There is no such thing as gravity, only Intelligent Falling, whereby Angels grab your ankles and pull you back down to the ground.
Don't put lies in peoples heads. Everyone knows gravity is "created" by the FSM holding us down with his noodley appendages. Thanks FSM!
I agree. Don't leave it out. Just discuss it in the same neutral, contextual manner as you would the Roman or Mayan polytheism, the Ottoman's practice of Islam, the shamanism of indigenous Brazilian tribes, King Ashoka's Buddhism and the multiple conflicting religions of the Punjab region of India.
It's the promotion of one religion over another in a taxpayer supported forum that's the problem, not information itself.
To be fair, it sounds like he talked his (Well Underage?) niece into being an honest person. Frankly with all the illegal downloading that kids do these days I think this is actually quite an accomplishment in itself. Maybe he is around his brother/sisters house several times a week. Doubtful. In this case, he would have had to teach his niece about backups, the importance of backups, and hoped she would go through the hassle anytime she spent some money on music. She is already (in her mind) being inconvienced by paying for music that her friends get for free. Pushing her to go through extra hoops isn't going to encourage her any more.
After all, Limewire will allow you to "recover" your songs if something goes wrong. Why pay money if you get LESS service than stealing the music? Besides, isn't "Cloud" computing the new fad? Your data, backed up and safe on a huge corporation's servers instead of your crappy home computer? The music store has the bytes. She paid for the bytes. It costs them nearly nothing to replace the bytes. What is the problem? Seriously? If I were in headkase's shoes I'd tell my niece "Well, you just learned how the world really works. It sucks. Everyone will fuck you as often and as hard as possible. Sorry you have to become jaded at this age, but you might as well steal as honesty isn't rewarded.
At the end of the day, Steam is the same thing as the Xbox 360 or PS3, from a business perspective at least.
Consoles are sold at a loss with the belief that game royalties, DLC, subscriptions, etc. will make up for hardware costs and then some. The hardware is just a gateway for a locked-down platform where the proprietor gets a cut of every transaction made over the platform.
Valve completely sidestepped the hardware and retail floorspace aspect of the traditional console sales model and delivered a platform straight to users' computers. Like Microsoft and Sony, Valve makes money from every game and DLC pack sold over their service, only Valve didn't have to sink billion of dollars into manufacturing and marketing an entire console to do it. Valve boiled away all of the extraneous stuff and focused on where the money's actually made.
Microsoft and Sony undoubtedly bring in more revenue from their respective videogame divisions, but Steam must have a staggering return-on-investment given that it cost virtually nothing to create.
"Hardcore" videogame consoles only exist because there are a few megacorps out there with enough capital to sink into making them. Given the enormous costs of creating the PS3 and Xbox, it strikes me as a horribly inefficient way of making money. Does anyone know if the PS3 and Xbox divisions are net winners for their respective companies yet?
Now w/ the recent price cut on the ps3 slim Sony is knowingly losing money on the ps3. The ps3 is selling better, and will probably continue to sell well assuming it makes another price cut, and the ps3 continues to release great software.
The Wii however is seeing a decline in sales, and it's not surprising. It's pretty much hit full saturation, and w/out re-releasing a new variation of the console Wii sales will continue to drop.
Lead-free solder, of course!
Though to be fair, that race course was a mixture of twists, turns and hills
So what? You say that like they SHOULDN'T be required to handle it. Who wants a car that can't handle turns or climb hills?
TFS is comparing the performance of Roadsters in different races. While this Roadster set a new record, the course that it set the record is sufficiently different from the course where the previous record was set. Hence the "to be fair" comment: the earlier course "was a mixture of twists, turns and hills", so you can't really compare the two records as an apple-to-apple comparison.
This is in South Carolina. "Good ol' boy" corrupted politics are to blame here rather than Mafia.
The Original DOOM and Wolfenstein had only a handful of guys making them. Seeing as how software development tools are far less primitive than they were twenty years ago when these games came out, I don't understand how they can spend millions developing today's games. Except for the graphics I don't see any difference in today's games, except that they just aren't as fun.
If you don't like today's games, then why did you just write about a page on it? While I will admit that badly run publishers can kill great games by under budgeting or pushing the game out the door too soon, well-run publishers produce a lot of great games that people find to be fun. If you're not having fun anymore then I'm terribly sorry to hear that, but video games today have a larger audience than ever; do you honestly think people are buying these games out of charity to the companies? They're buying them because they are having fun with them; this isn't just due to the developers but also due to the publishers.
In a way the publisher being a parent is a fairly decent analogy, just not quite right; the publisher wants you to do well so that they can benefit. I'd say it's more equivalent to the relationship between a manager and another employee; good managers want you to do well so they can benefit as well to make them look good and get the work done. Much like a manager, a publisher that doesn't put any restraint on a developer and just lets them do whatever they please they put out crap like Too Human, if they put too much restraint on a developer they get an underfunded wreck of a game. Some developers already have the proper focus to create something great others don't just like human beings; good managers are there to help their employees just like good publishers. When publishers just let developers create in a "free" environment we've generally gotten shitty games; Too Human, that X-Box game series that died after the first game came out (can't remember the name of it off the top of my head), Daikatana and others are examples of what happens when developers don't have proper focus and are basically just given money.
As to what all the money goes to in development, an awful lot of it goes to paying employees; anyone who hasn't been sleeping under a rock for the past two decades or so knows that most development teams now encompass teams of dozens of highly talented people. The increase of personnel has largely been due to the fact that computer programming has grown even more complex (note that computer software has seen a similar increase) and that most games today have more content in them. More people creating means you need more office space and generally have more overhead etc etc. Finally, marketing has also become more necessary (though the costs have mostly stayed the same compared to inflation) and those fancy new tools for development cost money to make too.
If you really don't like publishers just put your money where your mouth is (and maybe you already have, given that you claim you don't play new games because they aren't as fun) and don't buy any games put out by a publisher. Or if (as you may have just realized) most games you can play today have a publisher, then don't buy from Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Sega, Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft as those are the biggest publishers in America right now. But those of you reading this aren't going to do that, are you? You'll bitch about publishers whenever they nix a game you think you may have liked or drop a series you like, but ultimately you'll still go out and buy the best games out there. For all the supposed evil of publishers, they're funding, shipping and advertising most (if not all of) your favorite games and game series; bitch whine and moan as much as you like but in capitalism your vote is your money and an awful lot of people are voting "yes" for publishers.
Sun's MySQL page states ( http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.4.html ) that it is licensed under GPL and refers you to the following URL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Which clearly states it can be licensed using any newer version of GPL by anyone who wants to do so.
I'm sorry, you were claiming something about what RMS was stating? I lost track after realizing you had no idea how it was licensed.
I must admit, I'm not very knowledgeable on the editorial process of
./
Don't worry, the editors don't either.
I guess I'm too stupid to use GPL software.
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
