You know, every time this comes up, ISPs talking about charging content providers for use of bandwidth, I wonder what would happen if the content providers turned it around, and start talking about charging ISPs for delivering *their* content.

How much would Google suffer if Comcast users can't reach their servers anymore?
How much would Comcast suffer if their users can't reach Google anymore?

Not even talking about regulation, but this would seem like a dangerous game for all involved.

Perhaps on a related note, I was thinking that while Linus has obviously scaled vertically to his full extent, there is still plenty of room for him to scale horizontally.

See you all on the next hype.

Signing off.

ack, oh how we get old.

Hehe, I remember the first reviews of EGA cards, 'PC graphics now look as good as those on Amiga and MSX!'.

I suspect the next step is to try to get device makers not to support any format that does not have MPEG 7. And the one after that to prohibit any that do not, if that's still necessary.

How many physical dvd players nowadays do not enforce region codes?

It seems the current patent system encourages leeches and parasitic behaviour, which sucks life out of creativity and innovation, and suck you dry for money and blood, even when you have success.

One would almost think this system is written by lawyers.

i think he is referring to another game that is like geometry wars, but less good. I don't know for sure, we don't get the indy games over here (loved both geometry wars games though)

I'm assuming that 50 there is a typo; most second-hand games i've seen in stores are about 10% cheaper, which for me has always been the reason not to buy them (for only 10% more i have a shiny new one).

Apart from that, I think the vast majority of the money received by people selling their old games goes straight into new ones, so if the publishers 'defeat' second-hand sale, people who usually sell their games won't have as much to spend on new ones. People who usually buy used games might buy a few more new ones now, but less than they would second-hand. So the only thing the publishers are really taking here is second-hand markup by stores. And while that is quite a bit of money, I'm not convinced that that amount is worth screwing your real customers over.

But then again, service to customers has been lost down the drain of shareholders for quite some time now. As customers, we're the meat being sold, not the other way around.

True, and in this case it's not even a chip, just a game card where you can insert a memory card, and run your own stuff.

I have one, and it only contains one game; nethack-ds. I fail to see how that would be illegal.

Then just see it as a 'service' for the people that do buy your game to not use digital restrictions. Those are your customers, not the ones downloading it. They probably wouldn't have bought it even if it was impossible to download anyway.

To quote a speaker I saw on this topic; "The Internet is for (.)corn"

There's casual and there's casual. If you want an arcade racer, sure your money is well wasted elsewhere. However if you want to have a more simulation-like experience on specific known tracks with cool cars, but are a casual gamer in the sense that you don't want to invest a few working weeks to unlock those, the original comment stands. I kind of have the same gripe with local multiplayer games (like on the wii) that make you unlock the multiplayer fun in singleplayer. Don't know how GT works in this sense (never played it), but if it does, that sucks for those kind of casual players. Sometimes there are unlock codes, but not always.

I have just calculated a digit that's much further. It's 7, and it's somewhere around the 8 trillionth decimal. Give or take a few.

that's not really a "growth" business plan.

My Prediction for 2010: First big public case of Social-Networking-App-Gone-Ponzi