A real racket is when your prof requires you to buy his textbook, which is not published and is 135 pages of (double sided) photocopied paper for $280 in 1996 dollars. I imagine now he'd charge $100 more now and e-publish it. I couldn't sell it back, either. At least that was the worst case - I had about 3 other self-published classes, but most were in the $30-40 range.
Brian Fargo isn't the only one - I noticed inXile and Obsidian are teaming up for Wasteland 2, and Obsidian hired Tim Cain late last year (the first employee working on and lead programmer for Fallout) so I have to wonder if he's involved as well.
Strangely, Al Lowe didn't really create the game that is Leisure Suit Larry, which is also the one being remade, he took a text adventure game (Softporn Adventure by Charles Benton) and made it graphical and created the titular character, who was unnamed in the original text adventure (though I'm 99% sure him wearing a leisure suit is mentioned). Note that I played the text adventure when I was like 10 or 11, and it definitely wasn't a legal copy, whereas the LSL I played years later was (my college roommate's, and I think they were up to 3 or 4 by then). I was actually surprised by how close to the text adventure the game was - only a couple of changes, really, aside from some visual cues. Many of the jokes were even the same.
My EVGA Geforce 7600GT still works (driving my wife's non gaming computer). Too bad Sapphire was about the opposite - the ATI Sapphire card I bought never worked properly, and I kept sending it back to them as defective and they kept sending me back the same card and told me it was not, even after I told them that they needed to run the card with accelerated graphics on for about 3-5 minutes to see the problem (it BSoD'd, and it did not with the old card or the one I later replaced it with). I never got a working card - I got sick of paying shipping and arguing with them and just bought a different card for that box (after paying $100 for the card and over $50 in shipping fees). That was also the last ATI card I ever bought, but I've only bought two cards since - the one that replaced the Sapphire and one I put in a new box.
That was blamed, but Apple was hardly the only manufacturer with this problem - my ASUS laptop had its GPU blow twice, once well after the problem was revealed and that chip actually lasted about a year longer than its replacement (unfortunately, the laptop was out of warranty by the second failure), so I personally feel the 8600M line was defective and prone to overheating and that nVidia was covering it up. The die shrink that was the same architecture but reduced heat had a MUCH lower failure rate (the 9xxx line) - in fact, the laptop I replaced my ASUS with (an HP) had a 9800M GT, and the GPU never was a problem (the laptop itself was a nightmare of problems, especially after the 1 year warranty ended - display failed, disk failed, fan sounds like a banshee [probably ball bearings], touch sensor went wonky and randomly disconnects the wireless and changes sound levels, etc).
Anyhow, nVidia can blame whoever they want, but I won't believe it. I know they wanted to save face and I certainly don't blame them for it, but everyone has a lemon once in a while, and the 8xxx line was nVidias. If it's any consolation, I've had more problems with ATI cards, though there it tends to be driver issues that are eventually resolved.
Of course, that will just prove Alvin Weinberg was right all along, and Nixon and the greedy nuclear companies that owned the patents on light water reactor designs that got him fired were wrong. Nuclear power in today's reactors were always about the most efficient design that resulted in nuclear weapons grade byproducts and never about powering homes. A nuclear reactor that is much safer (can't melt down and byproducts decay faster, for example), burns almost all of its fuel, and can be shut down quickly if not needed? Who would want that? It also produces little nuclear weapons grade elements and self contaminates them. In fact, this technology can burn depleted uranium (AKA nuclear waste) instead of thorium... it seems win-win to develop it, but the US government has invested exactly $0 since shutting down the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (other governments have started investing, including Russia, and some private companies like FLiBe are investing, but I have yet to see the US spend a cent). Note that the US did build a thorium reactor in the Carter administration, but it was based more on LWR designs, not molten salt.
Weird... I didn't play any of those on the Apple ][, and I played nearly everything on the Apple ][. Oregon Trail is the exception, because I was living in the state that created and funded it. I played a bit of M.U.L.E. on a trash-80 I think (youch!). Silent Service was definitely on a colorless mac, and Archon and Pirates definitely on an IBM PC. Spindizzy I've never heard of until now, but looking it up I see it was similar to Marble Madness, and I played the actual Marble Madness port, so I probably didn't care.
Probably my favorite Apple ][ games, and there are a lot of them, were Choplifter, Rescue Raiders!, Sabotage, Castle Wolfenstein, Drol, Ultima, Wizardry, Karateka, Below the Root (eduware label be damned), Irving and Bird 1 on 1 (I had that game mastered and made $150 off of it in contests, so I had to include it), Lode Runner, Autoduel, Aquatron (the best defender clone ever), Conan: Hall of Volta, anything Infocom, Skyfox, and SunDog: Frozen Legacy. Oh, and I loved the total conversion Castle Smurfenstein (Dino Smurfs was OK, Smurfenstein was better).
The (Woz) floppy drive probably saved me from never caring about computers. I used the Apple ][ with a tape drive one year in elementary school and the unreliable 7-8 minute load time was more than my attention span could handle. I probably spent an hour total in the lab that year. The next year (1978 I think, may have been 1979) they got disk ][s and I learned BASIC. By the next year, I learned assembly. Then came the Sneakers and Sabotage... I had been an Atari 2600 gamer before then, but 1981 was the year I moved to computer gaming - still in Elementary School, mind you - neither my Jr High nor High School had computers you could access outside of a class. For that matter, my Jr High only had one computer - an IBM PC in the Electronics classroom, and my High School had computers you could only touch if you took a class teaching BASIC (and by then I was fluent in BASIC, Assembly, and PASCAL).
Maintaining OpenGL compatibility is one thing (that is, the hardware itself runs both old and new), but the language itself, especially graphical shading language (GLSL) made a huge turn at 3.0, making it much more similar to Cg and HLSL and most code that makes use of shaders needs to be rewritten. In my experience, this is a non-trivial rewrite because the code needs to hook into every triangle list and every shader needs to be rewritten if you want to use any new features (which has affected nearly every shader I've written because I'm highly involved with tessellation, but may not affect people writing shaders for, say, shadow mapping). IMO this is a good thing, though - the change is hard to implement, but porting code from Cg or HLSL will be MUCH easier, and it gets rid of a bad design decision that fixes some functionality. I haven't actually tried to port any shaders yet (I've been fixing the ones I've got), but having worked with GLSL and Cg with a touch of HLSL (porting, mostly) it looks like it will be far easier now.
That said, every CAD company is moving features or products to take advantage of hardware acceleration, most just partner with nVidia, which has supported OpenGL much better than ATI traditionally (like supporting non-ARB extensions, which ATI has historically been really bad at, though lately they've done better, or so I've heard - I don't currently have a properly working ATI card - the one I have blue screens Windows after about 1-5 minutes in graphics acceleration).
As for Linux gaming, Loki had problems because most people that can run Linux can run Windows as well, and do so for gaming, or run WINE. There also is a larger potential market targeting Apple, and that market hasn't been exploited much, either. There is quite a bit of effort needed to port from DirectX to OpenGL, whereas it used to be pretty trivial. All that work is for a potential 10% additional market share (8% Apple, a little less than 2% Linux, because if you port to OpenGL you'd be an idiot not to not also support Apple).
No, Sales Tax didn't kill Best Buy - if anything you could say Sales Tax EVASION killed them. In most states you owe sales tax on products you buy over the Internet (called a Use tax).
But their dependency on low cost, low margin items (competing against WalMart) and boosting profits with expensive accessories that people aren't buying and their dependency on dying high margin physical media sales (going to downloads) has to hurt. Incidentally, all of their competitors seem to be doing fine, even some that have some of the same problems (like Fry's poor customer service).
The funny thing is, the Best Buy near my house actually has great customer service and knowledgeable reps (one even told me to go to Microcenter when I said $40 for a cable (I think it was a 6' HDMI cable)? You're kidding, right? - they're like $5 online). It also is incidentally and sadly, one of the stores being shuttered soon. There is another one a few miles away, but last time I was there I was shopping for a refrigerator for my rental property, never found a rep, and bought the fridge at Sears instead, where I had several reps ready to serve me.
Although I've never worked for Best Buy, I've known people that did, and you are correct - non-commissioned and trained to try to sell high margin products with the discount products, and that has been consistent for years.
But trouble has been brewing for a while - CD and DVD sales moving to streaming or download, games for PC and recently consoles moving to the same, a lack of high cost, high margin PC computers (nothing over about $800 except Apples) has to hurt (for instance, nothing like Alienware), extremely expensive computer components for PC customizers, etc. The stores that branched out into music gear probably moved in the right direction, but all of the ones I know of that did built their stores next door to a Guitar Center, which is a stick-the-pistol-in-your-mouth-and-pull-it kind of move because Guitar Center has a high customer loyalty. Best Buy still can compete - when I bought my TV, it was the same price at Best Buy as it was on New Egg, and if people need installation (which I didn't), it is a perfect place for a profit. Same with installing car stereos, starters and such, and appliances, phones, cameras (though they lack high cost, high margin), and music players still seem to be a core business, so I imagine they are very profitable.
Really, Best Buy needs to refocus, and maybe even go upscale - competing against Walmart and the Internet is a lose-lose prospect, but Alienware has ridiculous margins for Dell, and Best Buy could easily create a premium brand computer with similar specs and sell it for less by licensing from, say, ASUS. There is a reason I buy computers at Microcenter (or online, and by computer I mean laptops because I buy computers as boxes of parts) and not Best Buy - they actually sell high end graphics at reasonably close to other online retailer prices (and who doesn't want it that day?). The only premium thing I've ever seen at Best Buy was phones (and overpriced phone cases - they want $35 for something I can get online for $5 - and I'm not shitting you - 7x markup, same exact product manufacturer and component #).
I think more importantly, Sandy Bridge has been in scant supply for several months due to a recall. I bought the last Sandy Bridge laptop at one store and nearly 2 months later they still don't have any 1080p or better 15 or 17 inch laptops in stock. Supposedly the supply will be back by mid-May, but I had heard many manufacturers were skipping replacing Sandy Bridge laptops since both Intel and nVidia had a chip refresh coming soon (Ivy Bridge and n600 respectively). I was in a bind though, because my laptop display had failed and other components (like the touch sensitive overlay) were failing and I was reluctant to sink $300+ into a 2 year old machine.
Many things on Kickstarter are already in production but need some extra funding to see final light. The Leisure Suit Larry people, as I understand it, are working on the "original" game with updated graphics after acquiring the license and original developer, but it obviously isn't done yet since some of the rewards are to add supporters in as in-game graphics. I use quotes around original because the original game was Softporn Adventure by Charles Benton, which was nearly identical but all text based (and published by On-Line Systems, which became Sierra On-Line.
As for amateurish, who knows - even corporate funded games with good leads can do that; as for pocketing the money, I don't feel like that is an issue because usually the pledge includes the game itself, access to the closed beta, or some other reward. It is probably a lot more risky to support a product that has not started development, but in the same light people like Brian Fargo have been in the industry a long time and can be seen as more trustworthy than others. He obviously hasn't managed to get corporate backing to do Wasteland 2, which is why he's appealing to fans of the game. Basically, for your pledge you are getting something out of it, not just giving them boatloads of cash to do with as they please.
Christianity has no problem whatsoever with divorce, as long as the split couple have no sex (except with each other?) until one of them dies. I got married before the Bush era tax cuts, so I actually was penalized for being married for a few years (and I got married mostly to appease my hyper-religious family - neither my wife nor I really cared - it was a ceremonial gesture done by a pagan under a Hawaiian moon with non-religious vows, but they don't have to know that - we had a reception for them later and didn't say a word about the ceremony).
I personally have no problem whatsoever with the government acknowledging a gay "marriage" (call it union or whatever) for tax reasons, though those don't matter at the moment anyway, so it is kind of pointless. Churches can do whatever they want - I mean, the Boy Scouts don't have to let girls in, so why should churches have to let in gays? I do think we should kick their tax exempt status to the curb, but that is mainly because of my loathing of Scientology and to a lesser extent, Catholicism (and I have no problem at all with the people in these religions - my beef is with the religions themselves).
Personally, I'm OUTRAGED by the (Biblical definition) of adultery shown in the games. I mean, you can sleep with up to three DIFFERENT characters of the opposite sex and you don't have to marry a damn one of them - your character should be forced to marry all three (because polygamy is A-OK according to the Bible). This sin is just as heinous as sleeping with your gay cousin in the Bible (death by stoning to appease Old Testament God), and just because Jesus forgave one particular adulteress doesn't mean it is OK all of a sudden. And if Jesus was without sin, he should have chucked the first stone at that bitch.
It would be nice if we had a choice, but my company goes a step further - they make everything depend on ASP/.NET due to an HR "Windows Only" mandate, so you can't do a f**king thing without IE. Except we need to validate our consumer products on multiple browsers and multiple platforms, so I always need 4-5 browsers up, and it's really fun when I need to work on the Linux or mac boxes, which means actually sit on them in some cases because hardware accelerated graphics don't work over remote desktop and VNC was banned (VNC sends the raw data, remote desktop does not) due to a bug 6 years ago and never reinstated. Nearly all of these tools depend on a Windows/IE proprietary security model (smart card, and don't even get me started there - corporate requires it for every machine we log in on, but it requires a Windows host or IE browser for remote desktop), so no, there is no fallback.
Anyhow, just ranting. I actually like what I work on, just not the hoops I have to jump through to do my job because HR and management base their policy on one type of product and not all of the products (the demands of a hardware manufacturer are not the same as the demands of a software house).
Add to the fact that this accident didn't even come close to Chernobyl, and that didn't come close to the 20 above ground nuclear blasts performed on Bikini Atoll in the 1940s and 1950s, including the first hydrogen bomb and residual contamination to a Japanese fishing boat and crew that inspired the movie Godzilla.
Sure part of the problem is Republicans who won't increase taxes in congress, but his spending is out of control too. This credit card economy is doomed to failure. Clinton also had a conservative congress and still managed it, so Obama can too.
Of course, if you look at US total obligation in addition to debt (Social Security, Medicare, etc), we are already up shit creek without a paddle.
Not to defend slavery, but the world as a whole didn't really consider it wrong (or even inhumane, since most slaves were viewed as a lesser human species), especially in the 1600-1700s - pretty much anyplace the Romans had been when they conquered most of Europe, slavery was practiced. England and America stopped slave trade boats in 1808, England abolished slavery in 1833, and the northern part of America had largely abolished slavery by 1840, but the Constitution allowed it (in 1776 when the Constitution was written, slavery was still an acceptable practice), and the southern North American plantations depended on it, so America was deeply divided and really the main and only major reason the Civil War happened. Slavery didn't end in N. America until months after the Civil War - troops had to be sent into several places to force the slave owners to free their slaves.
In Lincoln's day, the dominant party was the moderate Whigs, Republicans were liberal and Democrats conservative. Lincoln was, in fact, a Whig but he left the party because of internal turmoil that eventually destroyed them (being split on slavery, for instance). No moderate party has ever returned to power since then - we've always leaned left or right.
That and the fact that they are still getting license money from hardware vendors for OpenGL patents (as I understand it, you pay for these when you buy a graphics card). For this reason I question the validity of the patents for some vendors (I think Apple pays for using OpenGL in software, as well). Perhaps they are attacking Apple's non-OpenGL graphics or something, but I still suspect they are paying for the license already.
As for obviousness, I don't know. All workstation graphics I used in the early to mid 1990s were integer based color, even for millions of colors (8r, 8g, 8b, sometimes 8 alpha transparency). Even when I was programming voodoo cards all of the color calls were all set as ints. I didn't start using float colors until the 2000s, and even then I don't remember setting them as floats (I used OpenGL or DirectX to convert them, if necessary). In the past few years cards have always represented colors internally as floats, but most people still set them as ints.
ugh... I remember a fellow student (more acquaintance than friend, but we did projects together, and as I recall, he went to high school with the creator of Slackware) installing Slackware 1.0 and mesa to do OpenGL projects at home during the fall of 1993 (both of which were very new at the time). I did the same at a later date, but I'm guessing it was 1994 since I bought macs in 1992 and Oct 31 1995 and my 1991 PC died around the same time I bought my first mac, so I didn't have a working PC in 1993. And yes, I know the 1995 mac date exactly - it also where my Slashdot user ID came from - I called it Creepy because it was "born" on Halloween (my Slashdot ID was born more out of frustration - I tried 5 others and they were all taken and looked at my desktop and said - hey, how about Creepy, lol).
I do remember when I installed it, I installed XWindows immediately because I couldn't stand going from windowed systems (GEM and Mac at the time - though I got plenty of Windows 3.1.x as well while working tech support in my night job) to a command line...
Ford corrected the gas tank problem in later model years, so I believe specifically you need the 1971 Pinto. Of course, I like the memo where Ford estimated the cost of fixing the problem at something like 120 million and the cost of insurance payouts at 50 million and decided not to recall the car to fix the problem...
The problem with mass drivers is the G-forces squishy things (like people) would need to handle. It may be OK for, say, shooting potatoes into space and getting mashed potatoes, though.
You missed Geothermal (which I like a lot more than solar), but that only works in some areas. I lived in a solar heated house growing up and we relied more on the very inefficient wood burning fireplace for heat at night. They also needed to be kept clean in winter, which really sucked (especially the roof arrays, which I had to clean with a roof rake, which is basically a 20 foot pole with a flat piece of metal at the end, and I'd have to climb a 15 foot ladder first). Cloudy days would slow the solar heaters, but they still would kick in a couple of times a day. IMO, solar is a nice pipe dream - I'd like to see more thorium reactor research, though.
I didn't really know Incognito, but I knew BBS's based on the Curse, including Proving Grounds (and spent a lot of my early BBS days on the Safehouse, completely clueless that it was run by Apple Bandit).
Slashdot Mirror
A real racket is when your prof requires you to buy his textbook, which is not published and is 135 pages of (double sided) photocopied paper for $280 in 1996 dollars. I imagine now he'd charge $100 more now and e-publish it. I couldn't sell it back, either. At least that was the worst case - I had about 3 other self-published classes, but most were in the $30-40 range.
Brian Fargo isn't the only one - I noticed inXile and Obsidian are teaming up for Wasteland 2, and Obsidian hired Tim Cain late last year (the first employee working on and lead programmer for Fallout) so I have to wonder if he's involved as well.
Strangely, Al Lowe didn't really create the game that is Leisure Suit Larry, which is also the one being remade, he took a text adventure game (Softporn Adventure by Charles Benton) and made it graphical and created the titular character, who was unnamed in the original text adventure (though I'm 99% sure him wearing a leisure suit is mentioned). Note that I played the text adventure when I was like 10 or 11, and it definitely wasn't a legal copy, whereas the LSL I played years later was (my college roommate's, and I think they were up to 3 or 4 by then). I was actually surprised by how close to the text adventure the game was - only a couple of changes, really, aside from some visual cues. Many of the jokes were even the same.
My EVGA Geforce 7600GT still works (driving my wife's non gaming computer). Too bad Sapphire was about the opposite - the ATI Sapphire card I bought never worked properly, and I kept sending it back to them as defective and they kept sending me back the same card and told me it was not, even after I told them that they needed to run the card with accelerated graphics on for about 3-5 minutes to see the problem (it BSoD'd, and it did not with the old card or the one I later replaced it with). I never got a working card - I got sick of paying shipping and arguing with them and just bought a different card for that box (after paying $100 for the card and over $50 in shipping fees). That was also the last ATI card I ever bought, but I've only bought two cards since - the one that replaced the Sapphire and one I put in a new box.
That was blamed, but Apple was hardly the only manufacturer with this problem - my ASUS laptop had its GPU blow twice, once well after the problem was revealed and that chip actually lasted about a year longer than its replacement (unfortunately, the laptop was out of warranty by the second failure), so I personally feel the 8600M line was defective and prone to overheating and that nVidia was covering it up. The die shrink that was the same architecture but reduced heat had a MUCH lower failure rate (the 9xxx line) - in fact, the laptop I replaced my ASUS with (an HP) had a 9800M GT, and the GPU never was a problem (the laptop itself was a nightmare of problems, especially after the 1 year warranty ended - display failed, disk failed, fan sounds like a banshee [probably ball bearings], touch sensor went wonky and randomly disconnects the wireless and changes sound levels, etc).
Anyhow, nVidia can blame whoever they want, but I won't believe it. I know they wanted to save face and I certainly don't blame them for it, but everyone has a lemon once in a while, and the 8xxx line was nVidias. If it's any consolation, I've had more problems with ATI cards, though there it tends to be driver issues that are eventually resolved.
or they just might go nuclear
Of course, that will just prove Alvin Weinberg was right all along, and Nixon and the greedy nuclear companies that owned the patents on light water reactor designs that got him fired were wrong. Nuclear power in today's reactors were always about the most efficient design that resulted in nuclear weapons grade byproducts and never about powering homes. A nuclear reactor that is much safer (can't melt down and byproducts decay faster, for example), burns almost all of its fuel, and can be shut down quickly if not needed? Who would want that? It also produces little nuclear weapons grade elements and self contaminates them. In fact, this technology can burn depleted uranium (AKA nuclear waste) instead of thorium... it seems win-win to develop it, but the US government has invested exactly $0 since shutting down the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (other governments have started investing, including Russia, and some private companies like FLiBe are investing, but I have yet to see the US spend a cent). Note that the US did build a thorium reactor in the Carter administration, but it was based more on LWR designs, not molten salt.
Weird... I didn't play any of those on the Apple ][, and I played nearly everything on the Apple ][. Oregon Trail is the exception, because I was living in the state that created and funded it. I played a bit of M.U.L.E. on a trash-80 I think (youch!). Silent Service was definitely on a colorless mac, and Archon and Pirates definitely on an IBM PC. Spindizzy I've never heard of until now, but looking it up I see it was similar to Marble Madness, and I played the actual Marble Madness port, so I probably didn't care.
Probably my favorite Apple ][ games, and there are a lot of them, were Choplifter, Rescue Raiders!, Sabotage, Castle Wolfenstein, Drol, Ultima, Wizardry, Karateka, Below the Root (eduware label be damned), Irving and Bird 1 on 1 (I had that game mastered and made $150 off of it in contests, so I had to include it), Lode Runner, Autoduel, Aquatron (the best defender clone ever), Conan: Hall of Volta, anything Infocom, Skyfox, and SunDog: Frozen Legacy. Oh, and I loved the total conversion Castle Smurfenstein (Dino Smurfs was OK, Smurfenstein was better).
The (Woz) floppy drive probably saved me from never caring about computers. I used the Apple ][ with a tape drive one year in elementary school and the unreliable 7-8 minute load time was more than my attention span could handle. I probably spent an hour total in the lab that year. The next year (1978 I think, may have been 1979) they got disk ][s and I learned BASIC. By the next year, I learned assembly. Then came the Sneakers and Sabotage... I had been an Atari 2600 gamer before then, but 1981 was the year I moved to computer gaming - still in Elementary School, mind you - neither my Jr High nor High School had computers you could access outside of a class. For that matter, my Jr High only had one computer - an IBM PC in the Electronics classroom, and my High School had computers you could only touch if you took a class teaching BASIC (and by then I was fluent in BASIC, Assembly, and PASCAL).
Maintaining OpenGL compatibility is one thing (that is, the hardware itself runs both old and new), but the language itself, especially graphical shading language (GLSL) made a huge turn at 3.0, making it much more similar to Cg and HLSL and most code that makes use of shaders needs to be rewritten. In my experience, this is a non-trivial rewrite because the code needs to hook into every triangle list and every shader needs to be rewritten if you want to use any new features (which has affected nearly every shader I've written because I'm highly involved with tessellation, but may not affect people writing shaders for, say, shadow mapping). IMO this is a good thing, though - the change is hard to implement, but porting code from Cg or HLSL will be MUCH easier, and it gets rid of a bad design decision that fixes some functionality. I haven't actually tried to port any shaders yet (I've been fixing the ones I've got), but having worked with GLSL and Cg with a touch of HLSL (porting, mostly) it looks like it will be far easier now.
That said, every CAD company is moving features or products to take advantage of hardware acceleration, most just partner with nVidia, which has supported OpenGL much better than ATI traditionally (like supporting non-ARB extensions, which ATI has historically been really bad at, though lately they've done better, or so I've heard - I don't currently have a properly working ATI card - the one I have blue screens Windows after about 1-5 minutes in graphics acceleration).
As for Linux gaming, Loki had problems because most people that can run Linux can run Windows as well, and do so for gaming, or run WINE. There also is a larger potential market targeting Apple, and that market hasn't been exploited much, either. There is quite a bit of effort needed to port from DirectX to OpenGL, whereas it used to be pretty trivial. All that work is for a potential 10% additional market share (8% Apple, a little less than 2% Linux, because if you port to OpenGL you'd be an idiot not to not also support Apple).
No, Sales Tax didn't kill Best Buy - if anything you could say Sales Tax EVASION killed them. In most states you owe sales tax on products you buy over the Internet (called a Use tax).
But their dependency on low cost, low margin items (competing against WalMart) and boosting profits with expensive accessories that people aren't buying and their dependency on dying high margin physical media sales (going to downloads) has to hurt. Incidentally, all of their competitors seem to be doing fine, even some that have some of the same problems (like Fry's poor customer service).
The funny thing is, the Best Buy near my house actually has great customer service and knowledgeable reps (one even told me to go to Microcenter when I said $40 for a cable (I think it was a 6' HDMI cable)? You're kidding, right? - they're like $5 online). It also is incidentally and sadly, one of the stores being shuttered soon. There is another one a few miles away, but last time I was there I was shopping for a refrigerator for my rental property, never found a rep, and bought the fridge at Sears instead, where I had several reps ready to serve me.
Although I've never worked for Best Buy, I've known people that did, and you are correct - non-commissioned and trained to try to sell high margin products with the discount products, and that has been consistent for years.
But trouble has been brewing for a while - CD and DVD sales moving to streaming or download, games for PC and recently consoles moving to the same, a lack of high cost, high margin PC computers (nothing over about $800 except Apples) has to hurt (for instance, nothing like Alienware), extremely expensive computer components for PC customizers, etc. The stores that branched out into music gear probably moved in the right direction, but all of the ones I know of that did built their stores next door to a Guitar Center, which is a stick-the-pistol-in-your-mouth-and-pull-it kind of move because Guitar Center has a high customer loyalty. Best Buy still can compete - when I bought my TV, it was the same price at Best Buy as it was on New Egg, and if people need installation (which I didn't), it is a perfect place for a profit. Same with installing car stereos, starters and such, and appliances, phones, cameras (though they lack high cost, high margin), and music players still seem to be a core business, so I imagine they are very profitable.
Really, Best Buy needs to refocus, and maybe even go upscale - competing against Walmart and the Internet is a lose-lose prospect, but Alienware has ridiculous margins for Dell, and Best Buy could easily create a premium brand computer with similar specs and sell it for less by licensing from, say, ASUS. There is a reason I buy computers at Microcenter (or online, and by computer I mean laptops because I buy computers as boxes of parts) and not Best Buy - they actually sell high end graphics at reasonably close to other online retailer prices (and who doesn't want it that day?). The only premium thing I've ever seen at Best Buy was phones (and overpriced phone cases - they want $35 for something I can get online for $5 - and I'm not shitting you - 7x markup, same exact product manufacturer and component #).
I think more importantly, Sandy Bridge has been in scant supply for several months due to a recall. I bought the last Sandy Bridge laptop at one store and nearly 2 months later they still don't have any 1080p or better 15 or 17 inch laptops in stock. Supposedly the supply will be back by mid-May, but I had heard many manufacturers were skipping replacing Sandy Bridge laptops since both Intel and nVidia had a chip refresh coming soon (Ivy Bridge and n600 respectively). I was in a bind though, because my laptop display had failed and other components (like the touch sensitive overlay) were failing and I was reluctant to sink $300+ into a 2 year old machine.
Many things on Kickstarter are already in production but need some extra funding to see final light. The Leisure Suit Larry people, as I understand it, are working on the "original" game with updated graphics after acquiring the license and original developer, but it obviously isn't done yet since some of the rewards are to add supporters in as in-game graphics. I use quotes around original because the original game was Softporn Adventure by Charles Benton, which was nearly identical but all text based (and published by On-Line Systems, which became Sierra On-Line.
As for amateurish, who knows - even corporate funded games with good leads can do that; as for pocketing the money, I don't feel like that is an issue because usually the pledge includes the game itself, access to the closed beta, or some other reward. It is probably a lot more risky to support a product that has not started development, but in the same light people like Brian Fargo have been in the industry a long time and can be seen as more trustworthy than others. He obviously hasn't managed to get corporate backing to do Wasteland 2, which is why he's appealing to fans of the game. Basically, for your pledge you are getting something out of it, not just giving them boatloads of cash to do with as they please.
Christianity has no problem whatsoever with divorce, as long as the split couple have no sex (except with each other?) until one of them dies. I got married before the Bush era tax cuts, so I actually was penalized for being married for a few years (and I got married mostly to appease my hyper-religious family - neither my wife nor I really cared - it was a ceremonial gesture done by a pagan under a Hawaiian moon with non-religious vows, but they don't have to know that - we had a reception for them later and didn't say a word about the ceremony).
I personally have no problem whatsoever with the government acknowledging a gay "marriage" (call it union or whatever) for tax reasons, though those don't matter at the moment anyway, so it is kind of pointless. Churches can do whatever they want - I mean, the Boy Scouts don't have to let girls in, so why should churches have to let in gays? I do think we should kick their tax exempt status to the curb, but that is mainly because of my loathing of Scientology and to a lesser extent, Catholicism (and I have no problem at all with the people in these religions - my beef is with the religions themselves).
Personally, I'm OUTRAGED by the (Biblical definition) of adultery shown in the games. I mean, you can sleep with up to three DIFFERENT characters of the opposite sex and you don't have to marry a damn one of them - your character should be forced to marry all three (because polygamy is A-OK according to the Bible). This sin is just as heinous as sleeping with your gay cousin in the Bible (death by stoning to appease Old Testament God), and just because Jesus forgave one particular adulteress doesn't mean it is OK all of a sudden. And if Jesus was without sin, he should have chucked the first stone at that bitch.
Oops - sorry - forgot the sarcasm tag again
It would be nice if we had a choice, but my company goes a step further - they make everything depend on ASP/.NET due to an HR "Windows Only" mandate, so you can't do a f**king thing without IE. Except we need to validate our consumer products on multiple browsers and multiple platforms, so I always need 4-5 browsers up, and it's really fun when I need to work on the Linux or mac boxes, which means actually sit on them in some cases because hardware accelerated graphics don't work over remote desktop and VNC was banned (VNC sends the raw data, remote desktop does not) due to a bug 6 years ago and never reinstated. Nearly all of these tools depend on a Windows/IE proprietary security model (smart card, and don't even get me started there - corporate requires it for every machine we log in on, but it requires a Windows host or IE browser for remote desktop), so no, there is no fallback.
Anyhow, just ranting. I actually like what I work on, just not the hoops I have to jump through to do my job because HR and management base their policy on one type of product and not all of the products (the demands of a hardware manufacturer are not the same as the demands of a software house).
Add to the fact that this accident didn't even come close to Chernobyl, and that didn't come close to the 20 above ground nuclear blasts performed on Bikini Atoll in the 1940s and 1950s, including the first hydrogen bomb and residual contamination to a Japanese fishing boat and crew that inspired the movie Godzilla.
for rhyme's sake, I'm gonna answer that - OBAMA.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/
Sure part of the problem is Republicans who won't increase taxes in congress, but his spending is out of control too. This credit card economy is doomed to failure. Clinton also had a conservative congress and still managed it, so Obama can too.
Of course, if you look at US total obligation in addition to debt (Social Security, Medicare, etc), we are already up shit creek without a paddle.
Not to defend slavery, but the world as a whole didn't really consider it wrong (or even inhumane, since most slaves were viewed as a lesser human species), especially in the 1600-1700s - pretty much anyplace the Romans had been when they conquered most of Europe, slavery was practiced. England and America stopped slave trade boats in 1808, England abolished slavery in 1833, and the northern part of America had largely abolished slavery by 1840, but the Constitution allowed it (in 1776 when the Constitution was written, slavery was still an acceptable practice), and the southern North American plantations depended on it, so America was deeply divided and really the main and only major reason the Civil War happened. Slavery didn't end in N. America until months after the Civil War - troops had to be sent into several places to force the slave owners to free their slaves.
In Lincoln's day, the dominant party was the moderate Whigs, Republicans were liberal and Democrats conservative. Lincoln was, in fact, a Whig but he left the party because of internal turmoil that eventually destroyed them (being split on slavery, for instance). No moderate party has ever returned to power since then - we've always leaned left or right.
That and the fact that they are still getting license money from hardware vendors for OpenGL patents (as I understand it, you pay for these when you buy a graphics card). For this reason I question the validity of the patents for some vendors (I think Apple pays for using OpenGL in software, as well). Perhaps they are attacking Apple's non-OpenGL graphics or something, but I still suspect they are paying for the license already.
As for obviousness, I don't know. All workstation graphics I used in the early to mid 1990s were integer based color, even for millions of colors (8r, 8g, 8b, sometimes 8 alpha transparency). Even when I was programming voodoo cards all of the color calls were all set as ints. I didn't start using float colors until the 2000s, and even then I don't remember setting them as floats (I used OpenGL or DirectX to convert them, if necessary). In the past few years cards have always represented colors internally as floats, but most people still set them as ints.
ugh... I remember a fellow student (more acquaintance than friend, but we did projects together, and as I recall, he went to high school with the creator of Slackware) installing Slackware 1.0 and mesa to do OpenGL projects at home during the fall of 1993 (both of which were very new at the time). I did the same at a later date, but I'm guessing it was 1994 since I bought macs in 1992 and Oct 31 1995 and my 1991 PC died around the same time I bought my first mac, so I didn't have a working PC in 1993. And yes, I know the 1995 mac date exactly - it also where my Slashdot user ID came from - I called it Creepy because it was "born" on Halloween (my Slashdot ID was born more out of frustration - I tried 5 others and they were all taken and looked at my desktop and said - hey, how about Creepy, lol).
I do remember when I installed it, I installed XWindows immediately because I couldn't stand going from windowed systems (GEM and Mac at the time - though I got plenty of Windows 3.1.x as well while working tech support in my night job) to a command line...
Ford corrected the gas tank problem in later model years, so I believe specifically you need the 1971 Pinto. Of course, I like the memo where Ford estimated the cost of fixing the problem at something like 120 million and the cost of insurance payouts at 50 million and decided not to recall the car to fix the problem...
The problem with mass drivers is the G-forces squishy things (like people) would need to handle. It may be OK for, say, shooting potatoes into space and getting mashed potatoes, though.
You missed Geothermal (which I like a lot more than solar), but that only works in some areas. I lived in a solar heated house growing up and we relied more on the very inefficient wood burning fireplace for heat at night. They also needed to be kept clean in winter, which really sucked (especially the roof arrays, which I had to clean with a roof rake, which is basically a 20 foot pole with a flat piece of metal at the end, and I'd have to climb a 15 foot ladder first). Cloudy days would slow the solar heaters, but they still would kick in a couple of times a day. IMO, solar is a nice pipe dream - I'd like to see more thorium reactor research, though.
for some reason this thread reminded me of this:
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/ETYMOLOGY/WORDS/KRAD/cursehist.txt
I didn't really know Incognito, but I knew BBS's based on the Curse, including Proving Grounds (and spent a lot of my early BBS days on the Safehouse, completely clueless that it was run by Apple Bandit).