Only for now, and only if you're one of the people that hasn't cut cable TV service from their budgets. The average American watches 153 hours of TV every month. Netflix HD streams eat up approximately 2GB every hour (source: Netflix themselves and verified by watching my own router traffic while watching HD Netflix streams).
Some simple arithmetic leads us to 153 hours * 2GB/hr = 306GB per month for an average American who gets their TV fix from Netflix streaming or another comparable service. And this is assuming that there's either only one person in the household, or at least that every person in the household is watching the same thing all of the time. Have a roommate who has completely different taste in television? Boom, 612GB/month. Household or family of four? Of six? Happen to lie on the upper half of the Bell curve? You're screwed. Nevermind the traffic used by, you know, actual internet usage.
I'm sure there will be some replies saying "People should go outside or read a book", but the fact remains that they don't. Still think 150GB or even 250GB a month is all that generous?
You're right, the frustration level is pretty high. It's very difficult, and while I'm glad I own it, I doubt the more casual rhythm game players would be interested. Even Guitar Hero took the idea of Guitar Freaks and simplified it, making it considerably easier and more fun to play, IMO. I could see them maybe coming out with Keyboard Hero as one of the last of the line of games, but there are plenty of other instruments that would be more fun to play first.
That's only because David Lynch has an "artist" stick up his ass and doesn't want anyone viewing the movie in pieces or not all at once. It's the same reason there's no audio commentary on the disc either.
Honest question, because I really don't know. Do modern wear leveling techniques move unchanged data around to even up the number of write cycles? I'd say around around 80-90% of my disk usually stays full and unchanged, while the last 10-20% of my disk gets hammered with constantly changing data. Spreading out the write load to only 10% of the disk wouldn't help users like me much.
One thing your interpretation of the analogy fails to take into account is the willingness of people to pay for a nice box of DVDs (bottles?) or pay for cable so they don't have to download it, burn it, etc. (Not having to find someone who has Diet Coke to replicate?) All they have to do is turn on the TV, and bam, it's there, especially with things like Tivo (which isn't illegal, not yet anyway.)
Without going and getting out my copy of Dethkarz, I'd have to say I don't think it's Glide only. I know I was playing it last year on my GF4 Ti4200, and I didn't do anything special to get it working. I'd check it out, because like you, I think it's an awesome game and still love playing it. Good luck!
Tip for the compulsive gamer: never ever buy a game when it first comes out. It'll get cheap eventually, trust me. Minus the very odd exception (usually only limited edition boxes of games I've been waiting a long time for), I never have to pay more than $20 for a game, and sometimes as low as $10 or so! All you have to do is stay 6-12 months behind the curve of what is the latest and greatest. The additional bonus is that, at least for PC gaming, this saves you money on hardware too, because you don't have to upgrade as often. Buying games for half the price means you get twice as many to play for the same amount of money. You'll have so many games to play, you won't mind waiting the 6-12 months for the stuff that just came out.
I think I'd prefer a 60G ipod without a color screen for $100-200 less.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, I've been eagerly awaiting the release of a 60G iPod at the $499 price point for a couple years now. I'd somehow convinced myself that that would be worth it, but at $599, I just can't do it. Needless to say, I'm hugely disappointed. They really should have released a $499 normal iPod along with the iPod photo, like they did with the 40G. Why is it ok for the 40G to overlap, and not the 60G? Apple, you just lost a sale.
I'm studying in Japan this semester, and I've seen tons of phones here far more advanced than those in America. To address your concern, though I don't know about the Samsung camera in particular, alot of the phones here with 1-2 megapixel cameras have flash RAM sockets for storing/retrieving pictures. I would imagine such would be the case for this new camera as well.
And in response to the "it should be imported any time now" comment, I would have to say that's highly unlikely. The phones here that have features we in America wouldn't even dream of. Everyone here has 1-2 mpixel cameras, and some phones even have videophone capabilities; Hell, this one even has a TV/FM tuner built in! I actually held it in my hand, and watched TV on a cell phone. In-freaking-credible. But seeing those kinda phones all over the place here, and nowhere in America, I'd have to say the creation-to-import lag is quite high.
It might not be $35 for 30mbps, but considering the best you can do here in Tampa is $45/month for 3mbit through RoadRunner (and I only get 2.4mbit/384kbit) and Verizon's offering is 1.5m/384k for $35, I'm very much looking forward to a 15m/2m connection for the same price I'm paying for RR now. Here's hoping I actually get it at my house.
I watched most of the series as it aired, and watched through the whole thing again on DVD in as-aired order to finish it the way I had started. Some time later, I started watching it again with my girlfriend to introduce her to the show. This time, however, we started with the original pilot. To make a long story short, she was confused and a bit bored, not knowing who all of the random characters being introduced were, and my feeling was somewhere along the lines of "wow, I'm glad I saw this the other way first... you don't really appreciate the way everyone interacts when they're first meeting unless you're already familiar with their personalities". But, to each their own, I suppose.
Smitty, this is your philosophy professor. Showing off the words you picked up in class in a Slashdot post won't make your midterm exam grade any better. Sorry.:*(
Granted, I don't make my money selling my music, but I can't help but imagine that if I did, I'd be trying to opt out of having my songs used as bait for prosecution. Of course I'd want my fans to actually buy my CDs, but I can't imagine I'd be very comfortable knowing some 14 year old kids's life was being ruined because he wanted to hear my music and didn't want to or couldn't pay for it. If I'd have to end up having a day job because of it, then tough shit for me. At least I'd be able to sleep at night. I'm really kinda surprised at least a couple artists haven't come out against this draconian nonsense. I know a million other comments have brought up the point that you're better off shoplifting CDs than downloading them nowadays, but seriously... that's just not right. I'm totally for artists rights, but I'm sure even some of their stomachs are turning at these recent events.
After seeing stuff like Red Vs. Blue, I've wondered whether this technically violates copyrights. The models, textures, etc. were created by people other than the ones doing the posing, scripting, etc. Also (I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this one already, but I'll ask in case anyone knows for sure), can you use any game/rendering engine to do things like this with your own models/textures/sounds, or are you technically supposed to license the engine as well?
I'm really interested in these questions because I think this is a great way for people who want to tell stories but who don't have the resources to use other media to get their material out there, and I hope we see more of it in the future.
The artists really should be seeing single song sales as free bonus money. Most of the people only buying one song off of an album likely wouldn't have bought the album in the first place, thus making any money received from that person money they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
As long as there are people like me (I can't be the only one) who appreciate good albums as a complete work of art, artists like Radiohead, Tool, and Hybrid have absolutely nothing to worry about. The one thing I'd hate most would be to see the music industry go even more so into hit-single manufacturing business.
But really, it hasn't really happened yet, and prolly won't anytime real soon, but something tells me the money is gonna start spreading itself out a bit more as people use the internet and come across smaller bands who actually are artists. I know the internet has totally changed the way I listen to music and make my buying decisions. The internet is how I found lots of bigger but not huge artists I might not have found otherwise, like DJ Shadow, Plaid, and Cursive, but also bands like Plink, who can get their music out through word of mouth and a website are getting more of my money (my order's goin out tomorrow!). I forgot the guy's username that casually mentioned his band Plink in a comment here, but now he and his friends are gettin my $10, because the three _free, full-length_ songs on their website were amazing. And no, I don't know these people, they're just really that talented and I think they deserve the push.
So before I go too far off-topic, I'll end with "Support the artists who still view their music as art, not a paycheck."
Sony missed a golden opportunity? How about Microsoft? Who owns Connectix now? That's right, Microsoft. Connectix already went through the whole court battle regarding the legality of their Playstation emulator, and they won. All MS has to do at this point is:
1) Port Vitrual Game Station to the XBox 2) Profit!
Wilkes-Barre was featured in a previous Slashdot article when they decided not to renew their maintainence contract with IBM and their AS/400 with all of their tax records crashed... in light of that whole situation, unless Wilkes-Barre has done a technological 180 since then, I can't imagine what they'd do with all of this fiber.
My original intent with my previous comment was to point out the fact that, despite the otherwise insightful comments, the parent was putting vehicular manslaughter in the same "little things" category as jaywalking. Call me crazy, but I think that's a bit of a misclassification.
the vast majority of people are not murderers, rapists, or thieves; the laws that we'd be breaking everyday include little things like jaywalking, littering, minor speeding, running yellow lights, not coming to a full stop at stop signs, vehicular manslaughter, etc.
Whew! It's a good thing they don't crack down on that vehicular manslaughter either... I committed 3 of those just yesterday! Imagine if they actually prosecuted people for that! Silly pedestrians, always getting in the way...
I've got my wife happily using gnome 1.4 on RH7.3, and the differences in interface operation don't bother her.
I've thought about this some, and I actually think that as a more experienced computer user, I'm actually the one with a bigger problem switching from Windows to Linux. I think my mom would react pretty much the same way as your wife did when switching. You set her up with a few easy shortcuts, email, web browser, soitaire, and she just has 3 easy buttons to press, the same way she did before.
I, on the other hand, have to relearn just about everything I've ever known. What the hell are all these partitions for? How do I easily install and uninstall programs? Which one of these oddly named programs performs function X? I know that if I actually wanted to take the time to learn all this stuff, I could, and I'd probably be happy using Linux, but to be honest, I really don't want to spend the time. If I could, however transition over to a Linux-based system that looked and felt the same, I'd do it in a second. And by look-and-feel I don't just mean the start menu, I mean the locations of various settings, etc.
I know I can't be the only one who feels this way, and that's why I think projects like XPde are definitely worth pursuing. I looked at the screenshots and so far, I like what I see. I might even take a little time to try to get it setup and toy around with it.
Anyways, the whole point of my post was, it's alot easier for people who don't do many varied tasks on a computer to transition from clicking one of these three buttons in Windows to one of those three buttons in Linux...
A likely but unpleasant scenario just occurred to me: China makes it to the moon and starts mining whatever is there. The US or some other country decides they want a piece of the action and don't want China to gain an advantage, whether it be financial benefits of the mining, technological advances, or whatever. There's only a few good mining sites on the moon, but everyone wants them. Who gets what? Do we give every country an equal share? Shares based on population?
It really bothers me to know that this is a highly likely scenario, and it would probably be the source of a whole lot of trouble. The people of this earth need to start learning how to work together... but knowing that's unlikely to happen before this moon mining project is, the question remains. Who owns the moon?
Because Windows XP is, as my boss calls it, the Fisher-Price OS. Alot of people think it's gaudy or just plain ugly. I agree that it's not so much the change itself that made people want to switch back, but that it's just not nice to look at. Personally, I like the old start menu better as well... simple, quick, and to the point. Not a big mess of stuff that imo, should be consolidated and nested. While I appreciate that Microsoft tried to make WinXP more friendly and pleasing to the average user, I think they really dropped the ball on WinXP.
(Side note: does anyone else, like me, hate the stupid rounded edges of the windows? If you have a window that's taking up the whole screen, but isn't maximized, you throw your mouse cursor up in the corner to close the window, and you close the maximized program behind it. Grr!)
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Only for now, and only if you're one of the people that hasn't cut cable TV service from their budgets. The average American watches 153 hours of TV every month. Netflix HD streams eat up approximately 2GB every hour (source: Netflix themselves and verified by watching my own router traffic while watching HD Netflix streams).
Some simple arithmetic leads us to 153 hours * 2GB/hr = 306GB per month for an average American who gets their TV fix from Netflix streaming or another comparable service. And this is assuming that there's either only one person in the household, or at least that every person in the household is watching the same thing all of the time. Have a roommate who has completely different taste in television? Boom, 612GB/month. Household or family of four? Of six? Happen to lie on the upper half of the Bell curve? You're screwed. Nevermind the traffic used by, you know, actual internet usage.
I'm sure there will be some replies saying "People should go outside or read a book", but the fact remains that they don't. Still think 150GB or even 250GB a month is all that generous?
Probably similar to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_Mania
You're right, the frustration level is pretty high. It's very difficult, and while I'm glad I own it, I doubt the more casual rhythm game players would be interested. Even Guitar Hero took the idea of Guitar Freaks and simplified it, making it considerably easier and more fun to play, IMO. I could see them maybe coming out with Keyboard Hero as one of the last of the line of games, but there are plenty of other instruments that would be more fun to play first.
As evidenced by three words: Dance Dance Revolution
That's only because David Lynch has an "artist" stick up his ass and doesn't want anyone viewing the movie in pieces or not all at once. It's the same reason there's no audio commentary on the disc either.
Honest question, because I really don't know. Do modern wear leveling techniques move unchanged data around to even up the number of write cycles? I'd say around around 80-90% of my disk usually stays full and unchanged, while the last 10-20% of my disk gets hammered with constantly changing data. Spreading out the write load to only 10% of the disk wouldn't help users like me much.
One thing your interpretation of the analogy fails to take into account is the willingness of people to pay for a nice box of DVDs (bottles?) or pay for cable so they don't have to download it, burn it, etc. (Not having to find someone who has Diet Coke to replicate?) All they have to do is turn on the TV, and bam, it's there, especially with things like Tivo (which isn't illegal, not yet anyway.)
Without going and getting out my copy of Dethkarz, I'd have to say I don't think it's Glide only. I know I was playing it last year on my GF4 Ti4200, and I didn't do anything special to get it working. I'd check it out, because like you, I think it's an awesome game and still love playing it. Good luck!
Tip for the compulsive gamer: never ever buy a game when it first comes out. It'll get cheap eventually, trust me. Minus the very odd exception (usually only limited edition boxes of games I've been waiting a long time for), I never have to pay more than $20 for a game, and sometimes as low as $10 or so! All you have to do is stay 6-12 months behind the curve of what is the latest and greatest. The additional bonus is that, at least for PC gaming, this saves you money on hardware too, because you don't have to upgrade as often. Buying games for half the price means you get twice as many to play for the same amount of money. You'll have so many games to play, you won't mind waiting the 6-12 months for the stuff that just came out.
I think I'd prefer a 60G ipod without a color screen for $100-200 less.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, I've been eagerly awaiting the release of a 60G iPod at the $499 price point for a couple years now. I'd somehow convinced myself that that would be worth it, but at $599, I just can't do it. Needless to say, I'm hugely disappointed. They really should have released a $499 normal iPod along with the iPod photo, like they did with the 40G. Why is it ok for the 40G to overlap, and not the 60G? Apple, you just lost a sale.
I'm studying in Japan this semester, and I've seen tons of phones here far more advanced than those in America. To address your concern, though I don't know about the Samsung camera in particular, alot of the phones here with 1-2 megapixel cameras have flash RAM sockets for storing/retrieving pictures. I would imagine such would be the case for this new camera as well.
And in response to the "it should be imported any time now" comment, I would have to say that's highly unlikely. The phones here that have features we in America wouldn't even dream of. Everyone here has 1-2 mpixel cameras, and some phones even have videophone capabilities; Hell, this one even has a TV/FM tuner built in! I actually held it in my hand, and watched TV on a cell phone. In-freaking-credible. But seeing those kinda phones all over the place here, and nowhere in America, I'd have to say the creation-to-import lag is quite high.
It might not be $35 for 30mbps, but considering the best you can do here in Tampa is $45/month for 3mbit through RoadRunner (and I only get 2.4mbit/384kbit) and Verizon's offering is 1.5m/384k for $35, I'm very much looking forward to a 15m/2m connection for the same price I'm paying for RR now. Here's hoping I actually get it at my house.
I watched most of the series as it aired, and watched through the whole thing again on DVD in as-aired order to finish it the way I had started. Some time later, I started watching it again with my girlfriend to introduce her to the show. This time, however, we started with the original pilot. To make a long story short, she was confused and a bit bored, not knowing who all of the random characters being introduced were, and my feeling was somewhere along the lines of "wow, I'm glad I saw this the other way first... you don't really appreciate the way everyone interacts when they're first meeting unless you're already familiar with their personalities". But, to each their own, I suppose.
I think I need to call my mother.
Smitty, this is your philosophy professor. Showing off the words you picked up in class in a Slashdot post won't make your midterm exam grade any better. Sorry. :*(
Sincerely,
The Prof
Granted, I don't make my money selling my music, but I can't help but imagine that if I did, I'd be trying to opt out of having my songs used as bait for prosecution. Of course I'd want my fans to actually buy my CDs, but I can't imagine I'd be very comfortable knowing some 14 year old kids's life was being ruined because he wanted to hear my music and didn't want to or couldn't pay for it. If I'd have to end up having a day job because of it, then tough shit for me. At least I'd be able to sleep at night. I'm really kinda surprised at least a couple artists haven't come out against this draconian nonsense. I know a million other comments have brought up the point that you're better off shoplifting CDs than downloading them nowadays, but seriously... that's just not right. I'm totally for artists rights, but I'm sure even some of their stomachs are turning at these recent events.
After seeing stuff like Red Vs. Blue, I've wondered whether this technically violates copyrights. The models, textures, etc. were created by people other than the ones doing the posing, scripting, etc. Also (I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this one already, but I'll ask in case anyone knows for sure), can you use any game/rendering engine to do things like this with your own models/textures/sounds, or are you technically supposed to license the engine as well?
I'm really interested in these questions because I think this is a great way for people who want to tell stories but who don't have the resources to use other media to get their material out there, and I hope we see more of it in the future.
The artists really should be seeing single song sales as free bonus money. Most of the people only buying one song off of an album likely wouldn't have bought the album in the first place, thus making any money received from that person money they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
As long as there are people like me (I can't be the only one) who appreciate good albums as a complete work of art, artists like Radiohead, Tool, and Hybrid have absolutely nothing to worry about. The one thing I'd hate most would be to see the music industry go even more so into hit-single manufacturing business.
But really, it hasn't really happened yet, and prolly won't anytime real soon, but something tells me the money is gonna start spreading itself out a bit more as people use the internet and come across smaller bands who actually are artists. I know the internet has totally changed the way I listen to music and make my buying decisions. The internet is how I found lots of bigger but not huge artists I might not have found otherwise, like DJ Shadow, Plaid, and Cursive, but also bands like Plink, who can get their music out through word of mouth and a website are getting more of my money (my order's goin out tomorrow!). I forgot the guy's username that casually mentioned his band Plink in a comment here, but now he and his friends are gettin my $10, because the three _free, full-length_ songs on their website were amazing. And no, I don't know these people, they're just really that talented and I think they deserve the push.
So before I go too far off-topic, I'll end with "Support the artists who still view their music as art, not a paycheck."
I know! They even give you a nice case with cover art and everything! How cool is that?
Sony missed a golden opportunity? How about Microsoft? Who owns Connectix now? That's right, Microsoft. Connectix already went through the whole court battle regarding the legality of their Playstation emulator, and they won. All MS has to do at this point is:
1) Port Vitrual Game Station to the XBox
2) Profit!
Seriously.
Wilkes-Barre was featured in a previous Slashdot article when they decided not to renew their maintainence contract with IBM and their AS/400 with all of their tax records crashed... in light of that whole situation, unless Wilkes-Barre has done a technological 180 since then, I can't imagine what they'd do with all of this fiber.
My original intent with my previous comment was to point out the fact that, despite the otherwise insightful comments, the parent was putting vehicular manslaughter in the same "little things" category as jaywalking. Call me crazy, but I think that's a bit of a misclassification.
the vast majority of people are not murderers, rapists, or thieves; the laws that we'd be breaking everyday include little things like jaywalking, littering, minor speeding, running yellow lights, not coming to a full stop at stop signs, vehicular manslaughter, etc.
Whew! It's a good thing they don't crack down on that vehicular manslaughter either... I committed 3 of those just yesterday! Imagine if they actually prosecuted people for that! Silly pedestrians, always getting in the way...
I've got my wife happily using gnome 1.4 on RH7.3, and the differences in interface operation don't bother her.
I've thought about this some, and I actually think that as a more experienced computer user, I'm actually the one with a bigger problem switching from Windows to Linux. I think my mom would react pretty much the same way as your wife did when switching. You set her up with a few easy shortcuts, email, web browser, soitaire, and she just has 3 easy buttons to press, the same way she did before.
I, on the other hand, have to relearn just about everything I've ever known. What the hell are all these partitions for? How do I easily install and uninstall programs? Which one of these oddly named programs performs function X? I know that if I actually wanted to take the time to learn all this stuff, I could, and I'd probably be happy using Linux, but to be honest, I really don't want to spend the time. If I could, however transition over to a Linux-based system that looked and felt the same, I'd do it in a second. And by look-and-feel I don't just mean the start menu, I mean the locations of various settings, etc.
I know I can't be the only one who feels this way, and that's why I think projects like XPde are definitely worth pursuing. I looked at the screenshots and so far, I like what I see. I might even take a little time to try to get it setup and toy around with it.
Anyways, the whole point of my post was, it's alot easier for people who don't do many varied tasks on a computer to transition from clicking one of these three buttons in Windows to one of those three buttons in Linux...
A likely but unpleasant scenario just occurred to me: China makes it to the moon and starts mining whatever is there. The US or some other country decides they want a piece of the action and don't want China to gain an advantage, whether it be financial benefits of the mining, technological advances, or whatever. There's only a few good mining sites on the moon, but everyone wants them. Who gets what? Do we give every country an equal share? Shares based on population?
It really bothers me to know that this is a highly likely scenario, and it would probably be the source of a whole lot of trouble. The people of this earth need to start learning how to work together... but knowing that's unlikely to happen before this moon mining project is, the question remains. Who owns the moon?
Because Windows XP is, as my boss calls it, the Fisher-Price OS. Alot of people think it's gaudy or just plain ugly. I agree that it's not so much the change itself that made people want to switch back, but that it's just not nice to look at. Personally, I like the old start menu better as well... simple, quick, and to the point. Not a big mess of stuff that imo, should be consolidated and nested. While I appreciate that Microsoft tried to make WinXP more friendly and pleasing to the average user, I think they really dropped the ball on WinXP.
(Side note: does anyone else, like me, hate the stupid rounded edges of the windows? If you have a window that's taking up the whole screen, but isn't maximized, you throw your mouse cursor up in the corner to close the window, and you close the maximized program behind it. Grr!)