tl,dr, so in points:

• price discrimination is proven to be able to both draw more people to an online game and increase the actual revenue, so it's worth a try;
• price discrimination doesn't necessarily mean any single person would be forced to pay more than they pay now;
• there are certainly issues with this (e.g., "how to measure fun"), because, let's face it, it's just a theory right now; but that doesn't mean this theory is pointless and shouldn't even be considered

Actually "loosers" will not be told they are such for exactly the reasons you state. However the incentive to make games more fun will bring in larger audience (because people play to have fun first and foremost). So you give some discounts to "fun to play with" players and you get this money back thanks to the increased revenue. You win, your customers win - this is how you do business.

But if you ignore his "one price for everyone is a bug" idea, which is fucking stupid.

Micropayments have already proven to be a good way to get price discrimination. For example, check out what happened to Dungeons&Dragons Online after it went free-to-play with ability to buy extra content or eye candy. By giving customers a lot of payment strategies to choose from they managed to get a huge revenue increase. Here's a first link I googled out for you: Going Free Boosts Turbine's DDO Revenues 500 Percent. This is reality, not theory.

Suddenly you've invented an elaborate system, which might make less profit, and the inventive structure might deter people from getting into these games because "well if I'm not good at it, I might end up paying more for other games I'm more interested in/better at".

You're bashing a perfectly reasonable theory for *your* inability to see it implemented. They must love you at brainstorming sessions. All of the points you mentioned can be worked around. For example, you can have a per-game rating that can never get below 0, so there would be no point in avoiding a game.

Check your own link, it's Matryoshka, not "Matrushka". :)

I have similar problems with mouse controls in some games. For example, in Fallout: New Vegas the mouse moves by several pixels no matter how little and how slowly you move it physically. Overall the mouse controls make it an extremely poor shooter when compared to many FPS games. Luckily the game has a lot of other things going for it, but if it was a pure shooter, I wouldn't play it for even 5 minutes.

Yes, Microsoft was only capable of making a concept:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digital-journal-exclusive-pictures-and-de/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/29/microsoft-confirms-kills-courier-in-one-fell-swoop/

There are plenty of games that are fun. It's not surprising, that there's a niche for games that are a sport.

Football, volleyball, tennis, etc. - all are both games and a sport. What's wrong with some computer games also being an eSport?

iPad Next Gen.


Sue me.

1) Depends on how many people you fire every day.
2) It's dangerous to believe everything your enemies tell you.

Could anyone explain this a bit more? Are there any possible problems or unexpected side effects from this? What are the Skype's motivations for doing so? Thanks.

Loaning a CD or DVD to a friend is not a violation of copyright. Copyright is the monopoly right to make copies which is reserved to the copyright owner.

Indeed. But a compilation is done by copying music from various sources and putting them on a new medium. Distributing music in this form is then a copyright violation, unless you also distribute all the sources you used (presumably legally owned by you).

NFC is usually deployed for small payments only. If your phone was stolen, someone spending a few dollars on a ticket is going to be the least of your worries. In fact, it might even help police catch the thief.

A bot can't keep a list of checked passwords, because it's impossible to tell whether the password failed because of the static part or the part which is changing with every attempt (the captcha). Therefore there's no guarantee that your bruteforce will succeed in a certain time, that is after a certain number of attempts.

Skype has beaten ICQ for me, because Skype does so much more: voice, video, etc. Facebook has beaten LiveJournal for me, because Facebook does so much more: faster/easier sharing of interesting links, photos, organizing events, etc. The same for CDs, VCRs, etc. And the same applies to Guild Wars 2 - it can beat World of Warcraft, if it manages to offer more.

I went back to school and now I'm in the medical field, hopefully they don't start giving visas out to doctors...

You should have chosen a law school. Since the US law system is quite unique to, well, US, there's a much lower chance to be replaced by a foreigner. Doctors, on the other hand, deal with human body, which is mostly the same for different countries.