COMPLETELY made up. Nobody would consent to this for an hooker, even a mid/high-class one - which these ain't. Kink, dominatrix services, etc. are pretty easily available if you have cash to spend. Keep in mind that the very next article after this garbage on this site has a title that says, "You realize Pokémon is basically animal cruelty, right?". Dreamed up, 50 shades of gray, hipster feminist garbage.

Yeah, that's just it. If you're intent on doing programming work with or without the benefit of a degree, often even if you have a masters, you're a monkey they put in front a keyboard. One reliable, commited guy in one of the Slavic countries, in the Scandinavian peninsula or North Africa on contract for a project can often do the work that would take a team of a half dozen people in the US a year to complete at standard salary here, in half the time, for 25% of the cost and none of the lip.

You really need to have more expertise than "just" programming like an engineering or networking specialization as well, or you start looking lackluster in comparison to the guys with masters in Comp Sci and in Engineering fields that have years of experience, program well as a requirement for their past jobs... but are currently living with their family or out of their car.

With deregulation of business practices and increasing globalization, the coding part of Comp Sci alone isn't anywhere near the lucrative field it used to be.

I know that was your point. I understood what you were saying. And you called the OP and what he was saying stupid, when he was complaining not just about the decreasing quality of content and play/bug testing, but the current inability to hold publishers to a higher standard. He and I covered pretty succinctly how and why boycotting doesn't work.

And it's pretty clear you don't care, don't seem to think it's a problem or do anything about it, and take a "fuck all the stupid people" attitude. Whether you fall prey to hype and buy shoddy software or not doesn't make the industry, if the greater populace doesn't come to understand it's crap and do something about it, you're equally as screwed, buddy. You don't seem to care, which is more telling than just not understanding the problem.

That sir, makes *you* pretty mind-numbingly stupid. And if you have that attitude, do yourself and everyone around you a favor and get off your computer, go off into the wilderness far away from any trace of human civilization, and enjoy your own company blissfully distant from what you call "stupid people."

Depends on whether you're talking about IT/Business Computing, or Computer Science/coding...

...Because if you're talking Computer Science/coding, unless you've got a mighty strong background and specialization, and in the right part of the country...

...not only isn't it always a great field with good salary, the job'll often suck for what you get. There are still some jobs to be had in South and Central California, for example for $65k+ with a bachelors degree from a private or engineering school like Harvey Mudd, Stanford, or one of the Cal Tech/Poly schools... but frequently there's less jobs this side of the oceans, less pay and room for advancement, and the expectation that you'll frequently have to work full time and a half or more on projects on a regular basis.

I did, including your second reply. But you clearly didn't read mine, where I specifically addressed what he was saying about boycotting and lack of recourse.

I really don't think you get what he's saying.

Unlike for most other kinds of products and services, boycotting doesn't work well for games - people will complain and acknowledge how crap a game is to need patches and major bug fixes upon release, but will still buy the damn game saying, "It'll get fixed eventually." Or, they don't care to begin with. As he pointed out, it's a market that's largely fed by hype and advertising goading impulse buys. Value, and even cost of purchase isn't normally a concern at all for a large share of the gaming consumer market. Even if you mass boycott, developers will still make mass profits due to impulse buys and people... not caring. One example is the L4D2 boycott - so, SO many people still bought the game even with a substantial number of people in the official boycott group and of like mind outside of it. Even with many people in the PC gamer community understanding how flawed and botched the release and handling of L4D was. And at least half the people in the boycott still bought the game! Even if you somewhat successfully mass boycott, there's no guarantee the developer will fix the bugs, or do business differently. They don't care, because they don't *have* to.

You completely miss what he was saying about boycotts with games - not that he can't and won't choose not to buy bad games. He's saying it isn't effective because most people won't make that choice. We aren't talking about what choices just *you* make, but how the actions of a large group of people can change how these companies do business. I'd like to see how well just you choosing not to buy or play a game changes company policy. You give a good tirade about how you want to mod lorenzo down as stupid, when you didn't take the time or have the presence of mind to understand what he meant, or ask, instead going on a stupid rant.

There aren't many legal protections for the consumer of games for getting their money's worth, or regulations to hold developers to a minimum standard. The EULA details everything the End User can't do and the terms of the sale, but rarely if ever outlines any responsibilities the developer has to the End User if there are any problems (much less major problems) with the software. We can't exactly call the BBB on them and complain expecting something to happen, like we could with a retailer. We haven't been able to file a class action suit for games being unfinished or otherwise buggy pieces of shit. Enjoy your one man boycott - all of the points he makes are completely valid, that the power the End User has to impress upon the developer & publisher of games is extremely limited - it's bullshit, especially in light of the now common practice of releasing an unfinished game and fixing it later, if ever, and needs to change.

So, what exactly in what he said was stupid?

Agree with the sarcasm. Loss of revenue or decrease in sales =/= industry is dying.

And yes, BOTH M$ and Sony lost a lot of money in the format war, and the PS3 coming equipped with a BluRay drive certainly helped make the technology more common to consumers. But the BluRay technology was developed by a committee of electronics companies of which Sony was part, Sony putting a large financial stake in the propagation of BluRay. But BluRay won for two reasons. Because it's a superior technology to HD-DVD and always was from the start, except for price; and because many large studios such as Warner Brothers officially backed BluRay and sold their video releases in BluRay format only.

BluRay has a much, much higher maximum data storage capacity than does HD-DVD. It will be ideal for the future disposable data disc next in line in as were CDs and DVDs before it, as well as for increasingly complex and visually stunning games. It just cost a ton to produce at first, as most technologies using a new manufacturing process do. Typically, companies pioneering a new tech do a much better job of eating the initial investment and selling hardware, etc. at a loss to foster a new 'need' in the consumer market. This wasn't done with BluRay, and most of the development cost was passed onto consumers for the first few years. BluRay drives for PC and players for entertainment centers cost $1000 for the first few months after release, and have only slowly gone down in price over the years.

Once the cost of BluRay drives decreased to $650 and less with burnable media becoming cheaper, with the trend looking to continue and movie studios selling their major releases in Blu Ray format, the format war was over, won in favor of BluRay.

You shouldn't have been buying a $200 video card every year to begin with - it's completely unnecessary, as well as a waste of money.

Even today, a good Intel 3.2+ GHz P4 Extreme Edition with 2 GB of RAM and a $80-100 video card will run everything but games like Crysis and Supreme Commander on respectable graphics settings, if not high graphics settings - including L4D, WoW, Aion and such. A refurb desktop with Intel 3.6 GHz EE, 2 GB RAM, maybe a hard drive and no video card with 1 year warranty can be had for about $150.

A similar bare bones Dual Core system could run you $250ish. PCs are not expensive when you don't buy overpriced hardware, or make purchases that are mostly unnecessary to improve performance.

With both the PS 3 and especially the XBox 360, you still have driver/firmware problems, and have to download updates from PSN or XBox LIVE to fix them (e.g., you cannot play most video codecs on the XBox 360 without downloading a firmware patch. If you want to play most burned media from a PC and don't have a LIVE account, you're mostly screwed). You still have to download updates to your console to utilize expanded content for games (e.g., to play DLC for Fallout 3, at least for 360, you need to install a patch. Map packs for Halo, etc.). You may not have to deal with keys not working, but for what you gain for not having that, you lose tenfold in hardware issues/failures and restrictive online user agreements. Like being banned from XBox Live if your console is modded. Or unknowingly exploiting a glitch while playing online (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=17039).

Hardware failures, like all of the problems XBox 360s have had with overheating, failures/RROD, and permanently damaging game discs by etching the read surface when given the slightest poke while running. PS 3 hasn't been free of its share of hardware problems, with several hardware recalls over crashes/black screens the first week of release to similar issues about a year ago with the new firmware implementation. And unlike consoles, where your entire system is shot not if, but when you have an issue - PCs usually only have issues with specific applications or hardware, that does not cripple the entire system. And if the problems you have *do* cripple the system, it's almost always through a mistake of your own doing. Many older, but *new/unused* PC games can be had for $20 or less... the whole Civilization IV collection on Steam, for example... I don't buy that you're reselling your used games for the same price. But if it's true, then you live in a very different world than the rest of console gamers throughout the world. And new console games cost 1.5 to 2x the cost of most new PC games.

You may be satisfied with the current graphics level, and that's fine. But once the development cycle for the PS 3 or any other console ends in a couple of years, you need to buy a whole new box - instead of simply needing a new graphics card for a PC... and that's *if* you need to upgrade, instead of your card lasting another 2-3 years. And with the new current generation of consoles, and likely future generations to come: your price of admission is roughly equal, and often exceeds that of a PC. XBox 360 system (not the striped down "Core" package) cost $400 at launch. The PS 3 cost $499 for the 20 GB model, and $599 for the 60 GB model at launch, and was marketed as a tool to store and watch video, play music, and browse the internet... in other words, an overpriced, gimped PC. Future console releases are likely to cost as much, if not more at launch.

For roughly the past decade, a sturdy decent PC that would last for a good 4-5 years without needing a major overhaul never cost more than $500. 4-5 years being longer than the average 2-3 year life cycle of consoles. For the past 5ish years, a sturdy decent PC capable of playing any game you could want and last for a good 4-5 years+ without needing only a small upgrade here or there afterward should only cost $400. And if it to you 'everything seems to be released for consoles' you simply aren't fluent/aware of the PC game market, which has *always* had a higher volume of releases - if not all of them massively publicized - even if we only consider corporate releases and ignore mods, and ignore the plethora of free small games and browser apps. This is even more true commercially with interfaces such as the Steam engine making publication of inexpensive, Indy titles much more accessible.

You don't escape most of the problems PCs can have when you use consoles, they only change form & become the manufacturer's problem. And it makes sense, because it's all computer hardware we're talking about anyway, console hardware being a comparatively expensive and force-limited form of computer hardware. And you're in the same boat as die-hard Apple fans when you say it 'just works,' because you're paying much more for inferior or similar hardware as a PC, with less functionality and a simplified user interface that appeals to you, because you can't be bothered to learn to use your tools. And it only works until the some major issue or update is needed, and needs to be sent back to the dealer since you don't have the capability in the interface to fix the problem yourself.

To be blunt and maybe oversimplify it, consoles are over-priced, dumbed down computers. And they're fine if you want them for what they're advertised for, or for want of having to deal with having to do more than press a few buttons on a control. If that's what you want - not to deal with complexity - say so. Don't tout consoles as superior or a better buy because of the... basically, lack of options and application... because they're not, and you're wrong in doing so.

All this talk in this thread and others about "compatibility and driver issues," and "consoles just work" and the like are all lunacy.

If your PC stops running the games you buy now more than two years from now, you're seriously doing something wrong with your PC! And if you're referring to playing new games on a 2 year+ old system, you're doing something even more wrong - buying old parts for twice as much or more as they're worth in belief they're modern. In some of Apple's desktops, this is often enough the case. :rolls eyes:

If you looked over the specs for parts, and spent a good half hour planning out your decision (probably something everyone should do when making a purchase of a few hundred dollars or more) you wouldn't get these issues. Hardware/software incompatibilities happen with upgrades, but they're usually infrequent, and even more frequently easy to fix and easy to avoid beforehand with just a little planning.

The ability to 'just buy the game...and get playing...' exists for PCs as well. Building your own system is *simple* and unless you make a huge mistake with different hardware brands being incompatible or your own users settings in your software and OS, you won't have the '...various hardware and software compatibility issues to worry about.' You are equally able to buy a game, install it and 'just play it.' With the advent of direct download services and delivery clients such as Steam, you can click several times and get to playing.

A PC is greatly more complex with more potential use than a console, and in kind has more options and settings to mess with. If you don't want or like to fiddle with that, that's fine! Nobody *should* ridicule you for feeling that way. But that's different than trying to justify the superiority of an functionally inferior product with a comparatively simplified User Interface because it requires less knowledge and effort to use. That's when you get a line of people arguing with you, like in this thread.

You're making a claim that an overall more expensive, less functional product with a shorter life cycle than an overall less expensive, exponentially more functional product with a comparatively longer lifespan is superior overall, because it doesn't require effort, learning and sometimes problem solving to learn to use. If you don't understand why that attitude would incite argument or deserve ridicule, you're all the more deserving of them.

If you don't want to deal with complexity, then say so. PC users often take the technical competence they gain over time for granted - it's similar in a sense to auto repair & maintenance, home remodeling, etc. etc. etc. in that it's much less expensive to do things, and you can do more, when you know how to do it yourself. But not everyone wants to be bothered with it, and if you're in that camp you WILL pay much more for your tune ups, your repairs and replacements, even be price-gouged, at the hands of someone with the know-how.

The larger point people try to make aside from protesting functional lack of options/simplicity == functional superiority, is that unlike auto maintenance or home remodeling, basic computer use is very simple & quicker to pick up - and is so pervasive in society and will continue to be so that you had better learn. For all of the cost of buying your geek friend lunch, a $60 weekend course at a community college, or a few hours starting from scratch, you can learn to use all that extra utility a PC provides.

Console and PC games both have different feels to them, and are socially different things.

Many games that are released for consoles are not released for PC... so, that in itself is reason for some people with the spare cash to invest in a console over a PC.

However, with a bit of technical knowledge, a PC can do everything and more than a console. You can hook up a desktop to a TV with gamepads for the inputs, and play games a la console style in your living room the same way a console can.

It's that extra functionality and overall life span that you're missing when you compare PCs and consoles, while the price points are similar. And that's the point pretty much everyone in the thread is trying to make.

You don't *need* to buy a completely new computer, unless you're running a system that dates back to Windows 98. And even then, there are probably some parts you can salvage and reuse. PCs are modular, you can decide for yourself when you want to upgrade, and what you replace for expanded performance.

Your monitors, hard drives, cd/dvd drives, cables, Plug and Play USB hardware are all reusable. With a console, you will *never* be able to do that. Ironically, you complained about the "cost of getting a completely new computer" in what seems an implied argument favoring console gaming over PC gaming... deciding instead to shoulder the cost of getting a completely new console, comparable to the cost of a completely new computer?

If this is what you meant - instead of protesting people assuming that there is no reason you'd want to game on consoles and do so because of lack of technical knowledge - you prove their point and provoke their arguments. There are reasons to invest in a console, or a laptop, over a desktop model PC. But hands down a PC will win on functionality, lifespan, and reasonable reasonable price. Consoles have been (mostly) less expensive, at least short term, than PCs have until the XBox 360 and PS 3 generation of consoles. Then they lost their short term expense advantage as well. Arguing in favor of reasonable price, functionality, lifespan, etc, all of the areas PCs dominate will only earn richly deserved ridicule.

It's seems you're trying to justify your ideology by focusing on details that warp the original context and point.

His point was, that you buy a day long pass, you expect to receive access to whatever you want all day long. Similarly, you're contracted with the ISPs excepting the case of ISPs such as Comcast, to receive the full use of the bandwidth slice of the tiered service you're paying for.

Lines for rides in the Disneyland analogy can be a limitation on how many times you can use a ride, but the limitation isn't something that contradicts the terms of the sale - that you get unlimited use for the day - from the time you show up, to the time they start closing the park. You can, conceivably ride Magic Mountain 15, 20+ times if time, including time spent in line, allows. That's within the terms of the contract, and you don't hear anybody reasonable disputing that.

By contrast, within the nature of the technology and the contractual offering of the ISPs, you *are* contractually entitled to unlimited use of the slice of bandwidth you pay for, even if it's 24/7 for the duration of your billing period. What the ISPs are doing, is trying to impose limitations that contradict the terms of the sale - give you less bandwidth than you pay for, try to make you pay more for less than you were technically sold. And you hear plenty of reasonable people in the know disputing that

ISPs are currently being called out by the FCC and the FTC for data throttling - that is, ISPs such as Comcast especially have been caught red handed lowering connection speeds in general to certain categories of sites/hosts as the company sees fit - which is currently illegal, in addition to contradicting the nature of the service contract with subscribers. The contract doesn't say that they'll provide x amount of theoretical throughput when they feel like it, and only to places on the internet they approve of. It's x amount all the time, 24/7 to everyone and everything unless mandated otherwise by the Federal or State governments (like accessing illegal media).

If you get less bandwidth (say, 10 Mbps capability, or approximately 1 MB/sec downstream speed) than you're paying for in your contract, that's a few things... fraud being one of them. If the ISPs aren't actually able to provide the bandwidth you're contracted for within the terms of the contract (currently unlimited) then that's false advertising and again, fraud. Aside from doing what they were supposed to last time they were given large government grants and upgrade their infrastructure, the only way out of this bind they've put themselves in is for government deregulation, or to change the terms of their contracts, which is possibly what they will try next.

I really wish more people understood this, that internet bandwidth usage =/= utility usage, and the scale in costs to the parent company are incomparable between the two.

That, and the "it's unfair to pay for more than you use" garbage the companies started throwing around to cover up that their contracts ensure full usage of the bandwidth slice they've sold you, and they've both waaaaaay oversold and neglected to upgrade their backbone for both number of users and volume of data. If people get that, it's actually simple to see the nature of the problem. But noooooooo. =)

And you're probably the only other person in this thread I've seen to remember that more than $200 BILLION in subsidies and grants from Federal and Local gov'ts have been given for upgrades that never happened, the money being pocketed instead. No sympathy for these thugs that have already eaten mass amounts of public funds to upgrade the infrastructure for more than the volume of use than is common today, when they attempt to blame less than the top 10% of subscriber usage for the shoddy quality of connection. Takeovers and failures of companies such as Qwest and MCI, as well as AT&T acquiring the coverage of much of the Ma Bell network if I'm not mistaken, created technical loopholes in the obligations of the ISP companies to upgrade, that legislators simply haven't followed through on - all the congressmen that voted on the funding are no longer in office to boot.

Only thing about the utilities analogy I'd point out is that Electrical Utilities cannot possibly get away with laxity of service due to the absolute necessity of power supply to human life. Data communications are actually nigh unto required for modern society, but are still magnitudes less urgent than electrical power.

You missed everything I said and tried to justify yourself by say "in the real world" with a sheepish grin and a wink.

Since when aren't 'consume' and 'use up' synonymous? And in the quote you cite, you seem to have completely missed the "as water or electricity is" part.

I'll make this simple. The internet, including the part of the backbone your ISP runs is always on. When someone ties up bandwidth, it isn't transformed or destroyed, and returns as usable resources when you're done.

You're paying the ISP for a bandwidth allocation - unless you're with an ISP that has a data cap or contractually limits your access, it's unlimited, available for you to access up to capacity 24/7.

The ISP must pay to keep the entirety of their network online 24/7 as a cost of doing business. Therefore, using the allocation of bandwidth you've paid for, even constantly, up to capacity does not cost the ISP any more. Having *no* subscribers of their service with *nobody* using the network costs them the same to maintain as having the resources on the net maxed out 24/7 - they remit that maintenance cost by having subscribers. People using bandwidth on the network does not cost the ISPs more as bandwidth usage goes up.

Here's the hard part: this is *not* the same as gasoline, water, electricity, where more must be mined, harvested, generated, or otherwise acquired as it is used. It's renewable, if that makes it easier. When bandwidth on a network is used, it's only a temporary chunk taken of the total network resources for the duration of the connection. When someone is done downloading, those network resources can be allocated elsewhere on the same node. The only time where bandwidth costs money as it is used, is when a webhost or other business exceeds its data cap - unlike common subscribers, corporate subscribers often have a contractually (large!) limitation on how much throughput, or total data measured in MB/GB/TB they are allowed per contract time period. Go over, pay more.

The only way there wouldn't be enough for everyone, is if the ISPs do both of two things:

1.) They oversubscribe - they sell not just more bandwidth allocations, the contract you're paying the ISP for, than the network can handle at once... they sell *much* more than the total bandwidth capacity of the network within reason.

So, that if a small percentage of total subscribers, say people playing WoW or gaming online, downloading, watching youtube, etc are all using the network in the same time frame... the overall quality of connection suffers for everyone on that branch of the network, since the ISP never had the capacity to handle that many subscribers at the contractually offered bandwidth to begin with.

and 2.) Fail to expand their infrastructure to allow for growth in subscribers and volume of use, and continue using 20-30 year old technology as part of their backbone that are innate bottlenecks within the total network.

And if you want to talk about a practically unlimited upper throughput, rebuilding the base infrastructure so that it exclusively uses fiber would do just that. With extensive fiber networks as the base infrastructure instead of copper wire ethernet, you could reasonably increase the capacity of each network such that the bottlenecks would be in how quickly each host computer can process data, not how quickly data can be transmitted across the network.

And what you don't seem to understand is that the equipment and hardware costs, electricity, and human resource costs are all fixed, and already accounted for.

The routers, cabline, servers, etc all cost as do the utilities and labor. But, they're a fixed cost of doing business. They pay for all of their current capability for the network when they set it up - then they have to pay the cost to maintain it 24/7. That's just the cost of doing business. The *entire* network infrastructure must be on, and accessible at all times - all parts of the network, to full capacity. Whether it be average end-users, corporate clients, or government employees making a logical connection through that part of the network is irrelevant, it must always be accessible. That's part of the definition of the internet and how it works.

You've essentially failed the most basic "the internet and its uses for people who've never seen a computer" class at your average 2 or 4 year college for business and non-technical majors when you make the suggestions about cost and overhead, and "you cannot run everything at full capacity all of the time".

All this garbage about costs and usage amounts to the ISPs wanting to both oversubscribe their services and neglect to upgrade their infrastructure to allow for increasing number of users, and volume of usage. And if you want to talk about upgrading and costs - Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest already received over $200 Billion in Federal subsidies years back for infrastructure upgrades that mostly didn't happen.