Because companies intentionally cripple games and then charge you extra to get the full game. THAT is why. When you pay for HBO, HBO doesn't leave out certain shows that you have to pay extra for or only show you 3/4 of an episode and you have to pay extra for the rest of the episode. When you buy a car, they don't sell you the car and then say "oh, well you have to pay another $5,000 if you want a FUEL tank. What? You want to be able to turn it on? Well that's another $4,500 for the ignition!" That kind of garbage is the problem with DLC.
When you pay for cable though you don't get all the channels. You have to pay for HBO, Showtime, ESPN sports packages, then there's pay-per-view, on demand fees, and lets not forget a separate category for HD feeds.
When you buy a car you don't get all the features either. You might say "oh those aren't necessary", but I hear stories from my mother about cars and HOMES without air conditioning a few decades ago.
Do I think the practice is abusive? hell yeah! It should be fought tooth and nail too!, but this article makes it seem unique, which is far from the case.
It's reminiscent of a recent post at IncGamers where the author tallied up how much he'd spent on World of Warcraft over the past several years, and was astonished to realize it numbered in the thousands of dollars
TV services will add up to thousands of dollars in ONE year, not several.
If your hobby is auto tuning or off-roading that souped up sports car or SUV will gobble through even more money a year in parts and gas than the afore mentioned TV bills.
Is your hobby reading? Only a fraction of titles are available in the libraries of most municipalities, this means at least as much as WoW a month if not more.
The point is this is nothing new. Every generation has had its "nickel and dime", it's the nature of all hobbies.
As centralized corporate power continues to consolidate, it looks for more avenues by which to leverage its media holdings and increasingly dominant position in both the lives of every-day citizens and politics to invade the lives of the populace.
It seeks legislation and technical means by which to erect barriers to market entry and to prevent consumer behaviors which would interfere with their profit margins.
The larger the company's market presence and holdings, the more abusive it can become and the more people can be compelled to "bear" their behavior, as there are plenty of others unaffected, and any news holdings will be there to marginalize and discredit those who dare to speak out.
The irony of this sort of controlling behavior is it creates an underground society.
for reference, see: amzon kindle 1984 patent medicines of the 1800's meat packing practices which led to "the jungle" the current state of private health insurance in the USA. fox news
The only way to prevent the abuse of centralized corporate power is to centralize individuals' power in the form of government and regulate them with consumer protection laws.
Green - "whew, republicans control every branch of government" Yellow - "so called 'hackers' are posting documents proving government corruption to wikileaks" orange - "anonymous is posting on 4chan" red - "you have been killed by a government death panel"
The internet in its entirety is "p2p" by nature. This is what differentiates it from TV, radio, or any other medium for that matter, and it is provided "for profit", by these shady companies called "internet service providers".
This judge has just ruled his nation into the stone age, placing it behind even remote african villages in terms of telecom structure.
I predict a large number of ISP's dragged into court and shut down using this precedent.
Tell them no, then schedule the shows anyway and display text showing why they refuse for that block of time.
If it works for ESPN 360 to force cable companies to cough up money at MY expense, it should work for the BBC to make them cough up the programming DRM free.
Many conditions which will prompt MD's to send you to orthopedic surgeons can be treated successfully through non-invasive and much less expensive chiropractic treatment.
It's quite common in the US for chiropractors to treat whiplash injuries.
My step father was a chiropractor, and had to take boards and licensing exams like every other medical professional.
If its like any other GSM based service, the rates will be outrageous.. with stupid limitations like "evening transfer" "night time transfer" "transfer friends", and charges by the megabyte.
Unless its flat rate, unfettered, and competitive with current real ISP's it will be nothing more than an expensive flop.
As a small business owner I have noticed that those "teens" turn in to my employees and think it's ok to text while working and then expect to get "good jobs" for showing up on time to work. In fact; I have a 17 year old girl who seems quite reasonable, say to me after showing up 20 minutes late that she thought, and I quote "I didn't think it was a big deal". This kind of thinking is not isolated, to her , it is very common in this age range of employees.
As a college graduate I have noticed that those "employers" think it's ok to pay minimum wage for graduate level jobs, then make you train your replacement in india because its just too much trouble to pay even enough to allow them to pay rent through perpetual debt.
This is not isolated to just one employer, so I figure they reap what they sow with people not giving a crap about their precious schedules.
There's no indication that any of this is making anyone substantially stupider.
hang around anyone between the age of 12 and 16 and tell me they're not dumb as bricks speaking in chat acronyms rather than expending the exact same number of syllables on the actual words or actually expressing emotions.
That said, it's a quite well-written tutorial-style article with engaging prose that tackles a number of the relevant issues. I just balked at the "reverse engineer takes on biology" angle, as if that were something biologists had never thought of.
there are several instances in human history of inventions being developed independently in exactly at the same time.
this is far different than the sheer ignorance "max tedroom" displayed with his series of tubes speech.
Another expense with Apples is the inability to run new OSes on old hardware.
my school used various generations of macs on campus. the response time for 10.5 leopard was the same on all the machines from the mac pro towers in the media labs to the 1998 imac net nodes tucked away in obscure corners of the more neglected lecture halls.
anyone who has tried to make xp run on hardware dating from a similar time period would fall asleep from boredom waiting for "ye olde exe" to launch.
The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here.
On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project as well.
The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price:-)
30 bucks..
a proprietary OS for 30 bucks deserves 5 points on price.
apple releasing a version of osx for 30 bucks is metaphorically equivalent to an 2010 infiniti M slapped with a 20k(US) sticker price.
Ever since I blew up that guy's head at the press conference its all "the scanner blew up your phone, the scanner blew up your engine, the scanner this, the scanner that".. enough!.. it only works on brains damnit! BRAAAINS!!!
I wouldn't say the American system is perfect, I'm sure it isn't, but based on evidence from Britain, getting the Government involved on such a large scale is probably not going to help.
Maybe there is some other sort of reform that could be applied here?
here's the difference right now:
US system: huge bureaucratic hassle in which the bureaucrats have a serious financial incentive to make sure you are not treated.
British system: huge bureaucratic hassle in which the bureaucrats DONT have a serious financial incentive to make sure you are not treated.
instead of one set of forums in the british system, there are different sets of forms from office to office and provider to provider in the US system. For appointments you are asked to arrive 1 hour early specifically to sign forms, which must then be checked through about 15 different entities before they'll see you (unless you go to the emergency room, which charges you about 100x what the treatment actually costs)
as opposed to the vast bureaucracy created with the express purpose of denying people life-saving treatments and recinding their insurance while they're on the 10 count into anesthesia for their tumor removal?
Slashdot Mirror
Because companies intentionally cripple games and then charge you extra to get the full game. THAT is why. When you pay for HBO, HBO doesn't leave out certain shows that you have to pay extra for or only show you 3/4 of an episode and you have to pay extra for the rest of the episode. When you buy a car, they don't sell you the car and then say "oh, well you have to pay another $5,000 if you want a FUEL tank. What? You want to be able to turn it on? Well that's another $4,500 for the ignition!" That kind of garbage is the problem with DLC.
When you pay for cable though you don't get all the channels. You have to pay for HBO, Showtime, ESPN sports packages, then there's pay-per-view, on demand fees, and lets not forget a separate category for HD feeds.
When you buy a car you don't get all the features either. You might say "oh those aren't necessary", but I hear stories from my mother about cars and HOMES without air conditioning a few decades ago.
Do I think the practice is abusive? hell yeah! It should be fought tooth and nail too!, but this article makes it seem unique, which is far from the case.
It's reminiscent of a recent post at IncGamers where the author tallied up how much he'd spent on World of Warcraft over the past several years, and was astonished to realize it numbered in the thousands of dollars
TV services will add up to thousands of dollars in ONE year, not several.
If your hobby is auto tuning or off-roading that souped up sports car or SUV will gobble through even more money a year in parts and gas than the afore mentioned TV bills.
Is your hobby reading? Only a fraction of titles are available in the libraries of most municipalities, this means at least as much as WoW a month if not more.
The point is this is nothing new. Every generation has had its "nickel and dime", it's the nature of all hobbies.
sounds like its time to find a place where the legal department doesn't run IT?
when you leave tell them their tools are "defective by design" and you won't support them.
Unpaper may work for you if you're not afraid to deal with a CLI.
There's no harm in giving it a look. Assuming it's properly designed I can see it being quite elegant.
As centralized corporate power continues to consolidate, it looks for more avenues by which to leverage its media holdings and increasingly dominant position in both the lives of every-day citizens and politics to invade the lives of the populace.
It seeks legislation and technical means by which to erect barriers to market entry and to prevent consumer behaviors which would interfere with their profit margins.
The larger the company's market presence and holdings, the more abusive it can become and the more people can be compelled to "bear" their behavior, as there are plenty of others unaffected, and any news holdings will be there to marginalize and discredit those who dare to speak out.
The irony of this sort of controlling behavior is it creates an underground society.
for reference, see:
amzon kindle 1984
patent medicines of the 1800's
meat packing practices which led to "the jungle"
the current state of private health insurance in the USA.
fox news
The only way to prevent the abuse of centralized corporate power is to centralize individuals' power in the form of government and regulate them with consumer protection laws.
Green - "whew, republicans control every branch of government"
Yellow - "so called 'hackers' are posting documents proving government corruption to wikileaks"
orange - "anonymous is posting on 4chan"
red - "you have been killed by a government death panel"
The internet in its entirety is "p2p" by nature. This is what differentiates it from TV, radio, or any other medium for that matter, and it is provided "for profit", by these shady companies called "internet service providers".
This judge has just ruled his nation into the stone age, placing it behind even remote african villages in terms of telecom structure.
I predict a large number of ISP's dragged into court and shut down using this precedent.
Tell them no, then schedule the shows anyway and display text showing why they refuse for that block of time.
If it works for ESPN 360 to force cable companies to cough up money at MY expense, it should work for the BBC to make them cough up the programming DRM free.
Chiropractors do provide health benefits.
Many conditions which will prompt MD's to send you to orthopedic surgeons can be treated successfully through non-invasive and much less expensive chiropractic treatment.
It's quite common in the US for chiropractors to treat whiplash injuries.
My step father was a chiropractor, and had to take boards and licensing exams like every other medical professional.
BALL!!
If its like any other GSM based service, the rates will be outrageous.. with stupid limitations like "evening transfer" "night time transfer" "transfer friends", and charges by the megabyte.
Unless its flat rate, unfettered, and competitive with current real ISP's it will be nothing more than an expensive flop.
As a small business owner I have noticed that those "teens" turn in to my employees and think it's ok to text while working and then expect to get "good jobs" for showing up on time to work. In fact; I have a 17 year old girl who seems quite reasonable, say to me after showing up 20 minutes late that she thought, and I quote "I didn't think it was a big deal". This kind of thinking is not isolated, to her , it is very common in this age range of employees.
As a college graduate I have noticed that those "employers" think it's ok to pay minimum wage for graduate level jobs, then make you train your replacement in india because its just too much trouble to pay even enough to allow them to pay rent through perpetual debt.
This is not isolated to just one employer, so I figure they reap what they sow with people not giving a crap about their precious schedules.
I'm sorry, butchery of the english language DOES make someone dumb.
There's no indication that any of this is making anyone substantially stupider.
hang around anyone between the age of 12 and 16 and tell me they're not dumb as bricks speaking in chat acronyms rather than expending the exact same number of syllables on the actual words or actually expressing emotions.
txtn tns hv btchrd t3h en lang!
TISNF!!!
(Replying to my own comment.)
That said, it's a quite well-written tutorial-style article with engaging prose that tackles a number of the relevant issues. I just balked at the "reverse engineer takes on biology" angle, as if that were something biologists had never thought of.
there are several instances in human history of inventions being developed independently in exactly at the same time.
this is far different than the sheer ignorance "max tedroom" displayed with his series of tubes speech.
Indeed, I posted the correction.
They ran tiger, not leo, at the time.
Another expense with Apples is the inability to run new OSes on old hardware.
my school used various generations of macs on campus. the response time for 10.5 leopard was the same on all the machines from the mac pro towers in the media labs to the 1998 imac net nodes tucked away in obscure corners of the more neglected lecture halls.
anyone who has tried to make xp run on hardware dating from a similar time period would fall asleep from boredom waiting for "ye olde exe" to launch.
The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here.
On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project as well.
The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price :-)
30 bucks..
a proprietary OS for 30 bucks deserves 5 points on price.
apple releasing a version of osx for 30 bucks is metaphorically equivalent to an 2010 infiniti M slapped with a 20k(US) sticker price.
Ever since I blew up that guy's head at the press conference its all "the scanner blew up your phone, the scanner blew up your engine, the scanner this, the scanner that".. enough!.. it only works on brains damnit! BRAAAINS!!!
It's quite obvious the corruption involved in the initial raids on TPB in 2k6 was/is much more widespread than previously thought.
They are appealing, and from all accounts the initial lower court ruling does not get applied until their appeal is decided a year plus from now.
This is persecution plain and simple, a textbook case of political harassment by plutocrats intent on keeping their hegemony.
I wouldn't say the American system is perfect, I'm sure it isn't, but based on evidence from Britain, getting the Government involved on such a large scale is probably not going to help.
Maybe there is some other sort of reform that could be applied here?
here's the difference right now:
US system: huge bureaucratic hassle in which the bureaucrats have a serious financial incentive to make sure you are not treated.
British system: huge bureaucratic hassle in which the bureaucrats DONT have a serious financial incentive to make sure you are not treated.
instead of one set of forums in the british system, there are different sets of forms from office to office and provider to provider in the US system. For appointments you are asked to arrive 1 hour early specifically to sign forms, which must then be checked through about 15 different entities before they'll see you (unless you go to the emergency room, which charges you about 100x what the treatment actually costs)
I'm making my guesses, but i'd like confirmation as to which nation this is.. so i can move there.
as opposed to the vast bureaucracy created with the express purpose of denying people life-saving treatments and recinding their insurance while they're on the 10 count into anesthesia for their tumor removal?