Figures. I think I've finally found a good use for our old satellite dish now that we've got one of those little digital satellite dishes, and I find out T11 is a Ku satellite. I wonder if it's too late to try to talk my dad into getting the Ku band add-on package.
On a slightly off-topic note, the only thing I miss about our old C-band dish was the wildfeeds back in the day. Fox not airing the game you want to see in your area? No problem. Tune to T6 (or whatever satellite they used) and flip around on the channels until you find the right game. Going out of town next week and going to miss the new episode of ST:TNG (yeah, this was a while ago)? Simply pick up your sat guide and find out where and when the wildfeed will air and watch the new episode as it's beamed out to all the local affiliates. I guess the old C-band satellite dishes did have a few uses.
In all fairness I happen to like Tuvan throat singing. I find it fascinating that they are able to create all these overtones simply by adjusting the way the sound reverberates in their oral cavaties. But that's not all. I also like classical, electronica, jazz, and good old rock and roll and many other genres and sub-genres of music. In fact, last christmas I got 5 CDs each of which were from a different genre or sub-genre. The truth is that people's musical tastes can be varied. Although Tuvan throat singing might not sell as well in the US as N'Sync, that doesn't mean that Tuvan records don't sell and that there aren't people out there who do like said music. Just because the records don't sell at the same volumes as N'Sync doesn't make the music any less valid and it doesn't necessarily mean that the musicians aren't successful.
Dude. I have no doubt in my mind that with Card involved they will be able to make a great movie. I obviously haven't seen the movie yet, but I already know that I'm going to enjoy it. I just can't say the same for the rest of the/. crowd.:-D
What everybody seems to be ignoring here is the fact that many kids might live on the other side of the street from where the bus stops meaning that they will eventually have to cross to the other side of the street to get home, so why the hell shouldn't they do it when they get off the bus? I know that in my area we've had this same law in effect since we moved here in 1988.
I think it's a good law. Especially in light of the fact that some kids may be picked up and dropped off on very busy roads, making it dangerous for them to try to cross the street without the aid of the school bus to stop the traffic. So you have to stop for 30 seconds while a kid gets off the bus. So what? Is anybody really in that much of a hurry that they can't stop for 30 seconds to let some friggin' kids get off the damn bus? Christ! Have some compassion for the little buggers. Besides, I'm not sure about your area, but here as a bus approaches a stop they first turn on these little yellow lights that serve to warn the rest of the traffic to slow the fuck down, because I'm about to stop. As somebody already mentioned, kids aren't always the smartest people or paying attention so it's our job as motorists to watch out for them, not the other way around. In fact, the same applies to any other pedestrians. If you hit them, you are responsible. Period. End of story. Now quit bitching about having to stop for school buses and learn to drive with a little more caution.
--Posting without karma bonus due to the fact that this discussion is off-topic.
Wow, finally games get the recognition they deserve. Games are (for the most part, there are exceptions) serious creative endeavours on the part of their creators and should rightly be viewed as such. I.E. in my opinion, games have every right to be treated the same as art. Yeah, there are good games with many will agree should be considered art, and there are bad games which many won't agree to consider art, but then there's also good art and bad art, both of which can get the same rap.
In fact, after I get tired of actually playing a game, or get to a point where I just cannot seem to progress any farther in the game, I just turn on the cheat codes so that I can run around the game world admiring all these is to see. I like to kind of perform a rudimentary analysis of the game, noticing what's especially cool about the visuals, what about the game makes it so damn fun, and why the hell I couldn't seem to make it past that last bastard without the cheats. Hell, in many games the visuals can be so striking that they can probably be enough to qualify the game as an artform all on their own. I especially like the visuals in Oni for the interesting architecture of the levels and the buildings around which the levels are based. But that's probably becasue I almost became an architecture major until I found out it would require one more extra year of school. There are of course other games with interesting visual aspects or level design, but I've rambled enough in this post.
Kudos to the people at the Barbican for giving games the kind of credit they deserve.
That's not a Sega Game Gear, it's a Nomad. The Game Gear was an original system based off Sega's Master System hardware but with a better graphics subsystem (more colors). The Nomad was a complete Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) compressed into a handheld console. It played the original Genesis cartridges without any modification, giving it a library of hundreds of games right at its day of release.
I was going to correct him until I saw your post. Nice to see that somebody else realized his mistake. However, it is sad to see that this guy converted a Sega Nomad and not a Game Gear. The Nomad really was one of the best portables I've ever played. I purchased one new for $150 after the first christmas they were out, and sold my Game Gear the next day. I already had a Genesis and 4 times as many games for it as my Game Gear. Plus, the Nomad used the same power adapter and RF adapter that the Genesis used, and included a second controller port (really only useful when hooked up to the TV as the built-in screen wasn't meant for two people to view it) so I didn't have to buy any extra peripherals. The only complaint I ever had about the thing was the horrible battery life. I think the most I ever got from the thing was like 3 hours on a set of batteries. This is of course because of the wonderful color, back-lit screen in the Nomad. And despite what others may think, I would never have traded off that great screen for better battery life.
That said, I still can't believe this guy hacked up a Nomad to build this thing. The Nomad is a relatively rare piece of hardware and can still command a decent price. I sold mine a couple of years ago for ~$100. That's not much depreciation for the video game world. Then again, mine was still in pristine condition, complete with orgianl packaging, including twist ties and plastic bags, and the original receipt of purchase. I take care of my stuff. But I digress...
In fact, I'm not even sure what the purpose of this post was...
In addition, you can pop a TurboDuo CD in a normal CD player and go through all the music tracks....so long as you skip track #1.
Or, more specifically, you can pop a Turbo Duo CD in your computer, rip the tracks, and make a dedicated music CD from your games.:) I can't believe that I'd never played a Turbo Duo until now. My life is now complete.:)
Also, if you're up for a bit of nostalgia, this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school.
Well, I wouldn't quite say that listening to video game music has anything to do with my youth. Especially not with games like Dance Dance Revolution, Parappa the Rappa, and even Rez where the music is a very integral part of the game itself. I still go around humming the tunes to various video games every day. In fact, lately I've spent so much time in front of our (rather sizeable) collection of game consoles that I've probably heard more video game lately than I have "real" music. A good tune is a good tune, whether it was created for a video game or not.
Although, I am not nearly as hardcore as one of my friends who based part of his decision to purchase a Turbo Duo on the fact that the music on all those games was so damn good. He was right about the quality of the music, though. I was simply amazed at the music compositions from games like Lords of Thunder and Cotton. In fact, in a side by side comparison of Cotton for the Turbo Duo and Cotton for the PSX, the music on the Turbo Duo version was hands down the winner. Video game music kicks ass, dammit!
Well, I guess it will finally be time to go out and download those nude models that my friends were talking about. This certainly is incentive enough for me. =P
-- Posting without karma bonus due to the relative lewdness of my comment
..... can be convinced to open source/gnu the game titles as the f'd news article or mail from Loki states these titles will no longer be available.
Uh, don't take this the wrong way, but do you even know what Loki is selling? Most of their products are ports of closed source windows games. They don't own the source code to the games. The original developers do. Therefore, were Loki to release the source code, they would get into very big trouble.
Re:I seem to remember...
on
SNES Portable
·
· Score: 2
Hmm... I apologize. It appears that my understanding of autorotation was somewhat inaccurate. In effect, you take that sharp dive in order to achieve the autorotative effects. Previously, when I read about helicopter control mechanics, it was worded such that it seemed that the autorotation process was automatic. Here's a link about autorotation:
Re:I seem to remember...
on
SNES Portable
·
· Score: 2
That's crazy than that Rocket Guy! At least he can parachute down if he doesn't die in the explostion, a helicopter would give you just enough time to think, "Oh shit, I knew I should have used a stronger rubber belt to-"
Actually, with commercial helicopters (and I'm assuming that his home built helicopter's design won't vary that much from commercial designs), the helicopters are built with an auto-rotation design. I.E. if the engine ever stops, the helicopter blades will just automatically rotate to give a slow decent to the ground below. If the belt ever gives out, all the guy needs to do is shut down the engine and just wait it out as the helicopter decends on it's own. You'll probably get a little dizzy as the body of the helicopter will most likely want to counter-rotate and you won't have any direction control (then again you wouldn't have any direction control without the belt, either), but at least you won't come hurtling down, gaining speed at a rate of 9.8m/(s*s), eventually crashing and burning in the horrible flaming wreckage.
On a slightly related note, a friend of my dad's built his own airplane, powered by a small block Chevy V-8. There's no instrumentation and only very rudimentary controls, but it's as safe as any other airplane, and I'm sure he enjoys it a lot more knowing that he built it himself. He painted it John Deere green and calls it his John Deere airplane.:-)
Well, the most common statement of Murphy's Law goes somewhat like this: "Anything that can go wrong, will." Now, this is most likely a shortened version of the Original Murphy's Law, however as is common with natural language, some of the original meaning was lost in the translation to the current abreviated form of Murphy's Law.
The Americas
2-Pac: Until the End of Time (USA, Universal/Interscope)
I think the fact that they are still coming out with 2-Pac CD's is ever scarier than the fact that they are coming out with Copy Protected CD's. Hey guys, HE'S DEAD. Stop putting out the albums already.
Well then, you should come over here and join us. Yes, you too can become an American for only 4 easy payments of $1999.99. But wait, there's more. If you act now, we'll give you one payment free. Yes that's right, act now and you can become an American for just 3 payments of only $1999.99.
Actually, I think that you are right. Although, it has been quite a while since I last played Civ or Civ II, so I can't exactly be sure either. I just seem to remember reading something in one of the manuals about that. It makes perfect sense, and wouldn't be a very hard feature to implement.
Real terrain, where you can use the terrain for battle advantage, etc. That would be cool.
Uhh... well you can already use the terrain for battle advantages. For insance: your squad of catapults is being hunted down by a Knight? Head into the mountains to equalize the movement points. Want to be able to quickly deploy your units without building roads? Move you units down the river.
Although, I think that I may see what you're getting at. There really are only so many types of terrain, of which all squares of each type have the same tactical advantages/disadvantages.
Back home in Arkansas this summer, we actually suffered a phone outage in our area. It was a total telecommunications black out. Not even cell phones could get service in the area (presumably due to the towers' connections to the land lines somewhere). Anyway, about a month later I found out what happened. Turned out that some yahoo had stolen a backhoe to dig a grave for their pet cat. Only, while digging the hole he or she hit a major telecommunications trunk, cutting off service to many square miles of telephone customers. Needless to say, I was kind of pissed to find out that I lost phone service because some redneck was digging a grave for their pet cat.
Re:I overcame one of the three copy protections
on
NSync Copy Protected CD
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
The third method of copy protection is the most difficult of all: you have to draw the CD by hand.
Actually, here in New Orleans we do have a station that tells you the song title and artists name. On 105.3 at the beginning of every song, you hear a little chime and then the artist and the title are announced. To be honest, I didn't much care for it when the first started doing it, but now I rather like it. Now, I really do have a better idea of which bands I should love and which I should hate. (Now I just hate the little chime sound effect and wish they would find something more original.)
What annoys me the most about these kinds of copy protection schemes is how they limit me, the average consumer who does buy my music. I spend 9 months out of the year away at college. Frankly, I don't want to take apart my entire stereo and cart it back and forth every year. It's a pain in the ass, and I just know that something would sooner or later get broken. My solution? Play all my CD's in my computer. I paid $2000 for this thing, I damn well better be able to do more than type papers on it.
Furthermore, I like to rip a lot of my lesser used CD's to.mp3 so that I don't also have to bring my entire collection of >200 CD's to school each year. That is just another invitation for something to get lost or broken. Not to mention, I don't have enough room in the car for all that crap.
Oh yeah. I also like to run. (Yes, I am a geek who likes to get exercise.) But you know what I like to do when I run? Listen to music. Music on my solid state mp3 player that will not skip as I run. Let me rephrase that: I like to listen to my legally purchased music on my mp3 player while I run.
I'm not going to lie and say that I've never used Napster. I have, and I probably do have a few mp3's for which I do not own the CD. But for the vast majority of my mp3 collection I also have the CD's to accompany them. All the record companies are doing is serving to piss off people like me. People who do buy their music, but who wish to listen to it in a device other than a standard CD player. In fact, if I ever purchase a CD that I cannot play in my computer, I will return it. And then do you know what I will do? I will turn around and download the mp3's off my favorite p2p file sharing utility, because I have every confidence that despite whatever copy protection methods the record companies try to use, the mp3's will always be out there. After all, if I can't listen to my legally purchased music in the device of my choice, why should I pay to listen to that CD at all. If you're going to treat me like a criminal, then I may as well act like one.
Although, I must say that I am certainly glad that I am not a Michael Jackson or Charley Pride fan, because I loath the day when the record companies force me to actively pirate music just to listen to it on my preferred listening devices.
I for one think that this is a bad idea. I think that such a federally mandated ID card would really hurt the alcohol industry. After all, all the under age college students will no longer be able to purchase alcohol with horribly faked out of state ID's. Ellison is the devil.
Slashdot Mirror
Figures. I think I've finally found a good use for our old satellite dish now that we've got one of those little digital satellite dishes, and I find out T11 is a Ku satellite. I wonder if it's too late to try to talk my dad into getting the Ku band add-on package.
On a slightly off-topic note, the only thing I miss about our old C-band dish was the wildfeeds back in the day. Fox not airing the game you want to see in your area? No problem. Tune to T6 (or whatever satellite they used) and flip around on the channels until you find the right game. Going out of town next week and going to miss the new episode of ST:TNG (yeah, this was a while ago)? Simply pick up your sat guide and find out where and when the wildfeed will air and watch the new episode as it's beamed out to all the local affiliates. I guess the old C-band satellite dishes did have a few uses.
In all fairness I happen to like Tuvan throat singing. I find it fascinating that they are able to create all these overtones simply by adjusting the way the sound reverberates in their oral cavaties. But that's not all. I also like classical, electronica, jazz, and good old rock and roll and many other genres and sub-genres of music. In fact, last christmas I got 5 CDs each of which were from a different genre or sub-genre. The truth is that people's musical tastes can be varied. Although Tuvan throat singing might not sell as well in the US as N'Sync, that doesn't mean that Tuvan records don't sell and that there aren't people out there who do like said music. Just because the records don't sell at the same volumes as N'Sync doesn't make the music any less valid and it doesn't necessarily mean that the musicians aren't successful.
Dude. I have no doubt in my mind that with Card involved they will be able to make a great movie. I obviously haven't seen the movie yet, but I already know that I'm going to enjoy it. I just can't say the same for the rest of the /. crowd. :-D
So they're finally going to do a movie based on it? Oh great. Yet another movie for the slashdot community to bitch about. ;)
For some reason that post immediately made me think of Eddie Izzard...
What everybody seems to be ignoring here is the fact that many kids might live on the other side of the street from where the bus stops meaning that they will eventually have to cross to the other side of the street to get home, so why the hell shouldn't they do it when they get off the bus? I know that in my area we've had this same law in effect since we moved here in 1988.
I think it's a good law. Especially in light of the fact that some kids may be picked up and dropped off on very busy roads, making it dangerous for them to try to cross the street without the aid of the school bus to stop the traffic. So you have to stop for 30 seconds while a kid gets off the bus. So what? Is anybody really in that much of a hurry that they can't stop for 30 seconds to let some friggin' kids get off the damn bus? Christ! Have some compassion for the little buggers. Besides, I'm not sure about your area, but here as a bus approaches a stop they first turn on these little yellow lights that serve to warn the rest of the traffic to slow the fuck down, because I'm about to stop. As somebody already mentioned, kids aren't always the smartest people or paying attention so it's our job as motorists to watch out for them, not the other way around. In fact, the same applies to any other pedestrians. If you hit them, you are responsible. Period. End of story. Now quit bitching about having to stop for school buses and learn to drive with a little more caution.
--Posting without karma bonus due to the fact that this discussion is off-topic.
Wow, finally games get the recognition they deserve. Games are (for the most part, there are exceptions) serious creative endeavours on the part of their creators and should rightly be viewed as such. I.E. in my opinion, games have every right to be treated the same as art. Yeah, there are good games with many will agree should be considered art, and there are bad games which many won't agree to consider art, but then there's also good art and bad art, both of which can get the same rap.
In fact, after I get tired of actually playing a game, or get to a point where I just cannot seem to progress any farther in the game, I just turn on the cheat codes so that I can run around the game world admiring all these is to see. I like to kind of perform a rudimentary analysis of the game, noticing what's especially cool about the visuals, what about the game makes it so damn fun, and why the hell I couldn't seem to make it past that last bastard without the cheats. Hell, in many games the visuals can be so striking that they can probably be enough to qualify the game as an artform all on their own. I especially like the visuals in Oni for the interesting architecture of the levels and the buildings around which the levels are based. But that's probably becasue I almost became an architecture major until I found out it would require one more extra year of school. There are of course other games with interesting visual aspects or level design, but I've rambled enough in this post.
Kudos to the people at the Barbican for giving games the kind of credit they deserve.
That's not a Sega Game Gear, it's a Nomad. The Game Gear was an original system based off Sega's Master System hardware but with a better graphics subsystem (more colors). The Nomad was a complete Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) compressed into a handheld console. It played the original Genesis cartridges without any modification, giving it a library of hundreds of games right at its day of release.
I was going to correct him until I saw your post. Nice to see that somebody else realized his mistake. However, it is sad to see that this guy converted a Sega Nomad and not a Game Gear. The Nomad really was one of the best portables I've ever played. I purchased one new for $150 after the first christmas they were out, and sold my Game Gear the next day. I already had a Genesis and 4 times as many games for it as my Game Gear. Plus, the Nomad used the same power adapter and RF adapter that the Genesis used, and included a second controller port (really only useful when hooked up to the TV as the built-in screen wasn't meant for two people to view it) so I didn't have to buy any extra peripherals. The only complaint I ever had about the thing was the horrible battery life. I think the most I ever got from the thing was like 3 hours on a set of batteries. This is of course because of the wonderful color, back-lit screen in the Nomad. And despite what others may think, I would never have traded off that great screen for better battery life.
That said, I still can't believe this guy hacked up a Nomad to build this thing. The Nomad is a relatively rare piece of hardware and can still command a decent price. I sold mine a couple of years ago for ~$100. That's not much depreciation for the video game world. Then again, mine was still in pristine condition, complete with orgianl packaging, including twist ties and plastic bags, and the original receipt of purchase. I take care of my stuff. But I digress...
In fact, I'm not even sure what the purpose of this post was...
In addition, you can pop a TurboDuo CD in a normal CD player and go through all the music tracks....so long as you skip track #1.
Or, more specifically, you can pop a Turbo Duo CD in your computer, rip the tracks, and make a dedicated music CD from your games. :) I can't believe that I'd never played a Turbo Duo until now. My life is now complete. :)
Also, if you're up for a bit of nostalgia, this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school.
Well, I wouldn't quite say that listening to video game music has anything to do with my youth. Especially not with games like Dance Dance Revolution, Parappa the Rappa, and even Rez where the music is a very integral part of the game itself. I still go around humming the tunes to various video games every day. In fact, lately I've spent so much time in front of our (rather sizeable) collection of game consoles that I've probably heard more video game lately than I have "real" music. A good tune is a good tune, whether it was created for a video game or not.
Although, I am not nearly as hardcore as one of my friends who based part of his decision to purchase a Turbo Duo on the fact that the music on all those games was so damn good. He was right about the quality of the music, though. I was simply amazed at the music compositions from games like Lords of Thunder and Cotton. In fact, in a side by side comparison of Cotton for the Turbo Duo and Cotton for the PSX, the music on the Turbo Duo version was hands down the winner. Video game music kicks ass, dammit!
Well, I guess it will finally be time to go out and download those nude models that my friends were talking about. This certainly is incentive enough for me. =P
-- Posting without karma bonus due to the relative lewdness of my comment
Uh, don't take this the wrong way, but do you even know what Loki is selling? Most of their products are ports of closed source windows games. They don't own the source code to the games. The original developers do. Therefore, were Loki to release the source code, they would get into very big trouble.
Hmm... I apologize. It appears that my understanding of autorotation was somewhat inaccurate. In effect, you take that sharp dive in order to achieve the autorotative effects. Previously, when I read about helicopter control mechanics, it was worded such that it seemed that the autorotation process was automatic. Here's a link about autorotation:
http://www.helicoptersonly.com/Helicopter_Traini ng /Autorotation/autorotation.html
That's crazy than that Rocket Guy! At least he can parachute down if he doesn't die in the explostion, a helicopter would give you just enough time to think, "Oh shit, I knew I should have used a stronger rubber belt to-"
Actually, with commercial helicopters (and I'm assuming that his home built helicopter's design won't vary that much from commercial designs), the helicopters are built with an auto-rotation design. I.E. if the engine ever stops, the helicopter blades will just automatically rotate to give a slow decent to the ground below. If the belt ever gives out, all the guy needs to do is shut down the engine and just wait it out as the helicopter decends on it's own. You'll probably get a little dizzy as the body of the helicopter will most likely want to counter-rotate and you won't have any direction control (then again you wouldn't have any direction control without the belt, either), but at least you won't come hurtling down, gaining speed at a rate of 9.8m/(s*s), eventually crashing and burning in the horrible flaming wreckage.
On a slightly related note, a friend of my dad's built his own airplane, powered by a small block Chevy V-8. There's no instrumentation and only very rudimentary controls, but it's as safe as any other airplane, and I'm sure he enjoys it a lot more knowing that he built it himself. He painted it John Deere green and calls it his John Deere airplane. :-)
Well, the most common statement of Murphy's Law goes somewhat like this: "Anything that can go wrong, will." Now, this is most likely a shortened version of the Original Murphy's Law, however as is common with natural language, some of the original meaning was lost in the translation to the current abreviated form of Murphy's Law.
Just look on the bright side: if Murphy's law can go wrong, it will. :)
The Americas
2-Pac: Until the End of Time (USA, Universal/Interscope)
I think the fact that they are still coming out with 2-Pac CD's is ever scarier than the fact that they are coming out with Copy Protected CD's. Hey guys, HE'S DEAD. Stop putting out the albums already.
Well then, you should come over here and join us. Yes, you too can become an American for only 4 easy payments of $1999.99. But wait, there's more. If you act now, we'll give you one payment free. Yes that's right, act now and you can become an American for just 3 payments of only $1999.99.
Please make all checks payable to the MPAA.
Actually, I think that you are right. Although, it has been quite a while since I last played Civ or Civ II, so I can't exactly be sure either. I just seem to remember reading something in one of the manuals about that. It makes perfect sense, and wouldn't be a very hard feature to implement.
Real terrain, where you can use the terrain for battle advantage, etc. That would be cool.
Uhh... well you can already use the terrain for battle advantages. For insance: your squad of catapults is being hunted down by a Knight? Head into the mountains to equalize the movement points. Want to be able to quickly deploy your units without building roads? Move you units down the river.
Although, I think that I may see what you're getting at. There really are only so many types of terrain, of which all squares of each type have the same tactical advantages/disadvantages.
Back home in Arkansas this summer, we actually suffered a phone outage in our area. It was a total telecommunications black out. Not even cell phones could get service in the area (presumably due to the towers' connections to the land lines somewhere). Anyway, about a month later I found out what happened. Turned out that some yahoo had stolen a backhoe to dig a grave for their pet cat. Only, while digging the hole he or she hit a major telecommunications trunk, cutting off service to many square miles of telephone customers. Needless to say, I was kind of pissed to find out that I lost phone service because some redneck was digging a grave for their pet cat.
The third method of copy protection is the most difficult of all: you have to draw the CD by hand.
Actually, here in New Orleans we do have a station that tells you the song title and artists name. On 105.3 at the beginning of every song, you hear a little chime and then the artist and the title are announced. To be honest, I didn't much care for it when the first started doing it, but now I rather like it. Now, I really do have a better idea of which bands I should love and which I should hate. (Now I just hate the little chime sound effect and wish they would find something more original.)
What annoys me the most about these kinds of copy protection schemes is how they limit me, the average consumer who does buy my music. I spend 9 months out of the year away at college. Frankly, I don't want to take apart my entire stereo and cart it back and forth every year. It's a pain in the ass, and I just know that something would sooner or later get broken. My solution? Play all my CD's in my computer. I paid $2000 for this thing, I damn well better be able to do more than type papers on it.
Furthermore, I like to rip a lot of my lesser used CD's to .mp3 so that I don't also have to bring my entire collection of >200 CD's to school each year. That is just another invitation for something to get lost or broken. Not to mention, I don't have enough room in the car for all that crap.
Oh yeah. I also like to run. (Yes, I am a geek who likes to get exercise.) But you know what I like to do when I run? Listen to music. Music on my solid state mp3 player that will not skip as I run. Let me rephrase that: I like to listen to my legally purchased music on my mp3 player while I run.
I'm not going to lie and say that I've never used Napster. I have, and I probably do have a few mp3's for which I do not own the CD. But for the vast majority of my mp3 collection I also have the CD's to accompany them. All the record companies are doing is serving to piss off people like me. People who do buy their music, but who wish to listen to it in a device other than a standard CD player. In fact, if I ever purchase a CD that I cannot play in my computer, I will return it. And then do you know what I will do? I will turn around and download the mp3's off my favorite p2p file sharing utility, because I have every confidence that despite whatever copy protection methods the record companies try to use, the mp3's will always be out there. After all, if I can't listen to my legally purchased music in the device of my choice, why should I pay to listen to that CD at all. If you're going to treat me like a criminal, then I may as well act like one.
Although, I must say that I am certainly glad that I am not a Michael Jackson or Charley Pride fan, because I loath the day when the record companies force me to actively pirate music just to listen to it on my preferred listening devices.
I for one think that this is a bad idea. I think that such a federally mandated ID card would really hurt the alcohol industry. After all, all the under age college students will no longer be able to purchase alcohol with horribly faked out of state ID's. Ellison is the devil.