Kodak is far from the crappiest out there. Polaroid is definitely worse, and I would probably take a Kodak digital over many Fujifilm or Olympus cameras as well; the first just makes horrid devices, while the latter have pretty poor value (ie. higher prices than justified by the quality). Kodak's greatest sin, in my opinion, is an abundance of gimmick features that mainly appeal to a demographic who ultimately tend to prefer maximum simplicity.
The only news site I visit with consistently higher-quality user posts is The Economist's. There are one or two others that are often comparable, but the quality here is really quite high. Considering that this is the only site I place in that tier that lacks aggressive professional moderation empowered to delete posts (and routinely doing so), that is an extremely impressive feat.
BP could certainly try to recover the funds from ARCO, but since they acquired ARCO's assets and turned them into BP's assets, it would be a pretty pointless exercise.
If you live near any colleges or universities, there is a decent chance that a gaming club exists. Often they are lumped together with the sci-fi/fantasy club, anime club, or various other "nerd" clubs. Depending on the school, your age/gender and the specific group's dynamic, it may be more or less difficult to get into the social circle. I actually do most of my gaming with a club at a nearby women's college, despite the fact that I am (slightly) older than a typical college student, never attended the college, and never can or will attend (being male and all). All of the games they run/sponsor are open to the general public, advertised on their publicly available website, and have online forums: in theory, anyone could find them, if they were so inclined.
EA is an American company. The US currently does not allow exports of most things to Iran, including software, and doing so may qualify as a capital offense (treason). Iranian residents were unlikely to purchase BF3 regardless of how the Iranian gov't decided.
I disagree vehemently that tabletop RPGs are dead.
I currently play in 5 tabletops (3 of which are supposedly LARPs, but play more like traditional ttRPGs with a large number of players and pvp action), GMing another, and I am in the process of writing a system and content for a high fantasy tabletop game. I realize it isn't a tremendously popular activity (though I regularly game with about 30 individuals and know of many gamers in my locale with whom I do not play), but it never really was all that popular.
I've even seen something of a resurgence in the activity, as MMO gamers branch out from behind their keyboards to engage in a more social and flexible experience with drastically fewer limitations on what they can do.
I seem to recall another social networking site that started out as invite only and had very exclusive policies regarding who could join. I seem to recall the name was something like "facebook".
It just means they can't sell music from those labels. If they are able to do decently well on sales in spite of this, it proves that customers are more interested in their distribution outlet than they are in the labels' music. That would be a pretty compelling reason for any labels not already on board to sign up sooner rather than later.
For most musicians, it ends up working out that they can either make more money on fewer sales by going indie, or make less money on VASTLY greater sales on a major. Those with little talent, lacking the ability to write their own songs and more interested in fame than fortune may be better served with the latter. Typically, the music I enjoy does better with the former.
I suspect that with the death of Pope Steve it will slowly work itself out of the pro-Apple mentality, though certainly that event brought out all of the iFans for one last internet-wide hurrah.
Honestly? Yes. Most apps are a steaming pile of crap. If they can't sell more than 143 copies, then they are also an unsuccessful pile of steaming crap. I suppose that it is possible a really great app just won't sell, but I have trouble believing that is some sort of epidemic... if anything the epidemic is the number of really crappy apps that sell just fine and have inexplicably high ratings due to users being twats.
I think you're missing some orders of magnitude... 18000 copies of a $1 piece of software (rounding up for easier math), after the 30% cut and $99 license, brings home $12501. Way more than $1500, though I would agree it is not such a great living unto itself.
How many $1 apps do you think a person could write in a given year, though? Unless I am mistaken, it's still just the one $99 dev kit, and selling 50000 combined copies of a dozen small apps (one per month) seems entirely doable for a halfway competent programmer doing nothing else. That's still not huge money ($34901), but easily enough to modestly live on.
Because everyone is a company with 10 employees, not a student working on its free time, for example.
If such an individual retained 100% of their gross sales on 144 pieces of $.99 software, they likely would have made more money working part time at a fast food restaurant.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 1404 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 is a good chunk of the money, but likely a worthwhile investment.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 14004 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 was clearly a good idea to spend.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 140004 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 was barely worth taking as a tax writeoff.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 1400004 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 might as well be monopoly money.
The post you started bitching about was in response to somebody claiming that the $99 developer fee *SPECIFICALLY* made it nearly impossible to turn a profit, and pointed out that an app need only sell ~144 copies to recoup that fee *SPECIFICALLY* in order to cast doubt on the original claim.
Your insistence that development costs are in any way relevant to the specific argument made is largely inane.
On a semi-related note, if this exchange is typical of your posts, I suspect that your "mod-stalker" is, in fact, a delusion you indulge in to conceal the terrifying notion that you're just being modded down on your own (de)merits.
"Sure you can blame the humans since they where told they should not eat from the tree, but the fact is that god knew what would happen, and just spun the events in a way that he could push the blame on humans. "
Oh? I have no proof that behaving like an amoral dickbag will not lead to a great or personal satisfaction and objective success, indeed I see plenty of evidence that suggests it might do precisely that... do you suggest I drop my faith that being at least a marginally decent human being possessing some semblance of respect and concern for the well-being and rights of others is a superior way to live my life? That there is nothing noble about basic human compassion?
Define "false". Proving that the Bible (or any core religious text) is not an accurate description of the material events of history, regardless of the relative ease or difficulty of doing so, is largely irrelevant... the purpose is not to be a primary source of historical record or scientific theory. Treating it as either is patently fallacious.
According to that article, the four most valuable football clubs are Manchester United, Real Madrid, Arsenal and Bayern Munich, with respective valuations of $1.86B, $1.45B, $1.19B and $1.05B. There are 32 NFL teams, with an average value of $1.02B each.
For a sport played and watched almost exclusively in 1 country (I'm not counting Canada because they play by different rules... and also because they don't seem so into the sport anyway) that's a pretty strong comparison.
If you are paying to subsidize the cost of your phone, but purchased the phone at an unsubsidized price, then where is that money going?
I've sold cell phones, and I know several people who have made careers out of it. I am not aware of any provider in the US that will charge a lower monthly rate to customers who own their phones outright. Furthermore, due to the way in which salespeople are compensated in that in industry, I am not aware of anyone who would be eager to advertise, market, recommend, process or even acknowledge the existence of such a program.
Slashdot Mirror
Kodak is far from the crappiest out there. Polaroid is definitely worse, and I would probably take a Kodak digital over many Fujifilm or Olympus cameras as well; the first just makes horrid devices, while the latter have pretty poor value (ie. higher prices than justified by the quality). Kodak's greatest sin, in my opinion, is an abundance of gimmick features that mainly appeal to a demographic who ultimately tend to prefer maximum simplicity.
The only news site I visit with consistently higher-quality user posts is The Economist's. There are one or two others that are often comparable, but the quality here is really quite high. Considering that this is the only site I place in that tier that lacks aggressive professional moderation empowered to delete posts (and routinely doing so), that is an extremely impressive feat.
BP could certainly try to recover the funds from ARCO, but since they acquired ARCO's assets and turned them into BP's assets, it would be a pretty pointless exercise.
If you live near any colleges or universities, there is a decent chance that a gaming club exists. Often they are lumped together with the sci-fi/fantasy club, anime club, or various other "nerd" clubs. Depending on the school, your age/gender and the specific group's dynamic, it may be more or less difficult to get into the social circle. I actually do most of my gaming with a club at a nearby women's college, despite the fact that I am (slightly) older than a typical college student, never attended the college, and never can or will attend (being male and all). All of the games they run/sponsor are open to the general public, advertised on their publicly available website, and have online forums: in theory, anyone could find them, if they were so inclined.
EA is an American company. The US currently does not allow exports of most things to Iran, including software, and doing so may qualify as a capital offense (treason). Iranian residents were unlikely to purchase BF3 regardless of how the Iranian gov't decided.
I disagree vehemently that tabletop RPGs are dead.
I currently play in 5 tabletops (3 of which are supposedly LARPs, but play more like traditional ttRPGs with a large number of players and pvp action), GMing another, and I am in the process of writing a system and content for a high fantasy tabletop game. I realize it isn't a tremendously popular activity (though I regularly game with about 30 individuals and know of many gamers in my locale with whom I do not play), but it never really was all that popular.
I've even seen something of a resurgence in the activity, as MMO gamers branch out from behind their keyboards to engage in a more social and flexible experience with drastically fewer limitations on what they can do.
Have you seen the current Republican field? I wouldn't hold your breath, though the major cell carriers certainly should.
Alltel was a fairly small regional carrier. T-Mobile is the fourth largest carrier, and has full national coverage.
Frankly, if the merger were between Sprint and T-Mobile, it would be more likely to go through.
I seem to recall another social networking site that started out as invite only and had very exclusive policies regarding who could join. I seem to recall the name was something like "facebook".
It just means they can't sell music from those labels. If they are able to do decently well on sales in spite of this, it proves that customers are more interested in their distribution outlet than they are in the labels' music. That would be a pretty compelling reason for any labels not already on board to sign up sooner rather than later.
So no, not really.
Many of them can't.
For most musicians, it ends up working out that they can either make more money on fewer sales by going indie, or make less money on VASTLY greater sales on a major. Those with little talent, lacking the ability to write their own songs and more interested in fame than fortune may be better served with the latter. Typically, the music I enjoy does better with the former.
That started well before either of those events.
I suspect that with the death of Pope Steve it will slowly work itself out of the pro-Apple mentality, though certainly that event brought out all of the iFans for one last internet-wide hurrah.
Honestly? Yes. Most apps are a steaming pile of crap. If they can't sell more than 143 copies, then they are also an unsuccessful pile of steaming crap. I suppose that it is possible a really great app just won't sell, but I have trouble believing that is some sort of epidemic... if anything the epidemic is the number of really crappy apps that sell just fine and have inexplicably high ratings due to users being twats.
So because of your angst and lack of confidence, Apple is mean because they charge $99 to have apps in their market?
I don't think using movie theaters as your basis for a Free Market is exactly the best idea...
I think you're missing some orders of magnitude... 18000 copies of a $1 piece of software (rounding up for easier math), after the 30% cut and $99 license, brings home $12501. Way more than $1500, though I would agree it is not such a great living unto itself.
How many $1 apps do you think a person could write in a given year, though? Unless I am mistaken, it's still just the one $99 dev kit, and selling 50000 combined copies of a dozen small apps (one per month) seems entirely doable for a halfway competent programmer doing nothing else. That's still not huge money ($34901), but easily enough to modestly live on.
Because everyone is a company with 10 employees, not a student working on its free time, for example.
If such an individual retained 100% of their gross sales on 144 pieces of $.99 software, they likely would have made more money working part time at a fast food restaurant.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 1404 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 is a good chunk of the money, but likely a worthwhile investment.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 14004 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 was clearly a good idea to spend.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 140004 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 was barely worth taking as a tax writeoff.
If such an individual retained 70% less $99 of their gross sales on 1400004 pieces of $.99 software, the $99 might as well be monopoly money.
You see where this is headed?
The post you started bitching about was in response to somebody claiming that the $99 developer fee *SPECIFICALLY* made it nearly impossible to turn a profit, and pointed out that an app need only sell ~144 copies to recoup that fee *SPECIFICALLY* in order to cast doubt on the original claim.
Your insistence that development costs are in any way relevant to the specific argument made is largely inane.
On a semi-related note, if this exchange is typical of your posts, I suspect that your "mod-stalker" is, in fact, a delusion you indulge in to conceal the terrifying notion that you're just being modded down on your own (de)merits.
No love for Joseph Smith?
"Sure you can blame the humans since they where told they should not eat from the tree, but the fact is that god knew what would happen, and just spun the events in a way that he could push the blame on humans. "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQhkzYVlLl8
Oh? I have no proof that behaving like an amoral dickbag will not lead to a great or personal satisfaction and objective success, indeed I see plenty of evidence that suggests it might do precisely that... do you suggest I drop my faith that being at least a marginally decent human being possessing some semblance of respect and concern for the well-being and rights of others is a superior way to live my life? That there is nothing noble about basic human compassion?
Define "false". Proving that the Bible (or any core religious text) is not an accurate description of the material events of history, regardless of the relative ease or difficulty of doing so, is largely irrelevant... the purpose is not to be a primary source of historical record or scientific theory. Treating it as either is patently fallacious.
"Windows 7 really isn't that different from Windows 95 (except for the kernel and architecture"
How much more different could it possibly be?
According to that article, the four most valuable football clubs are Manchester United, Real Madrid, Arsenal and Bayern Munich, with respective valuations of $1.86B, $1.45B, $1.19B and $1.05B. There are 32 NFL teams, with an average value of $1.02B each.
For a sport played and watched almost exclusively in 1 country (I'm not counting Canada because they play by different rules... and also because they don't seem so into the sport anyway) that's a pretty strong comparison.
If you are paying to subsidize the cost of your phone, but purchased the phone at an unsubsidized price, then where is that money going?
I've sold cell phones, and I know several people who have made careers out of it. I am not aware of any provider in the US that will charge a lower monthly rate to customers who own their phones outright. Furthermore, due to the way in which salespeople are compensated in that in industry, I am not aware of anyone who would be eager to advertise, market, recommend, process or even acknowledge the existence of such a program.