Because the people quickest to harp on about the "homebrew" community aren't the real developers (most of those interested in console development are doing it on open platforms or though legitimate sources like XNA) they are pirates...they think its their magical blanket defense. Take 100 people crying over homebrew and you will likely find 1 has actually tried writing anything and maybe 2-3 have actually used anything the rest are all just looking for iso loaders and ruining the image of the true homebrew community.
Locking down their platforms is well within their right. I really do not understand the logic that companies should just spend millions on a platform then just leave it completely open. If as a gamer your not willing to accept their sandbox, you are always free to skip the device and buy something else. If your looking for totally open solutions there are things like Pandora, Gamepark, etc. That said, I haven't seen anyone beating down their doors for them, in fact all I tend to see are complaints that major developers do not jump on them in support as if the reason why wasn't obvious.
Datel has been sued 3 times in less than a year...by Sony over their battery tool, Microsoft over the controller and a pending suit by Nintendo over the action replay (which uses stolen code from Nintendo). Even the open source community should find it hard to support Datel after proving they have no problem stealing from them as well (with the pandora battery they weren't even smart enough about it to remove comments). Consumers get screwed as well when they find cheap products they purchased no longer work once the holes are plugged and devices are rendered useless (PSP and DS action replays to be specfic). This is an attempt to stop 3rd parties, all 3 have licensing available for that, its about stopping a rather unscrupulous company that will stop at nothing to rip off manufacturers and consumers alike.
Sure as long as while we are at we abolish corporate person-hood, ban lobbying and stop govt subsidies of corporations I would be all for it. The problem today is that corporations want the best of both worlds..you have to pick one or the other.
Can we please have a sanity check. Sure social networking has become a convenient way to meet people for random encounters, but classified ads and drunken bar visits have provided that for generations. I wonder if they bothered to consider that perhaps Facebook and its ilk aren't actually increasing the amount of infections but instead increasing peoples awareness and as a result more people getting tested. In previous times if someone gave someone else an STD the victim's only way of exposing the person passing it was to talk to mutual friends...with social networks there is easy access to friends of friends and acquaintance so spreading the word is now as easy as it was to spread the virus.
This type of thing has been going on for months, try walking into a best buy and buying an "on sale" notebook that doesnt have a $39 Geek Squad "optimized" sticker on it. I tried a couple months back when an Acer was on sale that I wanted for my son, after arguing with the sales guy who told me they were basically unusable without it I left. Instead of a notebook I walked out with frustration and a determination to never step foot in a best buy again.
I've had a Behringer Ultrabass amp for about 5 years now, no problems at all other than the strap came loose (its a bit heavy to lug around very far by just the handle on top). In fact I've even had it drop out of a truckbed onto the ground with no problems afterwards. I also have a vamp that has worked great since I bought it secondhand years ago. On the other hand I have had a small mixer from them that crapped out in less than year but it was under warranty so it was replaced. The company I have actually had the worst luck with has been Line 6, I havent had anything from them last very long at all, after going through 2 amps and a rackmount processor I just gave up on them.
For most its not a matter of if Google has played nice with their customer data so far, its the fact that they have all of it to start with. Some people are just uncomfortable with google having access to so much about them and see it as potentailly orwellian, if its not already.
Knows where you are.
Has access to your e-mail.
Has access to your medical records.
Stores your word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents.
Facilitates chat, voice and video conversations, as well as text messages.
Tracks what you search for and view on the Web.
Keeps track of your upcoming appointments.
Knows your contacts.
Knows what you read.
Knows what you buy.
And of course the tin-foil hat types will argue, how will we know if they are abusing it, they are in charge of the search engines most use to find out and we know they have no problems with censorship.
As for me I could care less at the moment, nothing to hide...but its still an encroachment on freedom and privacy, its not that hard to understand why some are concerned.
MS is simply doing as told and it appears to be bending over backwards to comply with what the EU thinks everyone wants. How is it MS's job to help you choose another browser...they offer the option to pick a different one after that your own your own.
I can appreciate that but other than battery life it seems that lighter and cheaper mainly came about through the loss of features. Im sure it will sell like crazy, and as I said I plan to get one in future generations of the device when it inevitably adds the features that were left out, but the first generation just seems so underwhelming.
Umm dont you mean 1/3rd the money? I was checking ebay to see if they are worth anything anymore, they seem to go for around $200 complete. The battery life is alot shorter (around 3 hours) but for the difference in price I could buy 7 extra batteries.
I never said it was optimal...just more functional..thats my issue. Im a mac guy, im typing on a 24" inch imac now, my wife has a mac and one of my kids has a mac its not like im an Apple hater...just disappointed.
Unless things are really different there, its pretty safe to assume that most of those employees arent making anything close to $128, having been in that area of employment I can assure you for most of the people doing the work, $55 will be a raise. Most contracting firms (yes there are some exceptions) these days are just a legal form of prostitution, the pimp gets the big money unfortunately they tend to have enough pull to block the independent contractor from most companies looking for help.
I wanted an iPad, and was reading up on tablets in general when I remembered a 6 year old HP tablet I had stashed away because it was simply dreadful under XP. For fun I dug it out, charged it up and started looking around to see if there were any hacks for it. Decided to upgrade the ram and drives with parts I had on hand then installed Windows 7 (the only windows device in my house) and after playing with it in its renewed form, im kind of over the iPad. I still may pick one up in a few generations but what I had and had nearly forgotten lets me do what I want to do with it, has plenty of "apps" available and seems speedy enough, the only thing missing is the 3g card which I can add via either the cardbus slot or usb ports. My biggest question is why did it take 6 years for something that at least in its current form appears to be step backwards? Perhaps the a4 will prove much faster than the 1.2 centrino in the tc1100 and the battery life will certainly be better but the lack of features just makes at least the first generation a skippable device.
Does anyone else worry that in the current age with technology constantly butting heads with rights holders that in the future historians will likely find large gaps of history simply missing? I have a feeling things will end up very similar to the hollywood and the bbc in the 60's and 70's when vast amounts of movies and television episodes were destroyed or wiped simply to clear space in the vaults. Take Dr Who for instance, most of the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton seasons are gone forever. In the states nearly all of the Jack Parr episodes of the Tonight Show are gone as well.
While I'd agree that non-violent crime needs some better for of punishment, the majority seems to think that having someone sit in jail for carrying a bag of pot is acceptable, so should someone that scammed people out of money, clogged inboxes and essentially broke into millions of computers be an even more acceptable jail resident? As long as no one was hurt should people found guilty of breaking and entering, grand theft, larceny and forgery be set free as well? Frankly I think that cybercrimes should be punishable at the same level of their real world equivalent, though perhaps the punishments on both sides should be reevaluated if there is really is a better alternative to jail.
I'm amazed at how often the more savy people on the internet tend to dismiss this kind of thing and blame the victim, in the real world you dont see people going "well he shouldnt have had such a nice car" or "you shouldnt have kept money in your house", or "well its your fault you didnt have better locks" yet online it seems there always seems to be this unexplicable symapthy for the criminal.
That is exactly my point. I wasnt trying to troll, simply pointing out that the internet was supposed to be a great equalizer, most media outlets have no desire to be part of the community they want to be the community and have gone out of their way to shut out anything that even resembles equality online. Linking has traditionally been the way that sites agregate news, many simply use rss summaries provided by the original content, what 80% are they going after? 80% of the rss summary would often mean if you quote more than sentence your in violation.
The comment about "licensing" going back to the smaller sites is legit too, how many times have you seen a article that appears on someones blog get picked up by a major news source with no credit at all? I've seen it lifted word for word regularly.
If that was the tradeoff needed to prevent the internet from becoming one big corporately guided tour pay as you go presentation of what they want us to see or do...sure. Actually by the mid 90's I was on ISDN.
If they are effective I have a feeling that the end results are not going to be what they were hoping for. The more likely result is going to be less traffic to the originators websites. Most news sites I know will cut and paste most of an article with links leading to the original source...but given the choice between linking back and paying most will just opt for ignoring it altogether. Is this going to go the other way as well? The big media companies regularly "steal" content from smaller sites, from user created video on youtube and viral videos to actual news, are those people going to get paid now? News especially more localized information regularly shows up from smaller sites before they aggrigate to the major news sources where they are reworded and not credited at all.
Sometimes I really wish we could just go back to the early 90's when big media thought the internet was a joke, we didnt need them then and frankly I usually think we would be better off without them now.
Thats true if you go back to the recent past but if you go back to the time when IW was purchased, Activision was the less evil of the big 3 (EA, Ubisoft and Activision). In the time since, EA has worked hard to improve its image, taking chances on new IP, taking a more hands off approach with developers, listening to customer feedback, etc. Meanwhile Activision has gutted 7 studios, Radical and Neversoft then they closed Underground Studios, Luxoflux, Shaba Studios and Red Octane. Add in Kotick's public "supposed-misquotes" such as
"really [reward] profit and nothing else"
"skepticism, pessimism, and fear" is promoted within the company with the goal of "keeping people focused on the deep depression."
"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."
The big difference now is that back in the day when EA was the most evil, they were buying up rights to game genres (NFL, etc) and rehashing old titles with nothing new to offer. There was really no one person to focus nerd rage at. With activision gamers have their very own Darth Vader...minus the cool costume.
I dont pirate but I dont support anti-consumer crap like this either. Normally I will buy a game then get a no-cd crack but this one wont even get that..im just skipping it and all Ubisoft games. It makes me kinda sad because I really wanted to play Splinter Cell Conviciton on my 360, but buying anything from them on any platform is excusing them for their actions.
But then the DRM really is pointless and is only done to punish legit users. Everytime some game publisher comes out with its "new unhackable drm" its defeated quickly. The sad part is they still keep touting the next one. The problem this time around is they concidered people who dont have constant internet connections (near me there are far more without broadband than with it) to be acceptable losses, then boasted about it resulting in further lost sales from people who flat out refuse to deal with them. All thats left are those who dont know about it but have a broadband connection and the pirates who are going to have it anyway. The likely scenario is much lower sales than the last version of the game and once again they will use the usual piracy excuse.
Im just wondering how they are going to handle the backlash when some guy out in some rural area gets the game and finds he cant play it at all and cant return it or better yet when he buys it for his kids and they use their per minute 3g connection racking up an insane bill. I fully expect a lawsuit within weeks.
The capitol of Venezuela also happens to have the highest per capita murder rate in the world. They just seem to be following the rest of the world...if you cant blame someone blame video games and anyone who doesnt want to be one of those statistics knows not to blame Chavez's regime.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the people quickest to harp on about the "homebrew" community aren't the real developers (most of those interested in console development are doing it on open platforms or though legitimate sources like XNA) they are pirates...they think its their magical blanket defense. Take 100 people crying over homebrew and you will likely find 1 has actually tried writing anything and maybe 2-3 have actually used anything the rest are all just looking for iso loaders and ruining the image of the true homebrew community.
Locking down their platforms is well within their right. I really do not understand the logic that companies should just spend millions on a platform then just leave it completely open. If as a gamer your not willing to accept their sandbox, you are always free to skip the device and buy something else. If your looking for totally open solutions there are things like Pandora, Gamepark, etc. That said, I haven't seen anyone beating down their doors for them, in fact all I tend to see are complaints that major developers do not jump on them in support as if the reason why wasn't obvious.
Datel has been sued 3 times in less than a year...by Sony over their battery tool, Microsoft over the controller and a pending suit by Nintendo over the action replay (which uses stolen code from Nintendo). Even the open source community should find it hard to support Datel after proving they have no problem stealing from them as well (with the pandora battery they weren't even smart enough about it to remove comments). Consumers get screwed as well when they find cheap products they purchased no longer work once the holes are plugged and devices are rendered useless (PSP and DS action replays to be specfic). This is an attempt to stop 3rd parties, all 3 have licensing available for that, its about stopping a rather unscrupulous company that will stop at nothing to rip off manufacturers and consumers alike.
Sure as long as while we are at we abolish corporate person-hood, ban lobbying and stop govt subsidies of corporations I would be all for it. The problem today is that corporations want the best of both worlds..you have to pick one or the other.
I would so buy that...hell I'd buy an ipad just to get one of those.
Can we please have a sanity check. Sure social networking has become a convenient way to meet people for random encounters, but classified ads and drunken bar visits have provided that for generations. I wonder if they bothered to consider that perhaps Facebook and its ilk aren't actually increasing the amount of infections but instead increasing peoples awareness and as a result more people getting tested. In previous times if someone gave someone else an STD the victim's only way of exposing the person passing it was to talk to mutual friends...with social networks there is easy access to friends of friends and acquaintance so spreading the word is now as easy as it was to spread the virus.
Crispin Glover was there and I still dont have a Flux Capacitor or even a hoverboard? Im pissed and I blame it all on Edison.
This type of thing has been going on for months, try walking into a best buy and buying an "on sale" notebook that doesnt have a $39 Geek Squad "optimized" sticker on it. I tried a couple months back when an Acer was on sale that I wanted for my son, after arguing with the sales guy who told me they were basically unusable without it I left. Instead of a notebook I walked out with frustration and a determination to never step foot in a best buy again.
I've had a Behringer Ultrabass amp for about 5 years now, no problems at all other than the strap came loose (its a bit heavy to lug around very far by just the handle on top). In fact I've even had it drop out of a truckbed onto the ground with no problems afterwards. I also have a vamp that has worked great since I bought it secondhand years ago. On the other hand I have had a small mixer from them that crapped out in less than year but it was under warranty so it was replaced. The company I have actually had the worst luck with has been Line 6, I havent had anything from them last very long at all, after going through 2 amps and a rackmount processor I just gave up on them.
Must watch return of Futurama...Must watch return of Futurama...Must watch return of Futurama...
For most its not a matter of if Google has played nice with their customer data so far, its the fact that they have all of it to start with. Some people are just uncomfortable with google having access to so much about them and see it as potentailly orwellian, if its not already.
Knows where you are.
Has access to your e-mail.
Has access to your medical records.
Stores your word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents.
Facilitates chat, voice and video conversations, as well as text messages.
Tracks what you search for and view on the Web.
Keeps track of your upcoming appointments.
Knows your contacts.
Knows what you read.
Knows what you buy.
And of course the tin-foil hat types will argue, how will we know if they are abusing it, they are in charge of the search engines most use to find out and we know they have no problems with censorship.
As for me I could care less at the moment, nothing to hide...but its still an encroachment on freedom and privacy, its not that hard to understand why some are concerned.
MS is simply doing as told and it appears to be bending over backwards to comply with what the EU thinks everyone wants. How is it MS's job to help you choose another browser...they offer the option to pick a different one after that your own your own.
I can appreciate that but other than battery life it seems that lighter and cheaper mainly came about through the loss of features. Im sure it will sell like crazy, and as I said I plan to get one in future generations of the device when it inevitably adds the features that were left out, but the first generation just seems so underwhelming.
Umm dont you mean 1/3rd the money? I was checking ebay to see if they are worth anything anymore, they seem to go for around $200 complete. The battery life is alot shorter (around 3 hours) but for the difference in price I could buy 7 extra batteries.
I never said it was optimal...just more functional..thats my issue. Im a mac guy, im typing on a 24" inch imac now, my wife has a mac and one of my kids has a mac its not like im an Apple hater...just disappointed.
Unless things are really different there, its pretty safe to assume that most of those employees arent making anything close to $128, having been in that area of employment I can assure you for most of the people doing the work, $55 will be a raise. Most contracting firms (yes there are some exceptions) these days are just a legal form of prostitution, the pimp gets the big money unfortunately they tend to have enough pull to block the independent contractor from most companies looking for help.
I wanted an iPad, and was reading up on tablets in general when I remembered a 6 year old HP tablet I had stashed away because it was simply dreadful under XP. For fun I dug it out, charged it up and started looking around to see if there were any hacks for it. Decided to upgrade the ram and drives with parts I had on hand then installed Windows 7 (the only windows device in my house) and after playing with it in its renewed form, im kind of over the iPad. I still may pick one up in a few generations but what I had and had nearly forgotten lets me do what I want to do with it, has plenty of "apps" available and seems speedy enough, the only thing missing is the 3g card which I can add via either the cardbus slot or usb ports. My biggest question is why did it take 6 years for something that at least in its current form appears to be step backwards? Perhaps the a4 will prove much faster than the 1.2 centrino in the tc1100 and the battery life will certainly be better but the lack of features just makes at least the first generation a skippable device.
Does anyone else worry that in the current age with technology constantly butting heads with rights holders that in the future historians will likely find large gaps of history simply missing? I have a feeling things will end up very similar to the hollywood and the bbc in the 60's and 70's when vast amounts of movies and television episodes were destroyed or wiped simply to clear space in the vaults. Take Dr Who for instance, most of the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton seasons are gone forever. In the states nearly all of the Jack Parr episodes of the Tonight Show are gone as well.
While I'd agree that non-violent crime needs some better for of punishment, the majority seems to think that having someone sit in jail for carrying a bag of pot is acceptable, so should someone that scammed people out of money, clogged inboxes and essentially broke into millions of computers be an even more acceptable jail resident? As long as no one was hurt should people found guilty of breaking and entering, grand theft, larceny and forgery be set free as well? Frankly I think that cybercrimes should be punishable at the same level of their real world equivalent, though perhaps the punishments on both sides should be reevaluated if there is really is a better alternative to jail.
I'm amazed at how often the more savy people on the internet tend to dismiss this kind of thing and blame the victim, in the real world you dont see people going "well he shouldnt have had such a nice car" or "you shouldnt have kept money in your house", or "well its your fault you didnt have better locks" yet online it seems there always seems to be this unexplicable symapthy for the criminal.
That is exactly my point. I wasnt trying to troll, simply pointing out that the internet was supposed to be a great equalizer, most media outlets have no desire to be part of the community they want to be the community and have gone out of their way to shut out anything that even resembles equality online. Linking has traditionally been the way that sites agregate news, many simply use rss summaries provided by the original content, what 80% are they going after? 80% of the rss summary would often mean if you quote more than sentence your in violation.
The comment about "licensing" going back to the smaller sites is legit too, how many times have you seen a article that appears on someones blog get picked up by a major news source with no credit at all? I've seen it lifted word for word regularly.
If that was the tradeoff needed to prevent the internet from becoming one big corporately guided tour pay as you go presentation of what they want us to see or do...sure. Actually by the mid 90's I was on ISDN.
If they are effective I have a feeling that the end results are not going to be what they were hoping for. The more likely result is going to be less traffic to the originators websites. Most news sites I know will cut and paste most of an article with links leading to the original source...but given the choice between linking back and paying most will just opt for ignoring it altogether. Is this going to go the other way as well? The big media companies regularly "steal" content from smaller sites, from user created video on youtube and viral videos to actual news, are those people going to get paid now? News especially more localized information regularly shows up from smaller sites before they aggrigate to the major news sources where they are reworded and not credited at all.
Sometimes I really wish we could just go back to the early 90's when big media thought the internet was a joke, we didnt need them then and frankly I usually think we would be better off without them now.
Thats true if you go back to the recent past but if you go back to the time when IW was purchased, Activision was the less evil of the big 3 (EA, Ubisoft and Activision). In the time since, EA has worked hard to improve its image, taking chances on new IP, taking a more hands off approach with developers, listening to customer feedback, etc. Meanwhile Activision has gutted 7 studios, Radical and Neversoft then they closed Underground Studios, Luxoflux, Shaba Studios and Red Octane. Add in Kotick's public "supposed-misquotes" such as
"really [reward] profit and nothing else"
"skepticism, pessimism, and fear" is promoted within the company with the goal of "keeping people focused on the deep depression."
"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."
The big difference now is that back in the day when EA was the most evil, they were buying up rights to game genres (NFL, etc) and rehashing old titles with nothing new to offer. There was really no one person to focus nerd rage at. With activision gamers have their very own Darth Vader...minus the cool costume.
I dont pirate but I dont support anti-consumer crap like this either. Normally I will buy a game then get a no-cd crack but this one wont even get that..im just skipping it and all Ubisoft games. It makes me kinda sad because I really wanted to play Splinter Cell Conviciton on my 360, but buying anything from them on any platform is excusing them for their actions.
But then the DRM really is pointless and is only done to punish legit users. Everytime some game publisher comes out with its "new unhackable drm" its defeated quickly. The sad part is they still keep touting the next one. The problem this time around is they concidered people who dont have constant internet connections (near me there are far more without broadband than with it) to be acceptable losses, then boasted about it resulting in further lost sales from people who flat out refuse to deal with them. All thats left are those who dont know about it but have a broadband connection and the pirates who are going to have it anyway. The likely scenario is much lower sales than the last version of the game and once again they will use the usual piracy excuse.
Im just wondering how they are going to handle the backlash when some guy out in some rural area gets the game and finds he cant play it at all and cant return it or better yet when he buys it for his kids and they use their per minute 3g connection racking up an insane bill. I fully expect a lawsuit within weeks.
The capitol of Venezuela also happens to have the highest per capita murder rate in the world. They just seem to be following the rest of the world...if you cant blame someone blame video games and anyone who doesnt want to be one of those statistics knows not to blame Chavez's regime.