The few plug-ins I run on Thunderbird are actually listed as Firefox extensions. They're nothing major - dictionaries and the like - but they're not specifically Thunderbird extensions, either. So if they're mixed, that's probably why, but I had confusion looking for them, too.
Understood, but there's a lot less value in that $60 then there were even a few years ago. You want to put in a code to enhance your game? You can't just put in a magic code anymore, or even unlock it in some cases, you have to pay $5 - $10 for a microtransaction from a place like XBox Live (this is highly prevalent in EA games). And cheat devices have more or less been locked out (and if they're not, just wait for the lawsuits). If you want to play on XBox Live, you have to pay a fee (as opposed to what the PS2, Wii and DS do). Furthermore, some games charge a monthly fee just to be able to make them useful (Final Fantasy XI, WoW)
I'm not against a $10 if it's JUST for the game. But when you take all that into consideration, and remember that a lot of these $60 aren't "new" games so much as "updates" (EA also comes to mind here, too), then the price increase gets worse and worse and worse.
So yes, even though a $50 game in 1985 costs the same as $96.82 in 2007, once you take all of that into account, the price difference dissipates to the point of being nearly irrelevant.
Oh, I wasn't challenging you. More or less agreeing.
And the great thing about Zelda?
What is a sequel of what - unless it's Adventures of Link (underrated) - doesn't matter much in the grand scheme. They still rule.
As a matter of fact, I would wager that Zelda's whole universe - there haven't been any actual sequels since the NES days, to my knowledge - revolves around it being essentially the same idea. Every game is different than every other game, and unrelated, and they're essentially the same for a long time until specific game mechanics (Ocarina, masks, sailing, what have you) take over.
That's not a bad thing, necessarily. Not only does it do what Zelda do best - make the person use their imagination - but it also gets rid of pesky canonical issues.
The video game emulation community, from what I can see, works the same way thanks to the ESA.
A lot of popular ROM sites will host a tonne of ROMs on their sites, but will intentionally take down "banned" ROMs that have been specified by the ESA. These are either popular franchises (Mario, Sonic, Metroid, the big names) or movie licenses (the Bond franchises, but also shitty movie licenses. Just in case we really needed to get that GBA version of Happy Feet). In exchange for ROM sites not having these ROMs, the ESA leaves us alone for the rest. After all, we really don't want to catch any shit for wanting to play Deadly Towers.
The only concern in all of this is that services like the Virtual Console are going to be a means for Nintendo to try to crack down on any and all emulation, but I don't ever see it going to the extent that, say, the MAFIAA goes to.
I pitched a motherfucking fit, that's what I did. Check my site sometime, that scratches the surface.
But, again, we can't go too far to one side. They have grossly abused their rights, but again, I don't think it's responsible to riot at the mere mention of an EO.
The language is a bit vague, but calling this a defeat of the Fifth Amendment is overly hyperbolic.
Let's calm down a bit, eh?
And why is it that half the articles KDawson approves are either overly liberal, or show some sort of political bone picking? I'm not saying I'm liberal or conservative - I'm Social Democrat - but this seems like it's pandering to liberal scaremongers. "The Republicans hate your freedom!"
Oh, I agree. But it's a matter of lazyness, and also a feeling that if they do one thing wrong to a computer that it's going to blow up.
It doesn't help that a lot of vendors are selling anti-spam and AV software (not the primary ones) based on nothing but FUD. "If you don't load our shit, your computer is going to be shitting out of it's CD-ROM drive!" Lusers don't know better.
It's not that deep. It's more a case of lazy, shitty coding than it is a massive corporate tie-in with Microsoft. They run too much shit that is dependant on Internet Exploder, figuring that most of the lusers out there run IE.
So while it's going to be an easier install for the lusers on IE, people on Firefox, Safari, Seamonkey, Opera or what have you are essentially fucked. For them, the question is "why aren't you using Windows?".
BTW, for all the Linuxvangelists that wonder "why can't the users just learn Linux?", here's your answer.
Sonic's own platform games haven't been done right in years, what the hell is an RPG going to do? I don't care WHO'S making it, it's basically a Furry Fest as it is.
See, when I first called them, reporting an outage (keep in mind, we're a multi-family house), they said there was a known outage in our area. If they'd have told us there was no known outage, in my mind, I probably would have gone to step B. Instead, I had that mental block, and on one told me that there was no general outage; all we knew was that our entire house was out, and no one was refuting a general outage.
Otherwise, I'd have been all over it. But thanks to that, I didn't get that mental block out of my head.
Yesterday, we remarked at my house that the phone was down. We felt it a temporary issue and left it at that.
Today, we found out that the service was down because the company was dead. We didn't find out from anyone at SunRocket, we found out on Slashdot. On SLASHDOT! And so far, no luck in contacting support about "Hey fuckers, we just paid you, how about a fucking refund!?".
I expect even a level 1 to know that SunRocket isn't my problem. Maybe as a Lv. 3, I have certain expectations, but I expect a Lv. 1 to at least be smart enough not to go "Hm, cable and internet... it's obviously this other company!"
They're very much with modern times. It's not that they're losing money off of this; the numbers are insignificant.
No, this is less about the current bottom line and more about control. If they can achieve the control that they want, and control every facet of the way we listen to music, then they can profit off of everything that they weren't able to profit off of in the past. More than that, they can determine our trends, and control things more from there.
Once they control everything and everyone, everyone forgets how we got to that point; who has time to think about corporate greed and rescinded rights to our own property when the new Kelly Clarkson album is out? Half the people screaming about the RIAA now will instantly forget it when the next corporately pushed, bubblegum pop group, overly emo rock group or "hardgore gangsta" artist comes out that they HAVE to have. Guaranteed.
The RIAA and their cronies will get away with this because they know we'll let them.
I had a three day - THREE DAY - outage at my house, which took out my internet, TV, you name it. Therefore, since I'm a SunRocket customer (:'(), that took out my phone, too. Even better: my house is in a nice little recessed valley, which doesn't get good cell reception. Therefore, to call tech support, I would have to walk up the road about a quarter mile, and get one bar worth of reception.
For a day and a half, this was the conversation:
"Hello, yes, we're completely out here..." "OK! What exactly is out?" "My internet is out" "OK..." "And my Cable is out" "OK..." *talk a little longer. She asks for a phone number; I give her my cell, and instructions to leave a message if they get my VM, since I'm out of reception range* "Do you have a home phone number?" "Yes, but it's out too, thanks to the internet being out" "Do you have our Voice Over IP service?" "No, I use SunRocket" "Well, we don't do support for SunRocket, you will need to contact their tech support" "No, lady, I know you don't support SunRocket, but my internet and cable are out!" "You will need to contact SunRocket support" "No, this has nothing to do with Su--" "Thank you for calling Comcast! *CLICK*"
After many call-backs and attempts to get her and the next three techs fired, I FINALLY - after three days - got someone out to the house, who explained why everything died: We were the victims of the most amateur attempt at stealing cable ever. It was laughable; shredded cable where he tried to put the connector on, cut wire everywhere, he eventually had the cable un-sheathed, and tied in together in a knot.
But it took three days to get a tech, partly because it was a weekend, and partly because of SunRocket, and them absolutely refusing to help me because I DARED to have an internet service that Comcast didn't expressly approve.
If anything did in my VoIP provider, it was this bullshit. And that leaves me with very unattractive options: Go to Vonage (who have their own problems), go back to AT+T land line, or go with Comcast's VoIP (a company who I'd dump completely if I had that option).
"It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career. It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."
They're not even subtle about this anymore. They're openly shaking down their own artists.
There's a difference between "want to support the artists" and "don't want to support the enablers while the artists get screwed", which is essentially happening here.
Also: the fees would go to MICROSOFT, with a pittance going to the artists... of that, it's very highly likely that even a large portion of THAT pittance would end up going to the MAFIAA.
So in conclusion: artists are losing more legitimate sales by people fed up with this nonsense, while the people too stupid to avoid paying this horrible, horrible fee to listen to what could be their own legally obtained music wouldn't even be sending significant revenue to the artists.
That's because they're too stupid to see the big picture. They can't look beyond "oh, noes! I won't be able to buy so many DVDs!:("
American consumers have got to be the most selfish, greedy, stupid people out there today. They're the reasons we have this government we have today; they'd vote in Hitler as long as they got to buy more stupid shit for themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
The few plug-ins I run on Thunderbird are actually listed as Firefox extensions. They're nothing major - dictionaries and the like - but they're not specifically Thunderbird extensions, either. So if they're mixed, that's probably why, but I had confusion looking for them, too.
Understood, but there's a lot less value in that $60 then there were even a few years ago. You want to put in a code to enhance your game? You can't just put in a magic code anymore, or even unlock it in some cases, you have to pay $5 - $10 for a microtransaction from a place like XBox Live (this is highly prevalent in EA games). And cheat devices have more or less been locked out (and if they're not, just wait for the lawsuits). If you want to play on XBox Live, you have to pay a fee (as opposed to what the PS2, Wii and DS do). Furthermore, some games charge a monthly fee just to be able to make them useful (Final Fantasy XI, WoW)
I'm not against a $10 if it's JUST for the game. But when you take all that into consideration, and remember that a lot of these $60 aren't "new" games so much as "updates" (EA also comes to mind here, too), then the price increase gets worse and worse and worse.
So yes, even though a $50 game in 1985 costs the same as $96.82 in 2007, once you take all of that into account, the price difference dissipates to the point of being nearly irrelevant.
Oh, I wasn't challenging you. More or less agreeing. And the great thing about Zelda? What is a sequel of what - unless it's Adventures of Link (underrated) - doesn't matter much in the grand scheme. They still rule.
I see no problems whatsoever with that.
As a matter of fact, I would wager that Zelda's whole universe - there haven't been any actual sequels since the NES days, to my knowledge - revolves around it being essentially the same idea. Every game is different than every other game, and unrelated, and they're essentially the same for a long time until specific game mechanics (Ocarina, masks, sailing, what have you) take over.
That's not a bad thing, necessarily. Not only does it do what Zelda do best - make the person use their imagination - but it also gets rid of pesky canonical issues.
The video game emulation community, from what I can see, works the same way thanks to the ESA.
A lot of popular ROM sites will host a tonne of ROMs on their sites, but will intentionally take down "banned" ROMs that have been specified by the ESA. These are either popular franchises (Mario, Sonic, Metroid, the big names) or movie licenses (the Bond franchises, but also shitty movie licenses. Just in case we really needed to get that GBA version of Happy Feet). In exchange for ROM sites not having these ROMs, the ESA leaves us alone for the rest. After all, we really don't want to catch any shit for wanting to play Deadly Towers.
The only concern in all of this is that services like the Virtual Console are going to be a means for Nintendo to try to crack down on any and all emulation, but I don't ever see it going to the extent that, say, the MAFIAA goes to.
Some people do use Hotmail accounts for business reasons.
Naturally, these people are fucking morons, but they do use them for business.
I pitched a motherfucking fit, that's what I did. Check my site sometime, that scratches the surface.
But, again, we can't go too far to one side. They have grossly abused their rights, but again, I don't think it's responsible to riot at the mere mention of an EO.
Too many extremes on both sides.
And trust me when I say I'm going to be watching progression VERY carefully on this. I have the same concerns you do.
I'd rather not be Chicken Little, though.
The language is a bit vague, but calling this a defeat of the Fifth Amendment is overly hyperbolic.
Let's calm down a bit, eh?
And why is it that half the articles KDawson approves are either overly liberal, or show some sort of political bone picking? I'm not saying I'm liberal or conservative - I'm Social Democrat - but this seems like it's pandering to liberal scaremongers. "The Republicans hate your freedom!"
Who the fuck modded this down as a troll? Is this the week the Apple fanboys got all the mod points or something?
Oh, I agree. But it's a matter of lazyness, and also a feeling that if they do one thing wrong to a computer that it's going to blow up.
It doesn't help that a lot of vendors are selling anti-spam and AV software (not the primary ones) based on nothing but FUD. "If you don't load our shit, your computer is going to be shitting out of it's CD-ROM drive!" Lusers don't know better.
That and $2 will get you a coffee.
It's not that deep. It's more a case of lazy, shitty coding than it is a massive corporate tie-in with Microsoft. They run too much shit that is dependant on Internet Exploder, figuring that most of the lusers out there run IE.
So while it's going to be an easier install for the lusers on IE, people on Firefox, Safari, Seamonkey, Opera or what have you are essentially fucked. For them, the question is "why aren't you using Windows?".
BTW, for all the Linuxvangelists that wonder "why can't the users just learn Linux?", here's your answer.
Sonic Advance/Rush were good games; they were exceptions to the norm.
As for Sonic and the Secret Rings, no, I haven't played it, don't have a Wii.
Sonic's own platform games haven't been done right in years, what the hell is an RPG going to do? I don't care WHO'S making it, it's basically a Furry Fest as it is.
See, when I first called them, reporting an outage (keep in mind, we're a multi-family house), they said there was a known outage in our area. If they'd have told us there was no known outage, in my mind, I probably would have gone to step B. Instead, I had that mental block, and on one told me that there was no general outage; all we knew was that our entire house was out, and no one was refuting a general outage.
Otherwise, I'd have been all over it. But thanks to that, I didn't get that mental block out of my head.
Yesterday, we remarked at my house that the phone was down. We felt it a temporary issue and left it at that.
Today, we found out that the service was down because the company was dead. We didn't find out from anyone at SunRocket, we found out on Slashdot. On SLASHDOT! And so far, no luck in contacting support about "Hey fuckers, we just paid you, how about a fucking refund!?".
I think we got gipped.
I expect even a level 1 to know that SunRocket isn't my problem. Maybe as a Lv. 3, I have certain expectations, but I expect a Lv. 1 to at least be smart enough not to go "Hm, cable and internet... it's obviously this other company!"
They're very much with modern times. It's not that they're losing money off of this; the numbers are insignificant.
No, this is less about the current bottom line and more about control. If they can achieve the control that they want, and control every facet of the way we listen to music, then they can profit off of everything that they weren't able to profit off of in the past. More than that, they can determine our trends, and control things more from there.
Once they control everything and everyone, everyone forgets how we got to that point; who has time to think about corporate greed and rescinded rights to our own property when the new Kelly Clarkson album is out? Half the people screaming about the RIAA now will instantly forget it when the next corporately pushed, bubblegum pop group, overly emo rock group or "hardgore gangsta" artist comes out that they HAVE to have. Guaranteed.
The RIAA and their cronies will get away with this because they know we'll let them.
Key words: as long as the connection is working.
I had a three day - THREE DAY - outage at my house, which took out my internet, TV, you name it. Therefore, since I'm a SunRocket customer (:'(), that took out my phone, too. Even better: my house is in a nice little recessed valley, which doesn't get good cell reception. Therefore, to call tech support, I would have to walk up the road about a quarter mile, and get one bar worth of reception.
For a day and a half, this was the conversation:
"Hello, yes, we're completely out here..."
"OK! What exactly is out?"
"My internet is out"
"OK..."
"And my Cable is out"
"OK..."
*talk a little longer. She asks for a phone number; I give her my cell, and instructions to leave a message if they get my VM, since I'm out of reception range*
"Do you have a home phone number?"
"Yes, but it's out too, thanks to the internet being out"
"Do you have our Voice Over IP service?"
"No, I use SunRocket"
"Well, we don't do support for SunRocket, you will need to contact their tech support"
"No, lady, I know you don't support SunRocket, but my internet and cable are out!"
"You will need to contact SunRocket support"
"No, this has nothing to do with Su--"
"Thank you for calling Comcast! *CLICK*"
After many call-backs and attempts to get her and the next three techs fired, I FINALLY - after three days - got someone out to the house, who explained why everything died: We were the victims of the most amateur attempt at stealing cable ever. It was laughable; shredded cable where he tried to put the connector on, cut wire everywhere, he eventually had the cable un-sheathed, and tied in together in a knot.
But it took three days to get a tech, partly because it was a weekend, and partly because of SunRocket, and them absolutely refusing to help me because I DARED to have an internet service that Comcast didn't expressly approve.
If anything did in my VoIP provider, it was this bullshit. And that leaves me with very unattractive options: Go to Vonage (who have their own problems), go back to AT+T land line, or go with Comcast's VoIP (a company who I'd dump completely if I had that option).
"It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career. It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."
They're not even subtle about this anymore. They're openly shaking down their own artists.
There's a difference between "want to support the artists" and "don't want to support the enablers while the artists get screwed", which is essentially happening here.
Also: the fees would go to MICROSOFT, with a pittance going to the artists... of that, it's very highly likely that even a large portion of THAT pittance would end up going to the MAFIAA.
So in conclusion: artists are losing more legitimate sales by people fed up with this nonsense, while the people too stupid to avoid paying this horrible, horrible fee to listen to what could be their own legally obtained music wouldn't even be sending significant revenue to the artists.
Americans vote all the time. They vote fervently, and with true passion.
Wait... you were talking about electing public officials? Fuck, I was talking about American Idol...
Great!
Now, let's compare "you" to "them".
That's because they're too stupid to see the big picture. They can't look beyond "oh, noes! I won't be able to buy so many DVDs! :("
American consumers have got to be the most selfish, greedy, stupid people out there today. They're the reasons we have this government we have today; they'd vote in Hitler as long as they got to buy more stupid shit for themselves.