When kids don't have phone, the school calls or let them call, or they ask a friend, or a neighbour or an office. Or the school takes care of them. Phone is not mandatory, it's just one way for your kids to get to you - among multiples. Make sure your kids understand and use these options.
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-io-Personal-Digital-Pen/dp/B00006JP23Logitech IO pen will allow to have notes, digital notes and some sort of text recognition at the same time. I used it long ago with some satisfaction. Note that technology has evolved since, and I cannot refine my statement with today's standards... Anyone?
It is much more critical to sell fast than to sell a lot. Take the example you someone building a new house. When you build it, you pay for two houses: your current, and the next. Near the end of the construction, every single week is critical for your budget. Because you have a high loan, and zero benefits out of the new house. This was development of the wii. This is investment.
Now, you start living in your house. You need to refund the bank. The faster you give the money back, the fewer interest you will pay. And at the end of the day, your house will be cheaper if you pay it in 7 years than if you pay it in 20 years. Same for the wii: nintendo is now paying for the development. Once they managed to refund the development, they start to earn money, and they can get even more benefits of that money (develop new products, buy buildings,...). And you enter a virtue circle.
If you sell very little at the beginning, you will have to sustain the high costs of daily business + refund investment for a longer time. Which means that you will not have capacity to invest, that your product will have to remain expensive. And ultimately, a new product will be released and you will be out. That's why taking 5 years to be a blockbuster is usually not an option, and that's why you see so many efforts to sell products exactly when they are released (movies, games, houses,...)
Cheers! what a ridiculous launch party. Not even on top of the charts. I no new shipment arrives next week, ps3 may sell just below xbox 1 in japan (between 1 to 5 units weekly).
You know what DRM is for? It's only because majors want you to buy the same songs again and again. The make most of their revenues with old songs, and their worst nightmare is that you buy it "once and for all". This is why they want DRM. If someone comes with an idea where good old mp3s are just good for trashcan, I bet they'll forget this DRM thing very fast to make as much profit as possible in no time.
Getting something for free is often great. But piracy does not provide free games. It comes with a package: -> risks (trojan, virus, police) -> restrictions (game updates, on line play) -> effort (find the game, download it, crack it,...) Therefore, I would say that piracy is the result of something in games that users don't like.
Let's make a list: 1) game quality: would you trust EA to make good games? no. Can you trust a studio to make a good game? no. The "seal of quality" does not exist in he PC world. Everybody makes crap. The mob does not read the reviews, or the reviews cannot be trused, which does not help. (lack of confidence) 2) how will it run? often, you don't know how a particular game will run on your PC. Sure, with the latest nvidia and athlon 64, it runs and look great. but... (lack of information) 3) Reviews: you always can find someone which didn't like a particular game. You don't trust one source, you compile many of them. And if someone says it's crap, maybe it's best to get for free, or not to get it? (too much information) 4) It's a sequel. It looks sooo much like the first one. (user bored) 5) It will be half the price in no time (user forget) 6) It's too long, too short, there's no enough support, let's wait for a patch, will there be any mods? (too many expectations)
The list could go like that. I believe that players have high expectations, and that it's difficult to sell them the "average" game. But it's not exacly their fault: developpers and magazines does encourage this behavior. For example "HL2 episode 1 is very short". This was in the column "cons" of the magazine I read. But my habits as a player is that I want short games, because don't have much time.
I believe that games on PC today wants to address the same market as 10 years ago. While those people have aged. The PC games market is probably very segmented. If the market of PC gamers all in all is 50 mio people, the target audience for a high end FPS is maybe 5 mio people only. If we are able to extract these figures, then we will probably realize that games are selling OK, because they address a pretty small user base.
Now the big question behind all that: if you want to make a living in the computer world as it is today, should you rather be a programmer or a lawyer?
There's about 5 junk food restaurants, 10 pizzeria, 3 guys selling sandwiches and 15 middle range restaurants for one great, good and pricy restaurant. So this is where PS3 sales are heading, huh?
I see it way: the rootkit guys at sony were just too desperate to be out of jobs in the music indutry that they decided to work on the games department. They screwed the blu ray protection in no time, and now the anti-rootkit team (the one that couldn't provide a proper removal tool) is working hard to fix the flaws.
It reminds me sooo much the Nintendo 64, which was the end of Nintendo's reign. The main question is now: will the major game makers turn to microsoft (or nintendo) to save their earnings for years 2006/2007?
I think that people at dell are having a hard time to find out who could be interested in a linux desktop. Basically, from the mob point of view, linux has only "mee too" features. So why bothering? My opinion is that the eubuntu project is reallay going in the right direction: if you are considering an os education purposes, then this one was made for you, and you must check it before taking a wondows/mac/linux decision! Only very specific targets should be adressed. Some examples: * Distro for the very young ones (simple interface, nice educational games...) * Distro for the elder ones (no configuration, only net, chat, voiIP and letters) *... Then linux could make a difference.
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When kids don't have phone, the school calls or let them call, or they ask a friend, or a neighbour or an office. Or the school takes care of them. Phone is not mandatory, it's just one way for your kids to get to you - among multiples. Make sure your kids understand and use these options.
... what about because vita games are 25-50USD a piece, while android are free to 10USD?
The pong generation transited OK
Just imagine his client is a correctional facility and the requirements all of a sudden make sense.
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-io-Personal-Digital-Pen/dp/B00006JP23Logitech IO pen will allow to have notes, digital notes and some sort of text recognition at the same time. I used it long ago with some satisfaction. Note that technology has evolved since, and I cannot refine my statement with today's standards... Anyone?
fun fact, out of roughly 570 deputes, only 34 were present during the vote. No question asked regarding what these guys do instead of working...
It is much more critical to sell fast than to sell a lot. Take the example you someone building a new house. When you build it, you pay for two houses: your current, and the next. Near the end of the construction, every single week is critical for your budget. Because you have a high loan, and zero benefits out of the new house. This was development of the wii. This is investment.
Now, you start living in your house. You need to refund the bank. The faster you give the money back, the fewer interest you will pay. And at the end of the day, your house will be cheaper if you pay it in 7 years than if you pay it in 20 years. Same for the wii: nintendo is now paying for the development. Once they managed to refund the development, they start to earn money, and they can get even more benefits of that money (develop new products, buy buildings, ...). And you enter a virtue circle.
If you sell very little at the beginning, you will have to sustain the high costs of daily business + refund investment for a longer time. Which means that you will not have capacity to invest, that your product will have to remain expensive. And ultimately, a new product will be released and you will be out. That's why taking 5 years to be a blockbuster is usually not an option, and that's why you see so many efforts to sell products exactly when they are released (movies, games, houses, ...)
Cheers! what a ridiculous launch party. Not even on top of the charts. I no new shipment arrives next week, ps3 may sell just below xbox 1 in japan (between 1 to 5 units weekly).
You know what DRM is for? It's only because majors want you to buy the same songs again and again. The make most of their revenues with old songs, and their worst nightmare is that you buy it "once and for all". This is why they want DRM. If someone comes with an idea where good old mp3s are just good for trashcan, I bet they'll forget this DRM thing very fast to make as much profit as possible in no time.
IMHO, the major industries stay away from "bleeding edge" products for the following reasons:
1) They don't know what it can do and how well it will perform in their specific domain. It's much more safe to be a "mee too"
2) They don't have people that are "expert" in this technology
3) They make long-term developments
Getting something for free is often great. But piracy does not provide free games. It comes with a package: ...)
-> risks (trojan, virus, police)
-> restrictions (game updates, on line play)
-> effort (find the game, download it, crack it,
Therefore, I would say that piracy is the result of something in games that users don't like.
Let's make a list:
1) game quality: would you trust EA to make good games? no. Can you trust a studio to make a good game? no. The "seal of quality" does not exist in he PC world. Everybody makes crap. The mob does not read the reviews, or the reviews cannot be trused, which does not help. (lack of confidence)
2) how will it run? often, you don't know how a particular game will run on your PC. Sure, with the latest nvidia and athlon 64, it runs and look great. but... (lack of information)
3) Reviews: you always can find someone which didn't like a particular game. You don't trust one source, you compile many of them. And if someone says it's crap, maybe it's best to get for free, or not to get it? (too much information)
4) It's a sequel. It looks sooo much like the first one. (user bored)
5) It will be half the price in no time (user forget)
6) It's too long, too short, there's no enough support, let's wait for a patch, will there be any mods? (too many expectations)
The list could go like that. I believe that players have high expectations, and that it's difficult to sell them the "average" game. But it's not exacly their fault: developpers and magazines does encourage this behavior.
For example "HL2 episode 1 is very short". This was in the column "cons" of the magazine I read. But my habits as a player is that I want short games, because don't have much time.
I believe that games on PC today wants to address the same market as 10 years ago. While those people have aged. The PC games market is probably very segmented. If the market of PC gamers all in all is 50 mio people, the target audience for a high end FPS is maybe 5 mio people only. If we are able to extract these figures, then we will probably realize that games are selling OK, because they address a pretty small user base.
Now the big question behind all that: if you want to make a living in the computer world as it is today, should you rather be a programmer or a lawyer?
Making money is THE difference between microsoft and ALL the other OS vendors.
There's about 5 junk food restaurants, 10 pizzeria, 3 guys selling sandwiches and 15 middle range restaurants for one great, good and pricy restaurant. So this is where PS3 sales are heading, huh?
Don't you get it? they want a free wii!! (IMHO for the balmer children)
I am really surprised to find such a link here. It it a sequel to "OMG!!! Ponies"?
One day, or an other, we will have to burn some witches.
I see it way: the rootkit guys at sony were just too desperate to be out of jobs in the music indutry that they decided to work on the games department. They screwed the blu ray protection in no time, and now the anti-rootkit team (the one that couldn't provide a proper removal tool) is working hard to fix the flaws.
It reminds me sooo much the Nintendo 64, which was the end of Nintendo's reign. The main question is now: will the major game makers turn to microsoft (or nintendo) to save their earnings for years 2006/2007?
I think that people at dell are having a hard time to find out who could be interested in a linux desktop. Basically, from the mob point of view, linux has only "mee too" features. So why bothering? ...
My opinion is that the eubuntu project is reallay going in the right direction: if you are considering an os education purposes, then this one was made for you, and you must check it before taking a wondows/mac/linux decision! Only very specific targets should be adressed. Some examples:
* Distro for the very young ones (simple interface, nice educational games...)
* Distro for the elder ones (no configuration, only net, chat, voiIP and letters)
*
Then linux could make a difference.