They are losing customers if they don't keep making advances to try to prevent theft. Ignore the pirates. The pirates are not your "customers". They should have NO say in how you develop your game and you should not waste your time targeting your game to the interests of would-be pirates.
If you can net $10 per copy sold, and 30 million people play your game, but only 10% will actually pay for it, you put your game budget somewhere under $30 million, not $300 million. To make a game for $300 million and then bake in onerous anti-piracy measures to get the other 90% to pay is just dumb. (hint: you won't be able to get them to pay no matter what)
True, but my point is that with the law of conservation of energy, we know that this electricity can't be "free". Something's got to be paying for it.
Right now, the energy extracted might be a miniscule fraction of the total thernal/wind energy available. But I can't help but wonder what it would do if we start powering a sizeable chunk of our planet with wind.
You'd think that net-neutrality is exactly the thing that the MPAA would want. As a content creator, you'd want to be able distribute your content over the internet without paying extortion fees to the ISP monopolies.
... but then again, maybe paying extortion fees is standard practice for the MPAA.
You'd think NASA would deploy some sort of space tractor up in orbit to move things around in cases such as this. It would also provide good practice, should we need to move a large asteroid out of our way some day....I wonder how much fuel such a tractor would consume.
I've always assumed that "Games For Windows" was a lock-in strategy to prevent people from jumping ship to Linux or OS X. How many people do you know would like to switch over to Linux but don't because they then couldn't easily play their games? What if nobody played "serious" games on PCs anymore? Microsoft would lose one of their last remaining roadblocks.
It is becoming quite irritating for me whenever "scientists" trot out an instance of natural selection as proof of evolution. To be clear, there is absolutely no controversy over the concept of the survival of the fittest. Every rational being accepts that concept, even those who ascribe to the most conservative religions. Confusing natural selection with evolution does nothing but confuse the argument.
Please, the next time someone wishes to prove evolution, show that a series of random genetic mutations in a complex organism creates multiple instances of a new, viable living species that is no longer able to interbreed with the original species. Don't show how one variation of a species survives better than a different variation. That proves nothing.
"Israeli companies, spies, and gangsters have hacked CALEA for fun and profit, as have the Russians and probably others, too. They have used our own system of electronic wiretaps to wiretap US, because you see that's the problem: CALEA works for anyone who knows how to run it."
Based on numerous recommendations, I bought a video iPod for my MP3 player, since it was supposed to be greatest thing since, well, the Macintosh. The first impression that I had was that the user interface was terrible! (Actually, my first impression was annoyance at the fact that I had to use iTunes to update it, but that's a different topic.) It is impossible to use the thing at all without directly looking at it. Since I only listen to it while in the car, I just figured I was in the minority and that everyone else thinks it is super keen. Here are my suggestions to improve it:
Use a lever button on the side to control volume, just like every cell phone on the planet does. Twirling your finger clockwise or counter-clockwise around the clickwheel requires too much fine-motor coordination. My two-year-old son does not have the motor skills to [deliberately] change the volume on my iPod, but he has no problem changing the volume on a cell phone. Again, I have to look at it just to change the volume. Fortunately, I can change the volume in my car via the car radio, which happens to have nice tactile buttons that can be operated without looking.
To navigate menus, use a click wheel on the side that actually clicks, like the scrollwheel on every [non-Apple] mouse. I can't hear the faint audible click with road noise, but I could certainly feel the click of a mouse scrollwheel. With a proper click wheel, I could easily navigate the menus without looking since I know that podcasts are one click down on the main menu and that This Week in Tech is four clicks down in the podcast menu. Again, twirling your finger in circles requires too much fine-motor coordination.
Put some sort of raised tactile nubbies on the pause and skip buttons. I can't even pause the darned thing without looking at it!
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If you can net $10 per copy sold, and 30 million people play your game, but only 10% will actually pay for it, you put your game budget somewhere under $30 million, not $300 million. To make a game for $300 million and then bake in onerous anti-piracy measures to get the other 90% to pay is just dumb. (hint: you won't be able to get them to pay no matter what)
I tell you, there's no greater reward for scientific achievement than to be put on the cover of Wired.
...and in related news, Mozart still laments having never made the cover of Rolling Stone.
True, but my point is that with the law of conservation of energy, we know that this electricity can't be "free". Something's got to be paying for it.
Right now, the energy extracted might be a miniscule fraction of the total thernal/wind energy available. But I can't help but wonder what it would do if we start powering a sizeable chunk of our planet with wind.
I can't help but wonder how much of an affect we will have on climate change once we start sapping energy from the wind currents on a massive scale.
You'd think NASA would deploy some sort of space tractor up in orbit to move things around in cases such as this. It would also provide good practice, should we need to move a large asteroid out of our way some day. ...I wonder how much fuel such a tractor would consume.
I've always assumed that "Games For Windows" was a lock-in strategy to prevent people from jumping ship to Linux or OS X. How many people do you know would like to switch over to Linux but don't because they then couldn't easily play their games? What if nobody played "serious" games on PCs anymore? Microsoft would lose one of their last remaining roadblocks.
It is becoming quite irritating for me whenever "scientists" trot out an instance of natural selection as proof of evolution. To be clear, there is absolutely no controversy over the concept of the survival of the fittest. Every rational being accepts that concept, even those who ascribe to the most conservative religions. Confusing natural selection with evolution does nothing but confuse the argument.
Please, the next time someone wishes to prove evolution, show that a series of random genetic mutations in a complex organism creates multiple instances of a new, viable living species that is no longer able to interbreed with the original species. Don't show how one variation of a species survives better than a different variation. That proves nothing.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030710