...of two huge monsters battling over Tokyo and knocking over buildings in their fight while the puny sysadmins in their tanks futilely try to hurl patches, and one of the huge monsters is Good and one of the huge monsters is Bad but no matter becuase even if the good one wins, Tokyo is getting stomped flat either way?
Okay, I think I've just proven that I've been awake too long. Goodnight..
However, I would imagine that hollywood is by and large safe because the majority of people do not have cell phones that support "text-messaging".
What we would really have to watch out for is if some technological renegade could come up with some way that "text messaging" messages could be encoded into normal speech, allowing people without even cell phones to "text mssage" each other warnings about bad movies simply by coming within a close physical radius. If that happens, Hollywood is doomed.
Although I am a bit perplexed. They suggest people did not go to see Gigli because these "text messages" warned them it was a bad movie. However, I do not have a "text message" capable cell-phone, yet I knew Gigli was a bad movie anyway, becuase all the media outlets I follow had been consistently running stories for two weeks before Gigli was released warning me that it was going to be a bad movie. Perhaps this "text messaging" of which they speak has somehow hijacked cnn.com and nyt.com, causing "text messages" warning of bad movies to masquerade as normal news? Wouldn't that be illegal? Hmm.
Okay, well, I'm going to leave my personal opinions are out of this one, but just so you know, this is what the official Slashdot Party Line(TM) seems to be:
People who partner with MS are not necessarily bad, and in fact in some tiny way on the "good" side, because they are Victims. Victims, and nothing worse than misguided. Anyone who partners with MS are going to get screwed, eventually, in the end. Remember: *everyone* is a competitor to Microsoft. The world is simply split up into people Microsoft can replace and people Microsoft can't replace *yet*. If you're in the second group, Microsoft temporarily needs you, so they cuddle up to you and try to ensure that the alliance works out in such a way that at the moment Microsoft gains the ability to replace you they can as efficiently as possible stab you in the back and quietly wipe you out of existence.
Look at MS's business partners and allies for the last ten years. It's a steady stream of broken promises, broken hearts, and dead companies.
Once/if it becomes clear there's no way the partner is ever going to wind up a Victim-- say, NBC or SCO (and SCO's pretty clearly about to implode.. f you can think of any other examples offhand of a company that's partnered with MS and not lost an arm and a leg in the end, feel free to speak up)-- the company becomes a "puppet" or "shill" and defaults back into the "Bad" camp, indistinguishable from MS itself.
They've spent the last few years taking Hotmail from something that was absolutely *ubiquitous* (people who weren't advertising constructs used hotmail as a -verb-. few services can claim that) to an obscure and neglected also-ran. Now they want to do the same for Outlook Express.
Remember, this is DARPA that scox is going to be dealing with here.
Knowing DARPA, they'll probably spend $6.2 million on developing, procuring, testing, and contracting, followed by months of budget and schedule overruns, only at the end of it all to produce "Hey, did you hear the latest news! SCO says they have a patent on oxygen! They want licensing fees from EVERYBODY!"
Then the spokesperson will burst into flames, as a buffer overflow in the joke is exploited by a script kiddy using a free dial-up ISP in Romania.
Assuming that SCO loses this battle, I doubt there will be much left of the company to go after.
Once SCO has lost the battle, there will still be the Canopy Group and the SCO board members, McBride and the rest. I am willing to bet that once SCO dies miserably, Canopy Group will have made more than many times over enough money they extracted from the stock manipulations they put SCOX through to have made the whole exercise more than worthwhile.
Is there any way at all persons like Mr. Wolf- would have the ability to go after Canopy Group, as the majority shareholder and pretty clearly the one guiding SCOX through all this, for the damages he would be able to demand from SCOX had not Canopy Group and Mr. McBride driven SCOX into the ground?
Is there any way that, once the intellectual-property thing serves useless except as a stock scam, people who were originally shareholders of Caldera and wound up with their Caldera stock becoming worthless paper after Canopy Group drove SCOX into the ground with their new "strategy" (and absconded with the money) could sue Canopy Group?
I realize most of our corporate law seems to be designed to ensure stockholders are not responsible for the actions of the company. However, recently, in the wake of the Enron Witchhunt, CEOs and other corporates who engage in openly deceptive practices actually have been getting in trouble.
Surely there's some sort of laws on the books to prevent individuals like McBride and groups like Canopy from taking over a small company like Caldera and using it as a shell to perform illegal actions (like libel, and barratry, and deceptive trade practices) with no intent or purpose for the company except to allow themselves to perform illegal acts without being legally liable? Surely the fact that it will be possible to show the Canopy Group's sudden majority ownership coincided with the strategies that led to SCOX being wiped out in counterlawsuits from IBM and Redhat and people like Wolf-, and the fact it will be possible to show the Canopy Group benefited GREATLY from the stock actions they performed during these strategies, means that once SCOX has been wiped out Canopy Group will be in some way liable for whatever damages post-bankruptcy SCOX couldn't be made to pay?
Yes? No? Is there an investment lawyer in the house?
Then Team SCO is hit by the giant SEC Insider Trading Hammer and flies off into the far distance, eventually simply disappearing into a little star in the sky that makes a brief "ping" noise.
Lucky bastard. All the gameboy-1 games at our local EBGames are like $15-$20:) Well, all the good ones, the only ones for less are "Game and Watch Gallery" for $7, hm, no thanks..
I don't think the PSP should be underestimated. At least, I seriously hope Nintendo doesn't underestimate the PSP. We will probably see a decent number of 'classic' PSX titles ported to the PSP, and the PSP offers the *possibility* of doing a straight port of PS2/GC/X-box games, as long as you dumb down the graphics sufficiently, so we may see it being hit with some decent cross-platform games.
Problem is, these games won't be nearly as cheap. And personally, I'd rather play the GBA's game lineup than the PSXs' game lineup.. which is, hell, why I currently own a GBA but not a PSX or PS2.
So basically we'll have a handheld Super Nintendo vs a handheld PSX. Hmm. I seem to remember that the PSX reigned supreme once the Super Nintendo died out, but I also seem to remember that for awhile they existed at the same time, and during this time the Super Nintendo was kicking the PSX's ass. Of course, none of the good PSX games had come out yet, so that's not a fair anology, but still..:)
Anyway, while i'm not sure the PSP will die, I definitely think you're at least right that Nintendo turning the PSP into the NeoGeo Pocket Color 2 is FAR more likely than the PSP driving Nintendo into a junior position in the handheld arena anytime before at least when the GBA3 is released:)
This is really, really cool. However: I seem to remember PS3 specs leaking out quite awhile ago... and then eventually changing to be marginally less impressive. I'll believe this when it comes to e3 next year. I have no doubt whatever Sony has at E3 next year will be rediculously impressive, of course; I'm just not going to listen to specs until they have a prototype working.
Now, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a thing called a Game Boy. The Game Boy was a complete and total hunk of junk. It had an unlit screen that displayed four shades of burnt yellow, unspeakably tinny sound, a limited processor, and limited ability to display large or numerous sprites at any given moment. After the Game Boy had been out a while, a couple of competitors were released: the Sega Whatsit, the Atari Lynx, and the Whatsit By Whoever Made the TurboGraphics 16. Now, these were really impressive little machines. They had lighted LCDs with bright, eye-catching colors. They had the ability to have large things moving. They had deep sound. The Sega handheld had a Sonic game that was almost as impressive as what you might find on the genesis at that time.
The Sega, Atari, and TG16 handhelds all crashed and burned violently, and the 4-shades-of-yellow hunk of junk went on to be one of the most successful video game consoles of all time. Why? Because everyone but the Game Boy tried to do too much. All the more powerful handhelds were bulky as hell, didn't fit in your hand or pocket as easily, cost twice as much (bad for something like a handheld, which is usually an impulse purchase), and most damning of all SUCKED BATTERIES LIKE THERE WAS NO TOMORROW. Meanwhile, the 4-color, dinky, tinny games for the gameboy just somehow wound up being really fun.
Now, is the point of me bringing this up to say that the PSP is going to crash and burn, or that I think Nintendo will crush Sony mercilessly because I am a nintendo fanboy and think Sony can do nothing good? No. Not at all. Sony is smart, and what they are describing is a kick-ass little machine. However, I do really have to wonder about what kinds of tradeoffs they're making to fit this in there-- because there WILL be some. How expensive is it going to be? Most importantly, how much *battery life* will this thing have?? I really have to wonder about the minidiscy optical drive; if ANYONE could pull off a CD-based handheld game system, it would be sony, but is that going to have any impact on the battery?
Basically the only reason i'm going on about all this is to counteract the inevitable group of people that (i'm guessing; there's probably like a hundred more comments in this story right now then there were when I started typing) are going to say this is going to be Nintendo's doom. Unless Sony does the x-box thing and dumps on the market to kill Nintendo, I don't quite think so. Better is not always better with handhelds, and in terms of Games, Sony has a rediculously uphill battle. The Game Boy game library is one of the biggest and best ever, rivalling even the PS1's, and the fact you can hop on ebay and get a bunch of dinky but fun gameboy-1 games for $5 a pop is nice. Moreover, Nintendo *really* understands how to build a good game library, the same way Sony *really* understands how to build gaming hardware. Sony is still mostly dependent on third-parties. And note that despite LOTS of talk about specs, Sony's said *nothing* about games. I predict that the first we hear about the GBA2, the first thing we're going to see, before we hear about polygons or anything else, is videos of games.
Here is my prediction: all the golden ages of video games have happened when there was healthy competition between two big consoles. Not like today, when the PS2 is all-owning and the other two are fighting over the "distant second" title; real, healthy competition. I think the PSP and the GBA/GBA2 (whenever and whatever that is; hopefully nintendo's been working on such a thing since well before the PSP announcement) are going to have one such healt
The Worm That Eternally Devours Its Own Flesh has shed its skin and now has a new one. Big fucking deal. It's still the same worm. It's still evil, and it still wants to consume all that lives.
The only difference I can see this concievably making is that now the constant anti-RIAA snipes on slashdot will no longer be occationally seen to contain unhelpful sexist comments, now that the RIAA has a spokesman and not a spokeswoman. Other than that I do not imagine the quantity or nature of slashdot RIAA posts, nor the actions of the RIAA, will change one bit.
I hadn't read the article all the way through at the time I posted my comment-- i read partway through and decided it didn't tell me anything i didn't know already. I didn't get to the point where he discussed non-UNIX(R) unices.. ^_^;
This may or may not have been the article author's reason for not including Mac OS X. I'm not sure. He did seem to be gathering his list of UNIXes directly from the Open Group website, though.
There have been no price increases. None. Mac OS X has held steady at roughly $130 per release since version 10.0.
You don't *have* to buy the new version. The old ones continue to work perfectly well. People generally upgrade because they want to.
The sole reasons for NEEDING to upgrade circle around application support (Well, and the relatively poor performance of OS X previous to 10.2. If you want to bitch about THAT, I won't stop you, but that is in the past.), as some applications use API enhancements that only work with a certain OS X version or later. However, from what I have seen, this is ONLY a problem with 1) Free software, either iApps from apple or software from the freeware/shareware community, and 2) Incredibly high-end software that you are paying well, well more than $130 for anyway. Outside of those two sets of applications, OS X app vendors have been relatively good about supporting a spread of OS X versions. The Mac OS 10.3 developer tools, incidentally, contain new features specifically designed to make it easier to target multiple Mac OS X versions. You can hardly complain of having to pay money every year and a half so that you can continue to use free software.
"Having a working system and sticking with it" isn't really an issue since historically, Mac OS X upgrades have not broken existing software, and thus required little change in your system upon upgrade. If you don't like sitting every year and a half through an hour's worth of install procedure.. uh.. well.. then, sorry.
OS X upgrades are comparable to Windows upgrades, when you consider that, as far as i can tell, Microsoft OS upgrades are rarer but cost more. OS X pricing cannot of course compare to linux pricing no matter WHAT apple does.
Upgrading every time Apple releases an OS upgrade is an added cost, but it is not a significant cost when you realize you are ALREADY probably paying a decent amount more money for your computer than you would be with an x86 box merely to be able to run OS X in the first place!
IF they're right, exactly the following sequence of events will happen.
SCO eventually releases/announces exactly what the copied code is, when forced to by a court.
The person who put the SCO code into linux is identified, and the code in question is positively identified as stolen SCO code.
The distribution licenses for all extant versions of linux since that stolen code was inserted promptly become invalid-- since the GPL only applies when you do in fact have the right to distribute the entire work, and unless the GPL applies, you have no right to distribute linux at all-- thus meaning distributing those kernels is no longer legal unless the offending code sections are removed.
Within a really really brief amount of time, probably less than 24 hours, stopgap patches are quickly released for the major contaminated kernel versions, that remove the SCO code and replace it with code that does the same thing, although probably not very well because it was rushed, so that Linux kernel distribution can resume.
Over time, probably not much time, people go back through and release complete patches that insert suitible, well-written, legal code in place of the illegal SCO code for each minor kernel version that people might concievably want to distribute.
The person who gave SCO code to the linux community and presented it as his own work is sued for fraud.
SCO is unable to collect any damages for the time that its code spent in Linux, since while it is easy to get an injunction stopping infringatory behavior, in order to collect *damages* for this sort of thing you must show that you made due dilligent effort to correct the problem. SCO made no effort whatsoever to correct the problem; in fact over a course of at least six or seven months (so far!) after SCO announced it had found the offending code, they refused to tell the linux developers what the infringing code was, *despite repeated requests they do so*. Moreover, since the code was relatively easily replaced once SCO revealed its identity, SCO can hardly claim either that they were damaged or that Linux significantly benefited from having the stolen code, since linux could have gotten by quite well with legally contributed code, and the linux community was totally unaware the code that was donated to them was illegally obtained.
"Hey!! You kids!!.. What are you DOING? Hey, I don't know who you are or what the heck that is you're pouring into your pants, but get off my lawn..!! Yeah, you heard me, if you're going to be doing that do it somewhere else..!!... wait, don't leave your trash here!... HEY!.. stupid kids.. leaving behind their.. what the heck is this thing, anyway, looks like some kind of statue.. uhh..
You are right, you can in fact terminate the agreement at any time you want. I was confused, i was just looking at the provision defining contract length, i missed the fact that there's a different provision saying either side can cancel with 30 day's notice.
The synopsis does say it's limited to just those services. I'm looking at the actual agreement you have to click through, which *seems* to conflict with the synopsisy thing. I may or may not be misinterpreting what this means. In fact, i'm really not sure what it means at all. Could this be interpreted as limiting the rights holder from publishing the mp3s on their private website? Of course, it isn't like this matters too much if you can cancel at any time, but...
Authorization.
Subject to the terms of this Agreement, RIGHTS HOLDER hereby appoints CD BABY as RIGHTS HOLDER's exclusive authorized representative for the sale and other distribution of Digital Masters. Accordingly, RIGHTS HOLDER hereby grants an exclusive right to CD BABY, during the Term, to:
reproduce and convert RIGHTS HOLDER Content delivered by RIGHTS HOLDER into Digital Masters;
perform and make thirty (30) second clips of the RIGHTS HOLDER Content available by streaming ("Clips") to promote the sale and distribution of applicable Digital Masters;
promote, sell, distribute, and electronically fulfill and deliver Digital Masters, as individual tracks or entire albums, and associated metadata to purchasers who may use such Digital Masters in accordance with usage rules similar to those set forth in Exhibit A;
If you read through their little presentation, it's actually $40 per album plus a one-time fee of $35 to set up a cdbaby account. That's still not horribly bad.
My only worry with this is that as far as I can tell, CDBABY isn't *required* to do anything.. they have to attempt to get you on these services but if the services all reject you, you still have spent $40.
Moreover, it *appears* from the contract that if you want out-- like, in the unlikely event if iTunes Music Store doesn't accept you through cdbaby, but you later find a way you can get on iTMS not through CDBaby, but you are bound by CDBaby to go through them-- you can do so without penalty, but not until either three and a half years from the start of the agreement or until CDBaby wants to change the terms of your contract, whichever comes first.. that's much better than it could be, of course, the contract isn't limitless and you can get out freely after that block of time, but it decreases the ability to do this kind of thing just as a what-the-heck kind of thing.
Here's the thing I can't figure out from the contract. If you sign up with them, do they have exclusive rights to ALL online distribution, or only online distribution through the services that CDBaby works with such as iTMS? In essence, if I signed up with them, would I still be able to distribute mp3s on my own website of the material signed over to them? The little slide-show seems to imply this would be allowed, but 8ai and 8aiii in the contract seem to say that CDBaby has been given an exclusive right to this as well.
Anyway, definitely interesting. I'd like to see if there's any other way to get onto iTMS or other services first as a complete independent, but I will definitely keep these CDBaby people in mind..
I still do not grasp this fascination with "itunes."
Itunes allowed me to buy and burn legal mp3s of a Gang Starr album for $10.
Therefore I think it's a pretty cool thing.
Does that sound reasonable?
it would be much cooler to see them doing the online distribution themselves in a format (ie MP3 or OGG) that the truly free world embraces.
Actually, I'm part of a small group selling homemade music manufactured at home, and I can imagine using CDBaby to put up music we made even though we already put up mp3s of significant amounts of the music we sell for free.
Why? Exposure. People are much more likely to find and attempt to experiment with music on a "trusted" music service like iTunes than they are to bother with a link on some random guy's sig on slashdot. I would see that $40 sent to CDbaby as effectively nothing more or less than money spent on advertising. If CDBaby was just putting the mp3s on the CDBaby site themselves, It wouldn't look nearly as attractive, since iTunes Music Store etc has a known user base and CDBaby does not.
Slashdot Mirror
2003 is the Year of the Sheep.
;)
Sheep, for all those people still running windows
*ducks*
...of two huge monsters battling over Tokyo and knocking over buildings in their fight while the puny sysadmins in their tanks futilely try to hurl patches, and one of the huge monsters is Good and one of the huge monsters is Bad but no matter becuase even if the good one wins, Tokyo is getting stomped flat either way?
Okay, I think I've just proven that I've been awake too long. Goodnight..
However, I would imagine that hollywood is by and large safe because the majority of people do not have cell phones that support "text-messaging".
What we would really have to watch out for is if some technological renegade could come up with some way that "text messaging" messages could be encoded into normal speech, allowing people without even cell phones to "text mssage" each other warnings about bad movies simply by coming within a close physical radius. If that happens, Hollywood is doomed.
Although I am a bit perplexed. They suggest people did not go to see Gigli because these "text messages" warned them it was a bad movie. However, I do not have a "text message" capable cell-phone, yet I knew Gigli was a bad movie anyway, becuase all the media outlets I follow had been consistently running stories for two weeks before Gigli was released warning me that it was going to be a bad movie. Perhaps this "text messaging" of which they speak has somehow hijacked cnn.com and nyt.com, causing "text messages" warning of bad movies to masquerade as normal news? Wouldn't that be illegal? Hmm.
Clearly there is much to think about here.
"Strain 121" is now officially the best name for a metal band that modern science has produced in years.
Okay, well, I'm going to leave my personal opinions are out of this one, but just so you know, this is what the official Slashdot Party Line(TM) seems to be:
People who partner with MS are not necessarily bad, and in fact in some tiny way on the "good" side, because they are Victims. Victims, and nothing worse than misguided. Anyone who partners with MS are going to get screwed, eventually, in the end. Remember: *everyone* is a competitor to Microsoft. The world is simply split up into people Microsoft can replace and people Microsoft can't replace *yet*. If you're in the second group, Microsoft temporarily needs you, so they cuddle up to you and try to ensure that the alliance works out in such a way that at the moment Microsoft gains the ability to replace you they can as efficiently as possible stab you in the back and quietly wipe you out of existence.
Look at MS's business partners and allies for the last ten years. It's a steady stream of broken promises, broken hearts, and dead companies.
Once/if it becomes clear there's no way the partner is ever going to wind up a Victim-- say, NBC or SCO (and SCO's pretty clearly about to implode.. f you can think of any other examples offhand of a company that's partnered with MS and not lost an arm and a leg in the end, feel free to speak up)-- the company becomes a "puppet" or "shill" and defaults back into the "Bad" camp, indistinguishable from MS itself.
They've spent the last few years taking Hotmail from something that was absolutely *ubiquitous* (people who weren't advertising constructs used hotmail as a -verb-. few services can claim that) to an obscure and neglected also-ran. Now they want to do the same for Outlook Express.
And I wish them well at it! ^_^
Remember, this is DARPA that scox is going to be dealing with here.
Knowing DARPA, they'll probably spend $6.2 million on developing, procuring, testing, and contracting, followed by months of budget and schedule overruns, only at the end of it all to produce "Hey, did you hear the latest news! SCO says they have a patent on oxygen! They want licensing fees from EVERYBODY!"
Then the spokesperson will burst into flames, as a buffer overflow in the joke is exploited by a script kiddy using a free dial-up ISP in Romania.
"Tia" is spanish for "Aunt".
You know, as in the overbearing, meddling aunt who's always gossiping and trying to interfere in your life?
Assuming that SCO loses this battle, I doubt there will be much left of the company to go after.
Once SCO has lost the battle, there will still be the Canopy Group and the SCO board members, McBride and the rest. I am willing to bet that once SCO dies miserably, Canopy Group will have made more than many times over enough money they extracted from the stock manipulations they put SCOX through to have made the whole exercise more than worthwhile.
Is there any way at all persons like Mr. Wolf- would have the ability to go after Canopy Group, as the majority shareholder and pretty clearly the one guiding SCOX through all this, for the damages he would be able to demand from SCOX had not Canopy Group and Mr. McBride driven SCOX into the ground?
Is there any way that, once the intellectual-property thing serves useless except as a stock scam, people who were originally shareholders of Caldera and wound up with their Caldera stock becoming worthless paper after Canopy Group drove SCOX into the ground with their new "strategy" (and absconded with the money) could sue Canopy Group?
I realize most of our corporate law seems to be designed to ensure stockholders are not responsible for the actions of the company. However, recently, in the wake of the Enron Witchhunt, CEOs and other corporates who engage in openly deceptive practices actually have been getting in trouble.
Surely there's some sort of laws on the books to prevent individuals like McBride and groups like Canopy from taking over a small company like Caldera and using it as a shell to perform illegal actions (like libel, and barratry, and deceptive trade practices) with no intent or purpose for the company except to allow themselves to perform illegal acts without being legally liable? Surely the fact that it will be possible to show the Canopy Group's sudden majority ownership coincided with the strategies that led to SCOX being wiped out in counterlawsuits from IBM and Redhat and people like Wolf-, and the fact it will be possible to show the Canopy Group benefited GREATLY from the stock actions they performed during these strategies, means that once SCOX has been wiped out Canopy Group will be in some way liable for whatever damages post-bankruptcy SCOX couldn't be made to pay?
Yes? No? Is there an investment lawyer in the house?
Then Team SCO is hit by the giant SEC Insider Trading Hammer and flies off into the far distance, eventually simply disappearing into a little star in the sky that makes a brief "ping" noise.
Lucky bastard. All the gameboy-1 games at our local EBGames are like $15-$20 :) Well, all the good ones, the only ones for less are "Game and Watch Gallery" for $7, hm, no thanks..
:)
:)
I don't think the PSP should be underestimated. At least, I seriously hope Nintendo doesn't underestimate the PSP. We will probably see a decent number of 'classic' PSX titles ported to the PSP, and the PSP offers the *possibility* of doing a straight port of PS2/GC/X-box games, as long as you dumb down the graphics sufficiently, so we may see it being hit with some decent cross-platform games.
Problem is, these games won't be nearly as cheap. And personally, I'd rather play the GBA's game lineup than the PSXs' game lineup.. which is, hell, why I currently own a GBA but not a PSX or PS2.
So basically we'll have a handheld Super Nintendo vs a handheld PSX. Hmm. I seem to remember that the PSX reigned supreme once the Super Nintendo died out, but I also seem to remember that for awhile they existed at the same time, and during this time the Super Nintendo was kicking the PSX's ass. Of course, none of the good PSX games had come out yet, so that's not a fair anology, but still..
Anyway, while i'm not sure the PSP will die, I definitely think you're at least right that Nintendo turning the PSP into the NeoGeo Pocket Color 2 is FAR more likely than the PSP driving Nintendo into a junior position in the handheld arena anytime before at least when the GBA3 is released
This is really, really cool. However: I seem to remember PS3 specs leaking out quite awhile ago... and then eventually changing to be marginally less impressive. I'll believe this when it comes to e3 next year. I have no doubt whatever Sony has at E3 next year will be rediculously impressive, of course; I'm just not going to listen to specs until they have a prototype working.
Now, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a thing called a Game Boy. The Game Boy was a complete and total hunk of junk. It had an unlit screen that displayed four shades of burnt yellow, unspeakably tinny sound, a limited processor, and limited ability to display large or numerous sprites at any given moment. After the Game Boy had been out a while, a couple of competitors were released: the Sega Whatsit, the Atari Lynx, and the Whatsit By Whoever Made the TurboGraphics 16. Now, these were really impressive little machines. They had lighted LCDs with bright, eye-catching colors. They had the ability to have large things moving. They had deep sound. The Sega handheld had a Sonic game that was almost as impressive as what you might find on the genesis at that time.
The Sega, Atari, and TG16 handhelds all crashed and burned violently, and the 4-shades-of-yellow hunk of junk went on to be one of the most successful video game consoles of all time. Why? Because everyone but the Game Boy tried to do too much. All the more powerful handhelds were bulky as hell, didn't fit in your hand or pocket as easily, cost twice as much (bad for something like a handheld, which is usually an impulse purchase), and most damning of all SUCKED BATTERIES LIKE THERE WAS NO TOMORROW. Meanwhile, the 4-color, dinky, tinny games for the gameboy just somehow wound up being really fun.
Now, is the point of me bringing this up to say that the PSP is going to crash and burn, or that I think Nintendo will crush Sony mercilessly because I am a nintendo fanboy and think Sony can do nothing good? No. Not at all. Sony is smart, and what they are describing is a kick-ass little machine. However, I do really have to wonder about what kinds of tradeoffs they're making to fit this in there-- because there WILL be some. How expensive is it going to be? Most importantly, how much *battery life* will this thing have?? I really have to wonder about the minidiscy optical drive; if ANYONE could pull off a CD-based handheld game system, it would be sony, but is that going to have any impact on the battery?
Basically the only reason i'm going on about all this is to counteract the inevitable group of people that (i'm guessing; there's probably like a hundred more comments in this story right now then there were when I started typing) are going to say this is going to be Nintendo's doom. Unless Sony does the x-box thing and dumps on the market to kill Nintendo, I don't quite think so. Better is not always better with handhelds, and in terms of Games, Sony has a rediculously uphill battle. The Game Boy game library is one of the biggest and best ever, rivalling even the PS1's, and the fact you can hop on ebay and get a bunch of dinky but fun gameboy-1 games for $5 a pop is nice. Moreover, Nintendo *really* understands how to build a good game library, the same way Sony *really* understands how to build gaming hardware. Sony is still mostly dependent on third-parties. And note that despite LOTS of talk about specs, Sony's said *nothing* about games. I predict that the first we hear about the GBA2, the first thing we're going to see, before we hear about polygons or anything else, is videos of games.
Here is my prediction: all the golden ages of video games have happened when there was healthy competition between two big consoles. Not like today, when the PS2 is all-owning and the other two are fighting over the "distant second" title; real, healthy competition. I think the PSP and the GBA/GBA2 (whenever and whatever that is; hopefully nintendo's been working on such a thing since well before the PSP announcement) are going to have one such healt
The Worm That Eternally Devours Its Own Flesh has shed its skin and now has a new one. Big fucking deal. It's still the same worm. It's still evil, and it still wants to consume all that lives.
The only difference I can see this concievably making is that now the constant anti-RIAA snipes on slashdot will no longer be occationally seen to contain unhelpful sexist comments, now that the RIAA has a spokesman and not a spokeswoman. Other than that I do not imagine the quantity or nature of slashdot RIAA posts, nor the actions of the RIAA, will change one bit.
DXM, MDMA, C20H25N30...
Err, mod parent up. I suck.
I hadn't read the article all the way through at the time I posted my comment-- i read partway through and decided it didn't tell me anything i didn't know already. I didn't get to the point where he discussed non-UNIX(R) unices.. ^_^;
If I remember right, The Open Group has revoked Apple's use of the UNIX trademark, because Apple didn't feel like continuing to pay the certification fees anymore. They were an open-group certified UNIX at first, but not anymore.
This may or may not have been the article author's reason for not including Mac OS X. I'm not sure. He did seem to be gathering his list of UNIXes directly from the Open Group website, though.
There have been no price increases. None. Mac OS X has held steady at roughly $130 per release since version 10.0.
You don't *have* to buy the new version. The old ones continue to work perfectly well. People generally upgrade because they want to.
The sole reasons for NEEDING to upgrade circle around application support (Well, and the relatively poor performance of OS X previous to 10.2. If you want to bitch about THAT, I won't stop you, but that is in the past.), as some applications use API enhancements that only work with a certain OS X version or later. However, from what I have seen, this is ONLY a problem with 1) Free software, either iApps from apple or software from the freeware/shareware community, and 2) Incredibly high-end software that you are paying well, well more than $130 for anyway. Outside of those two sets of applications, OS X app vendors have been relatively good about supporting a spread of OS X versions. The Mac OS 10.3 developer tools, incidentally, contain new features specifically designed to make it easier to target multiple Mac OS X versions. You can hardly complain of having to pay money every year and a half so that you can continue to use free software.
"Having a working system and sticking with it" isn't really an issue since historically, Mac OS X upgrades have not broken existing software, and thus required little change in your system upon upgrade. If you don't like sitting every year and a half through an hour's worth of install procedure.. uh.. well.. then, sorry.
OS X upgrades are comparable to Windows upgrades, when you consider that, as far as i can tell, Microsoft OS upgrades are rarer but cost more. OS X pricing cannot of course compare to linux pricing no matter WHAT apple does.
Upgrading every time Apple releases an OS upgrade is an added cost, but it is not a significant cost when you realize you are ALREADY probably paying a decent amount more money for your computer than you would be with an x86 box merely to be able to run OS X in the first place!
managing to register and tattoing everyone without someone noticing
[[mcc randomly wakes up in the middle of the night to find a man in a surgical mask standing over him and using a tattoo needlegun on his forehead]]
mcc: uhhh.. what are you doing?
man: nothing. i'm not here. go back to sleep.
Here's what I wonder, is getting the croup better or worse than getting mono?
Because mono is what I lost most of last year to.
"Hey!! You kids!! .. What are you DOING? Hey, I don't know who you are or what the heck that is you're pouring into your pants, but get off my lawn..!! Yeah, you heard me, if you're going to be doing that do it somewhere else..!! ... wait, don't leave your trash here! ... HEY! .. stupid kids.. leaving behind their.. what the heck is this thing, anyway, looks like some kind of statue.. uhh..
WTF, Is this supposed to be Natalie Portman??"
AAaaahh...
,thank you.
Interesting.. that makes things much clearer.
The synopsis does say it's limited to just those services. I'm looking at the actual agreement you have to click through, which *seems* to conflict with the synopsisy thing. I may or may not be misinterpreting what this means. In fact, i'm really not sure what it means at all. Could this be interpreted as limiting the rights holder from publishing the mp3s on their private website? Of course, it isn't like this matters too much if you can cancel at any time, but...
If you read through their little presentation, it's actually $40 per album plus a one-time fee of $35 to set up a cdbaby account. That's still not horribly bad.
My only worry with this is that as far as I can tell, CDBABY isn't *required* to do anything.. they have to attempt to get you on these services but if the services all reject you, you still have spent $40.
Moreover, it *appears* from the contract that if you want out-- like, in the unlikely event if iTunes Music Store doesn't accept you through cdbaby, but you later find a way you can get on iTMS not through CDBaby, but you are bound by CDBaby to go through them-- you can do so without penalty, but not until either three and a half years from the start of the agreement or until CDBaby wants to change the terms of your contract, whichever comes first.. that's much better than it could be, of course, the contract isn't limitless and you can get out freely after that block of time, but it decreases the ability to do this kind of thing just as a what-the-heck kind of thing.
Here's the thing I can't figure out from the contract. If you sign up with them, do they have exclusive rights to ALL online distribution, or only online distribution through the services that CDBaby works with such as iTMS? In essence, if I signed up with them, would I still be able to distribute mp3s on my own website of the material signed over to them? The little slide-show seems to imply this would be allowed, but 8ai and 8aiii in the contract seem to say that CDBaby has been given an exclusive right to this as well.
Anyway, definitely interesting. I'd like to see if there's any other way to get onto iTMS or other services first as a complete independent, but I will definitely keep these CDBaby people in mind..
I still do not grasp this fascination with "itunes."
Itunes allowed me to buy and burn legal mp3s of a Gang Starr album for $10.
Therefore I think it's a pretty cool thing.
Does that sound reasonable?
it would be much cooler to see them doing the online distribution themselves in a format (ie MP3 or OGG) that the truly free world embraces.
Actually, I'm part of a small group selling homemade music manufactured at home, and I can imagine using CDBaby to put up music we made even though we already put up mp3s of significant amounts of the music we sell for free.
Why? Exposure. People are much more likely to find and attempt to experiment with music on a "trusted" music service like iTunes than they are to bother with a link on some random guy's sig on slashdot. I would see that $40 sent to CDbaby as effectively nothing more or less than money spent on advertising. If CDBaby was just putting the mp3s on the CDBaby site themselves, It wouldn't look nearly as attractive, since iTunes Music Store etc has a known user base and CDBaby does not.