I know I'm getting a PS3 "someday", probably next year when I save up the money. But the 60 GB version still has the emotion chip hardware, so it's pretty much 100% compatible with all of my old PSOne and PS2 games, which will hold me over until the good PS3 games start coming in.
On the other hand, if I do wait, there's a chance those will be all gone by next year.
Hm. Actually kind of a tough choice, because this isn't "OMG GIMME NOW!" kind of thing, but more a "If I don't act now, I'll wind up getting the kind of crappier one later." Yeah, I know, the software emulation does all sorts of neat tricks to "upscale" it, but I usually find I don't give a crap. (Heck, I just put in the original "Persona" into my PS2 the other day for the first time and was perfectly pleased with them old 1990's graphics.)
Such group games like Wii Sports / Play really should have had internet play. Period. The only reason why I'm still playing Sports after three weeks is because my roommate and I have a rivalry going as far as getting gold medals in the trainings and trying to outdo each other in the fitness tests.
I have to disagree. Why? The fun of Wii Sports/Wii Play is playing with friends/family. I had my hair cut this weekend, and the stylist was complaining about sore arms because she went to a friend's house "and they showed us their Wii and I played Tennis".
Online play might work for gamers, and maybe it would have been a nice addition, but I don't think it as "required". Look at your own example - you're still playing it because you're competing with someone you know. Grandma Pearl and Grandpa Fogie wouldn't care about "Wii Tennis" ladders online - these are people they don't know, but they do care about their war buddy Jim who comes over to play (and yes, I'm being serious - I have some older coworkers who aren't tech guys who were talking about playing Wii Sports and getting competitive about their scores).
N'Gai Croal made an interesting question based on sales of Brain Age and Big Brain Academy.
Brain Age sales are still pretty high, and has sustainability - people play it for a loooong time (my wife still pulls it out from time to time now to play Soduku). But for one game, it has sales that just keep on going.
Kind of reminds me of your family and mine. My children (ages 8, 5 and 2) discovered Mario 64 when I picked it upon a whim, and they want to play it nearly every day. For Nintendo, then, making a profit is just finding that one game that keeps "casual" gamers coming back, maybe buying a sequel (like "Brain Age 2" which coming soon to the states), then waiting. The margins for these games are very low (I think the original "Brain Age" was designed, built and produced in 90 days), and rather than making 10 different games one for every month, Nintendo can focus on a few games and derivitives to build the brand.
I keep running into people who either "just got one" or still play theirs every day, and they're not gamer types. Personally, I expect another explosion when Wii Health comes out, and the female market goes "Hey - exercise item with tracking so I can chart my progress!".
I feel the same way. I'm not planning on upgrading my PS2 until the PS3 is closer to the $400 mark - but by then, the games that I'm looking forward to should be pretty cheap, so I'll probably still wind up spending $600 between system and games by then;).
OK - OK - it's been awhile since I've tried out Ubuntu - thanks for correcting me on the "screen resolution" - I am obviously a terrible, awful person, and will not make that mistake again.;)
It seems that this is going to be the final "slow bleed" for Microsoft. People aren't buying Vista (in fact, Dell is reoffering XP on systems just to shut up annoyed users). But hey - they have the lawsuits, and they'll be more than happy to pull a SCO and threaten to sue the pants off of people who don't pay off their protection racket.
Odds are, they'll be smarter about it than SCO - rather then go right for IBM (with tons of dollars to pay lawyers), they'll make "deals" with places like Novell and others so insure that PC tax continues no matter whom the likes of Dell and Gateway and others finally go through.
The sad thing is, there still isn't a great competitor to Windows. Linux is nice and Ubuntu and other distros have come far, but it seems they lack that final step (like "How do I change my screen resolution?" or other bits that only techies would know). OS X is my preferred OS as a security analyst, but it only runs on one system (I know - Apple sells hardware, blah, blah, blah, but damn - if they make Leopard for *all* X86 systems, they might take over the desktops - I've met plenty of CIO's who want that).
Either way, Microsoft's plan is to continue to be the "gasoline" of computers: they don't make the computers, but they get paid for every one that's made. Through their threats and strategic lawsuits/threatening of lawsuit, they'll ensure their money for a long time to come.
Unless, of course, there's enough people who stand up and say "No" and pool together *their* money to help companies fight back....
I'm rather surprised by that - everybody I work with (geek and non alike) seem to love the commercials. For weeks, it seemed that whenever someone entered someone elses office, I'd hear "Wii would like to play".
My wife, who isn't a gamer at all (the only game she plays is "Tetris" and "Brain Age") loves the commercials.
Mario Party is coming at the end of the month, so I don't expect this trend to change any time soon.
The other thing I wonder about is with Nintendo's dominance of the Japanese market, I'm wonder how long until we see more 3rd party developers decide that their RPG/fighter/FPS game doesn't *need* 50 GB of storage and 3 billion operations per second. (Personal note: I'd be stoked for a high res FFVII remake for the Wii. I know, I'm weak.)
The VistA system uses a very interesting database/programming language called MUMPS - long story short, it was doing 20 years ago what Oracle and EJB 3.0 are doing today. Variables declared in the correct way in MUMPS are automatically created in the database - the programmer doesn't have to worry about how that's done, or how to connect to the database. They just make up their variables, define their methods, and the system does the rest. There are newer implementations such as Cache that use the MUMPS language and expand on it (unless I'm mistaken, I believe there are some Object Oriented tools to go with it).
It's one of those things that never got big attention, though the technology was pretty advance and simple when it was created.
This is an interesting problem for Microsoft. Yes, we know - they can burn through this money and not lose it, they can take billion dollar losses every year on the Xbox and not care, blah, blah, blah - but sooner or later, profits *do* matter to your bottom line.
What I'm curious about is how the long run of Microsoft's console wars might end up hurting the company overall. It used to be that people stayed on Windows for 3 reasons:
1. It's what the office uses/proprietary apps I need 2. I need Microsoft Office 3. Games
Of all of these reasons, the #1 thing I heard from tech people for why they stayed on Windows - or at least kept a dual booting system - was for the games. Once consoles started on their rise, MS realized that this was a serious long term threat to the monopoly. Hence, the Xbox was born. This way, even if techie people go "Well, I stay with Windows for the games", at least MS would have a console of their own to ply.
Now, they're trying to tie in Windows into this gaming concept. Look at Vista, and the "won't run without an ESRB rating" issue some games have had a problem with - a "safety" issue says Microsoft, but a lock-in system says I. Now their Windows Live, which is the Xbox Live system on Windows - again, another method to try to tie in Windows and consoles, and establish a lock in. Or the "Halo 2 (a game made using Windows 2000 computer hardware level technology) can't run on your computer unless you run Vista with Windows Live", a move that I don't see a whole lot of gamers going "OOooo - I get to pay $200 for an OS to run a 3/4 year old game when I could buy the original Xbox version with a new Xbox from a store for the same price". It's an expensive move that so far, hasn't caught on. They're now trying to tie Vista in the Xbox, hoping to shore up both.
It seems a lot of money spent that, so far, is only costing them more. They lose more money with each Xbox sold. So how to make it up? Charge more on the Microtransactions, which leads to expensive "horse armor" and gamers who rebel against the cost of Guitar Hero II downloads for being way overpriced.
I can give credit to Microsoft for making a decent console (when it doesn't "red ring of death" on people - is that the equivalent of a blue screen of death?), but it seems like they're fighting for a Pyhrric victory. If this is their idea of success, then the rest of the Microsoft company had better hope that this brand of billion-dollar-per-year losing "success" doesn't infiltrate the rest of the company.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Windows Vista all the way. If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X? Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.
I seem to recall a lawsuit regarding Microsoft's predatory practices by making it financially difficult for vendors to sell any operations system other than Dos and Windows - then there's the code stealing (Doublespace), the intential breaking (DR DOS), and other practices that, over time, have helped to lead to not just Microsoft's and Windows domination, but also the discouragement of any other operating systems from gaining hold.
I thought there was a whole court case about this, Microsoft being found guilty or something. But since there was no punishment, I must be wrong.
A) We've seen this before, so what's the change? B) My understanding of the iTunes store sharing is that when you want to view a video/play a song you purchased, it checks to see if the client you're using is authorized. If Slingbox hasn't broken that DRM system, then how can it be used for iTunes purchased shows?
I hooked up my Wii with the browser into the Internets, and showed my wife - look, we can get YouTube on here!
Meh. As a non-geek, she couldn't care less - and I think that's most people. Youtube is useful for "Hey, Bob - did you see this video?" And maybe if there's a series you like (like Chad Vader or the shaving series by Mantis I like) - but typically, Youtube is a great idea, but I don't see the casual person sitting there going "Oh - look, I can surf Youtube!"
The two killer apps as I see it:
1. Seemless iTunes integration - and this includes the store. If I realize I forgot to Tivo Battlestar, or "House" for my wife, then I should be able to just pick up the iTunes remote, click, click, $2 later I got my show.
2. Any show, any time - with commercials. I wouldn't mind commercials on shows if I could pick whatever show I wanted, whenever I wanted - even if I couldn't skip them (or, if they forced a few at the beginning/middle or something like that). Then, if I want to watch "Veronica Mars", I just go right to the episode. No worried about my schedule - I just watch it.
I don't see 2 happening - networks I think are too obsessed with "time slow", even though such a "select the show" system would be a more accurate demonstration to commercial vendors of how effective a show is at getting eyeballs (and maybe that's why the networks don't do it;) ).
But while Youtube/Google Video integration would be nice, I don't buy that it would be the "killer app".
I'm afraid I must agree. First as a person, who is tired of hearing "Motherf---ing f-ing f-er! I'm going to rape you and your f-ing mother" when I play.
Secondly, as a father, I don't want my children interacting with people like that.
I rather like the Friends Code system - I know who's on my Wii, and who it communicates with, and I control the level of jerkitude I have to deal with.
1. The cost of computing and Internet access have truly dropped to a point to where it is nearly "universal". 2. The Human solution sometimes is the best.
What's going to be interesting is threefold: how do we conquer this problem, and how long until "sweat spam shops" have opened up, and how long until the outsourcers become the main branches? Much like the Cory Doctorow story revolving around sweat shops of MMO players, it might not be long until automated scripts are combined with "sweat shop" style workers, who's only job it so enter in the proper "human" data to fill spam.
On the other hand, as outsourcing has taught us, it is only a matter of time before the outsourcees become the suppliers as they get the training they need. Once the "local guy" starts making up the scripts, it's only a matter of time before he/she goes to open up their own spamming sweat shop. Which is a good thing in a weird way as the article points out - it encourages new business at the expense of annoyance.
The next phase of solutions might have to focus on more detailed question/responses - but there's a danger in this in finding the "sweet spot". You want to make it as expensive as possible for spammers, but not so annoying for your "true customers". Much like my new bank's online service, perhaps, where they made me select my "security image" and more personal questions so I had to enter 2-3 things to truly "log in" the first time.
If there's anything the recent events in Iraq versus North Korea have demonstrated, it's "those who have nukes don't get invaded". It's the ultimate self-defense mechanism, it would seem.
It seems that the primary difference, from what I've been reading, between Guba.com and bittorrent is at least with the former, the MPAA has a chance at some money coming their way. From the FAQ:
What is the difference between buying and renting a video on GUBA Premium?
Rent - If you rent a video on GUBA Premium it will be available for viewing from your computer for a limited period of time (most likely 24 hours). The 24 hour period commences at the moment that you click on the "Play" button in Windows Media Player (and not when you begin the download.) Rental videos most often restrict what you can do with the video--meaning that you can't burn it to CD or copy it to another computer. Please note that depending on license terms you may have up to 30 days to begin playing the video before which time it is no longer accessible. Be sure to check the details on your "My Favorites" page.
Buy - If you buy a video on GUBA Premium it is available for your enjoyment indefinitely, usually on up to 2 devices (check the individual file for the specific license rights.) In addition, you can back it up to a DVD-R or sync it to a Windows capable ("Playsforsure") mobile device.
Explanations for all of these rights are defined in the FAQ listed below (My Rights for Renting & Buying Videos.) Why am I not able to play the movie I just rented/bought?
Your computer must have the following minimum system requirements to play the movie you rented/bought:
* Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional SP-2 or Windows Media Center
* Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
* Windows Media Player 9 or higher
* A 300KBps or better Internet connection: We recommend Cable or DSL connection
So right there, Guba has some sort of DRM system in place that keeps people from just watching any movie at any time - and since they use the Usenet archives at times to snag their movies, the MPAA doesn't have to worry about "clean" copies - they'll still get paid for crappy Usenet archive copies that Joe Geek ripped from the DVD.
But there's something else that Guba offers as well: tracking of content. Does Hollywood want to know what movie might be a good pick? What if there's been a lot of traffic in "Santa Claus versus the Martians", and it's pretty constant - maybe rereleasing the DVD will make some cash.
Either way, the selective nature of just what the MPAA will go after and what they won't is rather interesting. I read through the artcle which seemed to show pretty clearly that the MPAA can ignore copyright violation when it wants to. Anyone else have a better idea than I why that may be?
If that is the case, then I believe the situation is even worse for them.
if they expect to make money off of DRM media, then with the iPod and the upcoming iTV, then the point of the Xbox - as you lay it out - is about to be superceded.
Either way, they're certainly not making money off of game sales so far. If anything, it seems they're losing money on the Xbox even faster since they ramped up production to try and take advantage of the PS3 delay - which with the large number of Wii units selling, might have been a useless gesture in the long run.
Now, when you order that VoodooPC, it comes with a free phone tap kit! Fun for the whole family (though unless you're a member of the NSA, make sure you get those warrants first!)
Actaully, I liked that, if for no other reason than we learned that if you're a big, annoying whiner, you don't get the super powers - your brother does.
Next time, just shut the hell up instead of boring us with how pathetic your life is. I mean, even Japanese Otoko boy Hiro figured out "Just do it". Now, *him* I liked.
OK, so the show is trying a little too hard to be "Lost" (Look - we've got all these connections between people - there are no coincidences on the Island - I mean, the Earth!)
But what gets me is how the writers could actually have a conversation like this one:
Politician: Hey, little brother. Good hearted guy: Hey, I think I can fly! Politician: Great - that's *exactly* something someone would say in a crowded room full of people. Good hearted guy: No, really - I'm going to be like superman!
I nearly turned it off at that point, but my wife wanted to watch the rest. Overall, maybe a 7/10 so far - but the next episode looks to kick things into gear.
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I know I'm getting a PS3 "someday", probably next year when I save up the money. But the 60 GB version still has the emotion chip hardware, so it's pretty much 100% compatible with all of my old PSOne and PS2 games, which will hold me over until the good PS3 games start coming in.
On the other hand, if I do wait, there's a chance those will be all gone by next year.
Hm. Actually kind of a tough choice, because this isn't "OMG GIMME NOW!" kind of thing, but more a "If I don't act now, I'll wind up getting the kind of crappier one later." Yeah, I know, the software emulation does all sorts of neat tricks to "upscale" it, but I usually find I don't give a crap. (Heck, I just put in the original "Persona" into my PS2 the other day for the first time and was perfectly pleased with them old 1990's graphics.)
So we're coming out with an Xbox 360 that costs $100 more! Take that, Nintendo!
I have to disagree. Why? The fun of Wii Sports/Wii Play is playing with friends/family. I had my hair cut this weekend, and the stylist was complaining about sore arms because she went to a friend's house "and they showed us their Wii and I played Tennis".
Online play might work for gamers, and maybe it would have been a nice addition, but I don't think it as "required". Look at your own example - you're still playing it because you're competing with someone you know. Grandma Pearl and Grandpa Fogie wouldn't care about "Wii Tennis" ladders online - these are people they don't know, but they do care about their war buddy Jim who comes over to play (and yes, I'm being serious - I have some older coworkers who aren't tech guys who were talking about playing Wii Sports and getting competitive about their scores).
N'Gai Croal made an interesting question based on sales of Brain Age and Big Brain Academy.
Brain Age sales are still pretty high, and has sustainability - people play it for a loooong time (my wife still pulls it out from time to time now to play Soduku). But for one game, it has sales that just keep on going.
Kind of reminds me of your family and mine. My children (ages 8, 5 and 2) discovered Mario 64 when I picked it upon a whim, and they want to play it nearly every day. For Nintendo, then, making a profit is just finding that one game that keeps "casual" gamers coming back, maybe buying a sequel (like "Brain Age 2" which coming soon to the states), then waiting. The margins for these games are very low (I think the original "Brain Age" was designed, built and produced in 90 days), and rather than making 10 different games one for every month, Nintendo can focus on a few games and derivitives to build the brand.
I keep running into people who either "just got one" or still play theirs every day, and they're not gamer types. Personally, I expect another explosion when Wii Health comes out, and the female market goes "Hey - exercise item with tracking so I can chart my progress!".
I feel the same way. I'm not planning on upgrading my PS2 until the PS3 is closer to the $400 mark - but by then, the games that I'm looking forward to should be pretty cheap, so I'll probably still wind up spending $600 between system and games by then ;).
OK - OK - it's been awhile since I've tried out Ubuntu - thanks for correcting me on the "screen resolution" - I am obviously a terrible, awful person, and will not make that mistake again. ;)
It seems that this is going to be the final "slow bleed" for Microsoft. People aren't buying Vista (in fact, Dell is reoffering XP on systems just to shut up annoyed users). But hey - they have the lawsuits, and they'll be more than happy to pull a SCO and threaten to sue the pants off of people who don't pay off their protection racket.
Odds are, they'll be smarter about it than SCO - rather then go right for IBM (with tons of dollars to pay lawyers), they'll make "deals" with places like Novell and others so insure that PC tax continues no matter whom the likes of Dell and Gateway and others finally go through.
The sad thing is, there still isn't a great competitor to Windows. Linux is nice and Ubuntu and other distros have come far, but it seems they lack that final step (like "How do I change my screen resolution?" or other bits that only techies would know). OS X is my preferred OS as a security analyst, but it only runs on one system (I know - Apple sells hardware, blah, blah, blah, but damn - if they make Leopard for *all* X86 systems, they might take over the desktops - I've met plenty of CIO's who want that).
Either way, Microsoft's plan is to continue to be the "gasoline" of computers: they don't make the computers, but they get paid for every one that's made. Through their threats and strategic lawsuits/threatening of lawsuit, they'll ensure their money for a long time to come.
Unless, of course, there's enough people who stand up and say "No" and pool together *their* money to help companies fight back....
I'm rather surprised by that - everybody I work with (geek and non alike) seem to love the commercials. For weeks, it seemed that whenever someone entered someone elses office, I'd hear "Wii would like to play".
My wife, who isn't a gamer at all (the only game she plays is "Tetris" and "Brain Age") loves the commercials.
But, to each their own.
I had heard about IV - do you have linkage to V and VI?
Mario Party is coming at the end of the month, so I don't expect this trend to change any time soon.
The other thing I wonder about is with Nintendo's dominance of the Japanese market, I'm wonder how long until we see more 3rd party developers decide that their RPG/fighter/FPS game doesn't *need* 50 GB of storage and 3 billion operations per second. (Personal note: I'd be stoked for a high res FFVII remake for the Wii. I know, I'm weak.)
The VistA system uses a very interesting database/programming language called MUMPS - long story short, it was doing 20 years ago what Oracle and EJB 3.0 are doing today. Variables declared in the correct way in MUMPS are automatically created in the database - the programmer doesn't have to worry about how that's done, or how to connect to the database. They just make up their variables, define their methods, and the system does the rest. There are newer implementations such as Cache that use the MUMPS language and expand on it (unless I'm mistaken, I believe there are some Object Oriented tools to go with it).
It's one of those things that never got big attention, though the technology was pretty advance and simple when it was created.
This is an interesting problem for Microsoft. Yes, we know - they can burn through this money and not lose it, they can take billion dollar losses every year on the Xbox and not care, blah, blah, blah - but sooner or later, profits *do* matter to your bottom line.
What I'm curious about is how the long run of Microsoft's console wars might end up hurting the company overall. It used to be that people stayed on Windows for 3 reasons:
1. It's what the office uses/proprietary apps I need
2. I need Microsoft Office
3. Games
Of all of these reasons, the #1 thing I heard from tech people for why they stayed on Windows - or at least kept a dual booting system - was for the games. Once consoles started on their rise, MS realized that this was a serious long term threat to the monopoly. Hence, the Xbox was born. This way, even if techie people go "Well, I stay with Windows for the games", at least MS would have a console of their own to ply.
Now, they're trying to tie in Windows into this gaming concept. Look at Vista, and the "won't run without an ESRB rating" issue some games have had a problem with - a "safety" issue says Microsoft, but a lock-in system says I. Now their Windows Live, which is the Xbox Live system on Windows - again, another method to try to tie in Windows and consoles, and establish a lock in. Or the "Halo 2 (a game made using Windows 2000 computer hardware level technology) can't run on your computer unless you run Vista with Windows Live", a move that I don't see a whole lot of gamers going "OOooo - I get to pay $200 for an OS to run a 3/4 year old game when I could buy the original Xbox version with a new Xbox from a store for the same price". It's an expensive move that so far, hasn't caught on. They're now trying to tie Vista in the Xbox, hoping to shore up both.
It seems a lot of money spent that, so far, is only costing them more. They lose more money with each Xbox sold. So how to make it up? Charge more on the Microtransactions, which leads to expensive "horse armor" and gamers who rebel against the cost of Guitar Hero II downloads for being way overpriced.
I can give credit to Microsoft for making a decent console (when it doesn't "red ring of death" on people - is that the equivalent of a blue screen of death?), but it seems like they're fighting for a Pyhrric victory. If this is their idea of success, then the rest of the Microsoft company had better hope that this brand of billion-dollar-per-year losing "success" doesn't infiltrate the rest of the company.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
I seem to recall a lawsuit regarding Microsoft's predatory practices by making it financially difficult for vendors to sell any operations system other than Dos and Windows - then there's the code stealing (Doublespace), the intential breaking (DR DOS), and other practices that, over time, have helped to lead to not just Microsoft's and Windows domination, but also the discouragement of any other operating systems from gaining hold.
I thought there was a whole court case about this, Microsoft being found guilty or something. But since there was no punishment, I must be wrong.
A) We've seen this before, so what's the change?
B) My understanding of the iTunes store sharing is that when you want to view a video/play a song you purchased, it checks to see if the client you're using is authorized. If Slingbox hasn't broken that DRM system, then how can it be used for iTunes purchased shows?
I hooked up my Wii with the browser into the Internets, and showed my wife - look, we can get YouTube on here!
;) ).
Meh. As a non-geek, she couldn't care less - and I think that's most people. Youtube is useful for "Hey, Bob - did you see this video?" And maybe if there's a series you like (like Chad Vader or the shaving series by Mantis I like) - but typically, Youtube is a great idea, but I don't see the casual person sitting there going "Oh - look, I can surf Youtube!"
The two killer apps as I see it:
1. Seemless iTunes integration - and this includes the store. If I realize I forgot to Tivo Battlestar, or "House" for my wife, then I should be able to just pick up the iTunes remote, click, click, $2 later I got my show.
2. Any show, any time - with commercials. I wouldn't mind commercials on shows if I could pick whatever show I wanted, whenever I wanted - even if I couldn't skip them (or, if they forced a few at the beginning/middle or something like that). Then, if I want to watch "Veronica Mars", I just go right to the episode. No worried about my schedule - I just watch it.
I don't see 2 happening - networks I think are too obsessed with "time slow", even though such a "select the show" system would be a more accurate demonstration to commercial vendors of how effective a show is at getting eyeballs (and maybe that's why the networks don't do it
But while Youtube/Google Video integration would be nice, I don't buy that it would be the "killer app".
I'm afraid I must agree. First as a person, who is tired of hearing "Motherf---ing f-ing f-er! I'm going to rape you and your f-ing mother" when I play.
Secondly, as a father, I don't want my children interacting with people like that.
I rather like the Friends Code system - I know who's on my Wii, and who it communicates with, and I control the level of jerkitude I have to deal with.
1. The cost of computing and Internet access have truly dropped to a point to where it is nearly "universal".
2. The Human solution sometimes is the best.
What's going to be interesting is threefold: how do we conquer this problem, and how long until "sweat spam shops" have opened up, and how long until the outsourcers become the main branches? Much like the Cory Doctorow story revolving around sweat shops of MMO players, it might not be long until automated scripts are combined with "sweat shop" style workers, who's only job it so enter in the proper "human" data to fill spam.
On the other hand, as outsourcing has taught us, it is only a matter of time before the outsourcees become the suppliers as they get the training they need. Once the "local guy" starts making up the scripts, it's only a matter of time before he/she goes to open up their own spamming sweat shop. Which is a good thing in a weird way as the article points out - it encourages new business at the expense of annoyance.
The next phase of solutions might have to focus on more detailed question/responses - but there's a danger in this in finding the "sweet spot". You want to make it as expensive as possible for spammers, but not so annoying for your "true customers". Much like my new bank's online service, perhaps, where they made me select my "security image" and more personal questions so I had to enter 2-3 things to truly "log in" the first time.
If there's anything the recent events in Iraq versus North Korea have demonstrated, it's "those who have nukes don't get invaded". It's the ultimate self-defense mechanism, it would seem.
And I just got my vasectomy. *Now* I learn the cheaper/less painful way.
The majority of slashdot readers have been invisible to human women for *years* now.
Wake me up when scientists can do *that*.
So right there, Guba has some sort of DRM system in place that keeps people from just watching any movie at any time - and since they use the Usenet archives at times to snag their movies, the MPAA doesn't have to worry about "clean" copies - they'll still get paid for crappy Usenet archive copies that Joe Geek ripped from the DVD.
But there's something else that Guba offers as well: tracking of content. Does Hollywood want to know what movie might be a good pick? What if there's been a lot of traffic in "Santa Claus versus the Martians", and it's pretty constant - maybe rereleasing the DVD will make some cash.
Either way, the selective nature of just what the MPAA will go after and what they won't is rather interesting. I read through the artcle which seemed to show pretty clearly that the MPAA can ignore copyright violation when it wants to. Anyone else have a better idea than I why that may be?
If that is the case, then I believe the situation is even worse for them.
if they expect to make money off of DRM media, then with the iPod and the upcoming iTV, then the point of the Xbox - as you lay it out - is about to be superceded.
Either way, they're certainly not making money off of game sales so far. If anything, it seems they're losing money on the Xbox even faster since they ramped up production to try and take advantage of the PS3 delay - which with the large number of Wii units selling, might have been a useless gesture in the long run.
Now, when you order that VoodooPC, it comes with a free phone tap kit! Fun for the whole family (though unless you're a member of the NSA, make sure you get those warrants first!)
Actaully, I liked that, if for no other reason than we learned that if you're a big, annoying whiner, you don't get the super powers - your brother does.
Next time, just shut the hell up instead of boring us with how pathetic your life is. I mean, even Japanese Otoko boy Hiro figured out "Just do it". Now, *him* I liked.
OK, so the show is trying a little too hard to be "Lost" (Look - we've got all these connections between people - there are no coincidences on the Island - I mean, the Earth!)
But what gets me is how the writers could actually have a conversation like this one:
Politician: Hey, little brother.
Good hearted guy: Hey, I think I can fly!
Politician: Great - that's *exactly* something someone would say in a crowded room full of people.
Good hearted guy: No, really - I'm going to be like superman!
I nearly turned it off at that point, but my wife wanted to watch the rest. Overall, maybe a 7/10 so far - but the next episode looks to kick things into gear.