"The ACCC is contending that a multi-national company, Sony Computer Entertainment, is moving in this particular case to prevent Australian consumers from reaping the benefits of globalisation" -- Professor Allan Fels, ACCC Chairman
Do you really think it would be a bad thing for, say, India if they never see an Xbox, GC or PS2? There are useful computer systems that increase the average knowledge and communication in a community, then there are video games. (This from someone not sitting 5m from 10 video games consoles.)
I do have a procmail recipe to quarentine mail from, say, hotmail.com that doesn't have a Received line with "hotmail.com" in it.
Please don't do this sort of thing. I have a Yahoo address that I make public. It's then POP3ed by Spamcop which filters it and forwards he remainder to my local account. When I send mail it has my Yahoo address in the From: line even though it's sent through the local server. I only use my local email address for receiving messages from Spamcop and eBay -- it's never been advertised and gets no spam. Your procmail rule knocks out the only way I've found to keep my much publicised Yahoo address (I've been through several ISPs) but firewall the spam.
The article may think it's hype, but about three days ago I turned on all of Spamcop's blacklist options, including one that read "Korea (the country)".
Does it really matter if a few industry bodies lobby a goverment to legally protect an undesirable product? It's not like we're forced in any way to purchase a DVD player or games console. So long as the law doesn't force the destruction of older equipment (book-burning style) then who cares if some CD you don't need won't play on your equipment.
For ages I was a big fan of Swatch Access, but here in Perth, Australia I never got to actually use the features. My current favourite watch that I own is a Casio WristCam -- the original black and white version. If I didn't already have this version I'd probably buy the new colour one. So instead the watch that's temping me is Casio's GPS watch, having dropped in price from A$1395 to A$899. If I had a job I'd have bought it a week ago when I first noticed the price had come down.
Funny thing is, I don't wear a watch anymore, not since I got my first mobile phone. Most of my friends are the same. (Actually, come to think of it, if you're after something funky and you don't need it on your wrist, the re-released Nintendo MiniClassics -- Game & Watch -- clip on a belt loop nicely. Try www.gameandwatch.com for some info.)
What's going to make eBooks run is added-value, not great content - if the Harry Potter eBook contained video, sound, games, etc., THEN I'd be looking to buy an eBook.
You must be in marketing. As a person that devours books in irregular bunches (Oo, I haven't read a book in 9 months, I think I'll read 20 this week) I can say that basic content and convenience is far more important than flashy gimmicks. I have a little Palm device that I don't intend to upgrade for a long time. People developing e-books should look at providing a simple technology that doesn't require me to upgrade anything. "Plain" text and a choice of nice readers.
On the other hand, feel free to produce a bundle I can buy where you include a simple e-book, a collection of MP3s, maybe some behind the scenes stuff as MPGs, perhaps some screen savers for a few platforms and some nice high-res still photos I can use as wallpaper. All in a nice copyprotection-free format so they actually work -- you can't guess how my system is setup so every bit of added complexity risks the product failing to work on my preferred devices.
As it happens, I've just started reading World War 3.0 -- a book all about the MS anti-trust stuff. I haven't got all that far, but I'm already asking;
Didn't the "Win98lite" installation utility prove that the browser can be separated from Win98?
I thought it let you install the nice stuff from Win98, like USB, and the lighter weight Windows Explorer from Win95 and not at all install Internet Explorer.
Personally I use Win98 as the base, Litestep as the shell and Mozilla as the browser. I still use Windows Explorer as the file manager, but only because long file names mean you can't use the old DOS Norton Commander...
When I got my Dreamcast the first game I wanted was Gauntlet Legends. When I first downloaded some Gameboy and MAME ROMs (*Bad Llama*) I downloaded Gauntlet. When I picked up a huge collection of C64 stuff last weekend the first games I got running were the two Gauntlet titles I found in there.
Gauntlet is possibly the only single and multiplayer party-type game that's just as fun with one person as it is with more.
Mind you, I'm quite enjoying Crazy Taxi at the moment, so I did also find and power up Space Taxi from the C64 collection, just to see...
I found a link to this site maybe a week ago through bOING bOING and first hit a "this site has used up its bandwidth" message, so when I did get through I optimised their images and at the same time gave them a thumbnail image page to replace the text list (see the wayback pages). Great to see they used it!
Sitting here browsing the web on a Sony 21" Trinitron monitor I picked up NEW for A$800 (~US$400) I pretty much love Sony all the time. I'm also a big fan of Logitech for their cordless keyboard and mouse and Ikea for their faux-leather reclining chairs. I'd post a photo, but I'm not wearing a shirt.
Also, not having a DVD player (or an Aibo) and not caring if movies and music are crap or not I find it hard to really hate them. I might even pickup a PS2 secondhand or on sale or something one day soon.
PAL people can already get 10 hours on a single tape with the old BASF (now EM-TEC) E-300, 5 hour tapes which you record in long-play. Sure, the quality isn't HDTV, but long-play on the "professional grade" E-300 is cleaner than standard-play on a bargain basement 3-hour tape.
I think NTSC moves faster so you wouldn't get the full 5 hours in standard play, but I'm not sure if your "extended-play" option is more than double...
I currently avoid much of the MS-induced email madness by using Spamcop's HTML sterilisation and Attachment stripping features on my public email address. Unfortunately, both of these features are going away in the new "flat-rate" version. Does anyone know of any other email filtering system that can return sanity to email?
The "average" person may well be slow to notice trends, unable to see where things are headed, not understand how badly they're being played by the big companies, but after a while of buying products with no real use they will stop.
When all you sell is useless crap, what happens to you when the market for useless crap dries up?
Unless you can sucessfully guess which direction games are likely to head, hardware-wise, you will need to upgrade your hardware. Sure, that TNT-whatever card you mention probably works fine if you bought one but if you went with something else you might find yourself trapped at DirectX version 3
You do need to upgrade drivers, all the time, if you want to play new games. At least Direct X, if not.DRV files. And some of the older games that need DirectX 3 won't work with the latest version.
The only way to have a working games PC is to build it (or have it built) part by part. You can't walk into a store and buy a ready-made, tested, QA-ed PC model from a name brand and expect it to even play the latest games, never known future ones. So you can have a games PC with no support or a games console that's trival to fix/replace.
And a final point, not necessarily matching the rest of this; What's with the original Crazy Taxi being released on the PS2 even though CT2 is out on the Dreamcast? I mean, don't get me wrong, as a DC owner I'm happy to be able to play the same game as PS2-owning friends, and it's a good game, but doesn't it make the PS2 look a little... redundant?
Oh, it's illegal here. Sony and friends have successfully lobbied to make it illegal to use their products in ways that actually make them viable. Fortunately we have a consumer watchdog that is preparing to battle region coding. More fortunately, these products are not necessities so when they become too hard to use and/or stop providing anything I want I can walk away from them.
Companies are no longer about producing a fair product for a fair price, they're now about producing nothing and charging a fortune for it. Here's a (mostly) relevant example. Quake 3 for the Dreamcast is out in Australia. However, there are no Australian servers to play network games and it's generally agreed that single-player Quake 3 is pointless. What the hell am I buying if I buy this product?
I'll second that. Not me personally, but a friend has kids and a couple of CD-based games consoles (Mega-CD, Saturn, possibly others). The kids' consoles (he has more than one of some platforms) have been modded to accept copies -- except the Mega CD which doesn't need to be modded. He never lets them near the originals, he burns a copy that they use and when (not if) they've killed it he burns another. If he can't make a backup for the kids to play, then the product is of much less use to him. I know he doesn't have a Playstation or Playstation 2, but I'm not sure if he has a Dreamcast or not. (No GC or XBox, they're not out here in Oz yet.)
if Sony US isn't willing to sell me what I want, I should be able to go to Sony Japan and get it.
But this is the NEW economy. You're supposed to want what they want to sell you. And if the economy isn't looking too healthy it's your patriotic duty to mindlessly consume.
What's to "cope" with? Dodging ads and lusting after LCD screens is perfectly healthy. If someone would filter ads for me and buy me a 42" Plasma TV I'd "fake" any illness they want.
I find that drinking a simple glass of water gets rid of a headache as effectively as drinking a glass of water with an asprin tablet desolved in it. YMMV.
Mind you, exercise without consuming enough water leaves me with a blinding headache -- something that can possibly be traced to a head injury when I was very young. I used to have blinding headaches right through primary school, but no one believed they could be as bad as they were. Chances are that if someone had told me they would go away if I drank water all the time I would have been much better off.
These workers need gloves tough enough to protect their hands from paper cuts, but thin and slightly tacky, so they can open the plastic bags
Just cut the ends of the gloves' fingers off -- you only need the fine control at the finger tips. Seriously, how hard is it to "innovate" this last step?
Yeah, but your volume allowance is 500 megabytes per month
This is why I still connect through a 56k modem here in Perth. The main reason I would want to get broadband is to download episodes of Buffy -- the lcoal free-to-air that shows it hasn't even started the most recent season yet. However, a single episode is over 700MB, and I'd want to do one a week for half the year. Plus all the rest of my traffic.
No thanks, I'll stick to my A$25/month 160 hours a month (with rollover), no download limit dial-up. Using Optus here in Perth you never get kicked off and never get a busy signal.
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Do you really think it would be a bad thing for, say, India if they never see an Xbox, GC or PS2? There are useful computer systems that increase the average knowledge and communication in a community, then there are video games. (This from someone not sitting 5m from 10 video games consoles.)
The article may think it's hype, but about three days ago I turned on all of Spamcop's blacklist options, including one that read "Korea (the country)".
Does it really matter if a few industry bodies lobby a goverment to legally protect an undesirable product? It's not like we're forced in any way to purchase a DVD player or games console. So long as the law doesn't force the destruction of older equipment (book-burning style) then who cares if some CD you don't need won't play on your equipment.
Funny thing is, I don't wear a watch anymore, not since I got my first mobile phone. Most of my friends are the same. (Actually, come to think of it, if you're after something funky and you don't need it on your wrist, the re-released Nintendo MiniClassics -- Game & Watch -- clip on a belt loop nicely. Try www.gameandwatch.com for some info.)
Hmm, I've never heard it called that before...
On the other hand, feel free to produce a bundle I can buy where you include a simple e-book, a collection of MP3s, maybe some behind the scenes stuff as MPGs, perhaps some screen savers for a few platforms and some nice high-res still photos I can use as wallpaper. All in a nice copyprotection-free format so they actually work -- you can't guess how my system is setup so every bit of added complexity risks the product failing to work on my preferred devices.
Didn't the "Win98lite" installation utility prove that the browser can be separated from Win98?
I thought it let you install the nice stuff from Win98, like USB, and the lighter weight Windows Explorer from Win95 and not at all install Internet Explorer.
Personally I use Win98 as the base, Litestep as the shell and Mozilla as the browser. I still use Windows Explorer as the file manager, but only because long file names mean you can't use the old DOS Norton Commander...
Gauntlet is possibly the only single and multiplayer party-type game that's just as fun with one person as it is with more.
Mind you, I'm quite enjoying Crazy Taxi at the moment, so I did also find and power up Space Taxi from the C64 collection, just to see...
I found a link to this site maybe a week ago through bOING bOING and first hit a "this site has used up its bandwidth" message, so when I did get through I optimised their images and at the same time gave them a thumbnail image page to replace the text list (see the wayback pages). Great to see they used it!
Also, not having a DVD player (or an Aibo) and not caring if movies and music are crap or not I find it hard to really hate them. I might even pickup a PS2 secondhand or on sale or something one day soon.
I think NTSC moves faster so you wouldn't get the full 5 hours in standard play, but I'm not sure if your "extended-play" option is more than double...
I currently avoid much of the MS-induced email madness by using Spamcop's HTML sterilisation and Attachment stripping features on my public email address. Unfortunately, both of these features are going away in the new "flat-rate" version. Does anyone know of any other email filtering system that can return sanity to email?
When all you sell is useless crap, what happens to you when the market for useless crap dries up?
- Unless you can sucessfully guess which direction games are likely to head, hardware-wise, you will need to upgrade your hardware. Sure, that TNT-whatever card you mention probably works fine if you bought one but if you went with something else you might find yourself trapped at DirectX version 3
- You do need to upgrade drivers, all the time, if you want to play new games. At least Direct X, if not
.DRV files. And some of the older games that need DirectX 3 won't work with the latest version. - The only way to have a working games PC is to build it (or have it built) part by part. You can't walk into a store and buy a ready-made, tested, QA-ed PC model from a name brand and expect it to even play the latest games, never known future ones. So you can have a games PC with no support or a games console that's trival to fix/replace.
And a final point, not necessarily matching the rest of this; What's with the original Crazy Taxi being released on the PS2 even though CT2 is out on the Dreamcast? I mean, don't get me wrong, as a DC owner I'm happy to be able to play the same game as PS2-owning friends, and it's a good game, but doesn't it make the PS2 look a little... redundant?Companies are no longer about producing a fair product for a fair price, they're now about producing nothing and charging a fortune for it. Here's a (mostly) relevant example. Quake 3 for the Dreamcast is out in Australia. However, there are no Australian servers to play network games and it's generally agreed that single-player Quake 3 is pointless. What the hell am I buying if I buy this product?
I'll second that. Not me personally, but a friend has kids and a couple of CD-based games consoles (Mega-CD, Saturn, possibly others). The kids' consoles (he has more than one of some platforms) have been modded to accept copies -- except the Mega CD which doesn't need to be modded. He never lets them near the originals, he burns a copy that they use and when (not if) they've killed it he burns another. If he can't make a backup for the kids to play, then the product is of much less use to him. I know he doesn't have a Playstation or Playstation 2, but I'm not sure if he has a Dreamcast or not. (No GC or XBox, they're not out here in Oz yet.)
It all sounds a bit too close to Soylent Green.
What's to "cope" with? Dodging ads and lusting after LCD screens is perfectly healthy. If someone would filter ads for me and buy me a 42" Plasma TV I'd "fake" any illness they want.
Mind you, exercise without consuming enough water leaves me with a blinding headache -- something that can possibly be traced to a head injury when I was very young. I used to have blinding headaches right through primary school, but no one believed they could be as bad as they were. Chances are that if someone had told me they would go away if I drank water all the time I would have been much better off.
Increasingly a normal event, that.
No thanks, I'll stick to my A$25/month 160 hours a month (with rollover), no download limit dial-up. Using Optus here in Perth you never get kicked off and never get a busy signal.
This site got me hooked on Sega.