You know that England was never particularly at risk in either world war, right? In WW2, England's worst prospect by the time America was attacked was having to make peace with Germany. In WW1, the worst that could possibly have happened is that France might have lost some territory.
Are you kidding? I'm not a gung-ho "America is teh hawt!" guy, but without the financial support of the US Government and, through it, US Banks, Britain could not have fought the Battle of Britain, let alone won it. Without lend-lease etc in WWII, Britain would have been eventually starved out. Without US Financial support in WWI, Britain's economy would have crumbled, leading to eventual annhiliation.
They had won the Battle of Britain, they controlled the Atlantic,
Huh? The Allies controlled the Atlantic? Was that with or without the destroyers the US traded for bases in 1940, even prior to lend-lease? It wasn't until '43 that Allied shipping was anything close to safe, and that had to do with American materiel and Hitler's choice to fight on two+ fronts.
Because if the girl you are with feels safe enough letting you say you are on pill so everything will be fine, probably isnt the type of girl you want to have sex with, without a condom on too.
You mean, we shouldn't want to have sex with a woman who trusts us? My wife was on contraceptives for four years while we were in grad school, until she developed complications from the side effects. I sure wish the male pill had been around back then, it was a very "awkward" two years until we didn't need the contraceptives anymore...
The pill isn't really meant for people who randomly hook up very occasionally with strangers; it's for people who need regular contraceptives because of frequent intercourse.
They killed Windows NT 4.0 SP7 in the ßeta process
They killed Windows 2000 SP5 in the pre-ßeta stage
What is a Betaeta process/stage?
Or do you bank at an ATM machine?
I happen to agree with you, though, that SP3 is dead in the water -- unless Vista bombs and there is a lot of Linux switchover. Announcing a delay allows MS to change their mind later, if necessary, so that they can release SP3 if it becomes a good decision to do so.
1) People soon start trying to remove the middleman, saving both the client and vendor time and money
Of course, any middleman company worth its salt would have legal recourse if any service provider of theirs actually went ahead and did this. Every employment contract I've ever seen stipulates that the employee cannot go work for a client without the express written permission of the employer.
Anecdotally, a past employer of mine got sued (and lost) for poaching an employee of one of our consulting firms... nasty stuff, breach of contract is.
Re:So John Fitzpatric, how much is a slashvertisem
on
2006 Election Maps Mashups
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Does it matter? Is this info still of interest to you or maybe other slashdotters? Sometimes you have to promote your own products... and sometimes it's a win-win for everyone.
As for me, I never pay attention to who submitted an article, and usually not to the summary either -- it's immaterial. Either the article stands on its own merits, or it doesn't.
If they where far enough apart that there was not enough gravity to hold them together, then how would you even consider these sibblings to begin with.
Dude, my sister lives in Japan... she's still my sibling.
These stars are siblings because they arose from the same process at around the same time as our sun... e.g., thay have the same parent. Locus has nothing to do with it.
A lack of quality sperm causes high cell phone usage!
Makes perfect sense to me. My daughter has no high-quality sperm (I hope -- and if she does, she didn't produce it and I don't want to know about it), and she's on the cell phone constantly.
Just kidding. I don't have a daughter, I've been using my cell hpone too much for that to happen.
So, what you're saying is that we're supposed to think that everyone's out to make us (the consumers) happy
There's nothing there about the motivation of the developers except for the profit motive... I dunno where you're pulling the idea of try-to-make-the-consumer-happy bit from.
and that we should just collectively shut our yap?
Yes, please.
It's very simple... buy|notbuy. As a consumer, you have that choice, I don't know what you're getting so upset about.
Interestingly enough, that clearly outlines another problem with boycotts against massive conglomerates -- it's easy enough to boycott a brand, but hard to boycott a company with literally thousands of brands.
Boycotts are often called for but they just don't work.
Wrong -- insufficiently complete boycotts don't work. Boycotts are very effective provided that:
1. Enough people participate to make the cost of ignoring the boycott greater than the cost savings or revenue increase associated with whatever actions prompted the boycott.
2. The company that is being boycotted sees the boycott as being a long-term issue.
The following factors increase the likelihood of a boycott working against Sony:
1. Sony depends on volume sales for profitability. Their non-unit costs are significant (advertising, marketing, admin costs, etc) which means that they need to sell a lot of units of each product to make a profit. 2. Sony is aware of the bad rep they are accumulating. Should that rep cross over into the mainstream, it could _really_ hurt their bottom line. Companies with already-weak public images are more vulnerable to boycotts.
There are some factors that help Sony withstand a boycott:
1. Most of their products are non-commodity goods. One cannot simply substitute movie X from Sony with movie Y from Columbia/Tristar in the market. This is true of any of their IP-derived products (music, games, etc), so consumers are less likely to go without the Sony product. This is especially true with the game industry, as the field of competitors is very small. 2. Sony is an extremely large company with deep pockets. It's quite possible that they can weather any smaller boycott of a few years duration (and given the short-term memory of at least the American consumer, even a few years is more than enough). 3. Sony is a global corporation, and the larger the scale of a boycott, the harder it is to pull off.
I'm sure I've missed a lot of factors, but it is a fallacy to believe that boycotts don't work. Any company that ignores their customer base for too long will inevitably lose market share (unless, of course, there are market inequities (like monopoly status for IP distribution)) to their competitors.
My point is that a boycott WILL help (if only only a small scale), as long as it's a vocal boycott that hits the press. What's needed is a Sony insider to write a scathing tell-all book that makes the non-fiction best-seller list:).
Meanwhile, out on the Long Island railroad (also run by the MTA,) you now pay a penalty of $5 or so when you buy a ticket for cash on the train. They want you to use the vending machines or the last few remaining human-staffed station booths instead, with the same resulting traceability. You even get all sorts of bonuses if you let them just mail your tickets to your home and charge your card.
NJTransit has had this for years. The purpose is not traceability; the purpose is cost-savings. Over the past ten years, the number of conductors on each train has diminished noticeably. This represents huge savings for the company.
That said, the transaction is more traceable, and as we've seen time and again, law-enforcement and other government agencies are happy to take advantage of any research tool at their disposal. Also note that while the ticket-purchase is traceable, ticket usage is not traced (yet). Conductors discard canceled (used) tickets after every trip. I used to buy monthly passes when I took the train, there is no way they could monitor my movements without resorting to the old standby of viewing video surveillance tapes -- they just view your ticket.
Public websurfing is an inherently dangerous thing to do. If you don't believe me, check out the "security now" article on ARP cache poisoning. http://www.grc.com/nat/arp.htm It's the scariest thing I've seen since the last time I was tricked into clicking a link to Goatse.
Wait, the last time you were tricked? I was scarred enough by the first time I was tricked that I swore off internet use for a month, and only now am recovering the fortitude to click on links, even with checking the full URL first.
And, given the reference to goatse in your post, there is no way in HELL I'm clicking on the link you provided... even if it may be the most insightful piece on security that's ever been written, it's just not worth the risk./shudder
Why is it always the fault of the consumer that an industry is unprofitable? When the HELL did that become our fault?
It's not a question of fault, it's a question of pragmatism. The laws of the market (such as they are) are no more the consumer's fault than they are the fault of the producer.
he same goes for games; one guy buys a copy and loans it to ten friends. If it sucks, those friends give it the hell back, and he trades it for a new game. But if it's good, they go get their own copy, and if it's really good, there AREN'T any used copies. That's the way it works.
Hm. That's odd, I see used copies of new, insanely popular games for sale all the time. Maybe you don't see them because they aren't stuck in inventory as long as less-popular games, but I'd bet that the volume on used copies of a popular game is much higher than the sales volume of used copies of an old, or less popular, game.
So here's your wake up: take a couple economics classes. Study the case of the video game market. Learn as much as you can, and realize that in the long run, unless we all end up paying subscription fees for games like WoW, we'll be without high-cost new games -- unless the game industry gets as much on the *AA wagon as the music and movie industries are.
But because I believe in cause and effect. Action and consequences. If the customer saws off the limb they're sitting on, and they fall? That should be permitted to happen. Humanity can't learn otherwise.
So foresight in avoiding a negative outcome is unwanted? What's the point of critical thinking if we don't use it to improve our situation and/or prevent a decline? Is this the same logic you use in your personal life? If, for example, you're on a mountain bike looking down a cliff, do you ride over the lip, since you won't learn to not ride off cliffs unless you do it once and get hurt?
I think you have a strange take on humanity if you think that
(1) Humanity only learns lessons from painful experience and (2) Humanity will indeed learn from painful experience.
I think history has shown us again and again that humanity is quick to forget lessons of the past, even when they do learn the lesson in the first place.
Again, I'm curious if anonymous has ever bought or sold a used car, CD, or book. Have the car, book, and music industries been forced to online distribution by resales? ("Now downloading Subaru Impreza 2006. 3% complete. Downloading at 6.02 zeptoatoms/second.")
I understand you're making light of the subject, but really, the car analogy is totally broken in this case.
As to CDs, there's more to it than you make it seem. First, the cost of producing a music CD is far less than the cost of producing a top-tier game. This means that the price point can be lower while profitability is maintained, and also means that the marginal effect of used CD sales is lower. Second, the music distro industry has indeed been "forced" to offer music online, though the impetus has been sharing rather than sale of used goods -- of course, part of that goes back to the price point, as well as ease of distribution. Do you think there would be more of a market for used CDs if they cost $50 new (assuming, of course, that it was difficult to just download a copy)? I sure do.
As to books, there's a big difference between a physical book and a downloaded copy. As for used books, yes there's a market (I frequent the Strand often), but many people don't like used books -- a lot of it has to do with the fact that the condition of a used book is often noticably worse than a new one. A used game? Not so -- though the packaging can be a bit disheveled, the content itself is identical (barring scratches). There's no discernable difference in utility.
I don't want to seem like I'm "siding" with the protectionist game companies, or that I'm "siding" with pure free market idealogues. But:
This isn't some conspiracy against video games; it's the free market.
Sure. But in the interest of wanting to play amazing games, what happens when I and all my fellow bargain-hunters make it unprofitable to develop the massive games that I enjoy? In a very real way, we are removing the incentive to develop large non-cookie-cutter games.
Don't read your email in HTML format. Problem solved. a) There is nothing to be said in email that can't be said in plaintext and b) I really could care less to see your smiley face sig and pretty flower background.
Yeah, but wouldn't that be much more emphatic if it was written like this:
Don't read your email in HTML format. Problem solved.
There is nothing to be said in email that can't be said in plaintext and
I really could care less to see your smiley face sig and pretty flower background.
they try to create a culture in which people will keep buying add-ons over and over again. The focus seems to be on creating hype and desire, rather than crafting a quality game.
It's just a different business model, independent of quality. Poor quality will kill them in the long run whether they have a "buy extras" model or a "buy it once" model. I personally won't play subscription-based games for the same reason (WoW, I'm looking at you!) you object to this model; but at the same time, I understand the subscription model's validity, and why some people are quite happy to fork over $20 a month.
I was just pointing out that geeks are very susceptible to seeing something as being collectible, and then spending irrational quantities of money to have that thing. So they're playing to the geek weakness.
I don't think that's a geek trait -- I think it's a human trait. Whether it's more common in geeks, I dunno -- but it would depend on the definition of geek, I guess.
There are only two groups who fall for this sort of scam: kids (think Pokemon) and geeks.
This is slashdot. I don't understand your objection to geek-centered material, and I don't understand why you think it is a scam. People are willing to pay for things that have value to them; so what if that value is constructed by the company selling the product? By your reasoning, any game at all is a scam.
Also, you don't think loss-leading teaser + profitable extras happens outside of geekdom? Maybe you need to rethink the business models of Gevalia Coffee, for example, or Columbia House & BMG prior to the mp3 revolution. How about collectible series, like the figurines you see in Hallmark stores, or the Christmas Village models that pop up every fall?
Someone must be giddy right now that they pulled off the free slashvertisement.
Sometimes I get annoyed by what seem to be slashvertisements. But then I think to myself, "Self, is it possible that this article is something that might be of interest to some subset of the slashdot community, people who might be happy it was brought to their attention?" And you know what? Most of the time, the answer is yes, so I quit my grumbling and move on to another article that I'm more interested in.
Slashdot Mirror
Condoms are awkward. Even though easy to use and cheap, they are still awkward -- they totally disrupt the flow of the act.
Huh? The Allies controlled the Atlantic? Was that with or without the destroyers the US traded for bases in 1940, even prior to lend-lease? It wasn't until '43 that Allied shipping was anything close to safe, and that had to do with American materiel and Hitler's choice to fight on two+ fronts.
The pill isn't really meant for people who randomly hook up very occasionally with strangers; it's for people who need regular contraceptives because of frequent intercourse.
Then again, from what I've heard, myspace is becoming a strong competitor.
What is a Betaeta process/stage?
Or do you bank at an ATM machine?
I happen to agree with you, though, that SP3 is dead in the water -- unless Vista bombs and there is a lot of Linux switchover. Announcing a delay allows MS to change their mind later, if necessary, so that they can release SP3 if it becomes a good decision to do so.
Anecdotally, a past employer of mine got sued (and lost) for poaching an employee of one of our consulting firms... nasty stuff, breach of contract is.
Does it matter? Is this info still of interest to you or maybe other slashdotters? Sometimes you have to promote your own products... and sometimes it's a win-win for everyone.
As for me, I never pay attention to who submitted an article, and usually not to the summary either -- it's immaterial. Either the article stands on its own merits, or it doesn't.
These stars are siblings because they arose from the same process at around the same time as our sun... e.g., thay have the same parent. Locus has nothing to do with it.
At any rate, it's best not to take notice, as the world seems to be on max pedophile alert.
Though the vibrate setting may make up for the awkwardness.
Just kidding. I don't have a daughter, I've been using my cell hpone too much for that to happen.
Yes, please.
It's very simple... buy|notbuy. As a consumer, you have that choice, I don't know what you're getting so upset about.
Thanks.
Interestingly enough, that clearly outlines another problem with boycotts against massive conglomerates -- it's easy enough to boycott a brand, but hard to boycott a company with literally thousands of brands.
1. Enough people participate to make the cost of ignoring the boycott greater than the cost savings or revenue increase associated with whatever actions prompted the boycott.
2. The company that is being boycotted sees the boycott as being a long-term issue.
The following factors increase the likelihood of a boycott working against Sony:
1. Sony depends on volume sales for profitability. Their non-unit costs are significant (advertising, marketing, admin costs, etc) which means that they need to sell a lot of units of each product to make a profit.
2. Sony is aware of the bad rep they are accumulating. Should that rep cross over into the mainstream, it could _really_ hurt their bottom line. Companies with already-weak public images are more vulnerable to boycotts.
There are some factors that help Sony withstand a boycott:
1. Most of their products are non-commodity goods. One cannot simply substitute movie X from Sony with movie Y from Columbia/Tristar in the market. This is true of any of their IP-derived products (music, games, etc), so consumers are less likely to go without the Sony product. This is especially true with the game industry, as the field of competitors is very small.
2. Sony is an extremely large company with deep pockets. It's quite possible that they can weather any smaller boycott of a few years duration (and given the short-term memory of at least the American consumer, even a few years is more than enough).
3. Sony is a global corporation, and the larger the scale of a boycott, the harder it is to pull off.
I'm sure I've missed a lot of factors, but it is a fallacy to believe that boycotts don't work. Any company that ignores their customer base for too long will inevitably lose market share (unless, of course, there are market inequities (like monopoly status for IP distribution)) to their competitors.
My point is that a boycott WILL help (if only only a small scale), as long as it's a vocal boycott that hits the press. What's needed is a Sony insider to write a scathing tell-all book that makes the non-fiction best-seller list
That said, the transaction is more traceable, and as we've seen time and again, law-enforcement and other government agencies are happy to take advantage of any research tool at their disposal. Also note that while the ticket-purchase is traceable, ticket usage is not traced (yet). Conductors discard canceled (used) tickets after every trip. I used to buy monthly passes when I took the train, there is no way they could monitor my movements without resorting to the old standby of viewing video surveillance tapes -- they just view your ticket.
And, given the reference to goatse in your post, there is no way in HELL I'm clicking on the link you provided... even if it may be the most insightful piece on security that's ever been written, it's just not worth the risk.
Hm. That's odd, I see used copies of new, insanely popular games for sale all the time. Maybe you don't see them because they aren't stuck in inventory as long as less-popular games, but I'd bet that the volume on used copies of a popular game is much higher than the sales volume of used copies of an old, or less popular, game.
So here's your wake up: take a couple economics classes. Study the case of the video game market. Learn as much as you can, and realize that in the long run, unless we all end up paying subscription fees for games like WoW, we'll be without high-cost new games -- unless the game industry gets as much on the *AA wagon as the music and movie industries are.
I think you have a strange take on humanity if you think that
(1) Humanity only learns lessons from painful experience and
(2) Humanity will indeed learn from painful experience.
I think history has shown us again and again that humanity is quick to forget lessons of the past, even when they do learn the lesson in the first place.
As to CDs, there's more to it than you make it seem. First, the cost of producing a music CD is far less than the cost of producing a top-tier game. This means that the price point can be lower while profitability is maintained, and also means that the marginal effect of used CD sales is lower. Second, the music distro industry has indeed been "forced" to offer music online, though the impetus has been sharing rather than sale of used goods -- of course, part of that goes back to the price point, as well as ease of distribution. Do you think there would be more of a market for used CDs if they cost $50 new (assuming, of course, that it was difficult to just download a copy)? I sure do.
As to books, there's a big difference between a physical book and a downloaded copy. As for used books, yes there's a market (I frequent the Strand often), but many people don't like used books -- a lot of it has to do with the fact that the condition of a used book is often noticably worse than a new one. A used game? Not so -- though the packaging can be a bit disheveled, the content itself is identical (barring scratches). There's no discernable difference in utility.
I don't want to seem like I'm "siding" with the protectionist game companies, or that I'm "siding" with pure free market idealogues. But:Sure. But in the interest of wanting to play amazing games, what happens when I and all my fellow bargain-hunters make it unprofitable to develop the massive games that I enjoy? In a very real way, we are removing the incentive to develop large non-cookie-cutter games.
Maybe the people who aren't obsessed with winning all the time?
I play games for lots of reasons, and of course I like winning -- but I enjoy a challenge even more.
Don't read your email in HTML format. Problem solved.
I don't think that's a geek trait -- I think it's a human trait. Whether it's more common in geeks, I dunno -- but it would depend on the definition of geek, I guess.
Also, you don't think loss-leading teaser + profitable extras happens outside of geekdom? Maybe you need to rethink the business models of Gevalia Coffee, for example, or Columbia House & BMG prior to the mp3 revolution. How about collectible series, like the figurines you see in Hallmark stores, or the Christmas Village models that pop up every fall?
Sometimes I get annoyed by what seem to be slashvertisements. But then I think to myself, "Self, is it possible that this article is something that might be of interest to some subset of the slashdot community, people who might be happy it was brought to their attention?" And you know what? Most of the time, the answer is yes, so I quit my grumbling and move on to another article that I'm more interested in.
Plenty of people do malicious things for fun. There doesn't always have to be a pecuniary motive.