...until they figure out that LinkedIn is just MySpace wearing a suit, and you don't really *know* the people you know.
"They" would be delighted to be connected to such a successful social network "wearing a suit" - if they made the connection. Weak social interactions are equally as important as strong ones, and in labour/business markets potentially more important. The people you *know* share the same information you already do - the people you're linked to but don't *know* are sources of new information and new connections. They're bridges to other social and business circles. LinkedIn is Granovetter's theory of Weak Ties gone all digital like - http://www.analytictech.com/networks/weakties.htm. (No, I'm no expert on sociology or on economics - caveat yada yada.)
In your personal life, it's your true friends that matter. In business, it's your acquaintances too.
I'm "friends" with quite a few people I don't know
Umm... why???
There are networks of value that don't include our friends. Fans of bands, union members, grassroots advocacy - many sorts of connections are viable with people you don't know. Look up "Granovetter, The strength of weak ties" for a significantly more interesting viewpoint on social networking.
I'd expect to see Apple shift their pricing model for OS X - included in the hardware bundle, near the current price for "upgrades" to registered users, and significantly higher for shrink-wrapped copies to new users/OEM dealers - near Vista's top cost of $400 or so.
No. Variable pricing at launch wouldn't have made a difference to the labels, the DRM would still have been required. They came later to the party, when it was obvious even to the tree stumps that DRM fails.
Apple showed with iTunes showed you could make money selling songs online, you didn't need models that constantly resubscribe to your account to keep listening. It worked for Apple, it worked for the recording industry, and it worked for most people listening to digital music.
eMusic showed you could sell DRM free music - but they couldn't get the library.
Subscriptions came and went. Some actually work reasonably well, now, as streaming technology has caught up - and the Zune "subscribe a bunch, keep some" looks good to me. Pity that they can't seem to figure out how to get the offering outside of the U.S., though.
For big industry, Apple was the bellwether and they became the laggard while they renegotiated the terms. Maybe it took longer than it should have, I wouldn't know. But without iTunes or a service by anyone else as egalitarian and as successful, Amazon would not have had the opportunity to make their offering. It didn't have to be Apple in the first place, but they showed up at exactly the right time, with the right combination of product and service, while the world was screaming "OMG NAPSTER".
There are lots of options, this is simply the easiest.
I don't think ease is the whole of it. YouTube is the best way to get these videos to the most people. People who would never go to the whitehouse.gov site may - and hopefully will - stumble over them while they browse YouTube. They'll be in the channels and playlists of YouTube contacts, embedded into their social profile pages, and in whatever other ways passed around. This move leverages the way people are already using the technology to get the information out. When a TV show puts a clip on their own site, it's the YouTube link that people pass around, and this isn't any different. It's not neccessarily that this is the easiest thing to do - it's the most effective thing to do.
It's still sound, it was never intelligent to apply copyright to consumer/home use (I remember a bit on Johnny Carson about VCRs and home taping... all that's new is the "D"). If I record a song and it's the title track to your movie, I expect to be protected by copyright and paid accordingly. This definition is what works for me:
I don't expect copyright to benefit me from you copying.mp3s, CDs, or other formats for you and your friends. Copyright will never do anything for black market piracy, either. But at the industrial/corporate level, copyright isn't so hard to enforce, because it's easy to detect ("I was sitting in a movie theater and TA-DAH there was my song.") There are issues with copyright law aside from home use (duration, renewability), but I don't think it's a fundamentally flawed concept.
The average Joe must not know what DRM means to experience the implications of it. I hate car analogies, but you don't have to be a greasemonkey to understand that something is wrong with your car.
The average Joe will run into DRM restrictions, and...
Most Joes won't. I check with the relations every Christmas (iTunes cards are the norm for stocking stuffers), and no-one has ever noticed. They buy tunes, listen to them on they iPods, computers, and laptops. No issues. Ditto the girlfriend. They seek, they find, they pay, they play.
My biggest beef - and it's the standard bitch about all digital media publishing services - is the cross-border BS. I know, it's the publishers and whatever legalities, but it's a piss-off that I need to juggle a fake American persona to cash in the gift card my well meaning second cousin buys me each year. And that's not a DRM issue, either.
All that having been said, I'd like to see iTunes catch up to Amazon on DRM-free, but as of the most recent press release I can find, iTunes Plus is up to two million tracks and at 99c per. They're in negotiations with the bigger publishers already. (All this according to press releases.) You can bet that it's come down to a power play between the model the labels want, and what Apple wants.
I remember the Napster days, when they were the first digital music store to the distribution and price right. The corporate rhetoric was "no digital sales ever, it'll never work". The mainstream alternatives were low-resolution subscrition/rental services. Without iTunes, Amazon (and eMusic) probably wouldn't be in business. Love 'em or hate 'em, iTunes was a big deal.
You want to boycott this effectively, go up the food chain, boycott the publishers until all of their music is available to all services without DRM. At this point, I cynically assume that the labels are trying to play DRM-free - without any sense of irony - as leverage either to set their own prices or to get a bigger percentage (either way, to run the store), which would be (from what little I've read) where Apple likes to stand pat.
Contrary to assumptions, DRM doesn't sell iPods. Slick marketing, an instantly familiar interface, and software integration do. I don't think Job's famous letter on DRM was a fraud - I do think it's written for maximum spin, but not an outright lie. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ What I think is, he wants to sell more iPods and knows that when he gets license to sell DRM free, that'll boost sales - and iTunes profits, too.
No, completely ineffective to call for an iTunes boycott. The punters won't collaborate, and it woudn't change anything if they did.
Much has been the fuss in the comicsâ(TM) blogosphere about my SPIRIT movie - much justified, much hoped for, and much to my delight, that there has been a fuss at all. Some comics readers are terrified that THE SPIRIT will be a retread of my SIN CITY. Others quarrel over the change of the SPIRITâ(TM)S traditional blue hat, mask, and jacket, to black. These are understandable concerns for any lover of Will Eisnerâ(TM)s masterpiece. I take this opportunity to address these concerns. With glee, I take this opportunity.
THE SPIRIT is, with every effort I give it, not a rusty, dusty old monument to the work of my beloved Mentor, so much as it is an extension of what I know to have been Eisnerâ(TM)s central intent: to create something new, witty, and exploratory. Thatâ(TM)s what he did. Thatâ(TM)s what Iâ(TM)m doing.
It only resembles SIN CITY in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities. Luckily, I was able to discern three important proclivities I share with the Master. We both love good stories. We both love New York City. And we both love beautiful women.
(Please forgive my constant present-tense references to my dear friend. His creative force, and his force of personality, remains so strong in my mind that I canâ(TM)t often think of Will Eisner as a man who has left us.)
Now, about that blue suit.
Comic books have long traditions based on the limitations of pre-digital printing. Among these are traditions from the old newsprint-run-through-letterpress approach (yes, comics have been?and still doâ"follow tradition that dates all the way back to Gutenberg!). Bad printing on pulp paper is why it was necessary for every superhero to have his emblem printed on his chest, and that everything thatâ(TM)s black be printed in blue. Hence Supermanâ(TM)s preposterous blue hair. And the Spiritâ(TM)s blue hat, mask, and suit.
In tests?and we did several?the blue made the Spirit look like an unfortunate guest at a Halloween party. Going to black brings back his essential mystery, his Zorro-like sexiness. It also makes that red tie of his look very, very cool. So I made the call, with all respect to Eisnerâ(TM)s creation, and most importantly, to what I perceived as his underlying intention. It was an easy call for me to make. The Spirit dresses in black, and looks much the better for it. As I said, my desire was never to slavishly follow the rules of â(TM)40s printing into campy oblivion, but to reintroduce Eisnerâ(TM)s creation, via modern technology, to our brave new world.
And THE SPIRIT as some sort of SIN CITY REDUX? No, SIN CITY, that oneâ(TM)s my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. THE SPIRIT is, and will always be, Eisnerâ(TM)s SPIRIT. Anybody watching me on the set could attest that I very frequently drew a storyboard for a given shot first as I saw it, then as Will might?ve seen in?and, in every case, went with what I saw as Willâ(TM)s version.
To drive the point home, THE SPIRIT, despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. SIN CITY?and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water?is, visually, a playhouse for black and white.
THE SPIRITâ(TM)s been one hell of an adventure, one thatâ(TM)s made me love the world of comics more than ever.
Iâ(TM)m confident that itâ(TM)s going to be one hell of a good movie.
The somewhat fantastic animals, the way the heroes were larger-than-life, the fights over a fallen comrade, the caricatured enemy--it is exactly the way you'd expect a somewhat-talented ancient Greek storyteller to handle the tale.
...
"Somewhat fantastic animals" are not especially characteristic of ancient Greece either.
Typical of ancient Greek storytelling however, which I think was the point. Minotaurs, chimera, hydra, harpy, hippogriff and so on.
I bought a noisy gadget for the son of a friend - a toy steering wheel with lots of buttons and sound effects - and it was a huge hit. For about 10 minutes after it was opened, when the little genius noted the resemblance to a frisbee and flung it into the pool.
WARNING: iPhone 3G browsing speeds may be impeded if you're an idiot.
According to PC Pro, those were Wi-Fi speeds - they use a 3G iPhone, but the WiFi connection.
"The video was shot using a standard iPhone 3G over a Wi-Fi connection, using sites and files similar to those shown in the advert."
Are we to believe that Apple was demonstrating "really fast" over WiFi and not 3G?
CNet ran a similar test comparing the ads to iPhone use, last year. He lags a little behind, and I get the sense that he wants to prove that iPhone is "all that" just as badly as PCPro wants to prove it isn't. With a remarkable lack of prescience, he concludes that nobody could accuse Apple of false advertising. http://cnettv.cnet.com/2001-1_53-28172.html I'm vague on the iPhone timeline, but I think this was before the iPhone had 3G.
Me, I could care less but the wife's iPod touch and her BlackBerry are both slower than the ad and faster than the "anti-ad". And I'm sending this over an "always on, always fast" broadband connection that drops out from time to time and hangs on pages and other content at random intervals with no pattern. We bought the service knowing it could be very good at it's best, but not be at it's best all of the time. I see 17 complaints agains an iPhone and think to myself "... And... ?".
And the other side of the coin is that IT is not a producing industry. IT merely allows other industries to produce their goods and services in a more efficient fashion.
Dude. Guitar Hero.
As I started reading, it occurred to me that this is the same thing many musicians are learning to work with. Loosely, the parallels are that music is the software, touring is the support, soundtracks are software for devices, and merchandising is the custom software. In music, this has become a benefit to the independent, mobile and astute musician while difficult for the larger corporate publishers to accommodate. I expect it'll be the same for the software industry.
They also destroy a lot that would have fallen apart without interference - like when I dump a girlfriend on the realization that she's into surface dwellers, after all.
Sony is pulling it to avoid offending anyone who would not like phrases from the Qur'an used in association with such a game.
Certainly true, but I believe it is to prevent lost sales and not that it's the "right thing to do and that they're just as nervous of offending non-Muslims. ("Sony supports religous terrorists!") I'm certain that there would be an outcry (and most importantly to Sony - lost sales) from misguided non-Muslims as well as misguided Muslims if the song had been left in the game. They've noticed that someone's thumb is resting on the "Hot hot hot button" - any controversy that invokes mention of Islam is certain to blow farther out of proportion than something like the blind protesting "Blindness" - http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=8a0cd1fb-bc44-45a4-bc86-6a116a90f4e8. It's difficult to sell to an angry, incoherent audience but in this case it's easy to avoid the risk.
The executives at Sony are probably trying to avoid the same kind of flack that they got over the use of Manchester Cathedral in last year's "Resistance" game - which also was much furor over nothing (and in the end, un-noticed) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/6739575.stm. Getting uppity about religious symbols isn't exclusive to anybody.
In the song, "Tapha Niang" (taken from the World Circuit/Nonesuch album "Boulevard de lâ(TM)Independance"), the singer, Moussa Diabate, adapts a traditional Malian song about the death of a much-loved hippopotamus who has been shot by a white hunter.
In the original song (Mali Sadjo) the griots of the village sing about how difficult it is to be separated from your loved one in death.
The singer adapts this song in âoeTapha Niangâ to lament the death of his brother Mustapha, who died very young as a child.
Moussa draws on the excerpts from the Koran to console him & help him overcome his bereavement...
It's a terrific album, by the way. I've had the privilege of listening to Toumani Diabate perform - he is one of the most magnificent musicians I have ever heard. His instrument is the kora, a harp-like instrument, the 71st generation griot of his family line, and a devout, peaceful Muslim who has never faced controversy for his inclusion of passages from the Qu'uran before. I don't think that any of that is particularly significant, but it's possibly relevant to the discussion and a little interesting given how misinformed many of the responses are.
remember when TLC was called the Learning Channel and actually had intelligent programming.
"Connections" with James Burke is the program that got me to pony up for cable. Until then, I was using a guitar string jammed in the coax connector, as an antenna.
There are games available for loads of mobile platforms, including phones. It's only because this story includes the word "Iphone" that it gets front page news, as if it were something new.
I can't agree at all with "only includes the word Iphone". It's definitely a piece worthy of Slashdot discussion (or as worthy as any other). There aren't newer mass-market gaming platforms than the iPhone; by it's design the iPhone incites a new approach to designing games; Android IS new; most games for the iPhone are as new as the App Store (which is new); there are still issues and controversies about that App Store and Apple's discretion; the development cycle started on the open platform Android and moved to the closed platform of the iPhone; Slashdot caters to geeks, programmers and gamers and a story about programming a game is just a bloody natural fit on the front page.
On top of all of that, it's a thorough and good breakdown in the article, and well worth reading exclusive of the other merits.
Slashdot Mirror
...until they figure out that LinkedIn is just MySpace wearing a suit, and you don't really *know* the people you know.
"They" would be delighted to be connected to such a successful social network "wearing a suit" - if they made the connection. Weak social interactions are equally as important as strong ones, and in labour/business markets potentially more important. The people you *know* share the same information you already do - the people you're linked to but don't *know* are sources of new information and new connections. They're bridges to other social and business circles. LinkedIn is Granovetter's theory of Weak Ties gone all digital like - http://www.analytictech.com/networks/weakties.htm. (No, I'm no expert on sociology or on economics - caveat yada yada.)
In your personal life, it's your true friends that matter. In business, it's your acquaintances too.
I'm "friends" with quite a few people I don't know
Umm... why???
There are networks of value that don't include our friends. Fans of bands, union members, grassroots advocacy - many sorts of connections are viable with people you don't know. Look up "Granovetter, The strength of weak ties" for a significantly more interesting viewpoint on social networking.
I'd expect to see Apple shift their pricing model for OS X - included in the hardware bundle, near the current price for "upgrades" to registered users, and significantly higher for shrink-wrapped copies to new users/OEM dealers - near Vista's top cost of $400 or so.
No. Variable pricing at launch wouldn't have made a difference to the labels, the DRM would still have been required. They came later to the party, when it was obvious even to the tree stumps that DRM fails.
Apple showed with iTunes showed you could make money selling songs online, you didn't need models that constantly resubscribe to your account to keep listening. It worked for Apple, it worked for the recording industry, and it worked for most people listening to digital music.
eMusic showed you could sell DRM free music - but they couldn't get the library.
Subscriptions came and went. Some actually work reasonably well, now, as streaming technology has caught up - and the Zune "subscribe a bunch, keep some" looks good to me. Pity that they can't seem to figure out how to get the offering outside of the U.S., though.
For big industry, Apple was the bellwether and they became the laggard while they renegotiated the terms. Maybe it took longer than it should have, I wouldn't know. But without iTunes or a service by anyone else as egalitarian and as successful, Amazon would not have had the opportunity to make their offering. It didn't have to be Apple in the first place, but they showed up at exactly the right time, with the right combination of product and service, while the world was screaming "OMG NAPSTER".
There are lots of options, this is simply the easiest.
I don't think ease is the whole of it. YouTube is the best way to get these videos to the most people. People who would never go to the whitehouse.gov site may - and hopefully will - stumble over them while they browse YouTube. They'll be in the channels and playlists of YouTube contacts, embedded into their social profile pages, and in whatever other ways passed around. This move leverages the way people are already using the technology to get the information out. When a TV show puts a clip on their own site, it's the YouTube link that people pass around, and this isn't any different. It's not neccessarily that this is the easiest thing to do - it's the most effective thing to do.
Also, why are RGBY Google's colors
How Google Got Its Colorful Logo: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_google_logos?slide=8&slideView=8
It's still sound, it was never intelligent to apply copyright to consumer/home use (I remember a bit on Johnny Carson about VCRs and home taping ... all that's new is the "D"). If I record a song and it's the title track to your movie, I expect to be protected by copyright and paid accordingly. This definition is what works for me:
copyright, right of first publication (a document granting exclusive right to publish and sell, literary or musical or artistic work) http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=copyright
I don't expect copyright to benefit me from you copying .mp3s, CDs, or other formats for you and your friends. Copyright will never do anything for black market piracy, either. But at the industrial/corporate level, copyright isn't so hard to enforce, because it's easy to detect ("I was sitting in a movie theater and TA-DAH there was my song.") There are issues with copyright law aside from home use (duration, renewability), but I don't think it's a fundamentally flawed concept.
The average Joe must not know what DRM means to experience the implications of it. I hate car analogies, but you don't have to be a greasemonkey to understand that something is wrong with your car.
The average Joe will run into DRM restrictions, and...
Most Joes won't. I check with the relations every Christmas (iTunes cards are the norm for stocking stuffers), and no-one has ever noticed. They buy tunes, listen to them on they iPods, computers, and laptops. No issues. Ditto the girlfriend. They seek, they find, they pay, they play.
My biggest beef - and it's the standard bitch about all digital media publishing services - is the cross-border BS. I know, it's the publishers and whatever legalities, but it's a piss-off that I need to juggle a fake American persona to cash in the gift card my well meaning second cousin buys me each year. And that's not a DRM issue, either.
All that having been said, I'd like to see iTunes catch up to Amazon on DRM-free, but as of the most recent press release I can find, iTunes Plus is up to two million tracks and at 99c per. They're in negotiations with the bigger publishers already. (All this according to press releases.) You can bet that it's come down to a power play between the model the labels want, and what Apple wants.
I remember the Napster days, when they were the first digital music store to the distribution and price right. The corporate rhetoric was "no digital sales ever, it'll never work". The mainstream alternatives were low-resolution subscrition/rental services. Without iTunes, Amazon (and eMusic) probably wouldn't be in business. Love 'em or hate 'em, iTunes was a big deal.
You want to boycott this effectively, go up the food chain, boycott the publishers until all of their music is available to all services without DRM. At this point, I cynically assume that the labels are trying to play DRM-free - without any sense of irony - as leverage either to set their own prices or to get a bigger percentage (either way, to run the store), which would be (from what little I've read) where Apple likes to stand pat.
Contrary to assumptions, DRM doesn't sell iPods. Slick marketing, an instantly familiar interface, and software integration do. I don't think Job's famous letter on DRM was a fraud - I do think it's written for maximum spin, but not an outright lie. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ What I think is, he wants to sell more iPods and knows that when he gets license to sell DRM free, that'll boost sales - and iTunes profits, too.
No, completely ineffective to call for an iTunes boycott. The punters won't collaborate, and it woudn't change anything if they did.
In Modern English, one would throw in a few "faakin caarnt" as well, or risk not being understood.
In Modern English, one would stop the world and melt with you.
I'm not questioning here if the movie will be good or not. I'm just wondering if he ever tried to explain why he's not being completely hypocritical.
His blog: http://www.mycityscreams.com/index2.html?swf=blog
Much has been the fuss in the comicsâ(TM) blogosphere about my SPIRIT movie - much justified, much hoped for, and much to my delight, that there has been a fuss at all. Some comics readers are terrified that THE SPIRIT will be a retread of my SIN CITY. Others quarrel over the change of the SPIRITâ(TM)S traditional blue hat, mask, and jacket, to black. These are understandable concerns for any lover of Will Eisnerâ(TM)s masterpiece. I take this opportunity to address these concerns. With glee, I take this opportunity.
THE SPIRIT is, with every effort I give it, not a rusty, dusty old monument to the work of my beloved Mentor, so much as it is an extension of what I know to have been Eisnerâ(TM)s central intent: to create something new, witty, and exploratory. Thatâ(TM)s what he did. Thatâ(TM)s what Iâ(TM)m doing.
It only resembles SIN CITY in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities. Luckily, I was able to discern three important proclivities I share with the Master. We both love good stories. We both love New York City. And we both love beautiful women.
(Please forgive my constant present-tense references to my dear friend. His creative force, and his force of personality, remains so strong in my mind that I canâ(TM)t often think of Will Eisner as a man who has left us.)
Now, about that blue suit.
Comic books have long traditions based on the limitations of pre-digital printing. Among these are traditions from the old newsprint-run-through-letterpress approach (yes, comics have been?and still doâ"follow tradition that dates all the way back to Gutenberg!). Bad printing on pulp paper is why it was necessary for every superhero to have his emblem printed on his chest, and that everything thatâ(TM)s black be printed in blue. Hence Supermanâ(TM)s preposterous blue hair. And the Spiritâ(TM)s blue hat, mask, and suit.
In tests?and we did several?the blue made the Spirit look like an unfortunate guest at a Halloween party. Going to black brings back his essential mystery, his Zorro-like sexiness. It also makes that red tie of his look very, very cool. So I made the call, with all respect to Eisnerâ(TM)s creation, and most importantly, to what I perceived as his underlying intention. It was an easy call for me to make. The Spirit dresses in black, and looks much the better for it. As I said, my desire was never to slavishly follow the rules of â(TM)40s printing into campy oblivion, but to reintroduce Eisnerâ(TM)s creation, via modern technology, to our brave new world.
And THE SPIRIT as some sort of SIN CITY REDUX? No, SIN CITY, that oneâ(TM)s my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. THE SPIRIT is, and will always be, Eisnerâ(TM)s SPIRIT. Anybody watching me on the set could attest that I very frequently drew a storyboard for a given shot first as I saw it, then as Will might?ve seen in?and, in every case, went with what I saw as Willâ(TM)s version.
To drive the point home, THE SPIRIT, despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. SIN CITY?and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water?is, visually, a playhouse for black and white.
THE SPIRITâ(TM)s been one hell of an adventure, one thatâ(TM)s made me love the world of comics more than ever.
Iâ(TM)m confident that itâ(TM)s going to be one hell of a good movie.
FM
The somewhat fantastic animals, the way the heroes were larger-than-life, the fights over a fallen comrade, the caricatured enemy--it is exactly the way you'd expect a somewhat-talented ancient Greek storyteller to handle the tale.
"Somewhat fantastic animals" are not especially characteristic of ancient Greece either.
Typical of ancient Greek storytelling however, which I think was the point. Minotaurs, chimera, hydra, harpy, hippogriff and so on.
I bought a noisy gadget for the son of a friend - a toy steering wheel with lots of buttons and sound effects - and it was a huge hit. For about 10 minutes after it was opened, when the little genius noted the resemblance to a frisbee and flung it into the pool.
Which was a delight and relief for the mother. ;)
WARNING: iPhone 3G browsing speeds may be impeded if you're an idiot.
According to PC Pro, those were Wi-Fi speeds - they use a 3G iPhone, but the WiFi connection.
"The video was shot using a standard iPhone 3G over a Wi-Fi connection, using sites and files similar to those shown in the advert."
Are we to believe that Apple was demonstrating "really fast" over WiFi and not 3G?
CNet ran a similar test comparing the ads to iPhone use, last year. He lags a little behind, and I get the sense that he wants to prove that iPhone is "all that" just as badly as PCPro wants to prove it isn't. With a remarkable lack of prescience, he concludes that nobody could accuse Apple of false advertising. http://cnettv.cnet.com/2001-1_53-28172.html I'm vague on the iPhone timeline, but I think this was before the iPhone had 3G.
Me, I could care less but the wife's iPod touch and her BlackBerry are both slower than the ad and faster than the "anti-ad". And I'm sending this over an "always on, always fast" broadband connection that drops out from time to time and hangs on pages and other content at random intervals with no pattern. We bought the service knowing it could be very good at it's best, but not be at it's best all of the time. I see 17 complaints agains an iPhone and think to myself "... And... ?".
And the other side of the coin is that IT is not a producing industry. IT merely allows other industries to produce their goods and services in a more efficient fashion.
Dude. Guitar Hero.
As I started reading, it occurred to me that this is the same thing many musicians are learning to work with. Loosely, the parallels are that music is the software, touring is the support, soundtracks are software for devices, and merchandising is the custom software. In music, this has become a benefit to the independent, mobile and astute musician while difficult for the larger corporate publishers to accommodate. I expect it'll be the same for the software industry.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my awesome Barack Obama firefox theme.
"Yes you can! Yes you can!"
... he was a bitch to live with as a puppy...
Probably due to the good animal's gender confusion!
They also destroy a lot that would have fallen apart without interference - like when I dump a girlfriend on the realization that she's into surface dwellers, after all.
Sony is pulling it to avoid offending anyone who would not like phrases from the Qur'an used in association with such a game.
Certainly true, but I believe it is to prevent lost sales and not that it's the "right thing to do and that they're just as nervous of offending non-Muslims. ("Sony supports religous terrorists!") I'm certain that there would be an outcry (and most importantly to Sony - lost sales) from misguided non-Muslims as well as misguided Muslims if the song had been left in the game. They've noticed that someone's thumb is resting on the "Hot hot hot button" - any controversy that invokes mention of Islam is certain to blow farther out of proportion than something like the blind protesting "Blindness" - http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=8a0cd1fb-bc44-45a4-bc86-6a116a90f4e8. It's difficult to sell to an angry, incoherent audience but in this case it's easy to avoid the risk.
The executives at Sony are probably trying to avoid the same kind of flack that they got over the use of Manchester Cathedral in last year's "Resistance" game - which also was much furor over nothing (and in the end, un-noticed) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/6739575.stm. Getting uppity about religious symbols isn't exclusive to anybody.
Toumani Diabate speaks about the song's meaning - http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/21/little-big-planet-musician-defends-song-to-mtv/:
In the song, "Tapha Niang" (taken from the World Circuit/Nonesuch album "Boulevard de lâ(TM)Independance"), the singer, Moussa Diabate, adapts a traditional Malian song about the death of a much-loved hippopotamus who has been shot by a white hunter.
In the original song (Mali Sadjo) the griots of the village sing about how difficult it is to be separated from your loved one in death.
The singer adapts this song in âoeTapha Niangâ to lament the death of his brother Mustapha, who died very young as a child.
Moussa draws on the excerpts from the Koran to console him & help him overcome his bereavement...
It's a terrific album, by the way. I've had the privilege of listening to Toumani Diabate perform - he is one of the most magnificent musicians I have ever heard. His instrument is the kora, a harp-like instrument, the 71st generation griot of his family line, and a devout, peaceful Muslim who has never faced controversy for his inclusion of passages from the Qu'uran before. I don't think that any of that is particularly significant, but it's possibly relevant to the discussion and a little interesting given how misinformed many of the responses are.
remember when TLC was called the Learning Channel and actually had intelligent programming.
"Connections" with James Burke is the program that got me to pony up for cable. Until then, I was using a guitar string jammed in the coax connector, as an antenna.
Is it more expensive than a high-end Windows machine? Not really.
Who buys those high-end Windows machines? Nobody with any sense.
Indeed not - people with dollars do.
There is no spoon?
Well then, we're forked.
I prefer to use killer robot armies, but pitchforks, flaming brands, works for me.
These are not mutually exclusive. Robot armies wielding pitchforks and flaming brands!
There are games available for loads of mobile platforms, including phones. It's only because this story includes the word "Iphone" that it gets front page news, as if it were something new.
I can't agree at all with "only includes the word Iphone". It's definitely a piece worthy of Slashdot discussion (or as worthy as any other). There aren't newer mass-market gaming platforms than the iPhone; by it's design the iPhone incites a new approach to designing games; Android IS new; most games for the iPhone are as new as the App Store (which is new); there are still issues and controversies about that App Store and Apple's discretion; the development cycle started on the open platform Android and moved to the closed platform of the iPhone; Slashdot caters to geeks, programmers and gamers and a story about programming a game is just a bloody natural fit on the front page.
On top of all of that, it's a thorough and good breakdown in the article, and well worth reading exclusive of the other merits.
So much better and more concise than the copy and paste I was about to post. I wish I had points.