Heya, all complaints about MS being a "monopoly' would be eliminated if instead of selling PCs they just sold these babies. After all no-one can bitch at you if it is your OS and your browser running on your 'gaming console'. Hehe. Yah right. ^_^
Remember that 'hardware interface standad' thingy that/. reported on last week or so that was MS's idea? Imagine that implemented into this next system;
I am sure that it will come out on the PC too.
Heck add some Mac support and. . . . ah, you see where I am going with this? MS would dominate THREE platforms minimum and it would THEN have the power to leverage OTHER platform manufacturers into making their systems complient with Microsofts systems(sounds like a good thing? Finaly some game support in *nix? Hold on. . . ) ;
Which would likely also include some sort of software that has to be licenced from Microsoft on some sort of per computer (or user, heh) basis.
Imagine M$ collecting royalites from _ALL_ computer users!
Oh yah, and imagine the PR campaign that would make you all/GLAD/ to pay them.
Don't believe me? Just look how far the anti-ms stance has changed even within/. itself. Hell a good part of the rest of the net is decidedly pro-ms, bleh.
What is wrong with elitism? It is not like the enterance bar has ever been very high to gain entry into the computer world, all you have ever really/had/ to have is a DESIRE to learn!
Seriously, is that too much to ask of a person now days? Ok mabye now days it is, but hell, that is all the more reason to RAISE the enterance standard back to what it used to be.
Sure I love the fact that computers are getting cheaper and more affordable all the time, but, if price is equivilent to elitism, then Apple is right up there promoting elitism. (Though their old policy of equipment donations to schools wa rather nice.)
If having a monopoly is elitism (be it UNIX, ITS, or Windows), then Apple is right up their promoting elitism. (use our hardware/and/ our software or else you cannot use our platform!)
If pointing out and laughing at or ridiculing people because they 'just don't get it' it elitism, then apple is sure as heck promoting elitism.
"If you don't like pretty color computers then your st00pid and obviously like that/ugly/ beige box of yours! bleeeeh!!!!"
Sheesh, yes I like my beige box, I happen to/like/ beige Thank You So Very Much. I also happen to like steel. I just do not like a society of computer 'users' that choose their computers not based upon their speed or functionality but rather on the color of the plastic case that surrounds it.
Granted not all Mac users do this, but Apple specificaly went ahead and interrelated the color and the speed of the iMacs, thus making what color imac a person had a sort of quasi social order type of a thing.
Now one of the things that I love _BEST_ about the computer community (ah, or at least I used to, it is quickly disappearing these days) is that your social order was dictated by two things;
Great Deeds commited in the past (and by Great Deeds I mean that you had to make World Changing types of events to get any sort of notice, we all know who the Gods are.:) ) and actions commited in the present.
Sure on some kiddie BBSs people would be judged by what type of computer they had (all caps on certian models of AppleIIs for instance VS those with a lowercase option put in), but shoo the computer community in a whole doesn't give a rats flying fig if you are helping people out from your Commodore 64 living in a shanty in one of the worst parts of your town.
It is the fact that YOU ARE HELPING PEOPLE that made the difference. Always. Period. That you where a positive member of the community, that you cared for others, that you had a good heart and a workethic that got things done. Nobody cared how you got access to the net, just so long as you did.
It wasn't your gender or your age or your racial background that mattered, it was who you were. Nobody knew your gender or your age or your racial background, all they knew was YOU.
Now days a person is far more likely to be judged on the basis of moral or social stances then anything else. Hell I've gotten I don't know how many death threats thanks to my strong anti-drug stance ("excuse me, but how the heck does you threatening to kill me make the situation any better for any of the parties involved?" Bleh).
If not that then a persons viewpoint of issues such as the progression of the artists into the computer community.
Yes computers have great possibilities for artistic achievement, but we should/never/ let it interfere with true technical advancment. Yes fancy see through GUIs look nice, and even if the OS has some nifty enhancments, the fact is that every moment that was spent programming in fancy graphical effects could have been used to actualy make/more/ progress over that which was already made. Let us not forget how slowly the artistic community has a habit of moving along on things, and how they obsessivly work towards perfecting one area of art before they move on to the next.
Heck even in these modern fast paced times one notices that rarly is a compleatly new form of art created even once in a decade, but rather art tends to be a slow progression of movements. While it can be said that all achievments work this way, well. . . . ah. Take a look at the plurality of vector standards and 3d over the web standards out there for an example of exactly how long it is going to take the artistic community to actualy accomplish anything.
Do we really want to limit our selves like this? To petty social-economical classes and a surrender of the desire, of the movement, of the fast paced. . . newness, interduction of technology, into the computer community?
Do you think that the C language would ever have been created if instead all efforts were going into making the prompts blink in pretty ways and making the computer 'polite' and more 'user friendly'?
Where do you think networking would be today if intead of working towards just better technology in general, more 'interactive' or more 'user transparent" networking was worked on instead?
What would it have been like if artists had run things all the way?
1990, introduction of the IEEE 802.3i 10BaseT standard;
"Sure our new ethernet standard is just at 5kbps but you just plug it in and go, it sets itself up! Why the network overhead isn't a problem, here, just see the pretty colors that the cords come in! You/do/ like pretty colors don't you???"
Bolstered support by saying that putting copy protection on CDs was A Bad Thing(tm), lost it (and then some!) by saying that we can't watch a show on more then one TV.
Not like a CatTV splitter doesn't work just as well anyways. ^_^
Seriously though, uh, if I am PAYING (currently around $90 a month mind you) to watch something on a cable box, why should I have to pay MORE to move that signal to a nearbye TV? Or hell mabye I just MOVED my TV and I don't want to have to MOVE the cable box as well (especialy if the wires are already stretched to their limits, quality degrades FAST over standard RF/CATTV wires as their length increases, REALLY fast, wireless would probably have less issues anyways).
Or mabye I just have one of Phillips flat screen TVs (I wish!!!) and I have an obsession with hanging it up in different parts of the room and I do not want to have to rewire my complete A/V center each time I do so.
Hell, there is an idea for you, wireless A/V boxen that automaticaly configure themselves! That'd save me a ton of trouble, bleh.
I'm sorry, did somebody say something? I was just freely and legaly downloading some GOOD music from www.mp3.com (hint: Its all under the classical section).
The only good thing that MTV has is Celebrity Deathmatch.
There are other P2P networks out there that make kazaa look like a pipsqueaks toy.
The 'problem' is that people set up their sharing to max (hey, college line, no BW problems, right? Heh) and end up sharing far more then most other users on the P2P network. People need to realize that 3 or 4 download slots open is more then enough, bleh.
::yawns:: besides, private FTP accounts are so much more entertaining.:)
When my family was making UNDER $20K A YEAR, hell, WELL below 20k a year, we still managed to afford a PC.
Why?
PRIORITIES. Simple.
If a family puts their childern's EDUCATION before _EVERYTHING_ else then they can do just fine. No new fancy assed $200 nike shoes (WTF is up with poor people expensive ass almost disposable quality nike shoes?), no CANDY (I saved _ALL_ of my money up for new computer HW. Every penny. Take advantage of Free Lunch programs if you have too), NO ski vacations, NO going on an airplane to visit relatives, and so on.
Repeat
THERE IS NO DIGITAL DIVIDE that CANNOT be overcome with HARD WORK AND DILIGENCE.
Now medical coverage on the other hand. . . . . grrrr.
OBTW: It was a nice feeling to be 12 years old and have more cash in the bank then your parents.:) Heh, hard work and determination paid off.:)
Of course aluminum went for alot higher price in those days too, heh.
". With the technology they have, we should be able to simply choose our channels. I ought to be able to subscribe to a specific channel for a month, or even a day if that station is showing something I want to see"
That is the purpose of buying ALL of the channels.
They want you to PAY _ALOT_ for all of those extra channels for all of those 'just in case' situations. It is how they make alot of their profits.
You think that I would be paying for/5/ showtimes otherwise?
Oh yah, and your cable co sucks.:) For ~$90 a month now my household gets 2 digital cable boxs (crips, I almost called them digicable boxs, yikes!!!) with EVERY channel AT&T has to offer, and 2 analog boxs and regular Cable on as many TVs as we can get line splitters for:)
The key has to be stored someplace either in the HW or on the media itself (though storing it on the media would be very silly, unless, see below.:) )
"and other tricks MS is using on them?"
Just so long as some weird type of laser is not being used to read a special part of the disc (or randomly interspersed parts of the discs) then with prober software the DVDs should be readable.
"So when you end up paying $40+ a month for basic cable, what is that going towards?"
$40 a month?
oh you mean in addition to the $5 a month Remote Control Rental Fee and the Way To Fucking Much A Month Converter Box Fee (for analog cable I think it is around a mere $15 or so, for digital cable it is WAAAY up there. Way to HIGH up there).
This is what my area has been through (TCI now AT&T) TW might be different, but I seriously doubt it. Equipment rental fees are the same all around.
Wait, so you mean the over $150 a month for TV, the whatever a month for LD, and the $20 a month for a cell phone and the $45 a month for internet service wasn't enough?
Bleh.
I want more CUSTOMIZABLE rates damnit!
I do NOT NEED over _*40*_ sports stations damnit!
In the last two months they have added TWO more porn stations! Come on, how many porn stations does one city need? Pretty soon it is going to be a 'choose your fetish' type of a situation!
We already have nearly 10 (I think, may be just five) WNBA stations!!! I don't even watch basketball but I know that those are factored into my bill!
Of course without the 'total TV" package it would cost even MORE to get a bunch of different SEPERATE packages that DID have what I wanted in them.
Did you know that Nickelodeon has its own Game Show network? Yah, seriously. All of the failed game shows that they once had on them are now on it, bleh.
Or how about the ever increasing number of music video stations? I don't know HOW many have been added within the last few months, but they seem to keep on growing. Hell AT&T doesn't even bother sending out New Channels Have Been Added annoucements anymore after all why should they when new channels are being added seemingly daily!
This is getting nuts. Let me just pay say 50 cents per channel and be DONE with it. Yah sure getting all 300 or whatever channels would cost a ton but shit, as it is I don't ever watch but 70 or so. Actualy I myself just watch 3 regularly, Sci-Fi, Comedy Central, and occasionaly CN (Dexters Lab == Kick Ass. The PPG are also nice. And Samuri Jack. heh.)
The Action Channel is occasionaly watched when they have their Anime Marathons on their, but shoot, besides that. . . . Animal Planet is also kind of neat though. The movie channels are nice to have around if a movie I want to watch comes on, but thats it.
I really don't need 10 stations for every sport (I think there is even a set of NHL stations now. . ..)
MS likely paid Borland tons of money to use this software licenece.
Just imagine M$'s potential PR response;
"Well yah sure most of our software generates proprietary code that only works half assed with any other venders products, and in fact only works half assed with our products as well, but at least _WE_ don't ask you to give up your constitutional rights in order to use our software! *COUGH* yet *COUGH*
"The console industry defined itself from its inception as an arena for hard-core capitalist corporations to milk maximum revenue from content providers and customers."
Play Nintendo. They have constantly shown that they are willing to take steps to give the CUSTOMERS what they want. (please do ignore pokemon, those/do/ suck, though I would rather have an 8 or 9 year old child playing Pokemon then playing GTA3)
Heck, Sony artificialy raised the CD-ROM prices for their PSX console to hell. I remember when the PSX first came out that the main 'advantage' of it over the N64 was that the games were 'so much cheaper.
My how that changed once Sony got an almost monopolistic hold on the market sector. Boom, watch CD prices shoot-up. Hell Sony even _ADMITED_ to using price controling techniques for their popular games, but the customers, loyal little sheeple that they be, just accepted this with a shrug. Bah.
When Nintendo releases something you KNOW that it is going to be good. Hell even their 'flop' ideas had a habit of kicking more ass then competitors products, it is just that people were used to the Insanely High Quality of the pre-existing Nintendo product so the merely OK quality of Nintendo's 'bad' products was looked down upon as being absolutly cruddy. (One disadvantage of being the best, everybody expects it from you 100% of the time. Oh well, I am happy with Nintendo's deliverence of 99.9% of the time.:) )
I myself am happy owning a Console system that did not cost MORE then a computer after you buy all of the neccisary extra's for it (Ps2) or something that is a computer with its balls chopped off that has this awful habit of being DEFECTIVE(1) and CRASHING (xbox).
1: Only a small percentage of them were defective. Oh well, still/too/ many. Bleh.
TV is often times a MULTIPERSON activity. More then one person can watch TV at a time.
Hard to surf with 2 people at once on the web, after that it becomes almost impossible. Unless you have a GIGANTIC monitor and one heck of a multi-input setup going on with lots of browser windows open at once. Personaly I think that just buying another few computers would help out more though, hehe.
When one person uses the computer the MONOPOLIZE that compters use time.
People can democraticaly vote on what to watch on TV. More then one person can participate at a time. The very SOCIAL aspect of watching TV is different, and ANY sort of individualized or personalized medium is going to have this effect.
You think Mr. Smith is just going to walk up to the family TV set and start surfing for pr0n in the middle of saturday morning cartoons?
Or that the kids are going to peacefuly coexist surfing the site at the same time? For any decent length of time at least? (at least to whatever extent kids ever do peacefuly coexist.:) )
Hell why should I _WANT_ to combine the two devices?
Do you realize that it is EASIER for me to play DVDs on my COMPUTER then it is to play them on my dedicated DVD player? Hell on the computer I just pop in a DVD into the DVD-ROM drive and it plays!
On my TV I have to change over audio and visual inputs and then manualy on the DVD player select the type of audio compression that the DVD uses and some other junk. Bleh. it is a ROYAL pain in the ass that can take up to five minutes.
Then I have to switch it all back to continue to watch TV. Another five minutes. Doh.
Computer, when I am done watching a DVD I just close the program down (one mouse move one click) and eject the DVD. Tada, all done. Yah.
" If it were only as simple as getting an appliance, plugging it in, entering a username and password, and you're on the 'Net - there would be many more using the Net. "
Hmm? How f*cking complicated.
I just turn mine on, yeesh.
(9x machine, my real machines have/good/ passwords on them.:) )
One good thing about always on cable modems, heh.
Music? No problem, I just goto mp3.com hit classical hit the style I want and then hit play all. A shortcut on my desktop to the link would likely work much better, but hey, I'm lazy.
TV? Got that too. TV-IN card. Cruddy quality though, and why? I can just goto my p2p app of choice and. . . ah, better not mention THAT one. Might make companies more eager to take away certain, uh, 'freedoms'. (ok so its theft, but damnit, 2.5minute commerical breaks every 10 minutes on a tv show SUCKS.)
"I think the other factor is that the machine itself doesn't seem to be a limiting factor anymore, it's the connection to the internet. Most people can't take advantage of their fast processors, because everything these days is focused on the pipes to the network."
I have played online games (Wildtangent, hell even some Shockwave games!) that have pushed my 1ghz computer with 32meg video card to their limits.
Besides, wait until we REALLY start getting some bandwidth, heh.
Can you say Total Immersion VR?:) 5 senses == CPU utilization going up through the roof!:)
Course we might all likely be dead by then, but. . . . gotta keep them minds open.:)
"There will always be hackers as well as the hardware techies. To stop these guys would invariably involve systematically wiping them out i.e. DEATH!"
Not to mention nobody to fix the MS made computers when they break down.:)
Remember, the ones who are needed the most in a highly ordered and structured society are those who are responsible for keeping that society patched together!
Slashdot Mirror
Heya, all complaints about MS being a "monopoly' would be eliminated if instead of selling PCs they just sold these babies. After all no-one can bitch at you if it is your OS and your browser running on your 'gaming console'. Hehe. Yah right. ^_^
/. reported on last week or so that was MS's idea? Imagine that implemented into this next system;
/GLAD/ to pay them.
/. itself. Hell a good part of the rest of the net is decidedly pro-ms, bleh.
Remember that 'hardware interface standad' thingy that
I am sure that it will come out on the PC too.
Heck add some Mac support and. . . . ah, you see where I am going with this? MS would dominate THREE platforms minimum and it would THEN have the power to leverage OTHER platform manufacturers into making their systems complient with Microsofts systems(sounds like a good thing? Finaly some game support in *nix? Hold on. . . ) ;
Which would likely also include some sort of software that has to be licenced from Microsoft on some sort of per computer (or user, heh) basis.
Imagine M$ collecting royalites from _ALL_ computer users!
Oh yah, and imagine the PR campaign that would make you all
Don't believe me? Just look how far the anti-ms stance has changed even within
The beast shall have you yet!
What is wrong with elitism? It is not like the enterance bar has ever been very high to gain entry into the computer world, all you have ever really /had/ to have is a DESIRE to learn!
/and/ our software or else you cannot use our platform!)
/ugly/ beige box of yours! bleeeeh!!!!"
/like/ beige Thank You So Very Much. I also happen to like steel. I just do not like a society of computer 'users' that choose their computers not based upon their speed or functionality but rather on the color of the plastic case that surrounds it.
:) ) and actions commited in the present.
/never/ let it interfere with true technical advancment. Yes fancy see through GUIs look nice, and even if the OS has some nifty enhancments, the fact is that every moment that was spent programming in fancy graphical effects could have been used to actualy make /more/ progress over that which was already made. Let us not forget how slowly the artistic community has a habit of moving along on things, and how they obsessivly work towards perfecting one area of art before they move on to the next.
/do/ like pretty colors don't you???"
Seriously, is that too much to ask of a person now days? Ok mabye now days it is, but hell, that is all the more reason to RAISE the enterance standard back to what it used to be.
Sure I love the fact that computers are getting cheaper and more affordable all the time, but, if price is equivilent to elitism, then Apple is right up there promoting elitism. (Though their old policy of equipment donations to schools wa rather nice.)
If having a monopoly is elitism (be it UNIX, ITS, or Windows), then Apple is right up their promoting elitism. (use our hardware
If pointing out and laughing at or ridiculing people because they 'just don't get it' it elitism, then apple is sure as heck promoting elitism.
"If you don't like pretty color computers then your st00pid and obviously like that
Sheesh, yes I like my beige box, I happen to
Granted not all Mac users do this, but Apple specificaly went ahead and interrelated the color and the speed of the iMacs, thus making what color imac a person had a sort of quasi social order type of a thing.
Now one of the things that I love _BEST_ about the computer community (ah, or at least I used to, it is quickly disappearing these days) is that your social order was dictated by two things;
Great Deeds commited in the past (and by Great Deeds I mean that you had to make World Changing types of events to get any sort of notice, we all know who the Gods are.
Sure on some kiddie BBSs people would be judged by what type of computer they had (all caps on certian models of AppleIIs for instance VS those with a lowercase option put in), but shoo the computer community in a whole doesn't give a rats flying fig if you are helping people out from your Commodore 64 living in a shanty in one of the worst parts of your town.
It is the fact that YOU ARE HELPING PEOPLE that made the difference. Always. Period. That you where a positive member of the community, that you cared for others, that you had a good heart and a workethic that got things done. Nobody cared how you got access to the net, just so long as you did.
It wasn't your gender or your age or your racial background that mattered, it was who you were. Nobody knew your gender or your age or your racial background, all they knew was YOU.
Now days a person is far more likely to be judged on the basis of moral or social stances then anything else. Hell I've gotten I don't know how many death threats thanks to my strong anti-drug stance ("excuse me, but how the heck does you threatening to kill me make the situation any better for any of the parties involved?" Bleh).
If not that then a persons viewpoint of issues such as the progression of the artists into the computer community.
Yes computers have great possibilities for artistic achievement, but we should
Heck even in these modern fast paced times one notices that rarly is a compleatly new form of art created even once in a decade, but rather art tends to be a slow progression of movements. While it can be said that all achievments work this way, well. . . . ah. Take a look at the plurality of vector standards and 3d over the web standards out there for an example of exactly how long it is going to take the artistic community to actualy accomplish anything.
Do we really want to limit our selves like this? To petty social-economical classes and a surrender of the desire, of the movement, of the fast paced. . . newness, interduction of technology, into the computer community?
Do you think that the C language would ever have been created if instead all efforts were going into making the prompts blink in pretty ways and making the computer 'polite' and more 'user friendly'?
Where do you think networking would be today if intead of working towards just better technology in general, more 'interactive' or more 'user transparent" networking was worked on instead?
What would it have been like if artists had run things all the way?
1990, introduction of the IEEE 802.3i 10BaseT standard;
"Sure our new ethernet standard is just at 5kbps but you just plug it in and go, it sets itself up! Why the network overhead isn't a problem, here, just see the pretty colors that the cords come in! You
You have it ass end backwards.
/ages/ after everybody else had gone HTML.
.^_^
AOL was the _LAST_ one to support HTML mail and had their users using their own custom markup tags for
Netscape can read HTML mail just fine Thank You So Very Much. After all it is just, uh, HTML. . .
It has been 'in development' since around 1998 as I recall.
:)
Hey look, they changed the site layout and actualy have a NEWS section now! Wow! LOL!
Ah, best of luck to them though, they'll need it.
Bolstered support by saying that putting copy protection on CDs was A Bad Thing(tm), lost it (and then some!) by saying that we can't watch a show on more then one TV.
Not like a CatTV splitter doesn't work just as well anyways. ^_^
Seriously though, uh, if I am PAYING (currently around $90 a month mind you) to watch something on a cable box, why should I have to pay MORE to move that signal to a nearbye TV? Or hell mabye I just MOVED my TV and I don't want to have to MOVE the cable box as well (especialy if the wires are already stretched to their limits, quality degrades FAST over standard RF/CATTV wires as their length increases, REALLY fast, wireless would probably have less issues anyways).
Or mabye I just have one of Phillips flat screen TVs (I wish!!!) and I have an obsession with hanging it up in different parts of the room and I do not want to have to rewire my complete A/V center each time I do so.
Hell, there is an idea for you, wireless A/V boxen that automaticaly configure themselves! That'd save me a ton of trouble, bleh.
I'm sorry, did somebody say something? I was just freely and legaly downloading some GOOD music from www.mp3.com (hint: Its all under the classical section).
The only good thing that MTV has is Celebrity Deathmatch.
Hmm
::begins to imagine the PPG in CDM::
KICK ASS!
Cold dead hands rip from.
MINE DAMNIT MINE!!!!
Besides, for $60 I got a full tower case with a removable Motherboard tray and a 300watt AMD approved PSU.
It works.
I can shove lots of stuff in it
AND I LIKE BIG BEIGE BOXS DAMNIT!!
It doubles as a footstool. Or a mini ladder. It can support over 200lbs on top of it. I like the free whitenoise.
"The university is paying about 1-2$ per GB. I have absolutely no problem with paying that.'
I would, shit, that'd be around $60 a month!!!!
"The real problem probably comes from file-sharing programs and warez servers. "
:)
:)
I have seen some REALLY good proxies that cache popular files from FTPs.
Ah, the legality 'issues' keep them from being too widespread though.
There are other P2P networks out there that make kazaa look like a pipsqueaks toy.
:)
The 'problem' is that people set up their sharing to max (hey, college line, no BW problems, right? Heh) and end up sharing far more then most other users on the P2P network. People need to realize that 3 or 4 download slots open is more then enough, bleh.
::yawns:: besides, private FTP accounts are so much more entertaining.
Windows XP home edition costs ~$200.
Other MS OSs cost simular, with the lower end being a 'mere' $100 or so for the full version.
Decent buget computers cost ~$400.
That is a 25% price increase for the OS. Eeew.
Not to mention that WAAAY to many people assume that you NEED word to type stuff.
Advert stat office more and cut off the $$$ normaly spent licencing word.
As I have said in the past though, most poor people don't give a fuck about 'software licencing'.
They get it from a friend just like everybody else. ^_^
There _IS_ no digital divide.
:) Heh, hard work and determination paid off. :)
Period.
Listen
When my family was making UNDER $20K A YEAR, hell, WELL below 20k a year, we still managed to afford a PC.
Why?
PRIORITIES. Simple.
If a family puts their childern's EDUCATION before _EVERYTHING_ else then they can do just fine. No new fancy assed $200 nike shoes (WTF is up with poor people expensive ass almost disposable quality nike shoes?), no CANDY (I saved _ALL_ of my money up for new computer HW. Every penny. Take advantage of Free Lunch programs if you have too), NO ski vacations, NO going on an airplane to visit relatives, and so on.
Repeat
THERE IS NO DIGITAL DIVIDE that CANNOT be overcome with HARD WORK AND DILIGENCE.
Now medical coverage on the other hand. . . . . grrrr.
OBTW: It was a nice feeling to be 12 years old and have more cash in the bank then your parents.
Of course aluminum went for alot higher price in those days too, heh.
". With the technology they have, we should be able to simply choose our channels. I ought to be able to subscribe to a specific channel for a month, or even a day if that station is showing something I want to see"
/5/ showtimes otherwise?
:) For ~$90 a month now my household gets 2 digital cable boxs (crips, I almost called them digicable boxs, yikes!!!) with EVERY channel AT&T has to offer, and 2 analog boxs and regular Cable on as many TVs as we can get line splitters for:)
That is the purpose of buying ALL of the channels.
They want you to PAY _ALOT_ for all of those extra channels for all of those 'just in case' situations. It is how they make alot of their profits.
You think that I would be paying for
Oh yah, and your cable co sucks.
"with whatever encryption"
:) )
The key has to be stored someplace either in the HW or on the media itself (though storing it on the media would be very silly, unless, see below.
"and other tricks MS is using on them?"
Just so long as some weird type of laser is not being used to read a special part of the disc (or randomly interspersed parts of the discs) then with prober software the DVDs should be readable.
"Then they should take ESPN out of the Basic Cable package. "
I get ~5 ESPN stations.
I think I now know why the cable bill took an upturn awhile back.
:(
"So when you end up paying $40+ a month for basic cable, what is that going towards?"
$40 a month?
oh you mean in addition to the $5 a month Remote Control Rental Fee and the Way To Fucking Much A Month Converter Box Fee (for analog cable I think it is around a mere $15 or so, for digital cable it is WAAAY up there. Way to HIGH up there).
This is what my area has been through (TCI now AT&T) TW might be different, but I seriously doubt it. Equipment rental fees are the same all around.
Wait, so you mean the over $150 a month for TV, the whatever a month for LD, and the $20 a month for a cell phone and the $45 a month for internet service wasn't enough?
.)
Bleh.
I want more CUSTOMIZABLE rates damnit!
I do NOT NEED over _*40*_ sports stations damnit!
In the last two months they have added TWO more porn stations! Come on, how many porn stations does one city need? Pretty soon it is going to be a 'choose your fetish' type of a situation!
We already have nearly 10 (I think, may be just five) WNBA stations!!! I don't even watch basketball but I know that those are factored into my bill!
Of course without the 'total TV" package it would cost even MORE to get a bunch of different SEPERATE packages that DID have what I wanted in them.
Did you know that Nickelodeon has its own Game Show network? Yah, seriously. All of the failed game shows that they once had on them are now on it, bleh.
Or how about the ever increasing number of music video stations? I don't know HOW many have been added within the last few months, but they seem to keep on growing. Hell AT&T doesn't even bother sending out New Channels Have Been Added annoucements anymore after all why should they when new channels are being added seemingly daily!
This is getting nuts. Let me just pay say 50 cents per channel and be DONE with it. Yah sure getting all 300 or whatever channels would cost a ton but shit, as it is I don't ever watch but 70 or so. Actualy I myself just watch 3 regularly, Sci-Fi, Comedy Central, and occasionaly CN (Dexters Lab == Kick Ass. The PPG are also nice. And Samuri Jack. heh.)
The Action Channel is occasionaly watched when they have their Anime Marathons on their, but shoot, besides that. . . . Animal Planet is also kind of neat though. The movie channels are nice to have around if a movie I want to watch comes on, but thats it.
I really don't need 10 stations for every sport (I think there is even a set of NHL stations now. . .
MS likely paid Borland tons of money to use this software licenece.
Just imagine M$'s potential PR response;
"Well yah sure most of our software generates proprietary code that only works half assed with any other venders products, and in fact only works half assed with our products as well, but at least _WE_ don't ask you to give up your constitutional rights in order to use our software! *COUGH* yet *COUGH*
I sure as heck hope so, the last decent fighting game that the PC had was OMF200x (forget the exact date. ^_^ ) and / or virtua fighter.
"The console industry defined itself from its inception as an arena for hard-core capitalist corporations to milk maximum revenue from content providers and customers."
/do/ suck, though I would rather have an 8 or 9 year old child playing Pokemon then playing GTA3)
:) )
/too/ many. Bleh.
Play Nintendo. They have constantly shown that they are willing to take steps to give the CUSTOMERS what they want. (please do ignore pokemon, those
Heck, Sony artificialy raised the CD-ROM prices for their PSX console to hell. I remember when the PSX first came out that the main 'advantage' of it over the N64 was that the games were 'so much cheaper.
My how that changed once Sony got an almost monopolistic hold on the market sector. Boom, watch CD prices shoot-up. Hell Sony even _ADMITED_ to using price controling techniques for their popular games, but the customers, loyal little sheeple that they be, just accepted this with a shrug. Bah.
When Nintendo releases something you KNOW that it is going to be good. Hell even their 'flop' ideas had a habit of kicking more ass then competitors products, it is just that people were used to the Insanely High Quality of the pre-existing Nintendo product so the merely OK quality of Nintendo's 'bad' products was looked down upon as being absolutly cruddy. (One disadvantage of being the best, everybody expects it from you 100% of the time. Oh well, I am happy with Nintendo's deliverence of 99.9% of the time.
I myself am happy owning a Console system that did not cost MORE then a computer after you buy all of the neccisary extra's for it (Ps2) or something that is a computer with its balls chopped off that has this awful habit of being DEFECTIVE(1) and CRASHING (xbox).
1: Only a small percentage of them were defective. Oh well, still
uh. . . .
:) )
First off:
TV is often times a MULTIPERSON activity. More then one person can watch TV at a time.
Hard to surf with 2 people at once on the web, after that it becomes almost impossible. Unless you have a GIGANTIC monitor and one heck of a multi-input setup going on with lots of browser windows open at once. Personaly I think that just buying another few computers would help out more though, hehe.
When one person uses the computer the MONOPOLIZE that compters use time.
People can democraticaly vote on what to watch on TV. More then one person can participate at a time. The very SOCIAL aspect of watching TV is different, and ANY sort of individualized or personalized medium is going to have this effect.
You think Mr. Smith is just going to walk up to the family TV set and start surfing for pr0n in the middle of saturday morning cartoons?
Or that the kids are going to peacefuly coexist surfing the site at the same time? For any decent length of time at least? (at least to whatever extent kids ever do peacefuly coexist.
Hell why should I _WANT_ to combine the two devices?
Do you realize that it is EASIER for me to play DVDs on my COMPUTER then it is to play them on my dedicated DVD player? Hell on the computer I just pop in a DVD into the DVD-ROM drive and it plays!
On my TV I have to change over audio and visual inputs and then manualy on the DVD player select the type of audio compression that the DVD uses and some other junk. Bleh. it is a ROYAL pain in the ass that can take up to five minutes.
Then I have to switch it all back to continue to watch TV. Another five minutes. Doh.
Computer, when I am done watching a DVD I just close the program down (one mouse move one click) and eject the DVD. Tada, all done. Yah.
" If it were only as simple as getting an appliance, plugging it in, entering a username and password, and you're on the 'Net - there would be many more using the Net. "
/good/ passwords on them. :) )
Hmm? How f*cking complicated.
I just turn mine on, yeesh.
(9x machine, my real machines have
One good thing about always on cable modems, heh.
Music? No problem, I just goto mp3.com hit classical hit the style I want and then hit play all. A shortcut on my desktop to the link would likely work much better, but hey, I'm lazy.
TV? Got that too. TV-IN card. Cruddy quality though, and why? I can just goto my p2p app of choice and. . . ah, better not mention THAT one. Might make companies more eager to take away certain, uh, 'freedoms'. (ok so its theft, but damnit, 2.5minute commerical breaks every 10 minutes on a tv show SUCKS.)
"I think the other factor is that the machine itself doesn't seem to be a limiting factor anymore, it's the connection to the internet. Most people can't take advantage of their fast processors, because everything these days is focused on the pipes to the network."
:) 5 senses == CPU utilization going up through the roof! :)
:)
I have played online games (Wildtangent, hell even some Shockwave games!) that have pushed my 1ghz computer with 32meg video card to their limits.
Besides, wait until we REALLY start getting some bandwidth, heh.
Can you say Total Immersion VR?
Course we might all likely be dead by then, but. . . . gotta keep them minds open.
"There will always be hackers as well as the hardware techies. To stop these guys would invariably involve systematically wiping them out i.e. DEATH!"
:)
Not to mention nobody to fix the MS made computers when they break down.
Remember, the ones who are needed the most in a highly ordered and structured society are those who are responsible for keeping that society patched together!
Finding them isn't exactly easy, bleh.
:)
Of course when your regular sources of news cover watercooling and things that make watercooling look 'hot', heh. . . . ^_^
Tis a new market for me, bleh, low low LOOW end integrated stuff. >:(
Oh well
In a few decades none of this will matter and computers will just WORK damnit.
Or not.
I'd bet on not myself.
Weee!
I can just imagin needing a 100TB HD to just INSTALL the OSs then and even then they just still run your darn applications, blah.
::notes he'll still likely be called a fool for complaining about OS bloat::
Ah, oh well, thus time is as it always is and has been. Ever moving forward and seeing progress go noplace fast.