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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Why Games Cost $60 -- A View of the Pie (crispygamer.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Crispy Gamer is running a very interesting article on why games cost $60. Many games start out at this retail price but why? Did the makers of The Beatles Rock Band game just happen upon $59.99 as did — by coincidence — the makers of Batman Arkham asylum? After all those two titles surely took different amounts of man hours to develop and result in different averages of entertainment time enjoyed by the consumer. They interview a director at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research who breaks down the pie as $12 to retailer, $5 to discounts/returns/retail marketing, $10 toward manufacturing costs and shipping. That leaves $30 to $35 in the hands of the publishers. Though lengthy, the article looks at three forces of economics on why game publishers continuously end up in lockstep for pricing: sensible greed, consumer stupidity or evil conspiracy. David Thomas collects several interesting quotes in this article from organization leaders to lawyers. When asked about the next step up to $70 or $80, Hal Halpin (president and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association) says, 'I'm not sure that we'll see a standard $70 price point at all. To my mind, emerging technologies, subscriptions and episodic and downloadable content should all enable price drops — increasing accessibility to a much wider audience. Free-to-play, ad-supported models, too, diversify the price landscape.' For those of you PC gamers that catch deals on Steam, you may be all too familiar with the change that Mr. Halpin is forecasting — will we see this on consoles?"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SPAM: How Could iPhone MMS Crash AT&T's Network?

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "AT&T has said it is already seeing 'record traffic during peak hours of the night' with just the users selected for testing and so it is 'very nervous' about the spike in traffic that it expects will occur when it launches MMS service for iPhones on Friday. Of course, setting records for MMS traffic isn't that great a feat considering that 'the service in question has been out for years on other handsets and hasn't exactly taken the mobile world by storm:'

In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.

However, the carrier's fears in one respect may have been justified, says ABI analyst Dan Shey: 'Interoperability between carriers has always been an issue, and that's why MMS usage hasn't really taken off.'"
Link to Original Source

Windows

Submission + - Ballmer: we screwed up Windows Mobile (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has blasted the company's own mobile operating system at the firm's Venture Capital Summit. One tweet from an attendee claims Ballmer said the company had "screwed up with Windows Mobile. Wishes they had already lauched WM7. They completely revamped the team". Another claims Ballmer said "we've pumped in some new talent. This will not happen again." It's not the first time Ballmer has attacked Windows Mobile, having publicly stated that version 6.5 was "not the full release we wanted"."
The Internet

Submission + - Music Artists Agree Softer Policy to Tackle Illega (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), which campaigns for the protection of performers' and musicians' rights, has appeared to u-turn on its opposition to an amended UK government (Digital Britain) proposal that would force UK broadband ISPs to disconnect customers who are suspected of illegal downloading. The change was passed following a 3-hour meeting in London last night, where the FAC voted in favour of support for the much criticised "three-strikes" (warn, warn and then cut-off) policy. In reality the FAC vote has redefined the "three-strikes" policy, with disconnection now being replaced by a bandwidth/speed limit on the customers service. That is a more sensible approach but perhaps they should have called it something different, instead of confusing all past material on the subject, where the third strike has traditionally meant disconnection. Doh.
Apple

Submission + - Apple releases full details of its carbon footprin (apple.com) 1

Submitted by
devjj
devjj writes: "Cult of Mac is reporting that "[Apple] is the first in the industry to provide full disclosure of its carbon footprint." Apple's web site has a new section entitled "Apple and the Environment," which includes some interesting figures, including the company's total carbon footprint: 10.2 million metric tons. Apple is unique in the industry by including the carbon output of its customers actually using their products. According to Apple, 53% of that 10.2 million metric ton number is due to actual product usage. Individual product reports are also available, with information including power consumption and the types of materials used in each product."
Entertainment

Submission + - Listen To The Moon (pinktentacle.com)

Submitted by
DynaSoar
DynaSoar writes: "From time to time we hear of someone taking some time series data such as radio astronomy or EEG recordings and transforming them into sound. But what we get to hear is just a static recording of the transform. At Moonbell http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/08/moonbell-lunar-music-generator/ you can listen to the surface of the moon dynamically transformed into music, under your control. "Moonbell is an automated music generator that plays musical scores based on lunar topographical data obtained by Japan's Kaguya (SELENE) explorer during its orbit around the moon from late 2007 to June 2009. Moonbell, which was developed in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has two playback modes: âoeOrbit Play" and âoeFree Scratch." In Orbit Play mode, Kaguya traverses the moon in a circular orbit and music is generated based on the topography below. In Free Scratch mode, you can use your mouse to chart a path across the moon's surface. To tweak the audio output, click the âoePreference" button on the bottom left of the screen. This opens the settings panel, where you can choose from 128 musical instruments for each track, change the playback speed, set the volume for each instrument, and more.""

Comment It WOULD be nice, would probably help most states. (Score 3, Insightful) 681

by Globally Mobile (#29510787) Attached to: Microsoft Tax Dodge At Issue In Washington State
The author says at the end...

2. I single out Microsoft because it's, by far, one of the biggest offenders, but I would like to see the uniform enforcement of state tax law to all corporations using out of state facilities to minimize tax payments.

I definitely agree. Would be great. But as someone stated above, you can't expect one company (in this case Microsoft) to be forced to follow a rule and then not force the rest of the companies. Well, I suppose you could, but in all fairness, should Washington, or any other state, be able to single out one offender, leaving others to get away with the same? Uniformality in this would be best.

Comment Re:"Little Brother" Doctorow, DCMA, then DHS? (Score 1) 507

by Globally Mobile (#29472111) Attached to: RIAA's Elementary School Copyright Curriculum
There is also a really great afterword part focused from a kids point of view complete with experiments, such as building a wifi antennae booster, and other such. Been a while sense I read through it. Another author that throws some of their stuff out there for free for people to read and or buy etc (CC license) is Charlie Stross. He has a bit of fun with the RIAA in Accelerando. He likens them to the oldschool mafioso. Literal leg-breakers.

Comment "Little Brother" Doctorow, DCMA, then DHS? (Score 1) 507

by Globally Mobile (#29468117) Attached to: RIAA's Elementary School Copyright Curriculum
Reminds me of a section in Chapter 13 of Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother. In chapter thirteen, or if you grep/search/seek out the phrase "Under what circumstances should the federal government be prepared to suspend the Bill of Rights?" Then you will see a classroom discussion about a little text that is released by the DHS, after things go ary, which eerily reminds me of this DCMA edu-mercial. The title of the educational material is called WHAT EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HOMELAND SECURITY. During the scene the boy & the teacher go back and forth about rights, and the constitution, etc.

Eeery. Orwell, Dick, & Brunner were all right on point. *shivers*
Security

Submission + - ISPs asked to cut off malware-infected PCs (itnews.com.au) 2

Submitted by
bennyboy64
bennyboy64 writes: "Australia's Internet Industry Association has put forward a new code of conduct that suggests ISPs contact, and in some cases disconnect, customers that have malware-infected computers.

"Once an ISP has detected a compromised computer or malicious activity on its network, it should to take action to address the problem. ISPs should therefore attempt to identify the end user whose computer has been compromised, and contact them to educate them about the problem," the new code states.

The code won't be mandatory but it's expected the ISP indutry will take it up if they are to work with the Australian Government in preventing the many botnets operating in Australia."
Google

Submission + - Google, Bing, Yahoo! - which is the best? (itwire.com)

Submitted by
davidmwilliams
davidmwilliams writes: "Not all search engines are created equal and while Google has been the undisputed king for some years, perhaps Bing or even long-time Yahoo! is worth a try. A Microsoft employee has produced a blind search tool to help you find out just which one delivers the goods."

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