Apple? OSX + Safari. How is it any different? Remember, the complaint isn't IE's integration with Windows any more. It's all about the very fact it's included at the expense of other browsers.
Ah, so you're all about pushing just the most popular browsers then? Just the most popular ones? Why should Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE be the choices? They have market and mindshare! Why not give the little guys a chance? After all, isn't that the whole point of disputing the inclusion of IE? To give other browsers a chance?
Except that you choose which browser you want during "creation" in the build-your-own computer shops. And most manufacturers that only do pre-builts are going to go with the cheapest option, and I doubt MS has any stake in pushing IE anymore, since it's pretty de-integrated by now. They could just drop the whole line, and come up with a new project for the team, and they'd never even notice, profit-wise.
The only valid thing is the "financial incentives" brought up by the AC above, but then we'd need to fine the crap out of every company that includes bundled software trial versions, since they all pay to get their trial installed instead of the competitor or free version.
I wouldn't have a problem, except that MS is the only one forced to do this. Apple with OSX? You get safari, shut the fuck up and like it. Ubuntu? Hey, here's Firefox for ya, hope you like it. Why should MS be the only one, when it's just a matter of scale? So if Windows wasn't popular, it wouldn't be a problem to bundle IE in?
Secondly, Win7 is in public RC. There's a release date set for THIS year. To force them to come up with a whole new addition to get this in order reeks of "fuck the big corporation, we want money" simply because they're not happy with the solution MS came up with to both satisfy the EU's complain AND still let them ship on time. No, it's the EU's way, no highway available.
Especially this quote: Now that Microsoft has acknowledged it has been breaking the law by bundling IE into Windows, the Commission must push ahead with an effective remedy.
I don't see an admission anywhere. I see a company saying "Get off our backs. Since you won't go away, this is how we'll deal with it, because anything you come up with is going to hurt our company."
You rarely hear from people like me, because you've stuck AC posts at 0, and the default is 1.
That's why I read at -1. The moderation system can bring some good points to light, but there's good stuff if you burrow down, or just read past the point most people burn their mod points on. If you're on 1, you can miss some good stuff.
What gives you the privilege or right to determine that you should have the option to pay for something.
And the producer has no right to my money for making a shit product. If there's a way to properly preview something (not movie previews, those are obviously just marketing tools), such as a demo, then fine, it becomes my duty to check the demo, establish an opinion of the product, and then purchase or not. But there's not really a way to demo a movie that's in theatres. I'd consider renting a movie demoing it, but you can't do that if it's a brand new movie. The majority of games for PC don't have demos, and you can't return them if you don't like them. Console games, you can conceivably rent, if the store decides they might like to carry it, but for a more esoteric title, with limited appeal, they're not going to waste the shelf space.
I'm Canadian, I can't use netflix, gamefly, or Hulu. I don't have a problem with rewarding someone who's done good work, but why reward a cash grab because the system's set up in such a way that if I don't have mainstream tastes, I don't get to try anything.
Furthermore, there's systems out there where people allow people to use their stuff for free, and then, if they like it, donations are accepted to give the developer an income stream. I realize, not reasonable for a multi-million dollar project, or at least, not at this time, but there ARE systems where you get the right to use something without paying, on the notion that if you appriciate it, you will donate.
Addressing your steak argument, how's this? Every movie and game is slightly different. There is absolutely no way to tell in advance if you're sure to like something. I've loathed movies that on paper should have been amazing. I've liked things that I probably should have hated. A steak is the same pretty much every time. You know what you're getting, you know if it's worth it to you. The situations are not the same in the slightest.
Now, finally, reading reviews. Again, my tastes differ from others. How do I know that just because someone says that a game's controls are horrifically awkward, I won't be able to cope with them? Bad dialog? Hard to know. Tastes are subjective, and reviews are flawed. There's only two sources I trust with game recommendations. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation, and the guys at Penny Arcade. Yet since neither are dedicated sources, they hardly cover the gamut of releases. I'm lucky if they cover even 5% of the releases. Every other source, I've disagreed majorly with either to the quality or lack thereof in a title. Again, I'd prefer to have the opportunity to actually form my own opinion. I don't see how this can possibly seem unreasonable to you.
No, I mean YOU all pay. Canadian, here. Second, "unconstitutional?" I'd like you to point out the place where it says "The government cannot direct the use of bandwidth used in broadcasting." Because that's what they're doing. They're re-purposing spectrum for use. I thought that was a big job of one of the FCC-type organizations you had? And I don't recall every hearing of a right for a TV to work in perpetuity. Lemme guess. You bitched about the switch to DVDs, too, didn't you?
[Canadian] Officials should not sit idly by as the U.S. unfairly tarnishes Canada's reputation.
I agree with that. Start throwing the real numbers out there, politicians! Hell, if people could start seeing the US government as spewing bullshit on this topic, other governments might be a little more cautious in dealing with them. After all, Canada's pretty heavily entwined with America's economy, and if the US is willing to trashtalk us with no basis in reality, what's to stop them from doing worse to some country they have fewer ties with?
I've never heard of a decoder box in Canada. Cable comes in through... well, cable, plugs in to TV, We get signal. If you've got satellite, you need a receiver box to process the signal, but that's about it.
"We're just going to completely make shit up, 'cause we can't be bothered to survey Canada. They're just like the US, right? We'll just use the numbers from the US, adjusted for population, and how backwards they are compared to us."
"Draconian." As most people charged with marijuana-related offences don't serve jail time, I think you need to recheck your definition of draconian. And we've tried multiple times to decriminalize it down to just a ticketing offence. It'll keep being brought up, and eventually it'll pass. Don't deflect the topic at hand with FUD.
So if Terminator 4 was downloaded 1million times in the US, one could say that it cost the $18million ($18 for the DVD) plus the government $1,260,000 in taxes (assuming 7% taxes).
Okay, I *saw* terminator 4 in theatres, and lemme tell you, it was NOT worth the price. If a friend hadn't bought my ticket, I wouldn't have watched it. But to my friend, it was worth the price because we were seeing it together. That's the difference. He was getting a value out of it separate to the value of the movie.
To me, the best pro-piracy argument is it allows people to not reward people for making shit products. If piracy wasn't available, I'd have to pay $60 to find out that new game is absolute ass-nuggets, I'd have to pay at least $10 to see a movie in the theatres to know it was crap, not including travel time, waiting time, concessions, etc. Why should someone benefit from my enforced inability to check the quality of their product before I shell out full price? You can't tell me you've never watched a movie, or played a game, or bought a book, or *something* that made you go, afterwards, "fuck, that was a waste of $X. I wish I had that back."
That, or everyone on the fucking planet ALREADY OWNS ONE. Hard to sell more when they already have one. It takes time for the little kids to age enough to save up enough to buy another.
No, but there's a huge demographic that doesn't see a huge difference between the Wii and the 360/PS3. Since everything's grey, brown, and muzzle flash, the lovingly rendered cracks on Grizzled Space Marine #624578's helmet don't really shine through, you know?
Seriously, play House of the Dead: Overkill. Looks good. Plays well. An experience that wouldn't really gain anything by shiner graphics.
It's about getting the developers off their fucking high horse to realize that no, you might not be able to do a direct port of your $14 million AAA title, but you can still make a good, solid, FUN game on the Wii. Most developers just looked at it like the Atari's retarded cousin, though.
Anyone who seriously thinks the Wii provides a "watered-down" gaming experience is elitist to the point of inbred doofusery. It removes a level of abstraction between players and what occurs on-screen, at the cost of a few pieces of bling. How is that a watered down experience? If anything, it's a more pure experience.
prettier graphics != better game. Lower the polygon count, drop the draw distance. I guarantee that 80% of gamers won't notice. That 80% being the casual gaming crowd.
And like other peripherals, it's likely that that niche audience will be the only ones to purchase it. Unless there's a dozen+ games within a year of its release, people won't buy it, and real-world situations have yet to be explored, such as "random person walks around in background" since it tracks more than one person.
Six-axis controls are junk. I have yet to hear of a game where they're even half-way reliable. Remember Lair? It was supposed to be the poster boy for what the PS3 could do, graphics-wise and control-wise, and the Sixaxis was a MESS. So no, you don't really have partial motion control. You have one of those "tilt the box to get the bead in the hole" puzzles integrated in to your controller.
Except the police aren't making the offers. They're simply standing around, and other people come up to them and say "Hey, I want drugs and/or sex." You really need to watch less TV.
No kidding. I have always argued that perhaps someone would not have ever even broken the law had they not been approached at that exact time in those exact circumstances.
That's called entrapment, and it gets cases tossed out. That's why police doing stings aren't allowed to make advances. The ones who pose as hookers? They just stand there. You have to approach them. You have to say something along the lines of "I want sex, here is money for it." They only do it in areas which already have prostitution issues, so they're not moving to areas where you'd be unlikely to find a hooker normally. So in no way are they increasing the likelyhood, and in fact, by placing more of the burden of the transaction on the John, they're decreasing it, since there's no co-operation from the undercover officer.
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Apple? OSX + Safari. How is it any different? Remember, the complaint isn't IE's integration with Windows any more. It's all about the very fact it's included at the expense of other browsers.
Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Governmental personae are not exempt.
Ah, so you're all about pushing just the most popular browsers then? Just the most popular ones? Why should Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE be the choices? They have market and mindshare! Why not give the little guys a chance? After all, isn't that the whole point of disputing the inclusion of IE? To give other browsers a chance?
Except that you choose which browser you want during "creation" in the build-your-own computer shops. And most manufacturers that only do pre-builts are going to go with the cheapest option, and I doubt MS has any stake in pushing IE anymore, since it's pretty de-integrated by now. They could just drop the whole line, and come up with a new project for the team, and they'd never even notice, profit-wise.
The only valid thing is the "financial incentives" brought up by the AC above, but then we'd need to fine the crap out of every company that includes bundled software trial versions, since they all pay to get their trial installed instead of the competitor or free version.
I wouldn't have a problem, except that MS is the only one forced to do this. Apple with OSX? You get safari, shut the fuck up and like it. Ubuntu? Hey, here's Firefox for ya, hope you like it. Why should MS be the only one, when it's just a matter of scale? So if Windows wasn't popular, it wouldn't be a problem to bundle IE in?
Secondly, Win7 is in public RC. There's a release date set for THIS year. To force them to come up with a whole new addition to get this in order reeks of "fuck the big corporation, we want money" simply because they're not happy with the solution MS came up with to both satisfy the EU's complain AND still let them ship on time. No, it's the EU's way, no highway available.
Especially this quote: Now that Microsoft has acknowledged it has been breaking the law by bundling IE into Windows, the Commission must push ahead with an effective remedy.
I don't see an admission anywhere. I see a company saying "Get off our backs. Since you won't go away, this is how we'll deal with it, because anything you come up with is going to hurt our company."
Opera's free. Even the mobile and mini versions are free now. That's about the extent of my critique of your post.
You rarely hear from people like me, because you've stuck AC posts at 0, and the default is 1.
That's why I read at -1. The moderation system can bring some good points to light, but there's good stuff if you burrow down, or just read past the point most people burn their mod points on. If you're on 1, you can miss some good stuff.
What gives you the privilege or right to determine that you should have the option to pay for something.
And the producer has no right to my money for making a shit product. If there's a way to properly preview something (not movie previews, those are obviously just marketing tools), such as a demo, then fine, it becomes my duty to check the demo, establish an opinion of the product, and then purchase or not. But there's not really a way to demo a movie that's in theatres. I'd consider renting a movie demoing it, but you can't do that if it's a brand new movie. The majority of games for PC don't have demos, and you can't return them if you don't like them. Console games, you can conceivably rent, if the store decides they might like to carry it, but for a more esoteric title, with limited appeal, they're not going to waste the shelf space.
I'm Canadian, I can't use netflix, gamefly, or Hulu. I don't have a problem with rewarding someone who's done good work, but why reward a cash grab because the system's set up in such a way that if I don't have mainstream tastes, I don't get to try anything.
Furthermore, there's systems out there where people allow people to use their stuff for free, and then, if they like it, donations are accepted to give the developer an income stream. I realize, not reasonable for a multi-million dollar project, or at least, not at this time, but there ARE systems where you get the right to use something without paying, on the notion that if you appriciate it, you will donate.
Addressing your steak argument, how's this? Every movie and game is slightly different. There is absolutely no way to tell in advance if you're sure to like something. I've loathed movies that on paper should have been amazing. I've liked things that I probably should have hated. A steak is the same pretty much every time. You know what you're getting, you know if it's worth it to you. The situations are not the same in the slightest.
Now, finally, reading reviews. Again, my tastes differ from others. How do I know that just because someone says that a game's controls are horrifically awkward, I won't be able to cope with them? Bad dialog? Hard to know. Tastes are subjective, and reviews are flawed. There's only two sources I trust with game recommendations. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation, and the guys at Penny Arcade. Yet since neither are dedicated sources, they hardly cover the gamut of releases. I'm lucky if they cover even 5% of the releases. Every other source, I've disagreed majorly with either to the quality or lack thereof in a title. Again, I'd prefer to have the opportunity to actually form my own opinion. I don't see how this can possibly seem unreasonable to you.
No, I mean YOU all pay. Canadian, here. Second, "unconstitutional?" I'd like you to point out the place where it says "The government cannot direct the use of bandwidth used in broadcasting." Because that's what they're doing. They're re-purposing spectrum for use. I thought that was a big job of one of the FCC-type organizations you had? And I don't recall every hearing of a right for a TV to work in perpetuity. Lemme guess. You bitched about the switch to DVDs, too, didn't you?
I thought there were a bunch of coupons given out to get it for practically free?
[Canadian] Officials should not sit idly by as the U.S. unfairly tarnishes Canada's reputation.
I agree with that. Start throwing the real numbers out there, politicians! Hell, if people could start seeing the US government as spewing bullshit on this topic, other governments might be a little more cautious in dealing with them. After all, Canada's pretty heavily entwined with America's economy, and if the US is willing to trashtalk us with no basis in reality, what's to stop them from doing worse to some country they have fewer ties with?
I've never heard of a decoder box in Canada. Cable comes in through... well, cable, plugs in to TV, We get signal. If you've got satellite, you need a receiver box to process the signal, but that's about it.
I believe the Broken Window argument is what most people use to attack that assertion.
*facepalm*
"We're just going to completely make shit up, 'cause we can't be bothered to survey Canada. They're just like the US, right? We'll just use the numbers from the US, adjusted for population, and how backwards they are compared to us."
"Draconian." As most people charged with marijuana-related offences don't serve jail time, I think you need to recheck your definition of draconian. And we've tried multiple times to decriminalize it down to just a ticketing offence. It'll keep being brought up, and eventually it'll pass. Don't deflect the topic at hand with FUD.
So if Terminator 4 was downloaded 1million times in the US, one could say that it cost the $18million ($18 for the DVD) plus the government $1,260,000 in taxes (assuming 7% taxes).
Okay, I *saw* terminator 4 in theatres, and lemme tell you, it was NOT worth the price. If a friend hadn't bought my ticket, I wouldn't have watched it. But to my friend, it was worth the price because we were seeing it together. That's the difference. He was getting a value out of it separate to the value of the movie.
To me, the best pro-piracy argument is it allows people to not reward people for making shit products. If piracy wasn't available, I'd have to pay $60 to find out that new game is absolute ass-nuggets, I'd have to pay at least $10 to see a movie in the theatres to know it was crap, not including travel time, waiting time, concessions, etc. Why should someone benefit from my enforced inability to check the quality of their product before I shell out full price? You can't tell me you've never watched a movie, or played a game, or bought a book, or *something* that made you go, afterwards, "fuck, that was a waste of $X. I wish I had that back."
Yeah, you don't get it by eating pork. that's how you get tapeworms. you get swine flu by porking pigs.
The Conduit. Look it up.
That, or everyone on the fucking planet ALREADY OWNS ONE. Hard to sell more when they already have one. It takes time for the little kids to age enough to save up enough to buy another.
No, but there's a huge demographic that doesn't see a huge difference between the Wii and the 360/PS3. Since everything's grey, brown, and muzzle flash, the lovingly rendered cracks on Grizzled Space Marine #624578's helmet don't really shine through, you know?
Seriously, play House of the Dead: Overkill. Looks good. Plays well. An experience that wouldn't really gain anything by shiner graphics.
It's about getting the developers off their fucking high horse to realize that no, you might not be able to do a direct port of your $14 million AAA title, but you can still make a good, solid, FUN game on the Wii. Most developers just looked at it like the Atari's retarded cousin, though.
Anyone who seriously thinks the Wii provides a "watered-down" gaming experience is elitist to the point of inbred doofusery. It removes a level of abstraction between players and what occurs on-screen, at the cost of a few pieces of bling. How is that a watered down experience? If anything, it's a more pure experience.
prettier graphics != better game. Lower the polygon count, drop the draw distance. I guarantee that 80% of gamers won't notice. That 80% being the casual gaming crowd.
And like other peripherals, it's likely that that niche audience will be the only ones to purchase it. Unless there's a dozen+ games within a year of its release, people won't buy it, and real-world situations have yet to be explored, such as "random person walks around in background" since it tracks more than one person.
Six-axis controls are junk. I have yet to hear of a game where they're even half-way reliable. Remember Lair? It was supposed to be the poster boy for what the PS3 could do, graphics-wise and control-wise, and the Sixaxis was a MESS. So no, you don't really have partial motion control. You have one of those "tilt the box to get the bead in the hole" puzzles integrated in to your controller.
Except the police aren't making the offers. They're simply standing around, and other people come up to them and say "Hey, I want drugs and/or sex." You really need to watch less TV.
No kidding. I have always argued that perhaps someone would not have ever even broken the law had they not been approached at that exact time in those exact circumstances.
That's called entrapment, and it gets cases tossed out. That's why police doing stings aren't allowed to make advances. The ones who pose as hookers? They just stand there. You have to approach them. You have to say something along the lines of "I want sex, here is money for it." They only do it in areas which already have prostitution issues, so they're not moving to areas where you'd be unlikely to find a hooker normally. So in no way are they increasing the likelyhood, and in fact, by placing more of the burden of the transaction on the John, they're decreasing it, since there's no co-operation from the undercover officer.