Comment Re:What am I missing? (Score 1) 101
$38 mil is nothing for california
And according to TFA, that number is for the entire west coast, not just California.
$38 mil is nothing for california
And according to TFA, that number is for the entire west coast, not just California.
The Microsoft assets used are minimal?
Sorry, I thought the first sentence was enough as is. The art assets used are minimal (if any).
A game might not care much about the Windows UI, but many years of work went into making the Windows kernel and DirectX into what they are today. Those are not simple bits of code.
Sure - but to use them, you enter into license agreements with Microsoft. Those agreements place restrictions on your activities and you also have to pay them to get a full version of Visual Studio, etc. They are already taking some kind of a cut from you - the differences are in the specific business model implicit in those agreements.
I'm not sure how this fits into the larger argument, but
Well, I didn't write Mono either...
Regardless of which compiler/runtime you use, you are in some kind of licensing agreement with the vendor. You are already paying them somehow - the only differences after that point are the specific terms.
Anything using the
In the first point, I was referring mainly to art assets - a typical Windows desktop application or game uses very few or zero MS art assets.
While we're at it, you're also using a compiler and an IDE you probably had nothing to do with the creation of.
That was the second point - subject to license agreements and modulo the vendor business model, you have to pay for those things. In other words, the vendors are already taking some of your profits (or placing various restrictions on your potential for profit).
Many commentators here have written that they were upset mainly because of the specific terms - 30% for Valve, 45% for Bethsesda, 25% for developer - and not with the idea that Valve and Bethesda would take some cut.
Valve could have charged it's normal rate, and Bethsesda settled for favorable licensing, the implicit increased game longevity and publicity (both of which they already had), and maybe a modest financial cut. Leaving aside other aspects, such as the surprise introduction, it's likely that using the same model with different terms could have avoided the outcry.
Why shouldn't Microsoft take a 40% cut of Zenimax profits because Skyrim runs on Windows? Why shouldn't Intel take a 40% cut of Microsoft since Windows runs on their processors?
The difference is that most mods use significant art assets. With Windows programming, the Microsoft assets used are typically minimal. You are also not considering that these costs are passed on through the wholesale agreements these firms reach with one another.
what's pushing this is the management class's absolute loathing of skilled individuals. they demand that every worker be a replacable component and they simply don't care that that means loss of productivity through loss of experience, skill, and talent.
Related point: management never tries to maximize profits, only the ratio of profits to management effort.
you should eventually see the schools that cut corners get run out of business
It will be too late, because of a "Gresham's dynamic" in which the good schools will have been run out of business by the cost-cutting ones.
gas cars are getting really good milage.
Relative to what? A '98 Mercedes E-class gets 30 mpg on the highway, but that's still "good" for a small car in 2015? Meanwhile a diesel Fiat Panda had been getting 70+ mpg for like 20 years.
In Nazi Germany, people accepted totalitarian rule because of economic growth, low unemployment and resurgent nationalism. In China and USSR, there was growth, redistribution and nationalist fervor. Extraordinary police powers were viewed as costs worth accepting in light of the real progress that had occurred.
The idea of protecting everyone all of the time is often the "wedge" that is used to start the totalitarian states.
Can you name one where this was true? In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and China, political control and ideological purity were the motivation and the wedge.
You can have low taxes or good infrastructure but not both.
This would be true if we had a full employment economy with no output gap. (Or, alternatively, if we didn't have our own currency).
I have never heard of a requirement that bystanders interfere.
I accidentally conflated Good Samaritan laws with duty to rescue, and apparently misremembered New York as an example. Such laws do exist in several states however.
There are places where the Police are tasked with protecting everyone, they are technically called "Police States".
Police state is a term denoting government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police. There has never been such a state, which tasked its police with "protecting everyone."
See Good Samaritan law
What's funny about these is that many of them coexist with legal precedent establishing that the police have no duty to protect citizens. So in New York for example, cops have no requirement to interfere, but ordinary citizens can be guilty of a crime if they do not.
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.
