Like many people, I'm stuck in a conundrum. I don't want to buy CDs any more because I think music should be cheaper due to cheap electronic distribution. I buy occasionally from iTunes, but fears about "losing my music" when my iBook dies and I forget to back it up often enough or some other weird technical thing renders me music-less because of DRM scares me. And I spend a lot of time listening to music on unsupported players. I like xmms, and I'm going to keep using it, so iTunes means I have to burn+rip to convert stuff. (I finally compiled hymn, but need my key off my iBook, I'm lazy, and xmms's aac player module seems to not compile...*sigh*)
I have basically all the money I want to spend on music. But whether tracks are $.39 or $.99 or $1.99 means nothing to me if I'm worried about just losing them. Some of this music I've already had ripped ot mp3 for like 7+ years now, and I can't even count the number of computers I've gone through, and it's nice and portable.
I think at some point, a brave label or two will band together, open their own store, and just offer raw 160+kbps mp3s for something cheap - probably $.49 to $1.49 for singles (probably based on the buzz level), $2.99 to $9.99 for a cd (again, popularity based pricing)... and will open the floodgates. They will do so much business they will be absolutely stunned. Ever music consumer will be amazingly spending 3x what they use to be. Record companies will be delightfully rolling in profits; consumers will be awash in music and ecstatic... everyone wins. Artists who couldn't sell CDs in the bargain bin will find audiences who will pay $2.99 for their albums, and the music industry as a whole will launch into a new era of growth.
We can only hope they realize that peoplpe hate hurdles, and DRM stops more customers from buying than it stops pirates from buying. Anyone with a clue should realize that a lot of music pirates will NOT buy music regardless of whether its free or not. If it is, they'll get it; if not, they won't. But either way, they won't pay. But many customers will pay for unencumbered music but will buy minimally or not at all from the DRM bin.
You only have to look at what happened in the UK with Virgin Cola - marketed by Richard Branson, who was a highly skilled businessman. It wasn't the world's most delicious cola - although I personally preferred it to Coke, but that's pretty much irrelevant. But when it failed, it was found out that most people had never even tasted it - so if it had been the world's most delicious cola, most people would not have noticed.
So you're saying that a multinational uberconglomerate with nearly infinite money tried to market a soft drink and failed miserably, despite their business prowess. And yet, I can go into my local store and buy organic niche cola that's been there for years.
How does this prove your point?
No. But a strong goal of capitalism is to reward successful companies with money that enables them to become even more successful. This means that over time the barrier to compete with them rises and rises. Sooner or later a point will be reached where it is so high that no new entrant to the market can possibly contemplate it. At that point things start to go wrong, because the company (or companies) no longer have to maximise efficiency provided it is still blocking competition.
There is no Wendy's in the UK, but there are McDonalds', Burger King and KFC. They do not compete in any meaningful sense anymore, and the "location problem" has meant that very few other fast food places exist or survive.
Simply having more money is not, in and of itself, a barrier to competition. Even a freshmen business major would know that. That, and money made by companies is rarely retained for future potential competitors, because that's inefficient use of capital. If you simply sit on money waiting for a challenger, any gains you make keeping competition away are dwarfed by the failure to use that money well. This is why companies largely burn cash as dividends, stock buybacks, or investments and acquisitions. They don't just stockpile resources.
As for fast food - what "location problem"? Fast Food is a classic textbook "minimal differentiation" industry. This is why a fast food place like McDonalds can have a second fast food place open on the opposite corner of an intersection, and see their business go UP as a result. The only high risk cannibalization is same-brand openings. A McDonalds store owner was quoted in one annual report I've read for a private investment fund as saying: "I have a Wendy's, Jack In the Box, and a Carl's Jr. at the intersection, and I outsell all 3 of them combined. But if another McDonalds opens up 5 miles down the road, I'll lose 20% of my business." (Late CEO Jim Cantalupo put the brakes on new store openings near existing stores to assuage these concerns)
As for introducing the students to people who were successful.. I'm not sure that would work, given the tone of their conversation. What they were talking about was people who had not gone to University, or who had left it, who were now being paid huge amounts whereas they, who were "stuck" doing in the "normal way", would never make that much. Most of the time the reason why was nothing to do with work quality but market conditions (the time frame was around the trailing edge of the dot-Bomb and they were CS students)
The IT industry has remarkably low barriers to entry and is a fairly fierce meritocracy, especially for the dynamic companies and positions. People do what they think is best. I dropped out of college, and I not only rode through two IPOs in the 90s/early 00s, but it is impossible to get the work I do on anything other than word of mouth... no amount of degrees and certs will cut it. And I consistently crush "market rate" pay. There are thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people with my general skills, yet I have an overfull schedule at over-market rates. And I'm all alone, a consultant in the wilderness. So you can't tell me that the big companies hold all the cards.
Heh, it would be pretty damn cool to play SFII online. I have a SSF2:turbo upstairs in the game room, actually. I used to play in Sunnyvale, CA at the Golfland that was home to the best players in the country. Way too much, of course.
I have nwn installed, and host City of Arabel, which generally owns the PW Story category. But the DM:player ratio is a PITA to deal with; PW servers are largely unattended or understaffed. Great for free play, but for people who value their game time more than their $2...well, you get where I'm going.
Were the games in question built by people as a passion-project because they wanted to build a game, or are they free because they weren't getting enough subscribers when people had to pay for the box?
There's a big difference between free by design and free by market bitch-slap.
It's something that can and will work - it's like EQ legends taken to the next level.
The trick is, it needs to piggyback on a successful service. You can't develop a game for 1500 people @ $50/mo. Even if you could provide the service at that rate (and I think $75/mo would be more likely, or $30 + a per hour rate), that still won't nearly cover development. But you can have a standard service and have some custom content on the premium service as well as route all content through a period of exclusivity there. The key is the GM/DM intervention to set up quests, make the world come to life, and do things like reward good roleplay.
It's a lot like what you'd get if you were able to join an NWN server with good content and a dedicated DM any time you wanted. I'd happily pay a *ton* of money for it... certainly $100/mo.
City of Heroes is fun, and I commend them for doing something different when too many people are just trying to be Everquest.
It goes to show that there's a lot of different things that attract different people; CoH was my first MMO, despite being a long-time MUDder who wrote 100,000 lines of code to expand the Diku/ROM base for a mud I helped make. (I do have an SWG box still gathering dust that I'll use sooner or later)
I think there's two concepts that are waiting to make a lot of money:
(1) MMORPG for people with money. People are desperate to target the $10-15 range. But I think there's a substantial set of subscribers who would pay a lot more for better service. I think the MMO to exploit this will be two tiered. Much like EQ's premium service, but far more so. It will be at least $75/mo -- or possibly not flat rate. It may be $50/mo + $2/hr or something. I know a lot of players are price sensitive, but I paid $3/hr on weekends to get onto compuserve and move an asterick around in a dungeon at 300 baud. And $2/hr doesn't mean squat to me, and if I can get a party of 6 into some real "DM-controlled" sort of adventures at $2/hr, I'm on it. I'd probably want some perks, but it could be very profitable. I know a lot of people who would do the same.
(2) Skill-based play. By which I mean reflexes. I'm a broken record on this topic, sure; but MMOs are "the same". One needs to implement semi-twitch gameplay... perhaps a Q3 style play, with a level of auto-aim that decreases with level. (or simply easier-to-hit monsters) I don't want to completely twitch-base it, I think anyone should be able to fight and win (at least at lower levels), but I think there should be an in-game effect of "skill". Please don't mention planetside; I still want level progression; I still want it to be playable by people who don't have the reflexes. I just want those that do to get an edge for them.
<rant>
On another note, I'd like to pre-emptively predict the utter failure of Dungeons and Dragons Online. They were SURE to get a subscription out of me, until I read an interview, and discover they are MANGLING the D&D ruleset, one of the best things about it... doing things like allowing a +5 attack bonus to let you "perform 5-hit combos with the proper key sequence". What? Are these crack-monkeys making D&D Online or Street Fighter II Online?
Except that it becomes an overpoweringly good asset, because EVERYONE needs it in order to get reward from the market for ANYTHING else they are doing.
It's an asset that will vary depending on how good you are at it, and how important it is to making any product work on the market. A friend of mine started a technology company. I thought their product sucked; in fact, their initial product was nearly worthless. It didn't fill an important need, and free alternatives were coming out.
He still secured venture capital, hired good people, and their second product was more useful. (And they were acquired)
His business skill was consummate. He built a company worth over a hundred million dollars in a few years built on an initial product that was nearly valueless.
By the same token, look at Vladimir Kush. He's a Russian surrealist artist who has a gallery in Hawaii (and is opening one in vegas). He was first featured at a local gallery. His works were so well received, however, that he paid to open his own gallery and offer his work to the public. Did it require any business sense to do this? No, not really. You lease a building, you hire an art history major to sell the art, and you collect the money. But it requires *talent*, because you have to produce a superior product.
These are extreme examples. In one, a businessman makes a business out of nothing. In the other, an artist makes a business without needing much of 'business'.
Which also inevitably results in the person who produced the product getting screwed over - usually by being payed a flat or per-hour fee for the work, while the business person gets the per-purchase fee from the market.
I've heard of many people - and personally known at least one excellent graphic artist - who were on the point of giving up completely because they were sick of being payed a couple of hundred or a couple of grand for a work and then having the people who marketed it driving around in Porsches because *they* got paid via a sales cut.
"Why not negotiate for it then?" Because they can't. Without the business guy, they can't make any money at all; and *all* business guys know this, so it's no use going to a different one.
The situation you describe is one where the art clearly is of lesser value than the marketing. If he "can't" negotiate, then it means that the business person can do without the art. If that wasn't the case, the artist could simply say, "You need to give me X, or I'm done", and the business person would have to capitulate.
Those who "help them to market it" tend to screw them over - because, by definition, if they needed help then the artisan had poor business skills and won't spot when he's being screwed.
The superiority of product doesn't matter if customers don't pay attention to find out how superior it is. Suppose you invented the most delicious cola ever made, superior to any on the market.. well, you see the problem.
There's a difference between having no business sense and having no sense of your own value. If it's the former, you may need someone. If it's the latter, you're probably in trouble. Depending on what you do and how well you do it, you can still succeed if you have the sense to play people off each other. Business people, just like producers of goods, are in competition; they need to acquire products to sell, and it is in their interest to do so for as little as possible. But by soliciting several people and letting them compete, you win. This works in almost everything. You can play car dealers against each other for discounts; you can let your employer make a counteroffer when you have a higher paying job elsewhere.
If you invented the most delicious cola ever made, then you can share it, and success is likely to find you. Friends of my parents had their own barbeque sauce. They never really tried to market it, and yet now you can buy it at Costco. Success found them.
You can lessen such risk without introducing enormous inefficiency into the system. You can't lower the risk for an investor without offloading the risk onto a third party.
I'm not saying that someone else should bear the risk. I'm saying the risk should be less.
Risk is something created by an imperfect understanding of market conditions. Risk is what happens when the person making an investment misjudges what they're investing in. Example: your grocer failed because they misjudged the threat posed by the remote competition and overestimated the advantage their locality would provide.
You can lessen such risk without introducing enormous inefficiency into the system. You can't lower the risk for an investor without offloading the risk onto a third party.
No. But established businesses can outbid small ones on every possible form of marketing, and there's enough established businesses already that it's perfectly possible they'll buy it all. Note that it does not matter which market those established businesses are in, because advertising streams are the same.
You're just wrong. Maybe hypothetically this is true, but many types of advertising have no limits. Direct mail, guys with signs on their chest, flyers on cars, etc; they're common, and they have a fixed cost that does not rise regardless of the number of people utilizing them. In practice, there are fairly standard rates for things like radio and TV adds which are based largely on the demographic you want to reach and the number of people who are expected to see an ad. Those rates are standard, and it doesn't matter whether a big business or small business is looking.
You miss the point. The only possible advantage they could have gotten on their competitor - local location - was crushed, but this process did not increase efficiency because the bus service was terminated immediately afterwards.
No, YOU are missing the point. If that was their only advantage, then they were foolish to bank on it as sufficient. They failed because of poor market understanding. The fact that the other grocery took steps to keep their business is admirable; had both businesses managed to succeed, everyone would likely have enjoyed a local grocer, and a bus service, and lower prices. But the people running the local grocer failed. It's unsurprising the bus service did not continue. Sad for those who utilized it and liked it, but hardly a tragic event.
Your original point in this thread was that communism forces people to give things away, which is obviously bad. But the problem is that capitalism also forces those who lack "business skill" to either give that work away (because they can't get into business to sell it) or get a far lesser reward than they normally would (by selling it to someone who does have "business skill" and who takes a big cut). Since having "business skill" is by no means connected to being able to do good works to sell.
It's simply John Gall's Operational Fallacy writ large. Indeed, he stated it himself: "The idea was that those who produced good work would accumulate more tokens. In fact, the people who accumulate the most tokens are the people who are good at accumulating tokens."
No, that wasn't my point. That was some other poster's point. My point was to clarify your misinformation on what constitutes a "free market". The person who made the original point about being forced to give things away was passing an ethical judgement on communism. That is, participation is utterly involuntary. There's a government -- the "gun" -- and it will force you to take part in that system. You cannot create and freely trade the fruits of your labor. It's an organized tyranny.
I agree with the poster of that comment, but my arguments stem only from pragmatism. Communism fails because bureaucrats are pathetically bad at resource allocation compared with a free market.
Having business skill is an asset like being able to produce a good work. If someone has the ability to produce a superior product, and the other has the ability to market and sell it in a superior fashion, they should work together to crea
Um, ok. I could respond in depth, but frankly, you strike me as a paranoid crank who is somehow convinced you're right when you have no idea what you're talking about. A lot of your claims sound absolutely preposterous, and I've been involved with a lot of businesses, both startup and otherwise, so I have a fair bit of experience to gauge against.
That's alright. But most of the time, new ideas aren't turned down for that reason. They're turned down because the potential sponsor says, "we're making money now, so why should we want to take a risk no you?".
This is just nonsense. What the hell does the word "sponsor" mean, anyhow? Most people gather their starting capital for small businesses from savings, mortgages, SBA loan, and loans from all their friends and family. "Sponsor"? *shakes head*
Previous generation. These problems are related to the last 10-20 years.
So capitalism was fine before 20 years ago? Or 10 years ago? That's not much of a data set, and frankly, business cycles are slow enough that 10 years is hardly a window you should make judgements against. Hell, it took the USSR a lot longer than that to fall apart.
My father's first business was only started 25 years ago, and it runs still, and it's small still; no different from a business just starting up, really, except perhaps for its good name. His second business was started around 1990, so that's toward the front end of your window. And it still just doesn't jibe.
I helped my wife launch a business 2 years ago. Again - nothing you're saying jibes with reality at all.
A cost of failure which requires you to declare bankruptcy is far too high. And it does not require a gutting risk: the cost of failure would always be wasting your time, when you could have made more money working elsewhere.
Too high according to whom? You, in your all-knowing omniscience? The fact is, a ton of people start businesses every year under those circumstances, and they obviously disagree. It all comes down to: if you're not going bankrupt when you fail utterly, then who WILL bear the risk if it's not you? The more you offload risk from the person responsible, the less efficient the system becomes. Again: this is why Communism became a dirty word.
They do not get customers because the customers do not know about them. I have seen an independant shop selling exactly the same sougt-after product as a chain store, but at a lower price and with more stock, and getting no sales because people didn't know it existed. And why didn't they know it existed? Because the chain store could outbid them on every billboard, and on the lot with walk-by.
Again, this sounds just fabricated. "outbid on every billboard"? What, one company bought up every billboard around? Sounds pretty expensive. And then the business could have taken their message to radio, or local cable TV. No business can afford to monopolize all advertising. That just sounds idiotic.
There have been cases of that here where somebody has opened a local grocery store in a town. Then, the out-of-town supermarket has started operating a free bus service for customers, to take away the 'local' advantage. When the grocery store folded, the bus was instantly withdrawn, and the people in the town were left without any groceries. So the supermarket crushed an attempt to solve a local problem.
So the local grocery failed. They were outcompeted; if your remote competitor offering a bus service is all it takes to drive your business under, your days are numbered. Maybe they should go into business offering a bus service instead.
It is freedom only if those abilities and talents are needed naturally, and the need for them is not artifically inserted by capitalism.
Capitalism can't "artifically insert" needs. Everyone is free to do what they want with their money and labor. It's communism and it's "planned economy" which creates artifical supply and demand -- whi
Well, exactly. The market isn't free, and can't be, so it's a fallacy for capitalism to assume that it is.
"Free market" means that anyone can offer their goods and services to another person; the state does not maintain a monopoly on production of anything, nor does it endorse or protect any particular producer. (When it does, as it occasionally does in the US, you have statism, not capitalism)
Which means they have to seek approval from another before being allowed to sell stuff. That breaks the free market and thus breaks capitalism.
No, it doesn't. It ensures that idiots with bad ideas who are convinced they are good don't introduce enormous market inefficiencies. "Give everyone a shot" sounds like a great egalitarian principle, but it isn't. Plus: two heads are better than one. If you think your idea is great, super; but if everyone you show it to looks at it and decides it won't work... why are you right and they're wrong?
In the vast majority of jobs, no matter how hard you work you'll never have enough within a lifetime.
Bullshit. My father started two successful businesses; the first time he had nothing. He borrowed and was frugal. The second had no startup costs. Friends of mine just opened a coffee shop; they had only their good credit and a bit of home equity; they borrowed.
Nope - it's not just unwillingness. For example, most people would only be able to do these things once in a lifetime, and if they failed, would be devastated. What kind of "free" market is it that only gives you one go and ruins your life if you fail?
Your life isn't ruined if your business fails. You declare bankruptcy, possibly make payments on a debt, and move on. If there wasn't a cost of failure, then everyone would be starting businesses to get ahead, and the market would be grossly inefficient for it. Every business is, to some degree, a gamble. Your ability to make it work is what hedges your bet. No matter what you do; you could fail, because not everything is under control.
That's why, when businesses succeed, people do well. And when they succeed very strongly, they get really rich. It's a sort of lottery ticket that's a lot more expensive to buy and a lot more dependant on the abilities and talents of the buyer. But that aside; if there was no RISK, everyone would do it. If lottery tickets cost nothing, people would buy them all day.
This reflects the way the world is. If I want to buy a machine to make pizzas so I can open a pizza place, it costs money for the machine. If I want labor, someone has to pay my employees. Who's going to pay if I don't? The communist answer is "the government"; and then you have a bureaucrat in some far-away place deciding who should and shouldn't start businesses. It's going to be a lot more arbitrary, people still can't ALL start up a business, and the person making the decision has no stake in the success or failure, so their decision is bound to be less correct on average than people self-determining their destiny and taking risks for themselves.
Welcome to the free market. It's efficient; you have to either improve things, or you fail.
90% of small businesses fail because they do not get attention equal to that of running businesses. Half the time this is because they are blocked by another business which controls market access and which "doesn't want to take risks".
What kind of "attention" are you talking about? And what are you talking about, "blocked by another business"? 90% of small businesses fail because they go after markets for emotional reasons where the market cannot sustain their business; or the competition is too strong for them; or they are undercapitalized and underestimated the amount of money needed to get to profitability; or they have unforseen disasters; or the time and energy required to run the business just wears out the owner.
Go get some experience in the world; your whole diatribe is incredibly sophomoric. I've started businesses and run them. The market is open and people with good ideas and the right abilities and talents can succeed. That's freedom. That's a free market.
It wasn't free to build the supermarket; why should the shelf space be free? (Although it is in some types of stores)
Customer attention is free, insofar as you can deliver your message. But technological ways to deliver messages cost money, so those aren't free.
People who have done good works can sell them, by buying their way into the market. If their product is compellingly good, they can borrow money or seek investment to buy their way into the market if need be; they can also work for someone else and save in order to buy into the market.
But this is why *access to capital* is important. If it isn't possible for someone to build infrastructure needed to produce their product and get it to market, then competition is weaker. That's different from people being unwilling to do what is necessary to GET the capital - which often includes things like putting their house up as collateral, taking out big loans, saving for years while working hard and spending less. The fact is, most people don't have the ability or vision to produce good products. 90% of all small businesses fail in the first 5 years. That's why people prefer to not take risks. For those ready to take risks, the opportunity is there.
Communism isn't a dirty word, but "From Each, To Each" has a host of pragmatic concerns which render it useless in the real world. Fact is, a lot of people, if they know they're getting paid the same no matter what they do, will spend all day reading/. instead of actually working. A lot of people will take a job doing security at night instead of going to medical school, because it's easier to sleep through a night shift than it is to work your ass off to become a doctor.
Economics is the allocation of scarce resources, by definition. Both what people think they need and what they can produce are both very subjective. Hard work, risk taking, self-discipline, delayed gratification -- these are things which often pay off in a capitalist system and simply don't have a place in that simple philosophy.
Aside from which, as long as there's a fairly egalitarian access to capital, it's almost impossible for any company to "soak the people" for profit without some statist loophole to rely on or a monopoly to exploit. Competition will force prices down; if one company or person is making money hand over fist making something or providing some service, the attractive money will lure others in, and that competition benefits the consumers.
Communism didn't become a dirty word because of the Cold War. Sure, no one likes countries stockpiling nukes; but Communism became a dirty word because all the communists had to wait in bread lines to eat, and had to ration their toilet paper to make it last.
Look at the effort it takes the IRS to do taxes. Imagine if there was some bureaucracy dedicated to evaluating peoples "abilities" and "needs". What a fiasco that would be... there'd probably be bread lines and rationed toilet paper, in fact.
I've never understood how people took the rant about free software being communist seriously.
Are lawyers doing pro bono work destroying the market for lawyers? Are doctors who work in a clinic as volunteers destroying the demand for medical services? Are all the people out there who write articles or novels and give them away for free "destroying" the market for books? Of course not.
It's foolish to assume that the best OSS software authors act entirely selflessly. If you could make $50/hr at a corporate software shop, or make a name for yourself on 10-15 hrs/week in coding for free and then command $150-200/hr for the other 25-30 hrs a week, what would you take? I'm making way more money than I ever did in a "real" job as a consultant, and I do it on my schedule and my terms. I got this by releasing a little OSS package... one that isn't even in use any more because I didn't have time to maintain it and it was fairly early-stage. But within weeks of putting it out, I was getting inquiries about modifying it on a per-hour bsais, and I've had a full schedule for over 16 months and more than 1 full time job offer that I've turned down.
Also, it sort of assumes that there's some competition between OSS and certain alternatives. If I had a choice between a free IIS and a $100 copy of Apache, I'd buy Apache. If I had a choice between a free winXP, and paying $89 for linux, I'd take linux. (And I'd dual boot to free windows so I could play games:p)
I'm sure for a lot of people, "free" is a nice thing. But you know what? It's been pointed out before: license fees on software are often a tiny fraction of TCO. OSS is often superior not because of the software cost, but the associated costs.
As far as the "World Economy" goes, this question is in the "Give Me a Break" category. It's like asking whether free medicine would help or harm the world economy. The only difference is there isn't an army of altruistic and excellent drug manufacturers like there are software developers.
Simply put, make games for people with money. The kiddies have their games, now make a fucking game for the people who have wallets bulging with cash and will never complain about spending 10 dollars a month because they already make $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Make a game with every type of game play EXCEPT time = power game play. In MMORPGs, time might equal power. However, in the real world time equals money. Waste my time, see none of my money.
Man, I hope I see this day. I drop $150/mo on coffee. If there was some really nice MMORPG that was fun, always different, and could put me in a story and let me feel like I was creating interactive entertainment... I'd pay >$100/mo. Maybe way over, depending on the quality. It's a no-brainer for me. My wife has us on $95/mo cable TV services. I don't watch TV. (Well, I Tivo 2 network shows in the main season and I occasionally tivo some world poker tour) But I play games. A lot. A couple hours a day at least on average. It's my favorite entertainment. Imagine an MMO with highly personalized service. I get on, I'm invited by an NPC to join some quest. I, and 5-10 friends in game, go off and save the world or whatever. It's got a DM/GM assigned. We're all spending >$3/hr, so that's $15-30/hr you could take in. I'm sure you can get decent DMs for $10/hr. Hell, I'd probably sign up to DM for 'store credit', if that were possible.
You have immediately eliminated griefers and lamers of all types. Why? Because people spending $200/mo on their game don't bother griefing people, because they can do that on a lesser mmo for $10/mo. You have eliminated idiots, because they can't afford it. You have eliminated kids with crappy grammar who can't RP to save their lives, because they can't afford it.
Ah, MMO heaven.
Some MMO developer IS going to figure this out. Because it doesn't take a whole new game. It just takes the 'special server' with a lot more staff and some special tools to personalize the experience. I wonder how EQ did with their higher-priced server? I never played EQ, but I'm sure I'd have happily signed up for the $45/mo version if I was into the game. Maybe CoH will come out with something like that while I'm still playing it.
Too bad NWN had the non-exploitation clause... that game would have been really useful for a pay-to-play environment where small communities of a few hundreds players could spring up around a talented DM staff.
I think you missed my point. I'm not disagreeing; both the FPS game and the MMORPG require huge time investments to get 'good'. The FPS game rewards you with better skills; you learn the nuances of the game, strategy with using weapons, etc, and combine that with learned reflexes. The MMORPG rewards your character. You gain xp, you go up levels.
I want to take a little of the best of both games. The way I see it: no matter how much you practice at Q3, every game you're starting over. Even if you've won 10,000 1v1 matches against top pros in a row without ever getting fragged, the score is 0-0 and you get a random starting position. With the MMORPG, it's another completely different issue: you've played for years. You've got 5 characters at max level. You are the elite player in terms of world knowledge and build strategy. You create a new level 1 character... and you know what? You're more or less a newb again. This is especially true on City of Heroes, where your ability to hand down gear is ~nil, world knowledge counts for almost nothing (there are very few secrets to know, quests are given out in the most straightforward manner, etc -- BUILD knowledge counts, but not knowing the world; especially not early on), and you're lucky to be able to outperform a brand new character who picked the same AT and powersets as you by 10-20%.
Thus I would propose a combination of sorts. An MMORPG where your character had certain powers and abilities, and even a newb with no twitch skills can aim and fire and grind it out... but where over time, if you end up with mad skillz, you could take the same character and significantly outperform. So you add both the 'twitch' skills (and I think that's a derogatory term; I'd rather call it reflexes or hand-eye) and the character development.
Thus your character grows... and so do you as a player. Even if you start a new character, some chunk of your time spent playing the game is 'portable'; you gain from play.
I think there's a whole set of people who won't like the idea. They want MMORPGs to be about tweaking their characters and grinding out their time. But I also think there's a big set of people who'd love to play a game where you could gain skill at playing while your character gains power. So some of the traditional MMORPG crowd will go away; some of the competitive FPS crowd will join in. And some new players might join the genre.
There are some side advantages. Players will great skill can make the 'less ideal' types still playable through skill. PvP play takes on a whole new depths as you have no only types of characters facing off, but the skill and manner in which they're played matters, too.
I'm going to have to look into Planetside and see how it plays; I'd heard of it, but had not heard it tried to incorporate the two play types.
It sounds to me like you just prefer FPS games to non-twitch RPG games
Actually, after I quit Q3 after the '02 quakecon, NWN had come out and I played that online pretty much as loyally as I'd played Q3. I'm actually an RPG fan from waaay back... infocom, SSI Goldbox, Ultima, etc... whereas Q3 was the only FPS I played after Duke Nukem came out.
I've been fond of the single-player FPS RPGs -- Deux Ex and JKII being good examples of FPS play with RPG-like character development. I think a visionary development shop could merge the two and really have a game for the ages.
If you're an MMORPG and you want a skill OR level based system, or a hybrid, you're going to have a hard time breaking new ground.
Know what I'd sign up for? Q3 as an RPG.
I spent like 18 months, maybe 2 years playing Q3. I started off bad. Challenging was finishing the same single player on the middle of 5 modes. Deathmatch online? Good luck... if I got lucky, I might manage to finish in the middle of the pack of 20+ players. (And I had superior hardware and bandwidth)
But fast forward 18 months... and I'm at Quakecon in 2002, and I am delivering a spanking to the whole con. My railgun back-to-back hit-o-meter is popping up every few seconds (28...29...30 in a row) as I adjust to the LAN environment. *My* skills have improved enough that I'm dominating a 75-person server. (Actually, I was running slightly ahead of a guy I played with constantly of my 'main server' back at home, who was sitting right next to me)
I've been playing City of Heroes lately. And frankly, I find it irritating that there's a lack of skill. If I play my tanker, I turn on my fiery aura, walk up to something, and spam my axe attack. Sure, in a big group taking on purples there's a little bit of strategic decision making, but it's obvious there's a pretty solid "ceiling" on where you can go with your own skill... and your own skill applies ~0 to your early progress, where the few powers you have available makes any decision making moot.
CoH without a respec suffers additionally -- since if you learn from your mistakes building, you're currently forced to go through the grind again with a new build if you think it's better... that should be over come "Sep/Oct" when the 2nd update pack will introduce a respec, but still.
If you played Q3, you may have run across a pro. Despite my LAN domination at Qcon, I wasn't one, and didn't nearly have the skills...yet. And it was the coolest thing. These guys had the aim, but they had the skills to make the most of it with other things like movement and strategy to gain the upperhand against you. That's how my games against pros typically went -- start off even, we each get some power ups. Maybe I get a frag or two early, but before long, I show up a second too late to grab some key item, and that's it... I never score again, and I'm ground into the dust. But you knew when you went up against these guys that they were better. They outplayed you.
In City of Heroes, when some L50 flies along, it's clear he has a lot more time on his hands than you do... especially when you're me, without 10 hrs a day to play, and you're crushing the xp/hr rates that people report on the forums... and it's *still* "taking forever".
Someone needs to come up with something that has the fun eye candy of CoH, but adds "player skill" to the "character skill". I'm not saying make Q3 into an MMORPG... why not just play Q3? But make player skill ACTUALLY count. Make attacks more powerful as you level up, but force players to actually AIM.
It's going to come out sooner or later. And you know what? People aren't going to stop playing it. It's not going to get boring. Because when you stop and think: hell, it's been 3 hours and I've only got half a level?... you're going to realize your aim is improving. And you're going to smile and press on. (And it will make PvP a lot more interesting)
This is why you don't buy big ticket items over the net with anything BUT a credit card. Credit cards are colossally tilted towards the purchaser. I've been involved in businesses fighting scams the OTHER way around (false buyers who claim they didn't order/receive/etc the merchandise). In a card-not-present transaction, all you have to do is say, "Mr. Credit Card Company, I didn't get what I bought. Please do a chargeback." and you will have your money back. The onus is on the seller to prove EVERYTHING and most cc companies will even refund any interest you paid.
I'd insist on a buyer who can ship within 10 days. You want a tracking number within 48 hours of your card being charged, or it's chargeback time. Then you want to inspect the goods when they arrive to make sure there's actually a LAPTOP in all that styrofoam... or it's chargeback time.
PayPal isn't BAD, but if you end up with someone who is connected via bank account and closes the account and empties the paypal account after taking your money, PayPal will not refund it. That's not the case with the credit card company - if they can't recover the funds, they will eat it.
For me, one of the best things about working in PHP is the online documentation. We've got:
(1) Thorough, beautifully organized, accurate documentation with minimal but effective examples.
(2) Fast searching. php.net/[searchterm] - it doesn't get much easier to look up a function, short of having the docs built into the IDE (Zend)
(3) User comments. I've contributed a few comments myself when I've run into sticky issues and then realized what was going on. And more than a few times, I've found little code snippets attached to the relevent functions that are good ways to use them. PHP and ASP, in my mind, are both tools for RAPID development and deployment. PHP is good at rapid; very good. The docs are a major reason. They make familiarizing with something like a new extension library very easy.
Only if you consider managing myself to be management.;) I've been self employed since the end of 2001, and I sort of enjoy going to the mirror when I need the boss.
I spent 5 years working as a network security architect at Exodus Communications, in the heydey before they grew themselves into bankruptcy. I had the pleasure of getting my own boss hired twice.
The first time, when there were problems with one manager, I proposed that my department (network security) be managed by the guy who ran NetEng, who was a friend and an all around great guy. I just said: who has a light-handed management style, who has the credibility to back me if management is thinking of doing something stupid, and can be a technical resource?
I used those same criteria to select my next boss. I was given only two candidates for a Directory of Network Security position. One was a fairly laid back, older gentlemen with an easygoing attitude, some technical aptitude (although he couldn't do the engineering work, but he had clearly done things in the arena in the past), and a clear idea of challenges we faced. The other candidate was ex-law enforcement, and his answer to most technical questions was, "I like to surround myself with good people so I have resources to tap for questions like that". He was stiff, formal, and projected a great deal of confidence... that didn't seem justified. He showed competence only with physical security issues (cameras, guards, etc), which was part of the job but not the important part to me (since I only did the network side).
The first guy had *real world* experience. He'd founded and flopped a security company that sold an evaluated hardened multi-level secure firewall... one that cost in the 6 figures to get and get installed and was generally only bought by a few governments.
I pulled heavily for the first guy, and he was the best boss I've had -- the best I can imagine. He was respectful, tried to shield us from management making illogical or impossible demands, and after several years, quit the company rather than allow bad management to wreck our group. (well, they still wrecked us, but he left rather than be party to it)
Based on this experience, I'd recommend you look for:
* Someone who was once technical. No matter that they aren't, but they should show the sort of aptitude and experience that indicates they did what you do or something equivalent * Someone who is laid back and 'real'. If they say anything about Moving Your Cheese, about management synergy, about "marketing the group", about "having a first-rate team" or other management-isms that you cringe to hear, then RUN don't walk from that candidate. * Someone who is not afraid of their management. One reason I liked our boss was he was on the tail end of his career -- he was in his 50s, and instead of being desperately clingy, he was ready to take a bullet for the team. He never really had to; he was so well thought of that even when they said our team was being taken from him because he wouldn't budge, they offered him another job (which goes to show how stalwart he was; he quit just as a disincentive for them to go through with it). Maybe he was just a strong person and it had nothing to do with age. * Someone you actually get along with. 50% or more of an interview is checking that a candidate fits the corporate culture. Having a manager who buys into your group's culture is key; this guy never batted an eye when we stuck a couch and a playstation in one room for chill out breaks.
Slashdot Mirror
A9 is slow. If your search engine can be slashdotted, it isn't ready for prime time. Better put the beta label back on.
Like many people, I'm stuck in a conundrum. I don't want to buy CDs any more because I think music should be cheaper due to cheap electronic distribution. I buy occasionally from iTunes, but fears about "losing my music" when my iBook dies and I forget to back it up often enough or some other weird technical thing renders me music-less because of DRM scares me. And I spend a lot of time listening to music on unsupported players. I like xmms, and I'm going to keep using it, so iTunes means I have to burn+rip to convert stuff. (I finally compiled hymn, but need my key off my iBook, I'm lazy, and xmms's aac player module seems to not compile...*sigh*)
I have basically all the money I want to spend on music. But whether tracks are $.39 or $.99 or $1.99 means nothing to me if I'm worried about just losing them. Some of this music I've already had ripped ot mp3 for like 7+ years now, and I can't even count the number of computers I've gone through, and it's nice and portable.
I think at some point, a brave label or two will band together, open their own store, and just offer raw 160+kbps mp3s for something cheap - probably $.49 to $1.49 for singles (probably based on the buzz level), $2.99 to $9.99 for a cd (again, popularity based pricing)... and will open the floodgates. They will do so much business they will be absolutely stunned. Ever music consumer will be amazingly spending 3x what they use to be. Record companies will be delightfully rolling in profits; consumers will be awash in music and ecstatic... everyone wins. Artists who couldn't sell CDs in the bargain bin will find audiences who will pay $2.99 for their albums, and the music industry as a whole will launch into a new era of growth.
We can only hope they realize that peoplpe hate hurdles, and DRM stops more customers from buying than it stops pirates from buying. Anyone with a clue should realize that a lot of music pirates will NOT buy music regardless of whether its free or not. If it is, they'll get it; if not, they won't. But either way, they won't pay. But many customers will pay for unencumbered music but will buy minimally or not at all from the DRM bin.
You only have to look at what happened in the UK with Virgin Cola - marketed by Richard Branson, who was a highly skilled businessman. It wasn't the world's most delicious cola - although I personally preferred it to Coke, but that's pretty much irrelevant. But when it failed, it was found out that most people had never even tasted it - so if it had been the world's most delicious cola, most people would not have noticed.
So you're saying that a multinational uberconglomerate with nearly infinite money tried to market a soft drink and failed miserably, despite their business prowess. And yet, I can go into my local store and buy organic niche cola that's been there for years.
How does this prove your point?
No. But a strong goal of capitalism is to reward successful companies with money that enables them to become even more successful. This means that over time the barrier to compete with them rises and rises. Sooner or later a point will be reached where it is so high that no new entrant to the market can possibly contemplate it. At that point things start to go wrong, because the company (or companies) no longer have to maximise efficiency provided it is still blocking competition.
There is no Wendy's in the UK, but there are McDonalds', Burger King and KFC. They do not compete in any meaningful sense anymore, and the "location problem" has meant that very few other fast food places exist or survive.
Simply having more money is not, in and of itself, a barrier to competition. Even a freshmen business major would know that. That, and money made by companies is rarely retained for future potential competitors, because that's inefficient use of capital. If you simply sit on money waiting for a challenger, any gains you make keeping competition away are dwarfed by the failure to use that money well. This is why companies largely burn cash as dividends, stock buybacks, or investments and acquisitions. They don't just stockpile resources.
As for fast food - what "location problem"? Fast Food is a classic textbook "minimal differentiation" industry. This is why a fast food place like McDonalds can have a second fast food place open on the opposite corner of an intersection, and see their business go UP as a result. The only high risk cannibalization is same-brand openings. A McDonalds store owner was quoted in one annual report I've read for a private investment fund as saying: "I have a Wendy's, Jack In the Box, and a Carl's Jr. at the intersection, and I outsell all 3 of them combined. But if another McDonalds opens up 5 miles down the road, I'll lose 20% of my business." (Late CEO Jim Cantalupo put the brakes on new store openings near existing stores to assuage these concerns)
As for introducing the students to people who were successful.. I'm not sure that would work, given the tone of their conversation. What they were talking about was people who had not gone to University, or who had left it, who were now being paid huge amounts whereas they, who were "stuck" doing in the "normal way", would never make that much. Most of the time the reason why was nothing to do with work quality but market conditions (the time frame was around the trailing edge of the dot-Bomb and they were CS students)
The IT industry has remarkably low barriers to entry and is a fairly fierce meritocracy, especially for the dynamic companies and positions. People do what they think is best. I dropped out of college, and I not only rode through two IPOs in the 90s/early 00s, but it is impossible to get the work I do on anything other than word of mouth... no amount of degrees and certs will cut it. And I consistently crush "market rate" pay. There are thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people with my general skills, yet I have an overfull schedule at over-market rates. And I'm all alone, a consultant in the wilderness. So you can't tell me that the big companies hold all the cards.
Going back to the top:
Heh, it would be pretty damn cool to play SFII online. I have a SSF2:turbo upstairs in the game room, actually. I used to play in Sunnyvale, CA at the Golfland that was home to the best players in the country. Way too much, of course.
I have nwn installed, and host City of Arabel, which generally owns the PW Story category. But the DM:player ratio is a PITA to deal with; PW servers are largely unattended or understaffed. Great for free play, but for people who value their game time more than their $2...well, you get where I'm going.
Were the games in question built by people as a passion-project because they wanted to build a game, or are they free because they weren't getting enough subscribers when people had to pay for the box?
There's a big difference between free by design and free by market bitch-slap.
I'm sure that some people will stumble across a niche game they like... but if they're giving it away, that probably says something about it.
It's something that can and will work - it's like EQ legends taken to the next level.
The trick is, it needs to piggyback on a successful service. You can't develop a game for 1500 people @ $50/mo. Even if you could provide the service at that rate (and I think $75/mo would be more likely, or $30 + a per hour rate), that still won't nearly cover development. But you can have a standard service and have some custom content on the premium service as well as route all content through a period of exclusivity there. The key is the GM/DM intervention to set up quests, make the world come to life, and do things like reward good roleplay.
It's a lot like what you'd get if you were able to join an NWN server with good content and a dedicated DM any time you wanted. I'd happily pay a *ton* of money for it... certainly $100/mo.
City of Heroes is fun, and I commend them for doing something different when too many people are just trying to be Everquest.
It goes to show that there's a lot of different things that attract different people; CoH was my first MMO, despite being a long-time MUDder who wrote 100,000 lines of code to expand the Diku/ROM base for a mud I helped make. (I do have an SWG box still gathering dust that I'll use sooner or later)
I think there's two concepts that are waiting to make a lot of money:
(1) MMORPG for people with money. People are desperate to target the $10-15 range. But I think there's a substantial set of subscribers who would pay a lot more for better service. I think the MMO to exploit this will be two tiered. Much like EQ's premium service, but far more so. It will be at least $75/mo -- or possibly not flat rate. It may be $50/mo + $2/hr or something. I know a lot of players are price sensitive, but I paid $3/hr on weekends to get onto compuserve and move an asterick around in a dungeon at 300 baud. And $2/hr doesn't mean squat to me, and if I can get a party of 6 into some real "DM-controlled" sort of adventures at $2/hr, I'm on it. I'd probably want some perks, but it could be very profitable. I know a lot of people who would do the same.
(2) Skill-based play. By which I mean reflexes. I'm a broken record on this topic, sure; but MMOs are "the same". One needs to implement semi-twitch gameplay... perhaps a Q3 style play, with a level of auto-aim that decreases with level. (or simply easier-to-hit monsters) I don't want to completely twitch-base it, I think anyone should be able to fight and win (at least at lower levels), but I think there should be an in-game effect of "skill". Please don't mention planetside; I still want level progression; I still want it to be playable by people who don't have the reflexes. I just want those that do to get an edge for them.
<rant>
On another note, I'd like to pre-emptively predict the utter failure of Dungeons and Dragons Online. They were SURE to get a subscription out of me, until I read an interview, and discover they are MANGLING the D&D ruleset, one of the best things about it... doing things like allowing a +5 attack bonus to let you "perform 5-hit combos with the proper key sequence". What? Are these crack-monkeys making D&D Online or Street Fighter II Online?
</rant>
Except that it becomes an overpoweringly good asset, because EVERYONE needs it in order to get reward from the market for ANYTHING else they are doing.
It's an asset that will vary depending on how good you are at it, and how important it is to making any product work on the market. A friend of mine started a technology company. I thought their product sucked; in fact, their initial product was nearly worthless. It didn't fill an important need, and free alternatives were coming out.
He still secured venture capital, hired good people, and their second product was more useful. (And they were acquired)
His business skill was consummate. He built a company worth over a hundred million dollars in a few years built on an initial product that was nearly valueless.
By the same token, look at Vladimir Kush. He's a Russian surrealist artist who has a gallery in Hawaii (and is opening one in vegas). He was first featured at a local gallery. His works were so well received, however, that he paid to open his own gallery and offer his work to the public. Did it require any business sense to do this? No, not really. You lease a building, you hire an art history major to sell the art, and you collect the money. But it requires *talent*, because you have to produce a superior product.
These are extreme examples. In one, a businessman makes a business out of nothing. In the other, an artist makes a business without needing much of 'business'.
Which also inevitably results in the person who produced the product getting screwed over - usually by being payed a flat or per-hour fee for the work, while the business person gets the per-purchase fee from the market.
I've heard of many people - and personally known at least one excellent graphic artist - who were on the point of giving up completely because they were sick of being payed a couple of hundred or a couple of grand for a work and then having the people who marketed it driving around in Porsches because *they* got paid via a sales cut.
"Why not negotiate for it then?" Because they can't. Without the business guy, they can't make any money at all; and *all* business guys know this, so it's no use going to a different one.
The situation you describe is one where the art clearly is of lesser value than the marketing. If he "can't" negotiate, then it means that the business person can do without the art. If that wasn't the case, the artist could simply say, "You need to give me X, or I'm done", and the business person would have to capitulate.
Those who "help them to market it" tend to screw them over - because, by definition, if they needed help then the artisan had poor business skills and won't spot when he's being screwed.
The superiority of product doesn't matter if customers don't pay attention to find out how superior it is. Suppose you invented the most delicious cola ever made, superior to any on the market.. well, you see the problem.
There's a difference between having no business sense and having no sense of your own value. If it's the former, you may need someone. If it's the latter, you're probably in trouble. Depending on what you do and how well you do it, you can still succeed if you have the sense to play people off each other. Business people, just like producers of goods, are in competition; they need to acquire products to sell, and it is in their interest to do so for as little as possible. But by soliciting several people and letting them compete, you win. This works in almost everything. You can play car dealers against each other for discounts; you can let your employer make a counteroffer when you have a higher paying job elsewhere.
If you invented the most delicious cola ever made, then you can share it, and success is likely to find you. Friends of my parents had their own barbeque sauce. They never really tried to market it, and yet now you can buy it at Costco. Success found them.
The prob
You can lessen such risk without introducing enormous inefficiency into the system. You can't lower the risk for an investor without offloading the risk onto a third party.
That's meant to be "you can't lessen".
I'm not saying that someone else should bear the risk. I'm saying the risk should be less.
Risk is something created by an imperfect understanding of market conditions. Risk is what happens when the person making an investment misjudges what they're investing in. Example: your grocer failed because they misjudged the threat posed by the remote competition and overestimated the advantage their locality would provide.
You can lessen such risk without introducing enormous inefficiency into the system. You can't lower the risk for an investor without offloading the risk onto a third party.
No. But established businesses can outbid small ones on every possible form of marketing, and there's enough established businesses already that it's perfectly possible they'll buy it all. Note that it does not matter which market those established businesses are in, because advertising streams are the same.
You're just wrong. Maybe hypothetically this is true, but many types of advertising have no limits. Direct mail, guys with signs on their chest, flyers on cars, etc; they're common, and they have a fixed cost that does not rise regardless of the number of people utilizing them. In practice, there are fairly standard rates for things like radio and TV adds which are based largely on the demographic you want to reach and the number of people who are expected to see an ad. Those rates are standard, and it doesn't matter whether a big business or small business is looking.
You miss the point. The only possible advantage they could have gotten on their competitor - local location - was crushed, but this process did not increase efficiency because the bus service was terminated immediately afterwards.
No, YOU are missing the point. If that was their only advantage, then they were foolish to bank on it as sufficient. They failed because of poor market understanding. The fact that the other grocery took steps to keep their business is admirable; had both businesses managed to succeed, everyone would likely have enjoyed a local grocer, and a bus service, and lower prices. But the people running the local grocer failed. It's unsurprising the bus service did not continue. Sad for those who utilized it and liked it, but hardly a tragic event.
Your original point in this thread was that communism forces people to give things away, which is obviously bad. But the problem is that capitalism also forces those who lack "business skill" to either give that work away (because they can't get into business to sell it) or get a far lesser reward than they normally would (by selling it to someone who does have "business skill" and who takes a big cut). Since having "business skill" is by no means connected to being able to do good works to sell.
It's simply John Gall's Operational Fallacy writ large. Indeed, he stated it himself: "The idea was that those who produced good work would accumulate more tokens. In fact, the people who accumulate the most tokens are the people who are good at accumulating tokens."
No, that wasn't my point. That was some other poster's point. My point was to clarify your misinformation on what constitutes a "free market". The person who made the original point about being forced to give things away was passing an ethical judgement on communism. That is, participation is utterly involuntary. There's a government -- the "gun" -- and it will force you to take part in that system. You cannot create and freely trade the fruits of your labor. It's an organized tyranny.
I agree with the poster of that comment, but my arguments stem only from pragmatism. Communism fails because bureaucrats are pathetically bad at resource allocation compared with a free market.
Having business skill is an asset like being able to produce a good work. If someone has the ability to produce a superior product, and the other has the ability to market and sell it in a superior fashion, they should work together to crea
Um, ok. I could respond in depth, but frankly, you strike me as a paranoid crank who is somehow convinced you're right when you have no idea what you're talking about. A lot of your claims sound absolutely preposterous, and I've been involved with a lot of businesses, both startup and otherwise, so I have a fair bit of experience to gauge against.
That's alright. But most of the time, new ideas aren't turned down for that reason. They're turned down because the potential sponsor says, "we're making money now, so why should we want to take a risk no you?".
This is just nonsense. What the hell does the word "sponsor" mean, anyhow? Most people gather their starting capital for small businesses from savings, mortgages, SBA loan, and loans from all their friends and family. "Sponsor"? *shakes head*
Previous generation. These problems are related to the last 10-20 years.
So capitalism was fine before 20 years ago? Or 10 years ago? That's not much of a data set, and frankly, business cycles are slow enough that 10 years is hardly a window you should make judgements against. Hell, it took the USSR a lot longer than that to fall apart.
My father's first business was only started 25 years ago, and it runs still, and it's small still; no different from a business just starting up, really, except perhaps for its good name. His second business was started around 1990, so that's toward the front end of your window. And it still just doesn't jibe.
I helped my wife launch a business 2 years ago. Again - nothing you're saying jibes with reality at all.
A cost of failure which requires you to declare bankruptcy is far too high. And it does not require a gutting risk: the cost of failure would always be wasting your time, when you could have made more money working elsewhere.
Too high according to whom? You, in your all-knowing omniscience? The fact is, a ton of people start businesses every year under those circumstances, and they obviously disagree. It all comes down to: if you're not going bankrupt when you fail utterly, then who WILL bear the risk if it's not you? The more you offload risk from the person responsible, the less efficient the system becomes. Again: this is why Communism became a dirty word.
They do not get customers because the customers do not know about them. I have seen an independant shop selling exactly the same sougt-after product as a chain store, but at a lower price and with more stock, and getting no sales because people didn't know it existed. And why didn't they know it existed? Because the chain store could outbid them on every billboard, and on the lot with walk-by.
Again, this sounds just fabricated. "outbid on every billboard"? What, one company bought up every billboard around? Sounds pretty expensive. And then the business could have taken their message to radio, or local cable TV. No business can afford to monopolize all advertising. That just sounds idiotic.
There have been cases of that here where somebody has opened a local grocery store in a town. Then, the out-of-town supermarket has started operating a free bus service for customers, to take away the 'local' advantage. When the grocery store folded, the bus was instantly withdrawn, and the people in the town were left without any groceries. So the supermarket crushed an attempt to solve a local problem.
So the local grocery failed. They were outcompeted; if your remote competitor offering a bus service is all it takes to drive your business under, your days are numbered. Maybe they should go into business offering a bus service instead.
It is freedom only if those abilities and talents are needed naturally, and the need for them is not artifically inserted by capitalism.
Capitalism can't "artifically insert" needs. Everyone is free to do what they want with their money and labor. It's communism and it's "planned economy" which creates artifical supply and demand -- whi
Well, exactly. The market isn't free, and can't be, so it's a fallacy for capitalism to assume that it is.
"Free market" means that anyone can offer their goods and services to another person; the state does not maintain a monopoly on production of anything, nor does it endorse or protect any particular producer. (When it does, as it occasionally does in the US, you have statism, not capitalism)
Which means they have to seek approval from another before being allowed to sell stuff. That breaks the free market and thus breaks capitalism.
No, it doesn't. It ensures that idiots with bad ideas who are convinced they are good don't introduce enormous market inefficiencies. "Give everyone a shot" sounds like a great egalitarian principle, but it isn't. Plus: two heads are better than one. If you think your idea is great, super; but if everyone you show it to looks at it and decides it won't work... why are you right and they're wrong?
In the vast majority of jobs, no matter how hard you work you'll never have enough within a lifetime.
Bullshit. My father started two successful businesses; the first time he had nothing. He borrowed and was frugal. The second had no startup costs. Friends of mine just opened a coffee shop; they had only their good credit and a bit of home equity; they borrowed.
Nope - it's not just unwillingness. For example, most people would only be able to do these things once in a lifetime, and if they failed, would be devastated. What kind of "free" market is it that only gives you one go and ruins your life if you fail?
Your life isn't ruined if your business fails. You declare bankruptcy, possibly make payments on a debt, and move on. If there wasn't a cost of failure, then everyone would be starting businesses to get ahead, and the market would be grossly inefficient for it. Every business is, to some degree, a gamble. Your ability to make it work is what hedges your bet. No matter what you do; you could fail, because not everything is under control.
That's why, when businesses succeed, people do well. And when they succeed very strongly, they get really rich. It's a sort of lottery ticket that's a lot more expensive to buy and a lot more dependant on the abilities and talents of the buyer. But that aside; if there was no RISK, everyone would do it. If lottery tickets cost nothing, people would buy them all day.
This reflects the way the world is. If I want to buy a machine to make pizzas so I can open a pizza place, it costs money for the machine. If I want labor, someone has to pay my employees. Who's going to pay if I don't? The communist answer is "the government"; and then you have a bureaucrat in some far-away place deciding who should and shouldn't start businesses. It's going to be a lot more arbitrary, people still can't ALL start up a business, and the person making the decision has no stake in the success or failure, so their decision is bound to be less correct on average than people self-determining their destiny and taking risks for themselves.
Welcome to the free market. It's efficient; you have to either improve things, or you fail.
90% of small businesses fail because they do not get attention equal to that of running businesses. Half the time this is because they are blocked by another business which controls market access and which "doesn't want to take risks".
What kind of "attention" are you talking about? And what are you talking about, "blocked by another business"? 90% of small businesses fail because they go after markets for emotional reasons where the market cannot sustain their business; or the competition is too strong for them; or they are undercapitalized and underestimated the amount of money needed to get to profitability; or they have unforseen disasters; or the time and energy required to run the business just wears out the owner.
Go get some experience in the world; your whole diatribe is incredibly sophomoric. I've started businesses and run them. The market is open and people with good ideas and the right abilities and talents can succeed. That's freedom. That's a free market.
It wasn't free to build the supermarket; why should the shelf space be free? (Although it is in some types of stores)
Customer attention is free, insofar as you can deliver your message. But technological ways to deliver messages cost money, so those aren't free.
People who have done good works can sell them, by buying their way into the market. If their product is compellingly good, they can borrow money or seek investment to buy their way into the market if need be; they can also work for someone else and save in order to buy into the market.
But this is why *access to capital* is important. If it isn't possible for someone to build infrastructure needed to produce their product and get it to market, then competition is weaker. That's different from people being unwilling to do what is necessary to GET the capital - which often includes things like putting their house up as collateral, taking out big loans, saving for years while working hard and spending less. The fact is, most people don't have the ability or vision to produce good products. 90% of all small businesses fail in the first 5 years. That's why people prefer to not take risks. For those ready to take risks, the opportunity is there.
Communism isn't a dirty word, but "From Each, To Each" has a host of pragmatic concerns which render it useless in the real world. Fact is, a lot of people, if they know they're getting paid the same no matter what they do, will spend all day reading /. instead of actually working. A lot of people will take a job doing security at night instead of going to medical school, because it's easier to sleep through a night shift than it is to work your ass off to become a doctor.
Economics is the allocation of scarce resources, by definition. Both what people think they need and what they can produce are both very subjective. Hard work, risk taking, self-discipline, delayed gratification -- these are things which often pay off in a capitalist system and simply don't have a place in that simple philosophy.
Aside from which, as long as there's a fairly egalitarian access to capital, it's almost impossible for any company to "soak the people" for profit without some statist loophole to rely on or a monopoly to exploit. Competition will force prices down; if one company or person is making money hand over fist making something or providing some service, the attractive money will lure others in, and that competition benefits the consumers.
Communism didn't become a dirty word because of the Cold War. Sure, no one likes countries stockpiling nukes; but Communism became a dirty word because all the communists had to wait in bread lines to eat, and had to ration their toilet paper to make it last.
Look at the effort it takes the IRS to do taxes. Imagine if there was some bureaucracy dedicated to evaluating peoples "abilities" and "needs". What a fiasco that would be... there'd probably be bread lines and rationed toilet paper, in fact.
I've never understood how people took the rant about free software being communist seriously.
:p)
Are lawyers doing pro bono work destroying the market for lawyers? Are doctors who work in a clinic as volunteers destroying the demand for medical services? Are all the people out there who write articles or novels and give them away for free "destroying" the market for books? Of course not.
It's foolish to assume that the best OSS software authors act entirely selflessly. If you could make $50/hr at a corporate software shop, or make a name for yourself on 10-15 hrs/week in coding for free and then command $150-200/hr for the other 25-30 hrs a week, what would you take? I'm making way more money than I ever did in a "real" job as a consultant, and I do it on my schedule and my terms. I got this by releasing a little OSS package... one that isn't even in use any more because I didn't have time to maintain it and it was fairly early-stage. But within weeks of putting it out, I was getting inquiries about modifying it on a per-hour bsais, and I've had a full schedule for over 16 months and more than 1 full time job offer that I've turned down.
Also, it sort of assumes that there's some competition between OSS and certain alternatives. If I had a choice between a free IIS and a $100 copy of Apache, I'd buy Apache. If I had a choice between a free winXP, and paying $89 for linux, I'd take linux. (And I'd dual boot to free windows so I could play games
I'm sure for a lot of people, "free" is a nice thing. But you know what? It's been pointed out before: license fees on software are often a tiny fraction of TCO. OSS is often superior not because of the software cost, but the associated costs.
As far as the "World Economy" goes, this question is in the "Give Me a Break" category. It's like asking whether free medicine would help or harm the world economy. The only difference is there isn't an army of altruistic and excellent drug manufacturers like there are software developers.
Simply put, make games for people with money. The kiddies have their games, now make a fucking game for the people who have wallets bulging with cash and will never complain about spending 10 dollars a month because they already make $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Make a game with every type of game play EXCEPT time = power game play. In MMORPGs, time might equal power. However, in the real world time equals money. Waste my time, see none of my money.
Man, I hope I see this day. I drop $150/mo on coffee. If there was some really nice MMORPG that was fun, always different, and could put me in a story and let me feel like I was creating interactive entertainment... I'd pay >$100/mo. Maybe way over, depending on the quality. It's a no-brainer for me. My wife has us on $95/mo cable TV services. I don't watch TV. (Well, I Tivo 2 network shows in the main season and I occasionally tivo some world poker tour) But I play games. A lot. A couple hours a day at least on average. It's my favorite entertainment. Imagine an MMO with highly personalized service. I get on, I'm invited by an NPC to join some quest. I, and 5-10 friends in game, go off and save the world or whatever. It's got a DM/GM assigned. We're all spending >$3/hr, so that's $15-30/hr you could take in. I'm sure you can get decent DMs for $10/hr. Hell, I'd probably sign up to DM for 'store credit', if that were possible.
You have immediately eliminated griefers and lamers of all types. Why? Because people spending $200/mo on their game don't bother griefing people, because they can do that on a lesser mmo for $10/mo. You have eliminated idiots, because they can't afford it. You have eliminated kids with crappy grammar who can't RP to save their lives, because they can't afford it.
Ah, MMO heaven.
Some MMO developer IS going to figure this out. Because it doesn't take a whole new game. It just takes the 'special server' with a lot more staff and some special tools to personalize the experience. I wonder how EQ did with their higher-priced server? I never played EQ, but I'm sure I'd have happily signed up for the $45/mo version if I was into the game. Maybe CoH will come out with something like that while I'm still playing it.
Too bad NWN had the non-exploitation clause... that game would have been really useful for a pay-to-play environment where small communities of a few hundreds players could spring up around a talented DM staff.
I think you missed my point. I'm not disagreeing; both the FPS game and the MMORPG require huge time investments to get 'good'. The FPS game rewards you with better skills; you learn the nuances of the game, strategy with using weapons, etc, and combine that with learned reflexes. The MMORPG rewards your character. You gain xp, you go up levels.
I want to take a little of the best of both games. The way I see it: no matter how much you practice at Q3, every game you're starting over. Even if you've won 10,000 1v1 matches against top pros in a row without ever getting fragged, the score is 0-0 and you get a random starting position. With the MMORPG, it's another completely different issue: you've played for years. You've got 5 characters at max level. You are the elite player in terms of world knowledge and build strategy. You create a new level 1 character... and you know what? You're more or less a newb again. This is especially true on City of Heroes, where your ability to hand down gear is ~nil, world knowledge counts for almost nothing (there are very few secrets to know, quests are given out in the most straightforward manner, etc -- BUILD knowledge counts, but not knowing the world; especially not early on), and you're lucky to be able to outperform a brand new character who picked the same AT and powersets as you by 10-20%.
Thus I would propose a combination of sorts. An MMORPG where your character had certain powers and abilities, and even a newb with no twitch skills can aim and fire and grind it out... but where over time, if you end up with mad skillz, you could take the same character and significantly outperform. So you add both the 'twitch' skills (and I think that's a derogatory term; I'd rather call it reflexes or hand-eye) and the character development.
Thus your character grows... and so do you as a player. Even if you start a new character, some chunk of your time spent playing the game is 'portable'; you gain from play.
I think there's a whole set of people who won't like the idea. They want MMORPGs to be about tweaking their characters and grinding out their time. But I also think there's a big set of people who'd love to play a game where you could gain skill at playing while your character gains power. So some of the traditional MMORPG crowd will go away; some of the competitive FPS crowd will join in. And some new players might join the genre.
There are some side advantages. Players will great skill can make the 'less ideal' types still playable through skill. PvP play takes on a whole new depths as you have no only types of characters facing off, but the skill and manner in which they're played matters, too.
I'm going to have to look into Planetside and see how it plays; I'd heard of it, but had not heard it tried to incorporate the two play types.
It sounds to me like you just prefer FPS games to non-twitch RPG games
Actually, after I quit Q3 after the '02 quakecon, NWN had come out and I played that online pretty much as loyally as I'd played Q3. I'm actually an RPG fan from waaay back... infocom, SSI Goldbox, Ultima, etc... whereas Q3 was the only FPS I played after Duke Nukem came out.
I've been fond of the single-player FPS RPGs -- Deux Ex and JKII being good examples of FPS play with RPG-like character development. I think a visionary development shop could merge the two and really have a game for the ages.
If you're an MMORPG and you want a skill OR level based system, or a hybrid, you're going to have a hard time breaking new ground.
Know what I'd sign up for? Q3 as an RPG.
I spent like 18 months, maybe 2 years playing Q3. I started off bad. Challenging was finishing the same single player on the middle of 5 modes. Deathmatch online? Good luck... if I got lucky, I might manage to finish in the middle of the pack of 20+ players. (And I had superior hardware and bandwidth)
But fast forward 18 months... and I'm at Quakecon in 2002, and I am delivering a spanking to the whole con. My railgun back-to-back hit-o-meter is popping up every few seconds (28...29...30 in a row) as I adjust to the LAN environment. *My* skills have improved enough that I'm dominating a 75-person server. (Actually, I was running slightly ahead of a guy I played with constantly of my 'main server' back at home, who was sitting right next to me)
I've been playing City of Heroes lately. And frankly, I find it irritating that there's a lack of skill. If I play my tanker, I turn on my fiery aura, walk up to something, and spam my axe attack. Sure, in a big group taking on purples there's a little bit of strategic decision making, but it's obvious there's a pretty solid "ceiling" on where you can go with your own skill... and your own skill applies ~0 to your early progress, where the few powers you have available makes any decision making moot.
CoH without a respec suffers additionally -- since if you learn from your mistakes building, you're currently forced to go through the grind again with a new build if you think it's better... that should be over come "Sep/Oct" when the 2nd update pack will introduce a respec, but still.
If you played Q3, you may have run across a pro. Despite my LAN domination at Qcon, I wasn't one, and didn't nearly have the skills...yet. And it was the coolest thing. These guys had the aim, but they had the skills to make the most of it with other things like movement and strategy to gain the upperhand against you. That's how my games against pros typically went -- start off even, we each get some power ups. Maybe I get a frag or two early, but before long, I show up a second too late to grab some key item, and that's it... I never score again, and I'm ground into the dust. But you knew when you went up against these guys that they were better. They outplayed you.
In City of Heroes, when some L50 flies along, it's clear he has a lot more time on his hands than you do... especially when you're me, without 10 hrs a day to play, and you're crushing the xp/hr rates that people report on the forums... and it's *still* "taking forever".
Someone needs to come up with something that has the fun eye candy of CoH, but adds "player skill" to the "character skill". I'm not saying make Q3 into an MMORPG... why not just play Q3? But make player skill ACTUALLY count. Make attacks more powerful as you level up, but force players to actually AIM.
It's going to come out sooner or later. And you know what? People aren't going to stop playing it. It's not going to get boring. Because when you stop and think: hell, it's been 3 hours and I've only got half a level?... you're going to realize your aim is improving. And you're going to smile and press on. (And it will make PvP a lot more interesting)
This is why you don't buy big ticket items over the net with anything BUT a credit card. Credit cards are colossally tilted towards the purchaser. I've been involved in businesses fighting scams the OTHER way around (false buyers who claim they didn't order/receive/etc the merchandise). In a card-not-present transaction, all you have to do is say, "Mr. Credit Card Company, I didn't get what I bought. Please do a chargeback." and you will have your money back. The onus is on the seller to prove EVERYTHING and most cc companies will even refund any interest you paid.
I'd insist on a buyer who can ship within 10 days. You want a tracking number within 48 hours of your card being charged, or it's chargeback time. Then you want to inspect the goods when they arrive to make sure there's actually a LAPTOP in all that styrofoam... or it's chargeback time.
PayPal isn't BAD, but if you end up with someone who is connected via bank account and closes the account and empties the paypal account after taking your money, PayPal will not refund it. That's not the case with the credit card company - if they can't recover the funds, they will eat it.
For me, one of the best things about working in PHP is the online documentation. We've got:
(1) Thorough, beautifully organized, accurate documentation with minimal but effective examples.
(2) Fast searching. php.net/[searchterm] - it doesn't get much easier to look up a function, short of having the docs built into the IDE (Zend)
(3) User comments. I've contributed a few comments myself when I've run into sticky issues and then realized what was going on. And more than a few times, I've found little code snippets attached to the relevent functions that are good ways to use them. PHP and ASP, in my mind, are both tools for RAPID development and deployment. PHP is good at rapid; very good. The docs are a major reason. They make familiarizing with something like a new extension library very easy.
Script kiddies don't need to know why symmetrical encryption is faster... they just need to know how to subscribe to Bugraq.
Only if you consider managing myself to be management. ;) I've been self employed since the end of 2001, and I sort of enjoy going to the mirror when I need the boss.
I spent 5 years working as a network security architect at Exodus Communications, in the heydey before they grew themselves into bankruptcy. I had the pleasure of getting my own boss hired twice.
The first time, when there were problems with one manager, I proposed that my department (network security) be managed by the guy who ran NetEng, who was a friend and an all around great guy. I just said: who has a light-handed management style, who has the credibility to back me if management is thinking of doing something stupid, and can be a technical resource?
I used those same criteria to select my next boss. I was given only two candidates for a Directory of Network Security position. One was a fairly laid back, older gentlemen with an easygoing attitude, some technical aptitude (although he couldn't do the engineering work, but he had clearly done things in the arena in the past), and a clear idea of challenges we faced. The other candidate was ex-law enforcement, and his answer to most technical questions was, "I like to surround myself with good people so I have resources to tap for questions like that". He was stiff, formal, and projected a great deal of confidence... that didn't seem justified. He showed competence only with physical security issues (cameras, guards, etc), which was part of the job but not the important part to me (since I only did the network side).
The first guy had *real world* experience. He'd founded and flopped a security company that sold an evaluated hardened multi-level secure firewall... one that cost in the 6 figures to get and get installed and was generally only bought by a few governments.
I pulled heavily for the first guy, and he was the best boss I've had -- the best I can imagine. He was respectful, tried to shield us from management making illogical or impossible demands, and after several years, quit the company rather than allow bad management to wreck our group. (well, they still wrecked us, but he left rather than be party to it)
Based on this experience, I'd recommend you look for:
* Someone who was once technical. No matter that they aren't, but they should show the sort of aptitude and experience that indicates they did what you do or something equivalent
* Someone who is laid back and 'real'. If they say anything about Moving Your Cheese, about management synergy, about "marketing the group", about "having a first-rate team" or other management-isms that you cringe to hear, then RUN don't walk from that candidate.
* Someone who is not afraid of their management. One reason I liked our boss was he was on the tail end of his career -- he was in his 50s, and instead of being desperately clingy, he was ready to take a bullet for the team. He never really had to; he was so well thought of that even when they said our team was being taken from him because he wouldn't budge, they offered him another job (which goes to show how stalwart he was; he quit just as a disincentive for them to go through with it). Maybe he was just a strong person and it had nothing to do with age.
* Someone you actually get along with. 50% or more of an interview is checking that a candidate fits the corporate culture. Having a manager who buys into your group's culture is key; this guy never batted an eye when we stuck a couch and a playstation in one room for chill out breaks.
Good luck.