...Just take it down from your site, post it somewhere where US lawyers can't touch it (Wikileaks, foreign hosting provider) something like that and just reference it from their site.
They can't prove you posted it to those sites and there's certainly nothing illegal in linking to it.
This will a) Allow discussion to continue, and b) Wind the lawyers and company up no end as they'll be powerless to act.
America doesn't own the internet, whilst these types of notices are frustrating they only work whilst you're a US citizen, using US hosting and where the posting can be linked back to you. US hosting is the weak link because most ISPs/Host that receive the notice will take it down regardless of what you want to do so I'd eliminate that first. Host abroad, host without any personal link to you on the site and there's jack all they can do using US take down notices and a lot of countries don't have anything similar, they'd have to take it all the way to court in most foreign countries to take action there and that's assuming you're not using hosting in a country like Sweden or just posting it on Wikileaks where such a site actually has constitutional protection.
I thought Scandinavian countries were good technologically because in the winter, when it's -30C out and the days don't last more than an hour there's not much to do other than prat around on a computer.
Like you say I don't think history has anything to do with it.
You'll see Europe's military spending dwarfs that of Chinas with only the US above it. Similarly the number of active troops in Europe is 8 million vs. China's active 2 million. When you combine those two figures and realise that not only does Europe have 4 times the active military personnel of China, they're also far, far better equipped due to having 6 times the budget (~$300bn US vs. China's ~$50bn US).
You'll see that China is one of the smallest nuclear players, having less active warheads than Russia, the US, the UK, France and possibly Israel whilst also only having just a few more than India. Also it's worth noting that whilst Russia is complaining bitterly about the US missile shield, it has more than enough nukes to overwhelm it but the reality is that China doesn't. China's nuclear capability could possibly not even whipe out the US let alone the rest of the West before it itself was whiped out, nukes create big explosions, but not _that_ big. The US has 300 million people and even assuming China has 160 nukes, at 1 million casualties per person on average that still leaves the US population at 140 million - hell, 1 million is a reasonable amount for a nuke but even strip another 40 million people off and the US is still going to have enough people to rebuild where possible whereas China would have been whiped off the map completely with the US' full stockpile.
Regarding Chinese citizens being happier, I'm not sure where you get that impression. Tibet has effectively been closed off because dissent is such a problem there, and China are also battling muslim uprisings right now.
You say China is moving into space and well, yeah, that's true, but they're still decades behind the US, Russia and Europe there too. Military bases offshore? So what? just like Russia, the US, and most European countries also then? The US and Europe have bases worldwide due to Europe's old colonial islands that still belong to us from the Falklands off Argentina, through to Guantanamo bay in Cuba to Quatar to bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, to Diego Garcia. Russia similarly has bases spread quite far across the world. So tell me, what exactly is the problem with China seeking an offshore base when other nations have it all already?
Nothing you've said demonstrates that China is gaining strength at an alarming rate, only that it's slowly playing catch up with the other major players.
Again, I know it's easy to fall into the propaganda trap of "China is a dangerous and evil threat" but that line of thinking just doesn't match up with the reality of the situation that even at current rates of increased spending China is still decades behind Europe and the US. It still has instability issues and there's still not really anywhere it can gain from attacking - it can't even feed people it has even though it has more than enough territory to support it's population so why would it want even more territory and people to deal with whilst simultaneously risking losing home territory, suffering massive casualties and defeat dealing with superiorly armed and equipped opponents and possibly even the overthrow of it's very own leadership?
I'm still intrigued to know where you even think they'd invade that wouldn't bring on the wrath of a major opponent such as the US or Europe who could leave them in ruins?
No, there's a lot of C#/.NET jobs out there because there aren't enough quality candidates to fill them.
If you keep an eye on UK job sites you'll see the same.NET jobs posted weeks on end (okay, well now the economy is down the shitter, not quite so prominently as they were 6 months+ ago). Also, as most universities teach Java you'll find that junior Java roles pay less and are less common because they are filled quickly due to so much competition. I've seen quite a few junior Java roles paying as low as £18k p/a whereas I've not seen C# and.NET jobs paying that little- they're usually around £20k - £25k scaling up to about £30k - £35k for good developers with at least 18 months - 2 years experience.
After this you'll certainly have to consider moving on to something like C++ or simply speciallising towards Oracle skills or similar to start applying for the £40k+ p/a jobs. Either way, in the UK jobs market for junior/graduate developers C#/.NET is far and away the best option right now because they pay okay wages and are easy to get.
"Parent is dead on. As for C#, it's a rival to both Java and C++ (mostly for non-games). The problem of course is it's a MS language."
Why is that a problem? If you're working for an MS shop as most businesses are then that's actually an advantage, MS technology bonds with other MS technology much better and much more cleanly for the most part.
"I would recommend that any SlashDot reader go with Java or C++ over C# because they are better documented"
News to me, got an evidence of this? I suppose there could be more documentation out there simply because they've been around longer, but better? in what way?
"more standards compliant"
Okay now you've really lost me, what standards are we talking about exactly? C# is a standard in itself, separate from the.NET framework and CLR. It also has better support for different character sets than most other languages too so it's hard to understand where you're coming from if that's what you're referring to.
"cross platform (Mono is nice and all but it's no substitute for MS C# from what I hear) and Open Source(Java was closed for a long time but it is finally Open and GPLed)."
C# and the.NET framework wasn't designed with the goal of being cross platform, it was designed to make building quality Windows platform based apps quickly and securely and it achieves that very well.
In fact, comparing languages like C#, Java and C++ directly like that is not something a good programmer would do. You use the best tool for the job, if you're using Java to write a Windows only app where potability isn't a requirement then you're wasting your time when you could get it done more quickly and easily in C# and.NET. If you're writing an app. that should run across many different platforms that wont be inconvenienced by the JVM (i.e. does it need direct hardware access?) then Java is the best choice. If you need direct hardware access and the maximum possible performance you can squeeze out the system in question then use C++.
But anyway, the original suggest here for C# was a good one. It's a language that's easy to use (and much harder to break things with than C++), it's still powerful, and it seems to get more job ad listings than any other language in the UK. So for a first time graduate, it's probably the best choice out there. The only C++ jobs I see start around £40k a year and are not jobs the guy asking the question has a chance in hell of getting. Java has some junior developer roles but much fewer than C#, there's also often higher wages to be found for C# developers at entry level too for some reason - possibly because they're so in demand right now.
One final point of course is that C#, using Visual Studio, is simply a pleasure to develop for more so than say Java with Eclipse or Netbeans, although the latter two are improving rapidly nowadays at least and really aren't far behind!
As long as you actually enjoy programming and want to do it long term you'll explore other languages yourself, whilst gaining experience on OOD/OOP quickly and easily using C# as well as learning the other issues that developers face. Developing is about more than just a language as you state and there's no reason all of that can't be learnt well in C#. A good programmer will be able to move language with ease eventually when they feel they're read anyway, but you're just shooting yourself in the foot to focus on anything other than the language which has the best starting wages and is easiest to start out in without harming your learning prospects initially and that language really is C# right now. A C# developer should get £30k to £35k p/a real quick here which isn't too shabby a wage for someone with only a year or two of experience.
China has to maintain a military because of it's border disputes with Russia and India and because it has unstable neighbours (Burma, North Korea) and also because it wants a deterrent to the US if it tries to aid Taiwan in becoming independent.
But no matter what arsenal they're building up that doesn't detract from the fact sending their forces outside their own borders would be suicide because they would lose so much home territory. Even if China wanted to invade other nations it couldn't, simply for that fact. There are too many people under Chinese rule that would love to overthrow the government and make their territory independent.
I'm not sure who you think China would even declare war on, to attack a major force such as Russia, Europe, the US, Nato or some similar body they'd not only risk losing territory but would be left so weak at home their own leadership would be left vulnerable. Even an attack on a smaller nation would provoke support from these major powers too. Even with all that, the Chinese military is still dated and weak compared to the US, Europe and even the soon to be modernised Russia (who are also re-arming now).
I have to agree and since 9/11 I've always thought the same regarding the second point.
One thing that I realised after 9/11 is that 9/11 could well be the end of plane hijackings as we knew them for the most part. Passengers wont just sit by anymore whilst someone waves a knife or gun because they now know full well that there is a chance they could die through being flown into a building anyway.
I'd say 9/11, whilst tragic, did more to prevent terrorist oriented plane hijackings (you may still get the odd nutjob try to hijack a plane because jesus told them to or whatever, but they're much more harmless) than any of the other measures implemented afterwards.
Reinforced doors are of course of obvious benefit too.
All of that said however, this doesn't mean planes are safe from being targetted - many terrorists would love to blow them up still, even if they'd struggle to hijack them and I think this is where airport security measures are focussed, on stopping bombs rather than hijackings.
Any idea where those 15,000 were or what they were doing exactly? Certainly they didn't seem to be pilots as there were only 9 US pilots involved in the Battle of Britain:
And of course, that was the real turning point of the war because it was the first major defeat of Hitler's forces, up until that point he had been advancing without fail. With a combination of RAF/Commonwealth airpower and British/Commonwealth naval power the war had already turned at this point such that the war had been stopped.
Britain and the Commonwealth could not have gone on to defeat Hitler alone certainly, but they did manage to contain Hitler's advance. The US contribution was important certainly, but not as important as the Russians who gave more lives and took more German lives to defeat Nazi Germany than the West did. Without Western strength though, the Russians would likely have advanced further than they did. At very least though, Britain didn't need the US to make sure it's home soil was safe, only to help liberate the rest of Europe.
Americans often like to think they were the saviours of Europe and to be fair they definitely helped and deserve a lot of thanks, but similarly the flip side of it is often ignored in that if they hadn't stalled for 2 years, Hitler could've been pushed back quicker, millions of lives could've been saved and even Pearl Harbour may never have happened. Ironically, 9/11 wasn't too dissimilar in that many Americans seemed oblivious to the fact that they had enemies until it happened. Perhaps acceptance and will to deal with a problem before it becomes a tragedy is something that can be avoided next time - for all our sakes.
There's a fatal flaw in the China part of your conspiracy theory.
The Chinese army is constantly busy trying to keep it's own citizenship oppressed enough not to rebel. If China dared send it's armed forces abroad to fight a war then it'd lose massive chunks of territory to dissidents - Taiwan and Nepal being the most obvious, but there are a lot of other areas and groups who are repressed by the Chinese and would love such an opportunity to rebel, the muslim areas are a good start.
China also has border disputes with India and Russia who would similarly love the opportunity to resolve those if China left the door open by sending it's troops away, India of course has all the traits you mention too and nearly as many people living there but is absolutely not an ally of China.
China as a threat is a red herring, it's use to stir up fear, but the reality is the only thing China is fighting for is survival in it's current incarnation, it's industrial progress is related to this in that the Chinese government realises there'll be a lot more dissidents if it can modernise and give them Western style lifestyles. To worry about China as a threat to anyone outside China though is ignorant of the reality of the situation there.
It's not just South Western England and rural areas, it's pretty much all of Yorkshire (North, East, South and West) and the Lake District as well as much of Scotland and most of Wales. About the only places not neglected are London and some other big cities like Manchester.
We're seeing signs of rollouts to rural areas to appease OFCOM but they always go to the extreme with this, they rollout a 1mbps connection to a single person in the middle of the Pennines or whatever and go "Look, we care about rural people!" whilst ignoring the millions that live in much less remote rural locations but still get shafted.
What annoys me most is that I'm only 3km from the exchange and have SnR ratio and other factors well within the bounds of 8mbps yet I can only sync at 1.6 to 2.2mbps and we've even had new lines into our house not so long ago, there's definitely not an issue with our wiring (checked, checked and checked again) so the issue has to be from the top of the street to the exchange or the exchange itself - it effects my neighbours too yet BT will do absolutely nothing about it because it's a rural area so we have this situation where even people in rural areas who could get 8mbps or damn near can't get it simply because BT don't want to spend money fixing faults. I also don't believe the governments scheme to mandate a minimum of 2mbps will help because BT will just say "Well look he sync'd at 2.1mbps for 30mins 7 weeks ago so surely that's good enough!" despite the fact I'm stuck at 1.6mbps 99% of the time.
Oh, and did I forget to mention, every time it rains heavily my line repeatedly drops and needs to re-sync as do my neighbours - again, it's pretty clear something is screwed at the exchange or along the lines but BT simply do not care, neither do OFCOM and there's nothing we can do about it.
BT do the bare minimum to keep OFCOM and the government happy and the government and OFCOM are happy (as with everything) with the bare minimum and that's the problem. There is no sign of us getting a technically competent government anytime soon however - The Conservatives have stated they'll put someone from the creative (i.e. content) industries in charges of the UK's broadband future so we can only expect things to get worse under them as they have demonstrated on countless occasions they're in big content's pockets.
"Not by law.. a debit card has no more protection than a cheque."
Which is probably more than you think. For one, a bank can't just hand your money away to someone for a fraudulent debit card transaction or a faked cheque. If you wish to argue that you didn't authorise a transaction then they have to be able to prove otherwise if they want to avoid giving you your money back.
You can't fiddle the system because say your card was used without your permission to buy a flatscreen TV online, the bank could contact the company the purchase was made from and ask if they can prove it was delivered to you for example. If the company couldn't prove it went to your address and that you signed for it then the bank couldn't prove you made the transaction and so you'd be legally entitled to have your money returned. If people tried getting things sent to other addresses and have other people sign for it for them then claim they never got it that'd work, but the bank would also be able to call the police on your for a fraud investigation if they suspected that this was the case. If you got caught, it would also be fraud.
Regarding charge backs it depends on the card issuer but Visa have the Visa Debit Chargeback scheme which all Visa debit cards are covered by. Whilst charge back isn't something that's forced by law on companies it is something that's forced as part of Visa and part of your terms and conditions of having a visa debit card, so even if your bank, say, Barclays, refused to do a charge back for you you could still take them to court for breaking terms and conditions and get the money back anyway. You could also issue a complaint to Visa to try and push action there too. Other payment schemes like Maestro don't offer the same protection however but they do have similar offerings but perhaps not quite as well enforced.
Realistically then, credit, or debit card, you're pretty well protected. The only difference is with debit card the onus is on you a bit more if they're difficult in that you'd have to initiate a court case as a last resort if they were being stuborn, but this is I understand a very rare occurance because when it hits court, the banks could lose more money having to pay court fees etc. too. Credit cards have protection that's written in to law by the government, whereas debit cards have protection that's written into law by the government for fraudulent use, or made legally binding through the contract as part of receiving a Visa debit card for charge backs. Charge backs are valid under Visa debit cards upto 120 days after the transaction and for damaged or undelivered goods.
The real reason we're told not to use debit cards in the UK is because banks can make less off of them as there's always the hope they'll get people to spend beyond their means and then try and rack in the interest. It's certainly not for consumer protection.
I guess it depends how slowly, most these demos seem to be based on cavases, and so if we're getting slower DOM performance but faster Javascript performance for the likes of canvases then there is an argument for it I suppose.
That doesn't mean we want to sacrifice DOM speed altogether but as long as it works at an acceptable rate it maybe worth sacrificing if we can get faster canvas speed (for realtime 3D in the browser without 3rd party plugins for example).
I agree with what you're saying though, browser developers need to make sure they don't ignore DOM speed too much, it's still extremely important.
There's been a lot of stories lately about new browser releases and how they have the fastest Javascript performance yet.
I asked why Javascript performance was such a big deal, and I didn't feel any answers I got were particularly convincing.
These experiments however have answered my question much more convincingly, the answer is not that existing applications need it but that future innovations in Javascript can achieve some pretty amazing things if Javascript implementations are efficient enough.
Pakistan is the centre of global terrorism but it's not based on oil wealth instead on opium profits and such. I don't think we'd see an end to global terrorism even if the middle east was whiped off the earth tommorrow.
In reality, the middle east would probably just become a lot more like Africa - a few prosperous big cities but a lot more poor areas that breed war and hate which would still include Islamic extremism (much like in areas of Somalia).
But even without biofuels the shift is going to happen anyway. The US, Canada and most notable Australia, hold the vast majority of the world's Uranium reserves so even a shift to nuclear power is going to have the same effect. The nations who currently hold the world to ransom are also almost entirely the nations that wont have anything to hold the world to ransom with a few decades down the line with Russia being only the real exception, even then it doesn't have a massive amount compared to the west. The middle east has none (bar a very small amount in Jordan), Africa has a little but not much, Europe has a little but not much, China has a little, Kazakhstan and Brazil have decent reserves, America, Canada and Australia have shit loads of the stuff.
So again, regardless of what replaces oil, it's almost certain the balance of power and control of energy is going to shift whether it's biofuels or nuclear.
Dear FAA, In 24 hours I intend to release balloons into the air randomly around Chicago O'Hare. Please alert all pilots so that they can go and land elsewhere.
Regards,
Real life troll.
Seriously though, I assume as you say the regulations in place govern also where you can and can't release things into the air? Presumably you can't just launch something wherever you feel like even if you do give notice and presumably the FAA can reject requests?
I used to agree. For a while VGChartz used to use different metrics for different consoles. For a while their 360 charts were based on Microsofts announcements whilst their Wii/PS3 were based on NPD's stats. The problem here was Microsoft went for over a year between announcements so whilst their announcement was shipped vs. sold it made their initial sales figures overly high but after that year the 360 was shown as being behind when it wasn't
Their figures do seem more accurate now though and they have since started using NPD's figures it seems as the figures seem to match.
You're right though, it's always better to go straight to the source, but VGChartz is at least a lot more accurate now than it used to be and does at least present stats in an easily searchable manner.
"I don't have much to say, except that, if my games were "shite" or "unoriginal", believe me. They wouldn't sell."
What is original about them exactly? isometric RPG with features that exist in most RPGs ever?
"Fortunately for me, Geneforge 4 is neither."
But at 4000 units, it seems that your opinion isn't widely shared. It's great you're building games (honestly, I wish I still had time to do that but I spend my time on further study nowadays) that you like, but you sound like you're building games you like rather than that a wider audience would like, then blaming piracy for not having higher sales figures. Furthermore, why do you feel at $28 people would buy your product rather than say, Neverwinter nights or another AAA title that has plummeted in price to be cheaper than your product? What exactly does it offer over such titles?
"And we're not 15 years out of date. Do you know what games looked like in 1994? We're ten years, at most!:-)"
I know by the smiley you were almost certainly joking, but 15 years ago Doom 2 came out as well as Warcraft 1, Jazz Jack Rabbit and a few others. The graphics of your games aren't beyond that of these games. The problem is we're talking about a game that uses 2D sprites and we don't exactly have a colour shortage so there's no real excuse for low quality tiles and sprites, performance isn't an argument for something like this.
I don't think we're in particular disagreement then, I agree he's done well despite the odds, and this is why I'm rather suprised he's under some expectation that if it weren't for piracy he deserves even more sales that seems an odd stance when on the face of it, for what he produced and how much he's selling it for, he's made a decent amount.
Quake 1: TF Bots
Quake 2: Assault Troopers Airquake 2
Quake 3: Q3F (aka Q3Fortress)
Half-Life: Aliens Half-Life mod (didn't make it to release though, got Foxed;))
I've done bits and pieces for other mod teams, but not as a "full time" team member as with these. Not all of those hit 50,000 (Assault Troopers didn't and TF Bots didn't although it hit around 30,000 first week, which at the time, for the size of the audience back then wasn't bad). Airquake 2 did (although I wasn't on the team at that point, Bjoern did the majority of the work up to that point) and Q3F did.
Certainly being free helps with downloads, but also that has to be balanced against the fact people have to buy the actual game, and also that that leaves you with a smaller audience (only a few million people), whereas this guy's audience is potentially nearly the entire internet (a billion people).
You're concluding that those 4000 customers was a result of those customers having played all existing superior games, which is a conclusion that you simply cannot back up.
Realistically it's more likely that the people who bought it, bought it because they were not aware of the superior alternatives or that they really did prefer his product.
If it's the latter then that's a good example of what I was suggesting, but I think it's more likely the former. Effectively, had these people been given the choice of say, NWN or this they'd almost certainly have gone with NWN. His sales are likely based on people who are not much in to gaming accidently stumbling across his site, not realising there is anything better out there or previous customers who found his products in this manner etc.
Also, 4000 is still an extremely small userbase. When I used to work on Quake and Half-Life mods it wasn't unusual to be able to get around the region of 50,000 unique users downloading the mod on release day.
"Your point is moot, because it would still get pirated. You can't tell me $10 is not an acceptable price for many good music albums, however you define good, yet they still get pirated like crazy."
I'm not sure you read my previous post where I explained that yes, some things will always be pirated, the key is to make your product good enough to be not pirated so that it's the other guy's product that gets pirated. So whilst $10 might be good enough for the album, is it good enough for a teenager who only has a total of $10 to spend on it, or will they spend it on the other, better album or game that sells for only $9 and pirate the $10 one? As I mentioned previously also, there are people who will only pirate because they do not even have a single $10 spare. The key though is to rack in as many customers as you can by offering a better deal than the other guy, if you don't then it'll be your product that is consistently pirated whilst the other guy gets all the sales. People don't have enough money to buy every piece of entertainment they want, but whilst there's a risk free method of getting it they wont let that stop them getting it.
"So until slavery became illegal in the US, it was morally correct?"
Well yes actually, at the time it was in fact seen as morally correct. The problem is you're applying modern standards to an old situation when morals were defined very differently. This is exactly what you and many others are doing to the piracy problem too but in reverse - applying old principles to a new situation. Using your own example, this is effectively the same as slavers of the time suggesting it's stupid to treat black people equally when people suggested abolishing slavery. That is clearly wrong, and similarly to the piracy situation it's arguable that existing views on copyright are also completely wrong. Morals aren't static through time and they change, attitudes are now changing to piracy and it's becoming morally acceptable if it's not so already.
"I'm so sick of all these straw-man arguments that get thrown around all the time, like those who pirate games and music are engaged in some noble fight."
Well as pointed out above it is to an extent, it's about mordernising views and getting those stuck in the past to realise millions upon millions of people have a completely different view on piracy nowadays.
"If you would all just be honest with yourselves and admit that you're just a bunch of cheapskates who don't want to pay, I'd have a lot more respect for your argument."
But that isn't the case, most people are happy to spend money on entertainment - I do, I spend thousands a year on gaming (mostly XBox 360 games), having only had the console just over 2 years and owning over 150 titles. The problem is what to do when the months money is out, there's a fair argument that people should go without, but they don't have to if they can pirate. You see, people haven't stopped spending money and started pirating, they're pirating as well as spending what they always did (some people may not spend anything, but never did anyway). This is how the music, movie and games can announce record profits year on year - because the amount of money people spend isn't shrinking, it's in fact growing. The only thing that's changed is that people are pirating as well as buying.
If we stopped piracy worldwide right this minute, products that were failing and blaming piracy would still be failing, that wouldn't change, no one would buy the products still, they'd still spend it on the superior offerings. The only difference is people would have to find other things to do that didn't involve spending money because they'd still have no more to spend than they were already spending.
There are however advantages to piracy, it leads to a better educated, better cultured population as they can consume more media than ever from anywhere in the world. It helps push technology, particularly internet connectivity but also storage technology. In some cases, it also acts as advertising for other services.
To suggest piracy is outright wrong, no questions asked, is as ignorant as it was of slavers to suggest slavery was right. It's just not that simple.
The PS3 is absolutely not outselling the 360 overall, nor is it doing so in Europe or North America. It is only outselling the 360 in Japan but only by around 10,000 units a week, whilst it's losing out to the 360 by around 20,000 a week in Europe and around 50,000 a week in the US.
The reason the AC parent has the stats he has (although they're rounded in favour of the PS3- the real stats are 21mill PS3s and 29mill XBox 360s) are because the PS3 had a period where it was outselling the 360, about 6 months into it's lifetime for around a year. It wasn't outselling it for the first 6months of it's life however and it has not been outselling it for the last 6, furthermore it's actually losing ground week on week in terms of the units shifted, so not only is it losing ground overall, it's losing ground at a faster rate week on week as an average trend across the last 6 months.
MS were cherry picking for a while for sure, but they're not now. They've got a healthy gain on the PS3 and it's almost certainly because the 360 is so cheap now whilst the PS3 remains too expensive.
It's also worth pointing out that MS is also selling over twice as many games per console as the PS3 so is making even more money than Sony in that repect too.
I'd be amazed if everyone has played every old game their system can run worth playing that is still both better and cheaper than the product listed here. There's a hell of a lot out there, and let's face it even if anyone has, the market is so small we're talking about maybe 1 or 2 potential customers.
Nope not at all, I mean producing a decent product at a sensible price.
"Morality has nothing to do with how many people partake in the activity."
Well, yes, it does actually. Morals are defined by the masses, and if the masses support something as being an acceptable activity (which judging by the scale of piracy it is) then it cannot be defined as morally wrong except on a personal level.
"No, what he's saying is that if you want to play his game you owe him $28. It's clear that he doesn't support piracy."
It's possible to unintentionally encourage something when performing actions that contradict your statements, which is what he's doing by setting an unreasonably high price for his game.
Slashdot Mirror
...Just take it down from your site, post it somewhere where US lawyers can't touch it (Wikileaks, foreign hosting provider) something like that and just reference it from their site.
They can't prove you posted it to those sites and there's certainly nothing illegal in linking to it.
This will a) Allow discussion to continue, and b) Wind the lawyers and company up no end as they'll be powerless to act.
America doesn't own the internet, whilst these types of notices are frustrating they only work whilst you're a US citizen, using US hosting and where the posting can be linked back to you. US hosting is the weak link because most ISPs/Host that receive the notice will take it down regardless of what you want to do so I'd eliminate that first. Host abroad, host without any personal link to you on the site and there's jack all they can do using US take down notices and a lot of countries don't have anything similar, they'd have to take it all the way to court in most foreign countries to take action there and that's assuming you're not using hosting in a country like Sweden or just posting it on Wikileaks where such a site actually has constitutional protection.
I thought Scandinavian countries were good technologically because in the winter, when it's -30C out and the days don't last more than an hour there's not much to do other than prat around on a computer.
Like you say I don't think history has anything to do with it.
I guess they've never heard of Cambridge, England?
I'm not really sure why you think that China is better equipped than Europe, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_European_Union#Member_States.27_military_spending
You'll see Europe's military spending dwarfs that of Chinas with only the US above it. Similarly the number of active troops in Europe is 8 million vs. China's active 2 million. When you combine those two figures and realise that not only does Europe have 4 times the active military personnel of China, they're also far, far better equipped due to having 6 times the budget (~$300bn US vs. China's ~$50bn US).
Regarding nuclear stockpiles, check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons#Estimated_worldwide_nuclear_stockpiles
You'll see that China is one of the smallest nuclear players, having less active warheads than Russia, the US, the UK, France and possibly Israel whilst also only having just a few more than India. Also it's worth noting that whilst Russia is complaining bitterly about the US missile shield, it has more than enough nukes to overwhelm it but the reality is that China doesn't. China's nuclear capability could possibly not even whipe out the US let alone the rest of the West before it itself was whiped out, nukes create big explosions, but not _that_ big. The US has 300 million people and even assuming China has 160 nukes, at 1 million casualties per person on average that still leaves the US population at 140 million - hell, 1 million is a reasonable amount for a nuke but even strip another 40 million people off and the US is still going to have enough people to rebuild where possible whereas China would have been whiped off the map completely with the US' full stockpile.
Regarding Chinese citizens being happier, I'm not sure where you get that impression. Tibet has effectively been closed off because dissent is such a problem there, and China are also battling muslim uprisings right now.
You say China is moving into space and well, yeah, that's true, but they're still decades behind the US, Russia and Europe there too. Military bases offshore? So what? just like Russia, the US, and most European countries also then? The US and Europe have bases worldwide due to Europe's old colonial islands that still belong to us from the Falklands off Argentina, through to Guantanamo bay in Cuba to Quatar to bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, to Diego Garcia. Russia similarly has bases spread quite far across the world. So tell me, what exactly is the problem with China seeking an offshore base when other nations have it all already?
Nothing you've said demonstrates that China is gaining strength at an alarming rate, only that it's slowly playing catch up with the other major players.
Again, I know it's easy to fall into the propaganda trap of "China is a dangerous and evil threat" but that line of thinking just doesn't match up with the reality of the situation that even at current rates of increased spending China is still decades behind Europe and the US. It still has instability issues and there's still not really anywhere it can gain from attacking - it can't even feed people it has even though it has more than enough territory to support it's population so why would it want even more territory and people to deal with whilst simultaneously risking losing home territory, suffering massive casualties and defeat dealing with superiorly armed and equipped opponents and possibly even the overthrow of it's very own leadership?
I'm still intrigued to know where you even think they'd invade that wouldn't bring on the wrath of a major opponent such as the US or Europe who could leave them in ruins?
No, there's a lot of C#/.NET jobs out there because there aren't enough quality candidates to fill them.
If you keep an eye on UK job sites you'll see the same .NET jobs posted weeks on end (okay, well now the economy is down the shitter, not quite so prominently as they were 6 months+ ago). Also, as most universities teach Java you'll find that junior Java roles pay less and are less common because they are filled quickly due to so much competition. I've seen quite a few junior Java roles paying as low as £18k p/a whereas I've not seen C# and .NET jobs paying that little- they're usually around £20k - £25k scaling up to about £30k - £35k for good developers with at least 18 months - 2 years experience.
After this you'll certainly have to consider moving on to something like C++ or simply speciallising towards Oracle skills or similar to start applying for the £40k+ p/a jobs. Either way, in the UK jobs market for junior/graduate developers C#/.NET is far and away the best option right now because they pay okay wages and are easy to get.
"Parent is dead on. As for C#, it's a rival to both Java and C++ (mostly for non-games). The problem of course is it's a MS language."
Why is that a problem? If you're working for an MS shop as most businesses are then that's actually an advantage, MS technology bonds with other MS technology much better and much more cleanly for the most part.
"I would recommend that any SlashDot reader go with Java or C++ over C# because they are better documented"
News to me, got an evidence of this? I suppose there could be more documentation out there simply because they've been around longer, but better? in what way?
"more standards compliant"
Okay now you've really lost me, what standards are we talking about exactly? C# is a standard in itself, separate from the .NET framework and CLR. It also has better support for different character sets than most other languages too so it's hard to understand where you're coming from if that's what you're referring to.
"cross platform (Mono is nice and all but it's no substitute for MS C# from what I hear) and Open Source(Java was closed for a long time but it is finally Open and GPLed)."
C# and the .NET framework wasn't designed with the goal of being cross platform, it was designed to make building quality Windows platform based apps quickly and securely and it achieves that very well.
In fact, comparing languages like C#, Java and C++ directly like that is not something a good programmer would do. You use the best tool for the job, if you're using Java to write a Windows only app where potability isn't a requirement then you're wasting your time when you could get it done more quickly and easily in C# and .NET. If you're writing an app. that should run across many different platforms that wont be inconvenienced by the JVM (i.e. does it need direct hardware access?) then Java is the best choice. If you need direct hardware access and the maximum possible performance you can squeeze out the system in question then use C++.
But anyway, the original suggest here for C# was a good one. It's a language that's easy to use (and much harder to break things with than C++), it's still powerful, and it seems to get more job ad listings than any other language in the UK. So for a first time graduate, it's probably the best choice out there. The only C++ jobs I see start around £40k a year and are not jobs the guy asking the question has a chance in hell of getting. Java has some junior developer roles but much fewer than C#, there's also often higher wages to be found for C# developers at entry level too for some reason - possibly because they're so in demand right now.
One final point of course is that C#, using Visual Studio, is simply a pleasure to develop for more so than say Java with Eclipse or Netbeans, although the latter two are improving rapidly nowadays at least and really aren't far behind!
As long as you actually enjoy programming and want to do it long term you'll explore other languages yourself, whilst gaining experience on OOD/OOP quickly and easily using C# as well as learning the other issues that developers face. Developing is about more than just a language as you state and there's no reason all of that can't be learnt well in C#. A good programmer will be able to move language with ease eventually when they feel they're read anyway, but you're just shooting yourself in the foot to focus on anything other than the language which has the best starting wages and is easiest to start out in without harming your learning prospects initially and that language really is C# right now. A C# developer should get £30k to £35k p/a real quick here which isn't too shabby a wage for someone with only a year or two of experience.
China has to maintain a military because of it's border disputes with Russia and India and because it has unstable neighbours (Burma, North Korea) and also because it wants a deterrent to the US if it tries to aid Taiwan in becoming independent.
But no matter what arsenal they're building up that doesn't detract from the fact sending their forces outside their own borders would be suicide because they would lose so much home territory. Even if China wanted to invade other nations it couldn't, simply for that fact. There are too many people under Chinese rule that would love to overthrow the government and make their territory independent.
I'm not sure who you think China would even declare war on, to attack a major force such as Russia, Europe, the US, Nato or some similar body they'd not only risk losing territory but would be left so weak at home their own leadership would be left vulnerable. Even an attack on a smaller nation would provoke support from these major powers too. Even with all that, the Chinese military is still dated and weak compared to the US, Europe and even the soon to be modernised Russia (who are also re-arming now).
I have to agree and since 9/11 I've always thought the same regarding the second point.
One thing that I realised after 9/11 is that 9/11 could well be the end of plane hijackings as we knew them for the most part. Passengers wont just sit by anymore whilst someone waves a knife or gun because they now know full well that there is a chance they could die through being flown into a building anyway.
I'd say 9/11, whilst tragic, did more to prevent terrorist oriented plane hijackings (you may still get the odd nutjob try to hijack a plane because jesus told them to or whatever, but they're much more harmless) than any of the other measures implemented afterwards.
Reinforced doors are of course of obvious benefit too.
All of that said however, this doesn't mean planes are safe from being targetted - many terrorists would love to blow them up still, even if they'd struggle to hijack them and I think this is where airport security measures are focussed, on stopping bombs rather than hijackings.
Any idea where those 15,000 were or what they were doing exactly? Certainly they didn't seem to be pilots as there were only 9 US pilots involved in the Battle of Britain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-British_personnel_in_the_RAF_during_the_Battle_of_Britain
And of course, that was the real turning point of the war because it was the first major defeat of Hitler's forces, up until that point he had been advancing without fail. With a combination of RAF/Commonwealth airpower and British/Commonwealth naval power the war had already turned at this point such that the war had been stopped.
Britain and the Commonwealth could not have gone on to defeat Hitler alone certainly, but they did manage to contain Hitler's advance. The US contribution was important certainly, but not as important as the Russians who gave more lives and took more German lives to defeat Nazi Germany than the West did. Without Western strength though, the Russians would likely have advanced further than they did. At very least though, Britain didn't need the US to make sure it's home soil was safe, only to help liberate the rest of Europe.
Americans often like to think they were the saviours of Europe and to be fair they definitely helped and deserve a lot of thanks, but similarly the flip side of it is often ignored in that if they hadn't stalled for 2 years, Hitler could've been pushed back quicker, millions of lives could've been saved and even Pearl Harbour may never have happened. Ironically, 9/11 wasn't too dissimilar in that many Americans seemed oblivious to the fact that they had enemies until it happened. Perhaps acceptance and will to deal with a problem before it becomes a tragedy is something that can be avoided next time - for all our sakes.
There's a fatal flaw in the China part of your conspiracy theory.
The Chinese army is constantly busy trying to keep it's own citizenship oppressed enough not to rebel. If China dared send it's armed forces abroad to fight a war then it'd lose massive chunks of territory to dissidents - Taiwan and Nepal being the most obvious, but there are a lot of other areas and groups who are repressed by the Chinese and would love such an opportunity to rebel, the muslim areas are a good start.
China also has border disputes with India and Russia who would similarly love the opportunity to resolve those if China left the door open by sending it's troops away, India of course has all the traits you mention too and nearly as many people living there but is absolutely not an ally of China.
China as a threat is a red herring, it's use to stir up fear, but the reality is the only thing China is fighting for is survival in it's current incarnation, it's industrial progress is related to this in that the Chinese government realises there'll be a lot more dissidents if it can modernise and give them Western style lifestyles. To worry about China as a threat to anyone outside China though is ignorant of the reality of the situation there.
Russia however, I agree with you on.
It's not just South Western England and rural areas, it's pretty much all of Yorkshire (North, East, South and West) and the Lake District as well as much of Scotland and most of Wales. About the only places not neglected are London and some other big cities like Manchester.
We're seeing signs of rollouts to rural areas to appease OFCOM but they always go to the extreme with this, they rollout a 1mbps connection to a single person in the middle of the Pennines or whatever and go "Look, we care about rural people!" whilst ignoring the millions that live in much less remote rural locations but still get shafted.
What annoys me most is that I'm only 3km from the exchange and have SnR ratio and other factors well within the bounds of 8mbps yet I can only sync at 1.6 to 2.2mbps and we've even had new lines into our house not so long ago, there's definitely not an issue with our wiring (checked, checked and checked again) so the issue has to be from the top of the street to the exchange or the exchange itself - it effects my neighbours too yet BT will do absolutely nothing about it because it's a rural area so we have this situation where even people in rural areas who could get 8mbps or damn near can't get it simply because BT don't want to spend money fixing faults. I also don't believe the governments scheme to mandate a minimum of 2mbps will help because BT will just say "Well look he sync'd at 2.1mbps for 30mins 7 weeks ago so surely that's good enough!" despite the fact I'm stuck at 1.6mbps 99% of the time.
Oh, and did I forget to mention, every time it rains heavily my line repeatedly drops and needs to re-sync as do my neighbours - again, it's pretty clear something is screwed at the exchange or along the lines but BT simply do not care, neither do OFCOM and there's nothing we can do about it.
BT do the bare minimum to keep OFCOM and the government happy and the government and OFCOM are happy (as with everything) with the bare minimum and that's the problem. There is no sign of us getting a technically competent government anytime soon however - The Conservatives have stated they'll put someone from the creative (i.e. content) industries in charges of the UK's broadband future so we can only expect things to get worse under them as they have demonstrated on countless occasions they're in big content's pockets.
"Not by law.. a debit card has no more protection than a cheque."
Which is probably more than you think. For one, a bank can't just hand your money away to someone for a fraudulent debit card transaction or a faked cheque. If you wish to argue that you didn't authorise a transaction then they have to be able to prove otherwise if they want to avoid giving you your money back.
You can't fiddle the system because say your card was used without your permission to buy a flatscreen TV online, the bank could contact the company the purchase was made from and ask if they can prove it was delivered to you for example. If the company couldn't prove it went to your address and that you signed for it then the bank couldn't prove you made the transaction and so you'd be legally entitled to have your money returned. If people tried getting things sent to other addresses and have other people sign for it for them then claim they never got it that'd work, but the bank would also be able to call the police on your for a fraud investigation if they suspected that this was the case. If you got caught, it would also be fraud.
Regarding charge backs it depends on the card issuer but Visa have the Visa Debit Chargeback scheme which all Visa debit cards are covered by. Whilst charge back isn't something that's forced by law on companies it is something that's forced as part of Visa and part of your terms and conditions of having a visa debit card, so even if your bank, say, Barclays, refused to do a charge back for you you could still take them to court for breaking terms and conditions and get the money back anyway. You could also issue a complaint to Visa to try and push action there too. Other payment schemes like Maestro don't offer the same protection however but they do have similar offerings but perhaps not quite as well enforced.
Realistically then, credit, or debit card, you're pretty well protected. The only difference is with debit card the onus is on you a bit more if they're difficult in that you'd have to initiate a court case as a last resort if they were being stuborn, but this is I understand a very rare occurance because when it hits court, the banks could lose more money having to pay court fees etc. too. Credit cards have protection that's written in to law by the government, whereas debit cards have protection that's written into law by the government for fraudulent use, or made legally binding through the contract as part of receiving a Visa debit card for charge backs. Charge backs are valid under Visa debit cards upto 120 days after the transaction and for damaged or undelivered goods.
The real reason we're told not to use debit cards in the UK is because banks can make less off of them as there's always the hope they'll get people to spend beyond their means and then try and rack in the interest. It's certainly not for consumer protection.
"(remember: we were originally a penal colony)"
Did someone forget to re-write the law books when you became independent or something??
I guess it depends how slowly, most these demos seem to be based on cavases, and so if we're getting slower DOM performance but faster Javascript performance for the likes of canvases then there is an argument for it I suppose.
That doesn't mean we want to sacrifice DOM speed altogether but as long as it works at an acceptable rate it maybe worth sacrificing if we can get faster canvas speed (for realtime 3D in the browser without 3rd party plugins for example).
I agree with what you're saying though, browser developers need to make sure they don't ignore DOM speed too much, it's still extremely important.
There's been a lot of stories lately about new browser releases and how they have the fastest Javascript performance yet.
I asked why Javascript performance was such a big deal, and I didn't feel any answers I got were particularly convincing.
These experiments however have answered my question much more convincingly, the answer is not that existing applications need it but that future innovations in Javascript can achieve some pretty amazing things if Javascript implementations are efficient enough.
Pakistan is the centre of global terrorism but it's not based on oil wealth instead on opium profits and such. I don't think we'd see an end to global terrorism even if the middle east was whiped off the earth tommorrow.
In reality, the middle east would probably just become a lot more like Africa - a few prosperous big cities but a lot more poor areas that breed war and hate which would still include Islamic extremism (much like in areas of Somalia).
But even without biofuels the shift is going to happen anyway. The US, Canada and most notable Australia, hold the vast majority of the world's Uranium reserves so even a shift to nuclear power is going to have the same effect. The nations who currently hold the world to ransom are also almost entirely the nations that wont have anything to hold the world to ransom with a few decades down the line with Russia being only the real exception, even then it doesn't have a massive amount compared to the west. The middle east has none (bar a very small amount in Jordan), Africa has a little but not much, Europe has a little but not much, China has a little, Kazakhstan and Brazil have decent reserves, America, Canada and Australia have shit loads of the stuff.
So again, regardless of what replaces oil, it's almost certain the balance of power and control of energy is going to shift whether it's biofuels or nuclear.
Dear FAA,
In 24 hours I intend to release balloons into the air randomly around Chicago O'Hare. Please alert all pilots so that they can go and land elsewhere.
Regards,
Real life troll.
Seriously though, I assume as you say the regulations in place govern also where you can and can't release things into the air? Presumably you can't just launch something wherever you feel like even if you do give notice and presumably the FAA can reject requests?
I used to agree. For a while VGChartz used to use different metrics for different consoles. For a while their 360 charts were based on Microsofts announcements whilst their Wii/PS3 were based on NPD's stats. The problem here was Microsoft went for over a year between announcements so whilst their announcement was shipped vs. sold it made their initial sales figures overly high but after that year the 360 was shown as being behind when it wasn't
Their figures do seem more accurate now though and they have since started using NPD's figures it seems as the figures seem to match.
You're right though, it's always better to go straight to the source, but VGChartz is at least a lot more accurate now than it used to be and does at least present stats in an easily searchable manner.
"I don't have much to say, except that, if my games were "shite" or "unoriginal", believe me. They wouldn't sell."
What is original about them exactly? isometric RPG with features that exist in most RPGs ever?
"Fortunately for me, Geneforge 4 is neither."
But at 4000 units, it seems that your opinion isn't widely shared. It's great you're building games (honestly, I wish I still had time to do that but I spend my time on further study nowadays) that you like, but you sound like you're building games you like rather than that a wider audience would like, then blaming piracy for not having higher sales figures. Furthermore, why do you feel at $28 people would buy your product rather than say, Neverwinter nights or another AAA title that has plummeted in price to be cheaper than your product? What exactly does it offer over such titles?
"And we're not 15 years out of date. Do you know what games looked like in 1994? We're ten years, at most! :-)"
I know by the smiley you were almost certainly joking, but 15 years ago Doom 2 came out as well as Warcraft 1, Jazz Jack Rabbit and a few others. The graphics of your games aren't beyond that of these games. The problem is we're talking about a game that uses 2D sprites and we don't exactly have a colour shortage so there's no real excuse for low quality tiles and sprites, performance isn't an argument for something like this.
I don't think we're in particular disagreement then, I agree he's done well despite the odds, and this is why I'm rather suprised he's under some expectation that if it weren't for piracy he deserves even more sales that seems an odd stance when on the face of it, for what he produced and how much he's selling it for, he's made a decent amount.
Quake 1:
TF Bots
Quake 2:
Assault Troopers
Airquake 2
Quake 3:
Q3F (aka Q3Fortress)
Half-Life: ;))
Aliens Half-Life mod (didn't make it to release though, got Foxed
I've done bits and pieces for other mod teams, but not as a "full time" team member as with these. Not all of those hit 50,000 (Assault Troopers didn't and TF Bots didn't although it hit around 30,000 first week, which at the time, for the size of the audience back then wasn't bad). Airquake 2 did (although I wasn't on the team at that point, Bjoern did the majority of the work up to that point) and Q3F did.
Certainly being free helps with downloads, but also that has to be balanced against the fact people have to buy the actual game, and also that that leaves you with a smaller audience (only a few million people), whereas this guy's audience is potentially nearly the entire internet (a billion people).
You're concluding that those 4000 customers was a result of those customers having played all existing superior games, which is a conclusion that you simply cannot back up.
Realistically it's more likely that the people who bought it, bought it because they were not aware of the superior alternatives or that they really did prefer his product.
If it's the latter then that's a good example of what I was suggesting, but I think it's more likely the former. Effectively, had these people been given the choice of say, NWN or this they'd almost certainly have gone with NWN. His sales are likely based on people who are not much in to gaming accidently stumbling across his site, not realising there is anything better out there or previous customers who found his products in this manner etc.
Also, 4000 is still an extremely small userbase. When I used to work on Quake and Half-Life mods it wasn't unusual to be able to get around the region of 50,000 unique users downloading the mod on release day.
"Your point is moot, because it would still get pirated. You can't tell me $10 is not an acceptable price for many good music albums, however you define good, yet they still get pirated like crazy."
I'm not sure you read my previous post where I explained that yes, some things will always be pirated, the key is to make your product good enough to be not pirated so that it's the other guy's product that gets pirated. So whilst $10 might be good enough for the album, is it good enough for a teenager who only has a total of $10 to spend on it, or will they spend it on the other, better album or game that sells for only $9 and pirate the $10 one? As I mentioned previously also, there are people who will only pirate because they do not even have a single $10 spare. The key though is to rack in as many customers as you can by offering a better deal than the other guy, if you don't then it'll be your product that is consistently pirated whilst the other guy gets all the sales. People don't have enough money to buy every piece of entertainment they want, but whilst there's a risk free method of getting it they wont let that stop them getting it.
"So until slavery became illegal in the US, it was morally correct?"
Well yes actually, at the time it was in fact seen as morally correct. The problem is you're applying modern standards to an old situation when morals were defined very differently. This is exactly what you and many others are doing to the piracy problem too but in reverse - applying old principles to a new situation. Using your own example, this is effectively the same as slavers of the time suggesting it's stupid to treat black people equally when people suggested abolishing slavery. That is clearly wrong, and similarly to the piracy situation it's arguable that existing views on copyright are also completely wrong. Morals aren't static through time and they change, attitudes are now changing to piracy and it's becoming morally acceptable if it's not so already.
"I'm so sick of all these straw-man arguments that get thrown around all the time, like those who pirate games and music are engaged in some noble fight."
Well as pointed out above it is to an extent, it's about mordernising views and getting those stuck in the past to realise millions upon millions of people have a completely different view on piracy nowadays.
"If you would all just be honest with yourselves and admit that you're just a bunch of cheapskates who don't want to pay, I'd have a lot more respect for your argument."
But that isn't the case, most people are happy to spend money on entertainment - I do, I spend thousands a year on gaming (mostly XBox 360 games), having only had the console just over 2 years and owning over 150 titles. The problem is what to do when the months money is out, there's a fair argument that people should go without, but they don't have to if they can pirate. You see, people haven't stopped spending money and started pirating, they're pirating as well as spending what they always did (some people may not spend anything, but never did anyway). This is how the music, movie and games can announce record profits year on year - because the amount of money people spend isn't shrinking, it's in fact growing. The only thing that's changed is that people are pirating as well as buying.
If we stopped piracy worldwide right this minute, products that were failing and blaming piracy would still be failing, that wouldn't change, no one would buy the products still, they'd still spend it on the superior offerings. The only difference is people would have to find other things to do that didn't involve spending money because they'd still have no more to spend than they were already spending.
There are however advantages to piracy, it leads to a better educated, better cultured population as they can consume more media than ever from anywhere in the world. It helps push technology, particularly internet connectivity but also storage technology. In some cases, it also acts as advertising for other services.
To suggest piracy is outright wrong, no questions asked, is as ignorant as it was of slavers to suggest slavery was right. It's just not that simple.
Actually you're wrong.
The PS3 is absolutely not outselling the 360 overall, nor is it doing so in Europe or North America. It is only outselling the 360 in Japan but only by around 10,000 units a week, whilst it's losing out to the 360 by around 20,000 a week in Europe and around 50,000 a week in the US.
The reason the AC parent has the stats he has (although they're rounded in favour of the PS3- the real stats are 21mill PS3s and 29mill XBox 360s) are because the PS3 had a period where it was outselling the 360, about 6 months into it's lifetime for around a year. It wasn't outselling it for the first 6months of it's life however and it has not been outselling it for the last 6, furthermore it's actually losing ground week on week in terms of the units shifted, so not only is it losing ground overall, it's losing ground at a faster rate week on week as an average trend across the last 6 months.
MS were cherry picking for a while for sure, but they're not now. They've got a healthy gain on the PS3 and it's almost certainly because the 360 is so cheap now whilst the PS3 remains too expensive.
It's also worth pointing out that MS is also selling over twice as many games per console as the PS3 so is making even more money than Sony in that repect too.
Go check the facts for yourself if you want at:
http://www.vgchartz.com/
I'd be amazed if everyone has played every old game their system can run worth playing that is still both better and cheaper than the product listed here. There's a hell of a lot out there, and let's face it even if anyone has, the market is so small we're talking about maybe 1 or 2 potential customers.
"You mean like DRM?"
Nope not at all, I mean producing a decent product at a sensible price.
"Morality has nothing to do with how many people partake in the activity."
Well, yes, it does actually. Morals are defined by the masses, and if the masses support something as being an acceptable activity (which judging by the scale of piracy it is) then it cannot be defined as morally wrong except on a personal level.
"No, what he's saying is that if you want to play his game you owe him $28. It's clear that he doesn't support piracy."
It's possible to unintentionally encourage something when performing actions that contradict your statements, which is what he's doing by setting an unreasonably high price for his game.