienced players it is more of a gamble than aquired skill. Of course it can still has a huge influence on outcome of the game. But compared to a fighting game where every move is basically a question of attack and block, action and reaction it is relatively small. Of course it depends on the game, some fighting games are more timing based than others. But with some of the most popular for competetive play, the only successful attacks are a result of a split-secon reaction to an opponents lost cover. You screw the reaction time and the attacks don't hit. To counteract this you must change the opponents ability to cover. And that's a massive intervention in the gameplay system.
This wasn't a government authority though. It was the Advertising Standards Authority. And yes, they pull advertisments all the time, even for stupid resons. The ASA can basically make sure that it isn't advertised anywhere where it's going to matter.
Interviewer: So, Mr. Miyamoto, tell us how you came up with the idea for Mario Bros.
Miyamoto: Well, a couple of years ago, there was a leak in the basement. I had to get a wrench and fix the pipes, change the water filters and the lot. Suddenly a turtle crawled out the pipe and knocked me over. Next think I know, a crab came out. I was able to flip them on their backs, but that just made them even madder. Luckily my bros. were visiting so I called them for help. Before we knew it, we were running around jumping on these little critters and on each others head. We managed to solve the problem in the end, but we had a real whale of a time, so I thought I'd have to make a game out of it.
Interviewer: So why Mario? You haven't got an Italian heritage, so what gave you the inspiration for the protagonist?
Miyamoto: He was reused from Donkey Kong.
Interviewer: Tell us about that.
Miyamoto: Before I started at Nintendo, I worked for a construction company in Los Angeles. Had a good friend there, and he was Italian. Antonio was his name. Had a huge tache He used to wear blue dungarees like all the time. Problem was, on the building we were working on, this huge gorilla was causing a lot of trouble. We used to have to run along girders and all the time that dirty ape was throwing barrels down at us. Pretty dangerous work now that I think back. Anyway when I was asked to design an arcade game when I started at Nintendo, I remembered the time with my old friend. I wanted to tell my story so I decided to create something that came as close to my experience as possible. I wanted to use Tony's image as he was such a memorable character. But I decided to change the name to conceal his identity.
Interviewer: Thanks for the interview Mr. Miyamoto.
FAIL! AFAIK, anabolic steroids (the ones talked about in relation to doping) are not used for treating skin conditions. It seems you don't actually know what your dad was taking.
Usually when people talk "steroids", they mean "performance enhancing drugs". I guess we should try and filter out pseudo-scientific vocabulary in popular speak, but that's the way it is I guess.
Just one more to back it up, that's the easiest and best solution. You probably want to have as much security and redundancy as possible, and hardware phones are simply more reliable. You can get a second phone for cheap if one should fail for redundancy. And if you get a wireless set, you don't have to sit in the same spot all the time and can walk around with the phone on your belt. Have another wired phone switched in parallel so you can pick that one up should the batteries be running low.
Depends on the food (mostly the heavily advertised products from Nestle & Co.) and the quantity involved (forget trying it twice). It sure as hell isn't a way to get free food. More of a marketing gimick. Who is seriously going to phone a number to get $1 back for a yoghurt drink?
I completely agree with you. Nobody should have to accept a product that doesn't work. I have no idea how many people try the play and return trick though. Guess the stores need some sort of smarter policy.
People always keep pulling out the "supply and demand" argument out of the box, but it's completely false.
"Supply and demand" is an illusion, a fairytale they tell you in school. There is hardly a single item traded anymore, where supply isn't manipulated to such an extent that it's meaningless.
In the modern western world, there are very few items that are traded to scarcity. If there is high demand, we simply upscale production. How many people nowdays will accept "because someone else bought it" as a finl answer. Scarcity can kick in, but it's only very temporary.
Only if you ignore how games are produced. And the traditional idea of "sharing" is that you sacrifice a part of your posession to give to someone else. Most people turn in to real fucktards when a newbie turns up. I highly doubt they'd "share" if it meant giving away half of the game that they payed for.
I think he was referring to the defense a lot of people use like "It isn't worth the $40". Still though, the deveopers didn't work for free and they have bills to pay. How would you like it if your boss could decide whether your work was "worth it", especially after you've finished it and he has got the benefit from it. If you don't think it's worth the money, don't buy it, and don't play it either.
That's rediculous. A Game is, 90% of the time anyway, a one-use item. Most people will only play most games once, and that's it. So after finishing the game and getting all of the enjoyment from it, how many people are going to decide against getting their money back and exchanging it for the next game?
It's almost like having return policies on Movie Tickets or Food items. Sure, you can be dissappointed, but that's life. People don't get a guarantee for satisfaction. You had to invest the time to try out the pirated game too after all.
Expedia is just a travel agent. They might try to give you the cheapest deals, but you will often find it cheaper to book directly through the airline, and many airlines aren't even available.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you guessed right, I wasn't restricting it to the U.S. market. In fact I haven't seen volume based offers for a while now, so I suppose they're on their way out, not on their way in.
So you can't complain about not getting the usage information easily if they don't offer Volume deals anyway.
Any Slashdotter could do this
1. Get Digital receivers to decode only the channels you want them to watch.
2. Hook up the outputs to some UHF modulators.
3. Output the signals to your existing Television cabels.
4. Re-tune the TV's
Could be done for a few hundred dollars at most.
Obviously YMMV, but generally and for most people, DTV provides better quality reception and more channels. Of course it depends on the transmitter you're tuned to, and antenna you're receiving with and there can be difficulties particularly when switching the broadcast systems like now. But this happened all the time with analog aswell, with channels going lost and having to re-tune your TV.
OK, you can get by by building your own system with new hardware but reusing the same old CD drive, providing it still works. You are obviously a minority though.
A DVD drive is considered the standard for optical drives on a PC and has been for years. A PC without one is more of an obscurity.
AFAIK, content providers already pay to send data to other networks. And AFAIK, net neutrality is about descriminating against certain companies and certain types of traffic, in order to allow the to add surcharges based on how profitable they consider the data to be. I.e., they might decide that they want a share of the online-gaming subscriptions despite the fact that their operating costs are no different than if the were browsing the web
Most ISPs give you free DSL hardware when you sign up. For a Volume-based charging, they give you a modem that tells you detailed information about your bandwidth usage.
It's not about computers writing the music, but allowing for vriations depending on the game situation. Getting sad? Change to a minor scale. In a hurry? Increase tempo. Want to add an instrument by an in-game trigger? MIDI's your man.
Actually, none of this is new. It's all been done years ago and even in the past few years many games have opted for sound synthesizers than prerecorded tracks and have achieved CD-quality sound.
Your comments about older games are so shockingly far-off. The classic Music-A in Tetris is what made that game, even if it was sublimible for most people. And even despite the limitations of NES hardware with a pulse wave and a triangle wave, we still got Final Fantasy, Zelda and Castlevania.
Multi-chanel sound sure is nice. But it doesn't make good audio great, if you know what I mean. Good 48 kHz sampled stereo is more than enough for me personally. And only a very small percentage of the gaming population bother to go beyond that anyway as they have the sound coming from TV loudspekers.
It is more interesting to me if the composer has done something new like implemented gameplay-dependant variations to the score or tried something other than the usual fade-in and -outs when changing areas.
And the care to variation even when sequencing a synthesized track is much more important in my opinion than whether or not a developer has payed for the latest dolby codec with all the bells and whistles that come with it.
Considering that it's at least four years since I've seen a CD drive on sale at a major retailer and I haven't seen them in complete system for about 2 years more than that, I honestly wonder what kind of new and boxed software you were buying that would still run on 4+ year old harware.
Amazon flipped the whole sitution round. Back when the only option was to go to a big bookstore and hope to find something in the "foreign books" section, the stores would like to charge twice the price or more, they just knew you'd be appy if you found what you were looking for.
As for duties it doesn't really apply to good ol books. I believe there is no duty on importing books to europe, but I can't be assed to back this up. And even if there were, they could buy the UK edition and avoid customs completely. Another contributing factor is, like you say, that the sales tax on books is only 7% as opposed to the normal 19%.
But that's one very specific situation in the game and even for experienced players it is more of a gamble than aquired skill. Of course it can still has a huge influence on outcome of the game.
But compared to a fighting game where every move is basically a question of attack and block, action and reaction it is relatively small.
Of course it depends on the game, some fighting games are more timing based than others. But with some of the most popular for competetive play, the only successful attacks are a result of a split-secon reaction to an opponents lost cover. You screw the reaction time and the attacks don't hit. To counteract this you must change the opponents ability to cover. And that's a massive intervention in the gameplay system.
This wasn't a government authority though. It was the Advertising Standards Authority.
And yes, they pull advertisments all the time, even for stupid resons.
The ASA can basically make sure that it isn't advertised anywhere where it's going to matter.
Interviewer: So, Mr. Miyamoto, tell us how you came up with the idea for Mario Bros.
Miyamoto: Well, a couple of years ago, there was a leak in the basement. I had to get a wrench and fix the pipes, change the water filters and the lot. Suddenly a turtle crawled out the pipe and knocked me over. Next think I know, a crab came out. I was able to flip them on their backs, but that just made them even madder. Luckily my bros. were visiting so I called them for help. Before we knew it, we were running around jumping on these little critters and on each others head. We managed to solve the problem in the end, but we had a real whale of a time, so I thought I'd have to make a game out of it.
Interviewer: So why Mario? You haven't got an Italian heritage, so what gave you the inspiration for the protagonist?
Miyamoto: He was reused from Donkey Kong.
Interviewer: Tell us about that.
Miyamoto: Before I started at Nintendo, I worked for a construction company in Los Angeles. Had a good friend there, and he was Italian. Antonio was his name. Had a huge tache He used to wear blue dungarees like all the time. Problem was, on the building we were working on, this huge gorilla was causing a lot of trouble. We used to have to run along girders and all the time that dirty ape was throwing barrels down at us. Pretty dangerous work now that I think back.
Anyway when I was asked to design an arcade game when I started at Nintendo, I remembered the time with my old friend. I wanted to tell my story so I decided to create something that came as close to my experience as possible.
I wanted to use Tony's image as he was such a memorable character. But I decided to change the name to conceal his identity.
Interviewer: Thanks for the interview Mr. Miyamoto.
FAIL! AFAIK, anabolic steroids (the ones talked about in relation to doping) are not used for treating skin conditions. It seems you don't actually know what your dad was taking.
Usually when people talk "steroids", they mean "performance enhancing drugs". I guess we should try and filter out pseudo-scientific vocabulary in popular speak, but that's the way it is I guess.
Just one more to back it up, that's the easiest and best solution.
You probably want to have as much security and redundancy as possible, and hardware phones are simply more reliable. You can get a second phone for cheap if one should fail for redundancy.
And if you get a wireless set, you don't have to sit in the same spot all the time and can walk around with the phone on your belt. Have another wired phone switched in parallel so you can pick that one up should the batteries be running low.
Depends on the food (mostly the heavily advertised products from Nestle & Co.) and the quantity involved (forget trying it twice). It sure as hell isn't a way to get free food. More of a marketing gimick. Who is seriously going to phone a number to get $1 back for a yoghurt drink?
I completely agree with you. Nobody should have to accept a product that doesn't work.
I have no idea how many people try the play and return trick though. Guess the stores need some sort of smarter policy.
Hint: you don't "cover" an area with tracks. The track length scales linearily.
But you can't get blood (money) from a stone (college student).
Ahh, but you can get money from a stoner.
People always keep pulling out the "supply and demand" argument out of the box, but it's completely false.
"Supply and demand" is an illusion, a fairytale they tell you in school. There is hardly a single item traded anymore, where supply isn't manipulated to such an extent that it's meaningless.
In the modern western world, there are very few items that are traded to scarcity. If there is high demand, we simply upscale production. How many people nowdays will accept "because someone else bought it" as a finl answer.
Scarcity can kick in, but it's only very temporary.
Only if you ignore how games are produced. And the traditional idea of "sharing" is that you sacrifice a part of your posession to give to someone else. Most people turn in to real fucktards when a newbie turns up. I highly doubt they'd "share" if it meant giving away half of the game that they payed for.
I think he was referring to the defense a lot of people use like "It isn't worth the $40". Still though, the deveopers didn't work for free and they have bills to pay. How would you like it if your boss could decide whether your work was "worth it", especially after you've finished it and he has got the benefit from it.
If you don't think it's worth the money, don't buy it, and don't play it either.
That's rediculous.
A Game is, 90% of the time anyway, a one-use item. Most people will only play most games once, and that's it.
So after finishing the game and getting all of the enjoyment from it, how many people are going to decide against getting their money back and exchanging it for the next game?
It's almost like having return policies on Movie Tickets or Food items. Sure, you can be dissappointed, but that's life. People don't get a guarantee for satisfaction.
You had to invest the time to try out the pirated game too after all.
Expedia is just a travel agent. They might try to give you the cheapest deals, but you will often find it cheaper to book directly through the airline, and many airlines aren't even available.
Why was this modded flaimbait? The U.S. has one high-speed line, and even calling that "high speed" is a bit of a push.