The Humble Indie Bundle 290
supersloshy writes "Last year, 2D Boy, the developers of the popular independent game World of Goo, had a pay-what-you-want birthday sale with curious results. For the next seven days, Wolfire Games is attempting the same kind of sale, but with some new twists. Wolfire Games' Humble Indie Bundle contains five independent games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra) with no DRM and they are all cross-platform. In addition to directly supporting the developers of these five games, part of the money also goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity. No matter how much you spend, you also get to choose who your money goes to (charity only, developers only, evenly, or custom)."
Cross-platform (Score:2, Funny)
All of the games work great on Mac, Windows, and Linux. We didn't want to leave anyone out.
No *BSD, but still kinda neat!
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No *BSD, but still kinda neat!
I agree, this is a great and legitimate means of getting people involved with supporting the work of the people who make the medias we know and love.
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You might get best designed and most usable (for point and clickers), but most secure and most reliable is kinda pushing it.
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SELinux, there. Beat your vaunted security by orders of magnitude.
When I said best design, I meant pretty, not technically masterful. Mac OS X isn't anywhere near as good as you are claiming.
It is good. But it isn't godlike compared the competition.
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Because you don't own Apple-approved hardware to run it on, but you want (legal) BSD anyway?
Re:BSD is *fully* supported: Mac OS X (Score:5, Funny)
Mac OS X *is* BSD, and it is the best designed, most secure, most reliable, most usable BSD ever made. Why would you use anything else?
I use shell expansion of the * character -- so *BSD expands to NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc. It doesn't expand to Mac OS X.
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Mod me -1 nitpick, but you mean globbing, not "shell expansion".
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Mod parent insightful. I would normally call this flamebait, but in light of the weirdly oblivious GP comment, it hits the nail on the head.
Very nice. (Score:2)
Great games. I've already bought WoG last year, and I will probably snag the rest of these for $25 or so.
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If you do not tell them, then they may feel not guilty about paying $5. Posting the average tends to help more than it hurts.
Really should have a $1 minimum though. If people want it for free let them get it from the piratebay and not waste the bandwidth you are paying for.
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No, it just means we can laugh at people more who pirate them, since obviously spending however many minutes of their time finding it on TPB was worth no more than $1 they must really consider their time to be worthless :)
As a side note, I already own 4 of those titles (all great games), buy them and consider it a donation.
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I already owned WoG and under my "if your game has a linux binary" general rule I bought this pack.
WoG... (Score:2)
World of Goo alone is worth your time and money.
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Obligatory [bash.org]
Support these guys! (Score:5, Informative)
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So much for consistency.. (Score:5, Funny)
World of Goo: .deb .run .tar.gz .bin .sh
Aquaria:
Gish
Lugaru HD:
Penumbra
Now that's just silly :D
Re:So much for consistency.. (Score:5, Funny)
NO ! This! Is ! Linux !
*kick*
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Also, Gish is x86-64, the rest x86-32 (except World of Goo, which works with either).
Re:So much for consistency.. (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair there's no way Gish could come in anything but a tarball.
Short review of Aquaria (Score:5, Informative)
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Similarly, a review of Penumbra.
Penumbra is a series with two titles and one expansion back, it's a survival-horror adventure, and takes a lot of cues from the Cthulu mythos and HP Lovecraft's writing (though has a rather unique story). Overture is fantastic - you need to get used to it though, so give it at least 30 minutes or an hour before just saying "pft!" There is very little focus on combat, and a lot more focus on stealth, avoidance, and problem solving. The story is brilliantly written and atmos
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Aquaria confused me to no end; in the very beginning, you talk to someone - and then apparently your character has never talked to anyone? What? I had no idea what was going on; it seemed like for no real reason the main character suddenly decided to go exploring, despite having been content with life before that.
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Alec Holowka of Bit Blot went on to form Infinite Ammo [infiniteammo.ca]. He is very talented.
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Wish they would do more of this for consoles (Score:2, Insightful)
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You only *need* to upgrade you PC hardware about as often as new consoles come out.
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You don't want to turn options down for a PC game so you're willing to settle for console which doesn't compare to current PC systems on launch and get even more behind year after year?
Doesn't make any sense to me, but whatever floats your boat.
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Turn down quality, drop rez, the consoles do (Score:2)
If you're satisfied with the console, you can be quite satisfied with PC gaming and dialing down the resolution and quality appropriately. Most major Xbox games don't even hit 720p (let alone 1080p) and often play at 30fps, so even though you have that nice 1080p monitor hooked to your PC, dial the resolution down in the game to get the same playability. Remember that every console is using outdated hardware in comparison to a current PC.
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If your PC was built during the last 7 years, it shouldn't any trouble running Gish or World of Goo, or even Penumbra for that matter.
PayPal/Amazon/Google CO (Score:2)
Why no plain "payment with CC" option?
I haven't used PayPal account for quite sometime (they changed their status in Europe at least twice already; a major pita to reauthorize myself again after the years) and I do not think other options would let me buy the bundle from over here.
Re:PayPal/Amazon/Google CO (Score:4, Informative)
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Noble, but sad (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen plenty of these experiments; especially from musicians. What ends up happening is everyone pays jack squat for the application and the artists scratch their heads dumbfounded that all the fans, claiming they were sticking it to the man by pirating music, are now sticking it to the artists. That being said, I'll probably contribute even though I'm not interested in the product (as I have before) because I dreadfully want to see this work.
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Average contribution $7.75
Re:Noble, but sad (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that the totals currently show otherwise...
- Total raised $55,481
- Average contribution $7.74
- Number of contributions 7169
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Wow, it was under $1000 when I paid this morning.
Also interesting that someone paid $500. And 3 others, >= $200.
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Remember that this was likely to be a donation / split payment.
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Except that the totals currently show otherwise...
- Total raised $55,481
- Average contribution $7.74
- Number of contributions 7169
I only donate in geeky amounts. Here are some recommendations
$1.87 (on a motherfucking cop) - rap geek
$11.11 - binary geek
$10.66 - european history geek
$14.92 - american history geek
$13.37 - computer geek
$31.41 - math geek
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$31.41 - math geek
Shouldn't math geek really be $3.14? At least then the decimal is in the right spot...
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Plus you can get some relatively cheap advertising for donating. For example I stopped by analogpixels.com to check out who this #2 contributor so far was....
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Except that I wasn't planning on buying it at all. Now I'll buy it and pay something for it. Something > Nothing.
I'd imagine that most people who wanted it would have already bought it by now. They're squeezing money out of people who wouldn't have bought it at the higher price.
Although, I have a feeling that sales will plummet after this week.
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I agree with this. $20 for just World of Goo seems too much to me. I played the demo and the depth is limited compared to many non-indie games. I paid a reasonable amount in my opinion for the collection which is more than they would have had otherwise. It is not unusual for games to drop massively in price, I personally don't buy new PC games because they are too expensive for me. If you find a steam sale you can pick up great games (e.g. Civ4 and Empire Total War) for fairly cheap (~£7) just a
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If this was a music album, I'd pay 1 cent first, listen to it, and *then* pay an appropriate price. That's how it should be, imho. But my payment average would be half of the reality.
Sales like these should give you an option to pay after *or* pay something before but be able to pay more afterwards without counting as a second sale.
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What the hell? Do you have any proof for the “plenty of experiments” you are supposed to have seen? (Especially, how have you seen what everybody paid? Unless you are close friends with them...)
I think you’re just trolltalking out of your ass.
I know that at least Nine Inch Nails and Moby had big successes with that, and actually made more money that way. And lowering prices on Steam to 25% of the old price also made them more money.
Being nice to your clients can mean that they are nice to
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Yeah, were really screwing them with the mere $95k they made in the first day. How ever could someone survive on more than $13k a day.
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If you are not going to pay for it just go to pirate bay already you cheap fuck.
Licensing Disconnect (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't use DRM. When you buy these games, they are yours. Feel free to play them without an internet connection, back them up, and install them on all of your Macs and PCs freely.
Now, from the EULA:
1.1 License Grant. 2D BOY hereby grants to you a non-exclusive license to use a single copy of the object code version of the Game for your personal, non-commercial home entertainment use on one personal computer or other compatible electronic device. You may sell or transfer your copy of the Game to another person along with, and subject to, your rights under this EULA, only if you do not retain any copies.
Emphasis is mine. It looks like Marketing might want to talk to Legal here...
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IANAL, but I feel that you can install it on as many machin as you want provided you only use a single one at a time.
Nice, I submitted this hours before (Score:2, Interesting)
Good Jerb Slashdot editors
Missing option: (Score:3, Insightful)
I abstain from buying because I don't think I can pay enough for so many games in good conscience. The games are decent, and the 20 USD I can afford now wouldn't do the games justice.
The whole "experiment" is useless without this option, in my opinion. They're going to see a bunch of people paying 1 cent going to EFF and conclude "what a bunch of cheapskates", when there is a good amount of people who either could buy later (after the offer limit), or refuse to buy that many games hands-down, because they actually *value* those games at 70-80 USD and think it's too much money to spend.
These kind of people won't show up in the statistics.
Re:Missing option: (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if you DID give $20, then the developers would have $20 more than if you did NOT buy. I think that this is kind of the point of this.
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You could always just pay and not download all the games, as each game is a separate download.
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That is $20 they otherwise would not get at all, so go for it. It is also about 3 times the average.
Woot. I'm in for $10 - Devs 100% (Score:2)
yeah, I'm a bit of a cheapskate, but I'm on a gaming & fun budget each month, so I gotta watch things. Gotta save some money for Zeevex Cards for diamonds for Runs of Magic. :-)
just went over 80.000 $ (Score:3, Insightful)
Biggest problem for such Indie-Developers is imho not the intentional lack of DRM and the resulting unlicensed copying of the games, but the lack of media coverage. As the numbers show, there are enough people out there who are willing to pay for games, even if they could get them for free. And I was one of them.
btw. while I typed this, the counter went over 84.000 $. I wonder how much they'll collect over the remaining 6 days.
Pay $100 or more (Score:3, Informative)
If you pay $100 or more (split any way you like), you get a complimentary EFF Pioneer Level Membership.
Source [wolfire.com].
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Which they shouldn't.
Why release your work for free? Does freedom feed you at the end of the day? Does it pay for your rent?
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Freedom allows us to fulfill our desires, not just our basic needs. Food and shelter alone are not enough for happiness.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:4, Funny)
But not for long.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which they shouldn't.
I'm sorry, what? There is no "should" or "shouldn't", there's merely what is. And clearly these people are eating just fine. So anything or anyone that says they shouldn't is plainly wrong. What you fail to grasp is that people are willing to pay something more than they necessarily have to for the knowledge that they are contributing and therefore encouraging future work - both from those particular individuals and others who can see from that example that talent and hard work can be enough to make a living.
In other words, there are plenty of consumers who need only the carrot (the prospect that their payment will be rewarded by production of future works) to pay fairly. Unfortunately most established industries are managed by people who like you who continue to deny what's actually happening with the belief that their philosophy will prove true in the end, and therefore always fall back to the stick method of threatening, DRM-encumbering, and generally treating their (potential) customers like criminals.
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there are plenty of consumers who need only the carrot (the prospect that their payment will be rewarded by production of future works) to pay fairly. Unfortunately most established industries are managed by people who like you who continue to deny what's actually happening with the belief that their philosophy will prove true in the end, and therefore always fall back to the stick method of threatening, DRM-encumbering, and generally treating their (potential) customers like criminals.
To their credit, I, a potential customer, am a criminal (though less in terms of pirating and more in terms of public urination) and I hate carrots.
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Yes, but if there was free public toilet, would you have used it?
How can you hate carrots and their sugar goodness? you're weird.
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Which they shouldn't.
Why release your work for free? Does freedom feed you at the end of the day? Does it pay for your rent?
Only if you sell advertising for your free product.
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Why release your work for free? Does freedom feed you at the end of the day? Does it pay for your rent?
I paid $10 for it... that wasn't free.
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For some of us, programming is about recreation. Slashdot likes car analogies, so how about this: I know people who make money working on cars, and I have friends who do the same thing for themselves on the weekend because they enjoy it.
You know, there are lots of individuals and businesses whose business plan includes giving something away for free. It absolutely does help pay the bills.
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Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe. Does the free release of my work gain me notoriety that helps me to make future sales? We're not all short term minimalist thinkers.
And besides, both food and housing are guaranteed to all US citizens.*
* Some restrictions may apply, see county jail for details.
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In most cases, homeless people are not rational thinkers at all. Most homeless people have serious mental illness problems. It's just not hard to acquire housing (at least in this country) if you're mentally whole.
And if they were at all rational, they'd probably realize that the rape and slaughter strategy is not their best option. Grand theft will get them food and shelter for life without the risk of lethal injection or the moral quandaries of rape and murder.
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If there lucky, it might just get them a free car to sleep in.
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"Shouldn't"?
When you say "Shouldn't" you are making a judgment. You don't say "'won't" or "can't", but "shouldn't".
I'm really interested in hearing you explain your worldview that allows you to judge whether or not these game makers "should" or "should not" earn anything. Please help me here.
Are you saying that they "shouldn't" earn anything because they have decided to deal with their customers on the honor system? Or is it that they "shouldn't" make any money because they don't sha
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Yes in fact, it does.
Ann Rand was full of shit. the exact kind of shit the fits well with people just beginning to learn under their own responsibility. i.e. collage.
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Indeed you can make quite a wonderful collage out of the chopped up covers of Ayn Rand works.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Funny)
I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.'
'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.'
'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.'
I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...
Rapture.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. Ayn Rand-types won't necessarily pay zero for this. You're assuming they give no thoughts to future desires and only think of immediate costs and instant gratification, and that just isn't true.
The developers get advertising, which they would otherwise have to pay for -- hence a measurable, monetary cost and a selfish desire on their par. Their similar stunt with World of Goo led me to purchase other games they developed because WoG showed me they were delivering quality, entertaining games. I no longer purchase games for any system without trying them out first. I've been burned too many times with over-hyped commercial games that turn out to be shit and a waste of money.
Because *I* want these developers to continue what they are doing -- a selfish desire on my part -- I will pay cash towards that end. Consider it an opportunity to invest in future products by these developers. Speculation in the market, or an investment in future return if you will.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Altruism is always a disguised form of selfishness. Even anonymous donors donate because it makes them feel good.
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That's a somewhat different kind of selfishness, though. Rand, being somewhat Nietzschean in orientation (especially early on), isn't a pure hedonist (do what makes you feel good), but feels that some kinds of instincts and desires are "better" than other kinds, and (like Nietzsche) classifies some of the things traditionally thought of as "altruism" as bad ones.
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Altruism is always a disguised form of selfishness.
That's some pretty bizarre bullshit. That's right up there with concluding that every human behavior is logical and can always be explained. In aggregate, maybe there is a small tendency for altruism to improve the status of the altruistic. But for individual actions, you could never make that claim that an altruistic person always expects a benefit.
Not to mention that Rand felt that altruism was ethically unsupportable. That claim has led her followers to propose some really zany ideas.
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I don't care at all for what Rand felt or thought, she had crazy ideas. But the notion that altruism is just a form of selfishness is straight out of fundamental psychology. Why does any organism engage in any behavior: either shaping by genetics or shaping by environment. Either way, it's the reward based feedback system that creates altruism.
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Wow, that sounds like my proposal that all models of government are equally good in an ideal world. It's just too bad we don't live in an ideal world, although it isn't as dystopian as your statement implies. Any action can be self-serving, that doesn't mean it is. Or are they just lying to themselves and you know better?
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My point is that altruism doesn't exist in reality, not that the definition is incorrect. All actual instances of something labeled 'altruism' are in fact examples of the positive feedback mechanism of fundamental psychology. There are only two things that shape all behavior: genes and environment. All behavior comes from those two sources. 'Altruism' exists because it gets reinforced, either in genetics or by the environment.
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No, never read it. I've read enough about her to agree she was batshit crazy, and egotist of the first order and a major hypocrite on many subjects. I'm not a follower of Rand so much as I'm intrigued about much of her philosophy in Atlas Shrugged.
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Well, I'll agree that Rand didn't seem to understand the Tragedy of the Commons and many of her direct followers also don't. Again, I'm not so much an acolyte of Rand -- who had many flaws -- as I am intrigued by much of the philosophy of objectivism. Some is wrong, but it has a good base from my perspective.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Dwarf Fortress guy made $16k last month. And his game is donation-only. And the donations aren't required.
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I wish he'd integrate & improve Stonesense into Dwarf Fortress. Awesome idea, I just can't get into it personally.
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Informative)
If only they get that kind of money month after month...
2010
April Donations: $16,104.49
March Donations: $4,387.99
February Donations: $1,452.57
January Donations: $2,291.50
2009
December Donations: $4,762.98
November Donations: $5,122.29
October Donations: $1,759.27
September Donations: $2,138.21
August Donations: $2,510.86
July Donations: $2,202.37
June Donations: $2,723.83
May Donations: $2,221.92
April Donations: $2,549.15
March Donations: $2,997.46
February Donations: $1,428.62
January Donations: $2,099.48
2008
December Donations: $5,279.49
November Donations: $1,305.10
October Donations: $1,868.30
September Donations: $1,695.48
source [bay12forums.com]
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He isn't doing so bad. If he fails to pay taxes, he earned more money in those 20 months than my take home pay for my 9 to 5 programming gig.
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You don't want to fail to pay taxes when self employed. The IRS scrutinizes you much more closely.
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Like every quarter. And you have to pay both sides of the tax equation, employer and employee. Figure on loosing 25% to taxes at a minimum. Probably more like 30%.
Which is why the tax law is hideously complicated; to allow for deductions to help offset their own crushing red tape requirements. It helps a little, but I quit my biz for the regulation reqs (and a down economy).
Re:Ayn Rand, do you hear me? (Score:5, Insightful)
True. Even after taxes, it is likely comparable to the salary he would have earned if he had stayed on at the math department.
And he earned it working on his life goal, crafting video games. Whereas, I spend each and every day having my soul sucked out in a monotonous grind of code reviews and ever shifting and contradicting requirements.
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Fast?
Re:Cheap, Fast, Good (Aha!) (Score:5, Insightful)
Aha!
If I pay a lot for it, that will make it fast and good
ate my tags (Score:2)
Slashdot ate my sarcastic tags.
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Don't worry, the people who appreciate sarcasm can detect it well enough, the others will, unfortunately, mod you down.