For the good of society I suggest that piracy be stopped immediately. The Television, Movie and Music industries need to do our part. Since its obvious all of us would buy everything shoveled at us if it werent for the lack of funds and/or the ability to pirate, the best thing the industries can do is cease offering it to the public. Make us suffer through creating our own music and entertainment rather than telling us what is cool...that will show us and teach us a lesson while ensuring all those tv shows and songs stay out of the hands of evil people everwhere.
Well thank you for that but if you actually read the post rather than spouting off after the first sentence you would notice that I mentioned using a handsfree in my car. I really dont see how thats any more dangerous than listening to the radio. BTW I am nearly 40 and have been involved in one accident in my life, it was in parking lot.
I would not be surprised to see TV eventually shift back to advertising techniques used before the networks figured out that the vast majority would actually tollerate being bombarded by advertisements 5 out of every 15 minutes. PBS has done this for years, but I can very easily see programs being sponsored by one major company. Saturday morning cartoons are largely doing this already basing their shows on toys and game, can "Subway presents: Simple Life (because you need a sammich)" be far behind? Advertisers are going to have be creative, traditional 30 and 60 second spots are dead to any that can afford it, bringing attention without being an annoying distraction is going to be key.
I have no problem as long as their is equal effort in citing drivers for loud music, eating, putting on makeup, shaving, smoking, having their dog run back and forth on the front seat, DVD players active while driving, reading billboards, applying bumper stickers or any other things that drivers do all the time that lead to distraction.
I work as a consultant, I have to answer my phone or I have no business. I do use a hands free device and its usually very short but based on this logic tuckers shouldn't have cb's and cops shouldn't have their radios. Bad drivers are going to be bad drivers regardless of whether there is a phone involved.
If there has to be a law, make it one that requires hands free devices that can be cited only when being pulled over for another offense, much like the way most states enforce seatbelt laws. That kind of leads to another question why is wearing a motorcycle helmet considered a personal choice yet wearing a seat belt isn't?
Dont fool yourself this has nothing to do with protecting people or even getting people to drive more responsibly, its all about revenue.
You evidently have no clue. Here are a couple of craigs list ads with their "cheap" pricing as you can see two of them even have the CompUSA stickers on them. Why do you think they are selling them for $45? Because they bought them for $20.
I myself picked up Vista Business premium for $40 dollars when things hit 60% off thinking surely they would sell at that price. When I went back the last weekend, Vista Home was selling for $20. I picked up a HD-DVD for my Xbox for $40 so evidently MS just missed a store.
You have to love Ebay's comments as to why they dont allow Google Checkout, it reliability is unproven. Which of course translates into we dont get anything out of allowing their service and are much happier double-dipping on our "customers". Their real fear is that people would ditch paypal in droves, which is true, I dont know anyone who really likes paypal but its the only choice you have in dealing with Ebay. Ebay may be surprised to find that accepting other forms of payment would bring people back to ebay. I hated paypal so much after being ripped off for a second time that I just stopped using ebay completely, a better choice of payment options might tempt me back. I did still find myself led to Ebay by google often when searching for specific items.
I'd like to see the real numbers on traffice from google to ebay, I have seen it listed as much as 10% and as little as 2%. Still it looks like this hurts Ebay more than Google, I havent seen any numbers suggesting revenue from Ebay totalling more than 1-2%. If I was Google I'd stick to my guns and not allow them back until checkout was declared acceptable.
Sorry but you obviously havent been anywhere near a real call center. Number 3 would be constantly on the managers shit list and probably canned after a couple weeks for lack of productivity (number of calls matter much more than number of happy customers). Number 1 will keep a job as long as he doesnt deviate from he script. Number 2 will become management.
If they really did it would eliminate the fallback excuse of why no one is buying it unless being forced to. The local CompUSA here was going out of business and even at 75% off during the final days they were open there were still dozens and dozens of vista boxes just sitting there.
I wouldnt count on any data rate price wars. Frankly I would not be surprised if AT&T tried to charge more. They are counting on the apple fanboys to make it the next ipod. I think they overestimate themselves but rest assured they are going to make a go at making it the most expensive phone to own ever.
I switch back and forth between providers as soon as my contracts run out. I go to the lowest price...all the service is equally shitty in one way or another so its really just a matter of who gets the least amount of money from me. This crap actually started a long time ago with certain applications. My latest move was to drop from the highspeed $75 a month package to their dirt cheap $19 one because there was virtually no difference at all with caps in place.
So some group of yahoo's out of Massachusetts have decided that they dont like restrictions on free content? The anti-drm argument is fine when its paid for content (If I buy it I should be able to do what I want) but free content should be distributed however the owner wants to do it. Their arguments are rather sad. The first one is that DRM doesnt work, if thats the case then why worry about it, just circumvent it and shut the hell up. The second point makes no sense, what right do you have to free content? The third point streches it about as far as it can go...you can watch anytime you want so how is the lack of being able to copy inhibiting your ability to learn? DRM is their business decision, in some cases its done to protect content that can provide revenue to the BBC such as blocking access to the Torchwood site content to those outside the area's in which its shown. The argument is made that the BBC is paid for by the public, which is true but last I checked Boston didnt pay the TV tax so IMHO they have negated their voice in the matter simply by location. I hate DRM as much as anyone but the argument made by Binary Freedom Bostom just comes across as a bunch of whining hippies who were upset that they couldnt easily record Hex.
So you cant personally disclose the vulnerabilities to the site operator...then anonymously offer them up to the public instead. Let the script kiddies and black hats get ahold of them for a couple days. The messsage might get painful but at least they will be made aware of the problem. This hide your head in the sand and pretend everything is ok approach to internet security is both poor and dangerous. Optimally rather than holding white hat's responsible for finding holes there should be regulation not only absolving the white hats but holding the site owner liable if the problem is not fixed. Of course I think ISP's should also share responsibility for zombied PC's on their network as well, but they are paying customers so we just do nothing and whine about the problem instead.
From other articles I have read about this the guy refused to follow instructions given by the gateway techs and was shipped a second machine though he never returned the first. I have a feeling this guy is just an idiot making a poor attempt at taking an upper hand.
I have both a Wii and a 360 and really dont understand why people are oblivious to the consoles being different enough to sell to two different markets. The Wii is doing great right now and will continue to do so, many people I know that have picked up a Wii would not have owned a console otherwise. My parents have a Wii and havent owned a game console since the Atari 2600 when I was a kid. One of the attorneys I work with gave them out as christmas presents. Its "the" hot gadget right now, the 360 could be $100 cheaper than the Wii and right now the Wii would outsell it for the novelty factor alone. The Wii is fun to play but is primarily a social gaming device. Hardcore gamers (the same ones who picked up the xbox and ps2 early in the last generation) are still going to be more attracted to the 360 and PS3. Currently the 360 is outselling its direct competition the PS3 so why bother with a price cut? Cutting the price now might bump sales a bit but really wont make a dent in Wii sales. The sales bump will come from those same xobx 360 and ps2 owners, the late adopters from last generation that tend to value a year or two of entertainment at about $100. They will buy it whenever the price reaches their breaking point whether thats now or next year so why rush it, cutting prices certainly wont increase profits since those that wait tend to also buy the budget titles as well.
What a crock. Even my mother knows that things can be distributed at different bitrates, different encoding and different formats. This has about as much of a chance of "solving" the vastly overstated p2p problem as I do of winning the lottery.
Then we find that a developer has been able to trump Harmonix at its own game, who knows we find the same with FFXIII. On the other hand if Rock Band is better than GHIII then we know just how insrumental (no pun intended) Harmonix was to the GH franchise.
Most hotel rooms have outlets, unless your a hobo electricity isnt hard to find. Car/Airplane power adaptors are cheap as well so keeping it juiced while flying, camping or on the road isnt very difficult. As a sidenote the battery issues with the PSP have been greatly exaggerated, if your worried about it turn down the brightness and turn off the wifi and you can generally get around 6 hours out of it.
I have both a DS and a PSP. I love them both, but they are completely different and I use them differently. The DS is great for quick gaming sessions you can pick it up and play for five minutes here and five minutes there. The PSP on the otherhand is for longer gaming sessions and has more console like games. I like the ability to play longer games in a mobile format, I can play without hogging the TV and its great for extended travelling. When I have a decent amount of time I always choose my PSP over my DS but for quick gaming the DS cant be beat.
The heart and soul of Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi (The Co-Founder of square as well as the creator and executive producer of Final Fantasy 1-12) and Kensuke Tanaka (developer of Squares's online service and producer on many FF titles) are both gone and are with Mistwalker developing games exclusively for the 360. So dont worry 360 fans will get all the RPG goodness they can stand. Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey are all on the way, it will be interesting to see if Final Fantasy is more Sakaguchi or more Square-Enix. IMHO Final Fantasy without Sakaguchi is like Guitar Hero without Harmonix.
If the area of dispute is the chase card aspect wouldnt the thousands of non-sport card sets for the past 40 years be valid prior art. Many had puzzles on the back that you had to have all of the cards to complete, and several were normally short-printed. I remember a card set I had as a kid that had punch out pieces sort of like paper dolls where you had to build a model of someone...i remember being ticked off that I could never find the one piece I needed to finish it.
I'm just looking at this as a person who would have to support it. I have two people handling over 100 people spread out over 4 offices. On any given day im having to convert some oddball format (usually an ancient version of Word Perfect) to something readable by the client. Its already bad enough with some idiot the clients trying to communicate sending time sensitive documentation in docx format assuming everyone jumped at the opportunity to grab Office 2007. Could you imagine the hassle of trying explain to outside contacts why you can't accept their documents? Who is going to support the people outside the government office? Try explaining to Joe constituant that you cant accept his letter to the senator because he doesnt have the right plugin...im sure the reply of "we're thinking of the future" would go over great. It's a great idea to go to a standard that wont die, but even open ones arent immune to that. The bigger challenge in my mind is finding a storage method for the documents that wont be obsolete, unfortunately it looks like the most practical time-proof method is still printing it out on archival paper.
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For the good of society I suggest that piracy be stopped immediately. The Television, Movie and Music industries need to do our part. Since its obvious all of us would buy everything shoveled at us if it werent for the lack of funds and/or the ability to pirate, the best thing the industries can do is cease offering it to the public. Make us suffer through creating our own music and entertainment rather than telling us what is cool...that will show us and teach us a lesson while ensuring all those tv shows and songs stay out of the hands of evil people everwhere.
Well thank you for that but if you actually read the post rather than spouting off after the first sentence you would notice that I mentioned using a handsfree in my car. I really dont see how thats any more dangerous than listening to the radio. BTW I am nearly 40 and have been involved in one accident in my life, it was in parking lot.
I would not be surprised to see TV eventually shift back to advertising techniques used before the networks figured out that the vast majority would actually tollerate being bombarded by advertisements 5 out of every 15 minutes. PBS has done this for years, but I can very easily see programs being sponsored by one major company. Saturday morning cartoons are largely doing this already basing their shows on toys and game, can "Subway presents: Simple Life (because you need a sammich)" be far behind? Advertisers are going to have be creative, traditional 30 and 60 second spots are dead to any that can afford it, bringing attention without being an annoying distraction is going to be key.
I have no problem as long as their is equal effort in citing drivers for loud music, eating, putting on makeup, shaving, smoking, having their dog run back and forth on the front seat, DVD players active while driving, reading billboards, applying bumper stickers or any other things that drivers do all the time that lead to distraction.
I work as a consultant, I have to answer my phone or I have no business. I do use a hands free device and its usually very short but based on this logic tuckers shouldn't have cb's and cops shouldn't have their radios. Bad drivers are going to be bad drivers regardless of whether there is a phone involved.
If there has to be a law, make it one that requires hands free devices that can be cited only when being pulled over for another offense, much like the way most states enforce seatbelt laws. That kind of leads to another question why is wearing a motorcycle helmet considered a personal choice yet wearing a seat belt isn't?
Dont fool yourself this has nothing to do with protecting people or even getting people to drive more responsibly, its all about revenue.
You evidently have no clue. Here are a couple of craigs list ads with their "cheap" pricing as you can see two of them even have the CompUSA stickers on them. Why do you think they are selling them for $45? Because they bought them for $20.
m lm lm l
I myself picked up Vista Business premium for $40 dollars when things hit 60% off thinking surely they would sell at that price. When I went back the last weekend, Vista Home was selling for $20. I picked up a HD-DVD for my Xbox for $40 so evidently MS just missed a store.
http://kansascity.craigslist.org/sys/350872995.ht
http://kansascity.craigslist.org/sys/348986385.ht
http://kansascity.craigslist.org/sys/344235412.ht
http://news.com.com/Google+cancels+rain+on+eBays+p arade/2100-1024_3-6190905.html goes into much more detail.
You have to love Ebay's comments as to why they dont allow Google Checkout, it reliability is unproven. Which of course translates into we dont get anything out of allowing their service and are much happier double-dipping on our "customers". Their real fear is that people would ditch paypal in droves, which is true, I dont know anyone who really likes paypal but its the only choice you have in dealing with Ebay. Ebay may be surprised to find that accepting other forms of payment would bring people back to ebay. I hated paypal so much after being ripped off for a second time that I just stopped using ebay completely, a better choice of payment options might tempt me back. I did still find myself led to Ebay by google often when searching for specific items.
I'd like to see the real numbers on traffice from google to ebay, I have seen it listed as much as 10% and as little as 2%. Still it looks like this hurts Ebay more than Google, I havent seen any numbers suggesting revenue from Ebay totalling more than 1-2%. If I was Google I'd stick to my guns and not allow them back until checkout was declared acceptable.
Sorry but you obviously havent been anywhere near a real call center. Number 3 would be constantly on the managers shit list and probably canned after a couple weeks for lack of productivity (number of calls matter much more than number of happy customers). Number 1 will keep a job as long as he doesnt deviate from he script. Number 2 will become management.
If they really did it would eliminate the fallback excuse of why no one is buying it unless being forced to. The local CompUSA here was going out of business and even at 75% off during the final days they were open there were still dozens and dozens of vista boxes just sitting there.
I wouldnt count on any data rate price wars. Frankly I would not be surprised if AT&T tried to charge more. They are counting on the apple fanboys to make it the next ipod. I think they overestimate themselves but rest assured they are going to make a go at making it the most expensive phone to own ever.
Mr. Kutaragi? I thought you retired?
My phone book has been used for location based searches since the 1900's.
At least it had an ending which is better than I can say for Carnivale, Deadwood.
I switch back and forth between providers as soon as my contracts run out. I go to the lowest price...all the service is equally shitty in one way or another so its really just a matter of who gets the least amount of money from me. This crap actually started a long time ago with certain applications. My latest move was to drop from the highspeed $75 a month package to their dirt cheap $19 one because there was virtually no difference at all with caps in place.
So some group of yahoo's out of Massachusetts have decided that they dont like restrictions on free content? The anti-drm argument is fine when its paid for content (If I buy it I should be able to do what I want) but free content should be distributed however the owner wants to do it. Their arguments are rather sad. The first one is that DRM doesnt work, if thats the case then why worry about it, just circumvent it and shut the hell up. The second point makes no sense, what right do you have to free content? The third point streches it about as far as it can go...you can watch anytime you want so how is the lack of being able to copy inhibiting your ability to learn? DRM is their business decision, in some cases its done to protect content that can provide revenue to the BBC such as blocking access to the Torchwood site content to those outside the area's in which its shown. The argument is made that the BBC is paid for by the public, which is true but last I checked Boston didnt pay the TV tax so IMHO they have negated their voice in the matter simply by location. I hate DRM as much as anyone but the argument made by Binary Freedom Bostom just comes across as a bunch of whining hippies who were upset that they couldnt easily record Hex.
So you cant personally disclose the vulnerabilities to the site operator...then anonymously offer them up to the public instead. Let the script kiddies and black hats get ahold of them for a couple days. The messsage might get painful but at least they will be made aware of the problem. This hide your head in the sand and pretend everything is ok approach to internet security is both poor and dangerous. Optimally rather than holding white hat's responsible for finding holes there should be regulation not only absolving the white hats but holding the site owner liable if the problem is not fixed. Of course I think ISP's should also share responsibility for zombied PC's on their network as well, but they are paying customers so we just do nothing and whine about the problem instead.
From other articles I have read about this the guy refused to follow instructions given by the gateway techs and was shipped a second machine though he never returned the first. I have a feeling this guy is just an idiot making a poor attempt at taking an upper hand.
I have both a Wii and a 360 and really dont understand why people are oblivious to the consoles being different enough to sell to two different markets. The Wii is doing great right now and will continue to do so, many people I know that have picked up a Wii would not have owned a console otherwise. My parents have a Wii and havent owned a game console since the Atari 2600 when I was a kid. One of the attorneys I work with gave them out as christmas presents. Its "the" hot gadget right now, the 360 could be $100 cheaper than the Wii and right now the Wii would outsell it for the novelty factor alone. The Wii is fun to play but is primarily a social gaming device. Hardcore gamers (the same ones who picked up the xbox and ps2 early in the last generation) are still going to be more attracted to the 360 and PS3. Currently the 360 is outselling its direct competition the PS3 so why bother with a price cut? Cutting the price now might bump sales a bit but really wont make a dent in Wii sales. The sales bump will come from those same xobx 360 and ps2 owners, the late adopters from last generation that tend to value a year or two of entertainment at about $100. They will buy it whenever the price reaches their breaking point whether thats now or next year so why rush it, cutting prices certainly wont increase profits since those that wait tend to also buy the budget titles as well.
What a crock. Even my mother knows that things can be distributed at different bitrates, different encoding and different formats. This has about as much of a chance of "solving" the vastly overstated p2p problem as I do of winning the lottery.
Then we find that a developer has been able to trump Harmonix at its own game, who knows we find the same with FFXIII. On the other hand if Rock Band is better than GHIII then we know just how insrumental (no pun intended) Harmonix was to the GH franchise.
Most hotel rooms have outlets, unless your a hobo electricity isnt hard to find. Car/Airplane power adaptors are cheap as well so keeping it juiced while flying, camping or on the road isnt very difficult. As a sidenote the battery issues with the PSP have been greatly exaggerated, if your worried about it turn down the brightness and turn off the wifi and you can generally get around 6 hours out of it.
I have both a DS and a PSP. I love them both, but they are completely different and I use them differently. The DS is great for quick gaming sessions you can pick it up and play for five minutes here and five minutes there. The PSP on the otherhand is for longer gaming sessions and has more console like games. I like the ability to play longer games in a mobile format, I can play without hogging the TV and its great for extended travelling. When I have a decent amount of time I always choose my PSP over my DS but for quick gaming the DS cant be beat.
The heart and soul of Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi (The Co-Founder of square as well as the creator and executive producer of Final Fantasy 1-12) and Kensuke Tanaka (developer of Squares's online service and producer on many FF titles) are both gone and are with Mistwalker developing games exclusively for the 360. So dont worry 360 fans will get all the RPG goodness they can stand. Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey are all on the way, it will be interesting to see if Final Fantasy is more Sakaguchi or more Square-Enix. IMHO Final Fantasy without Sakaguchi is like Guitar Hero without Harmonix.
If the area of dispute is the chase card aspect wouldnt the thousands of non-sport card sets for the past 40 years be valid prior art. Many had puzzles on the back that you had to have all of the cards to complete, and several were normally short-printed. I remember a card set I had as a kid that had punch out pieces sort of like paper dolls where you had to build a model of someone...i remember being ticked off that I could never find the one piece I needed to finish it.
Really where are the making up the sales then? 10 years ago I didnt know anyone who didnt play Magic...now I dont know anyone who does.
I'm just looking at this as a person who would have to support it. I have two people handling over 100 people spread out over 4 offices. On any given day im having to convert some oddball format (usually an ancient version of Word Perfect) to something readable by the client. Its already bad enough with some idiot the clients trying to communicate sending time sensitive documentation in docx format assuming everyone jumped at the opportunity to grab Office 2007. Could you imagine the hassle of trying explain to outside contacts why you can't accept their documents? Who is going to support the people outside the government office? Try explaining to Joe constituant that you cant accept his letter to the senator because he doesnt have the right plugin...im sure the reply of "we're thinking of the future" would go over great. It's a great idea to go to a standard that wont die, but even open ones arent immune to that. The bigger challenge in my mind is finding a storage method for the documents that wont be obsolete, unfortunately it looks like the most practical time-proof method is still printing it out on archival paper.