Actually, no... Only the foreign media would make this misunderstanding. The blog is quite obviously humoristic, no one here in Brasil would believe them.
Right! For example, American journalists would never mistake a story in the Onion for a real story, right?
Why is it that published works (music, film, books) are the only things that mankind produces that we perceive as being deserving of a lifetime of income? Most of the time it's not even the artists who hit the jackpot, but their publishers.
Copyright is supposed to be a deal made by the government to protect your exclusive rights to your work for a limited time, in exchange for this work going into the public domain at the end of this protected period. Instead, it's used to try to milk money from a tiny percentage of works for nearly a century, usually by large corporations, while the vast majority of works fall into obscurity and may never survive long enough to even enter into the public domain.
What is the benefit to the people when the vast majority of works are held hostage, and the tiny portion that are profitable will be squeezed until they are barely relevant by the time they enter the public domain. It's a shit trade, if you aren't a copyright holder.
"Geek" is used because it's a pejorative word. It means it causes revulsion in normal people, just like the guy that bites the heads off chickens. Ie, glasses are taped up, elbows hit other people when dancing, eats boogers, etc. A "nerd" is someone who's obsessed with one subject, like an anime nerd, a star trek nerd, a math nerd, etc (obsessed with more than is normal or more than is necessary for a job).
For the most part, "Nerd" and "Geek" are used as close to synonyms. In fact, I've seen the difference explained nearly exactly as you just did, but reversed the words associated with each group. Most, though perhaps not all, prefer "Geek" to "Nerd" when referring to themselves, and find the other more offensive, even though those who don't self-identify seem less likely not to care about any imagined distinction.
To think "Geek" is less desirable because of the origins is rather silly, since I'd wager that the vast majority of people who use the word are not even aware of the origin. Word meanings change. My experience has been that the word "geek" has lost a lot of it's baggage, and has even gained a certain air of respect from a growing subculture that self identifies as geeks, or at the very least will admit to an interest in certain things that they will describe as being geeky. Once in a while, you may even hear phrases like, "geek chic" being thrown around.
Words change. Sometimes so much that words that were originally merely literally descriptive become derogatory, or words that were derogatory can even become complimentary (or reverse).
An example that I like is the word "Nimrod." It was traditionally used as a non-derogatory term applied to hunters. However, due to the changes in usage (believed by some to be inspired by the ironic usage by Bugs Bunny), it turned into an insulting term.
There are a small number of offensive slurs that are can legitimately be considered to be in the ball park of the infamous "N-Word".
There are a larger number of terms and slurs that I hear people *claim* are analagous to the infamous slur, even though I personally think they are overreacting. I usually let those slide, even if I think it's quite a stretch.
However, finding "geek" to be that offensive is just unfathomable. I see that said, "to me", to show that this may be merely your personal opinions. In a similar vein, anyone claiming that a word like "geek" is analogous to the N-Bomb seems like an over-sensitive prat, "to me".
Do you think that they were really trying to convey that this had anything to do with actual "IQ", rather than the relatively common pop culture usage of IQ?
One might think that you are just being a pedantic stick in the mud. To be clear, I am referring to the idiomatic expression; I am not trying to imply you are literally made out of wood and covered in soil saturated with water.
On an extremely superficial level, it is like Simon... and that would be that they are both games that have several large brightly colored plastic buttons on an electronic device, where these buttons also happen to result in a tone. However, where are the rest of the similarities?
However, if you insist on using superficial analogies in order to fool yourself into thinking you are insightful and/or belittling a game type that doesn't happen to be your taste, let me offer a few alternative analogies so you don't have to rely on the surprisingly cliche (for being so inaccurate) comparison of Simon.
* Rock Band is nothing but a reinvented Space Invaders. Instead of the aliens scrolling horizontally and you have to shoot them before they land, they scroll vertically and you have to "shoot" them right as they land! It's basically just a vertical shooter with 5 cannons, right?
* Rock Band is just a reinvented fighting game, without fighting characters! The defining characteristics to fighting games are simply responding having to hit buttons at the right timing, and pulling off combos effectively, right?
* Rock Band is just a reinvented Tetris! All the player is doing is responding to various falling colored blocks, right?
Why just stick to Rock Band style games?
* StarCraft is nothing but a reinvented game of Risk! * World of WarCraft is nothing but reinventing NetHack!
Being cynical and dismissive on the internet is fun!
It's a good thing that they are just tapping in to get free electricity... rather than tapping into networks to get free music downloads, otherwise the U.S. Military could be liable for trillions of dollars.
'An example of decisions being made that will cause customers to get a crappy deal with DLC is with recent release of Rock Band 3.
Now that they've added a new instrument (keyboards) and support 2 and 3 part harmony on vocals to songs, some previously released DLC songs are slowly being remade and released with the new track data. Those who buy the track for the first time will pay $1.99 (which I think is also overpriced for reasons I won't get into here).
Now, if you have already bought the original track for $1.99 before keyboards were added, even if you just purchased it a few weeks ago before knowing it would be replaced with a better version, you are out of luck. If you want full instrumentation an additional $1.99.
It's almost like having an early adopter tax where in the long run they get to pay twice as much for their DLC.
Supposedly it has to do with license restrictions on the music, but at the same time it really shafts the customers who purchased many tracks already and have to repurchase the exact same songs in order to get full benefit. I think many would find it easier to swallow if even a discounted purchase of the updated track was available.
When was the last "Extremist White Christian" bombing you can think of off the top of your head.
I believe that the last "bombing" that resulted in a fatality was in 1998, by Eric Robert Rudolph. Of course, it was nowhere near the scale of destruction as the WTC towers, however that wasn't simply a bomb either.
The point is that there are extremist whack-jobs (as well as moderates) in just about any religious or political groups.
If you think that Muslims are the only people that have dangerous nutcases, then you are naive. Furthermore, If you think violent Muslim extremists are the norm, rather than the corner cases, then that would make you a bigot.
You must watch "The View" and think "Insightful!"
And should I suggest that you must watch FOX News and think, "Fair and Balanced!"?
You are muddying the issue here with the Juan Williams story. The fact that Williams was fired doesn't in itself prove anything about whether their programming or reporting has left bias.
I'm not saying that I support the decision to fire him. I think it was kind of boneheaded, but at the same time I can at some level understand how NPR does not want to seem like they are tolerant of anti-Muslim bias.
However, your equating being afraid of Muslims as natural as being afraid of sharks in itself sounds like a highly biased statements. Do you not see a problem with making an analogy comparing fear of sharks (which are by their very nature are predators) and Muslims?
Maybe a more apt question would be that since there have been shark attacks, is it normal for us to be afraid of all fish?
Muslims have bombed people. So have extremists white Christians. So have many other racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Maybe we should just all be afraid of humans?
Please, tell me, where is the anti-FOX "propaganda"?
Nobody has to create propaganda to make FOX look bad. They can be completely honest and show what they have to say, and FOX frequently appears to then satirize themselves.
And yes, I've seen far more FOX than I have ever wanted.
I've also even seen guests or commentators on FOX presenting a reasonable opinion that I found myself actually agreeing with. I even once found myself agreeing with Glenn Beck on an issue. Usually it's followed up with the rest of the panel ganging up against that person's idea...
But don't get me wrong, I don't dislike FOX because they are conservative. I dislike them because of the lies, exaggerations, fear mongering, inaccurate spins, propaganda, and sensationalism.
I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.
Are you suggesting that NPR promotes the left as FOX promotes the right?
Have you actually listened to NPR, or are you just assuming that the FOX propaganda regarding NPR is true?
It did have many dark and mature themes. There were many interesting ideas embedded in the story as well. They also had quite a few really well done scenes.
However, I think they lacked good pacing. The story seemed to plod along clumsily. It was almost like watching a television show directed by Stanley Kubrick (whom I love, but who clearly draws certain scenes on way too long).
One part of the story that I found truly absurd and overly drawn out was when Stoltz's character was repeatedly attempting to torment his dead daughter that he believed might be inside the Cylon. It was completely warped, sadistic, hard to believe, and overly drawn out. The multiple experiments to convince himself just seemed to make it feel drawn out, while making him look like a sadistic prick.
Back in the Verant days, yes, MMOs were dicks to their players and that was ok (well ok in that people would put up with it). You canceled your account, they deleted your character and other silly punitive measures like that. However WoW showed everyone that isn't how you do things. You be nice to players. Cancel your account in a rage? No problem you can keep playing for all your paid time. You wanna come back later, even years later? No problem, all your characters are just as you left them, database space is cheap. Get really mad and delete your characters? No problem, they can be recovered from backup. Someone steal your account and sell all your hard earned shit? No problem, they can trace that and recover to an earlier state.
That is how things should be done and, no surprise, what gamers want now. Once Blizzard started doing that, other companies learned. SOE went and screamed at EQ's developers and producers and they went and recovered all the deleted characters and sent out a "Please come back and play we've restored your shit," e-mail and EQ and EQ2 now operate similar to WoW.
EQ did a lot of dumb things. Looking back, I often wonder why I bothered playing through such painful design decisions. The only reason I can come up with is I liked the idea of an MMRPG so much that I played despite the design, not because of it (not to mention that every following MMRPG tried to copy EQ's minor success by making the same boneheaded design decisions as EQ did, all the way up until WoW came on the scene and shook things up). When I speak of the game, it's the same way that I might speak of an ex-girlfriend who cheated on me, stole my money, and humiliated me in front of my family.
However, what you write about EQ's policies, as far as my bitter memories and experiences go, is a completely bogus and revisionist history.
EQ would not *guarantee* canceled accounts would remain after 3 months, however I've never once heard of them actually deleting accounts. I've known several people, myself included, who canceled anywhere between months and years and then came back with all their stuff intact.
As far as account restores go, the first maybe 2 or 3 years they did not do full restores on characters who had lost all of their stuff (usually due to dying in a weird place and not being able to get to your corpse... one of many dumb mechanics in the first few years). However, even back in those early days, they would often give you a starter kit that had gear to help get you back going again. This kit varied over time and sometimes sucked (but was far better than nothing) and sometimes was ok. However, further down the road, they did implement being able to further restore complete characters (as I had to have one done once).
And tying both of these together, they've even had players who *deleted* their characters, then canceled their accounts, then came back months later, and were successfully able to have their characters restored from the player's own deletion. However, I do have a vague recollection that they once announced that they were going to create a limit on how long they would store *deleted* characters before they would be permanently lost, but that's a far cry from what the above poster has stated.
This all happened before WoW came on the scenes, since I never touched EQ after WoW came out.
EQ was bad... but it wasn't because of the false reasons you gave.
Going over on data, or using data without a plan is obscenely overpriced. I recall calculating how much it would cost to download a Gigabyte of data without a plan with one carrier, and it was $5,000 for 1 GB!!!
I accidentally hit the online store button on my phone (which is just a minimal phone that is JUST for calls and rare texts, with no data plan... a "dumb phone", if you will.) The button click cost $0.10. It wasn't much for me, but I wondered how much money they generate by people hitting the wrong buttons and paying dimes here and there.
At the rates they charge, if I had bought an app, I am pretty sure that I'd have to pay more for the download's bandwidth than the download itself. Now there's a nice shtick! Charge them for browsing your store, then charge them for the merchandise, then charge them for downloading it! Many apps like to make online connections to, so then you can charge them for using it too! Maybe you they can 1-up themselves and require going online to delete your app as well.
I think the planned data charges are outrageous... but overages and non-planned data and text are in the realm of absurdity.
I'll see your anecdotal evidence of Sony's reliability, and raise you my anecdotal evidence!
I no longer have any working Sony hardware. Every Sony product I have owned has died on me (long enough to last through warranties, but not by a lot...)
I also used to work in retail management for a video game store chain that dealt quite a bit with used games and systems during the last generation of consoles. I'd estimate that of the number of systems that people who brought in their used systems to trade in, I'd have to estimate that about 90% to 95% of PS2s that were brought in to trade were victims of the infamous disc read error on 1 or more of the supported disc types (black, blue, or silver). In contrast, I'd say only 10% of the used XBoxes traded in had obvious problems , and 1 single GameCube was bad (but was used in a car, had mud in the vents and a broken dome).
In regards to the previously mentioned "No Disc Error", Sony denied there was any defect, and blamed it on the users up until they settled the Class Action Lawsuit. I should also mention that I never saw a single refurbished PS2 from Sony that was not later returned as defective. I always advised customers to buy our used systems (because we checked them out first) or a new system, but never a refurbished. Additionally, PS2 also had defective Sony memory cards, and a recall on their power adapters. I read an article once that claimed that the designer of Resident Evil once attributed part of the PS2's strong sales with people who had to buy replacements. Honestly, I'd believe that claim considering my personal experience of talking to dozens of people who had to buy a 2nd or 3rd PS2 because their previous ones died. I even had 3 people claim they were on their 5th or 6th PS2 system.
That's just the PS2, to counter the PS1 reliability claim. That's not even going into the defect complaints regarding the PSP launch, or some rumored defect rates in the PS3 line...
However, I didn't see many bad original Playstation (1) systems that were bad...
Google can skirt around their "Don't Be Evil" motto, by taking on an evil partner like Sony that can do the dirty work while letting Google keep their hands clean!;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no... Only the foreign media would make this misunderstanding. The blog is quite obviously humoristic, no one here in Brasil would believe them.
Right! For example, American journalists would never mistake a story in the Onion for a real story, right?
Why is it that published works (music, film, books) are the only things that mankind produces that we perceive as being deserving of a lifetime of income? Most of the time it's not even the artists who hit the jackpot, but their publishers.
Copyright is supposed to be a deal made by the government to protect your exclusive rights to your work for a limited time, in exchange for this work going into the public domain at the end of this protected period. Instead, it's used to try to milk money from a tiny percentage of works for nearly a century, usually by large corporations, while the vast majority of works fall into obscurity and may never survive long enough to even enter into the public domain.
What is the benefit to the people when the vast majority of works are held hostage, and the tiny portion that are profitable will be squeezed until they are barely relevant by the time they enter the public domain. It's a shit trade, if you aren't a copyright holder.
"Geek" is used because it's a pejorative word. It means it causes revulsion in normal people, just like the guy that bites the heads off chickens. Ie, glasses are taped up, elbows hit other people when dancing, eats boogers, etc. A "nerd" is someone who's obsessed with one subject, like an anime nerd, a star trek nerd, a math nerd, etc (obsessed with more than is normal or more than is necessary for a job).
For the most part, "Nerd" and "Geek" are used as close to synonyms. In fact, I've seen the difference explained nearly exactly as you just did, but reversed the words associated with each group. Most, though perhaps not all, prefer "Geek" to "Nerd" when referring to themselves, and find the other more offensive, even though those who don't self-identify seem less likely not to care about any imagined distinction.
To think "Geek" is less desirable because of the origins is rather silly, since I'd wager that the vast majority of people who use the word are not even aware of the origin. Word meanings change. My experience has been that the word "geek" has lost a lot of it's baggage, and has even gained a certain air of respect from a growing subculture that self identifies as geeks, or at the very least will admit to an interest in certain things that they will describe as being geeky. Once in a while, you may even hear phrases like, "geek chic" being thrown around.
Words change. Sometimes so much that words that were originally merely literally descriptive become derogatory, or words that were derogatory can even become complimentary (or reverse).
An example that I like is the word "Nimrod." It was traditionally used as a non-derogatory term applied to hunters. However, due to the changes in usage (believed by some to be inspired by the ironic usage by Bugs Bunny), it turned into an insulting term.
About your title...
G**k - Like N****r to me"
Really? You think those terms are comparable?
There are a small number of offensive slurs that are can legitimately be considered to be in the ball park of the infamous "N-Word".
There are a larger number of terms and slurs that I hear people *claim* are analagous to the infamous slur, even though I personally think they are overreacting. I usually let those slide, even if I think it's quite a stretch.
However, finding "geek" to be that offensive is just unfathomable. I see that said, "to me", to show that this may be merely your personal opinions. In a similar vein, anyone claiming that a word like "geek" is analogous to the N-Bomb seems like an over-sensitive prat, "to me".
So, what's your point?
Do you think that they were really trying to convey that this had anything to do with actual "IQ", rather than the relatively common pop culture usage of IQ?
One might think that you are just being a pedantic stick in the mud. To be clear, I am referring to the idiomatic expression; I am not trying to imply you are literally made out of wood and covered in soil saturated with water.
Oh a Simon analogy! That's fresh and original!...
On an extremely superficial level, it is like Simon... and that would be that they are both games that have several large brightly colored plastic buttons on an electronic device, where these buttons also happen to result in a tone. However, where are the rest of the similarities?
However, if you insist on using superficial analogies in order to fool yourself into thinking you are insightful and/or belittling a game type that doesn't happen to be your taste, let me offer a few alternative analogies so you don't have to rely on the surprisingly cliche (for being so inaccurate) comparison of Simon.
* Rock Band is nothing but a reinvented Space Invaders. Instead of the aliens scrolling horizontally and you have to shoot them before they land, they scroll vertically and you have to "shoot" them right as they land! It's basically just a vertical shooter with 5 cannons, right?
* Rock Band is just a reinvented fighting game, without fighting characters! The defining characteristics to fighting games are simply responding having to hit buttons at the right timing, and pulling off combos effectively, right?
* Rock Band is just a reinvented Tetris! All the player is doing is responding to various falling colored blocks, right?
Why just stick to Rock Band style games?
* StarCraft is nothing but a reinvented game of Risk!
* World of WarCraft is nothing but reinventing NetHack!
Being cynical and dismissive on the internet is fun!
It's a good thing that they are just tapping in to get free electricity... rather than tapping into networks to get free music downloads, otherwise the U.S. Military could be liable for trillions of dollars.
Mojo Nixon is charged with inciting violence against Don Henley.
'An example of decisions being made that will cause customers to get a crappy deal with DLC is with recent release of Rock Band 3.
Now that they've added a new instrument (keyboards) and support 2 and 3 part harmony on vocals to songs, some previously released DLC songs are slowly being remade and released with the new track data. Those who buy the track for the first time will pay $1.99 (which I think is also overpriced for reasons I won't get into here).
Now, if you have already bought the original track for $1.99 before keyboards were added, even if you just purchased it a few weeks ago before knowing it would be replaced with a better version, you are out of luck. If you want full instrumentation an additional $1.99.
It's almost like having an early adopter tax where in the long run they get to pay twice as much for their DLC.
Supposedly it has to do with license restrictions on the music, but at the same time it really shafts the customers who purchased many tracks already and have to repurchase the exact same songs in order to get full benefit. I think many would find it easier to swallow if even a discounted purchase of the updated track was available.
Let the blink tags and "Under Construction" GIF files stay buried!
wouldn't that it make it "Hulu Plus Or Minus"?
I'd say that would be more or less correct.
You may think you are joking, but this issue was seriously brought up in in the U.K. There was a BBC article about it maybe about a year ago.
I should point out... I meant the last bombing "in the US"...
When was the last "Extremist White Christian" bombing you can think of off the top of your head.
I believe that the last "bombing" that resulted in a fatality was in 1998, by Eric Robert Rudolph. Of course, it was nowhere near the scale of destruction as the WTC towers, however that wasn't simply a bomb either.
The point is that there are extremist whack-jobs (as well as moderates) in just about any religious or political groups.
If you think that Muslims are the only people that have dangerous nutcases, then you are naive. Furthermore, If you think violent Muslim extremists are the norm, rather than the corner cases, then that would make you a bigot.
You must watch "The View" and think "Insightful!"
And should I suggest that you must watch FOX News and think, "Fair and Balanced!"?
You are muddying the issue here with the Juan Williams story. The fact that Williams was fired doesn't in itself prove anything about whether their programming or reporting has left bias.
I'm not saying that I support the decision to fire him. I think it was kind of boneheaded, but at the same time I can at some level understand how NPR does not want to seem like they are tolerant of anti-Muslim bias.
However, your equating being afraid of Muslims as natural as being afraid of sharks in itself sounds like a highly biased statements. Do you not see a problem with making an analogy comparing fear of sharks (which are by their very nature are predators) and Muslims?
Maybe a more apt question would be that since there have been shark attacks, is it normal for us to be afraid of all fish?
Muslims have bombed people. So have extremists white Christians. So have many other racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Maybe we should just all be afraid of humans?
Please, tell me, where is the anti-FOX "propaganda"?
Nobody has to create propaganda to make FOX look bad. They can be completely honest and show what they have to say, and FOX frequently appears to then satirize themselves.
And yes, I've seen far more FOX than I have ever wanted.
I've also even seen guests or commentators on FOX presenting a reasonable opinion that I found myself actually agreeing with. I even once found myself agreeing with Glenn Beck on an issue. Usually it's followed up with the rest of the panel ganging up against that person's idea...
But don't get me wrong, I don't dislike FOX because they are conservative. I dislike them because of the lies, exaggerations, fear mongering, inaccurate spins, propaganda, and sensationalism.
I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.
Are you suggesting that NPR promotes the left as FOX promotes the right?
Have you actually listened to NPR, or are you just assuming that the FOX propaganda regarding NPR is true?
I'm not even sure we even use Imperial units anymore...
From reading the news, I believe our units are:
- Hairs
- Stories
- Football Fields
- Libraries of Congress
The Republicans will never let this fly!
It did have many dark and mature themes. There were many interesting ideas embedded in the story as well. They also had quite a few really well done scenes.
However, I think they lacked good pacing. The story seemed to plod along clumsily. It was almost like watching a television show directed by Stanley Kubrick (whom I love, but who clearly draws certain scenes on way too long).
One part of the story that I found truly absurd and overly drawn out was when Stoltz's character was repeatedly attempting to torment his dead daughter that he believed might be inside the Cylon. It was completely warped, sadistic, hard to believe, and overly drawn out. The multiple experiments to convince himself just seemed to make it feel drawn out, while making him look like a sadistic prick.
Back in the Verant days, yes, MMOs were dicks to their players and that was ok (well ok in that people would put up with it). You canceled your account, they deleted your character and other silly punitive measures like that. However WoW showed everyone that isn't how you do things. You be nice to players. Cancel your account in a rage? No problem you can keep playing for all your paid time. You wanna come back later, even years later? No problem, all your characters are just as you left them, database space is cheap. Get really mad and delete your characters? No problem, they can be recovered from backup. Someone steal your account and sell all your hard earned shit? No problem, they can trace that and recover to an earlier state.
That is how things should be done and, no surprise, what gamers want now. Once Blizzard started doing that, other companies learned. SOE went and screamed at EQ's developers and producers and they went and recovered all the deleted characters and sent out a "Please come back and play we've restored your shit," e-mail and EQ and EQ2 now operate similar to WoW.
EQ did a lot of dumb things. Looking back, I often wonder why I bothered playing through such painful design decisions. The only reason I can come up with is I liked the idea of an MMRPG so much that I played despite the design, not because of it (not to mention that every following MMRPG tried to copy EQ's minor success by making the same boneheaded design decisions as EQ did, all the way up until WoW came on the scene and shook things up). When I speak of the game, it's the same way that I might speak of an ex-girlfriend who cheated on me, stole my money, and humiliated me in front of my family.
However, what you write about EQ's policies, as far as my bitter memories and experiences go, is a completely bogus and revisionist history.
EQ would not *guarantee* canceled accounts would remain after 3 months, however I've never once heard of them actually deleting accounts. I've known several people, myself included, who canceled anywhere between months and years and then came back with all their stuff intact.
As far as account restores go, the first maybe 2 or 3 years they did not do full restores on characters who had lost all of their stuff (usually due to dying in a weird place and not being able to get to your corpse... one of many dumb mechanics in the first few years). However, even back in those early days, they would often give you a starter kit that had gear to help get you back going again. This kit varied over time and sometimes sucked (but was far better than nothing) and sometimes was ok. However, further down the road, they did implement being able to further restore complete characters (as I had to have one done once).
And tying both of these together, they've even had players who *deleted* their characters, then canceled their accounts, then came back months later, and were successfully able to have their characters restored from the player's own deletion. However, I do have a vague recollection that they once announced that they were going to create a limit on how long they would store *deleted* characters before they would be permanently lost, but that's a far cry from what the above poster has stated.
This all happened before WoW came on the scenes, since I never touched EQ after WoW came out.
EQ was bad... but it wasn't because of the false reasons you gave.
Going over on data, or using data without a plan is obscenely overpriced. I recall calculating how much it would cost to download a Gigabyte of data without a plan with one carrier, and it was $5,000 for 1 GB!!!
I accidentally hit the online store button on my phone (which is just a minimal phone that is JUST for calls and rare texts, with no data plan... a "dumb phone", if you will.) The button click cost $0.10. It wasn't much for me, but I wondered how much money they generate by people hitting the wrong buttons and paying dimes here and there.
At the rates they charge, if I had bought an app, I am pretty sure that I'd have to pay more for the download's bandwidth than the download itself. Now there's a nice shtick! Charge them for browsing your store, then charge them for the merchandise, then charge them for downloading it! Many apps like to make online connections to, so then you can charge them for using it too! Maybe you they can 1-up themselves and require going online to delete your app as well.
I think the planned data charges are outrageous... but overages and non-planned data and text are in the realm of absurdity.
Indeed... When I saw the headline, I instantly thought, "says the current most famous proponent of the Man in the Sky theory."
Or maybe what this really is about is that the Pope is a Civilization player, and he finds the tech tree confusing and unrealistic.
I'll see your anecdotal evidence of Sony's reliability, and raise you my anecdotal evidence!
I no longer have any working Sony hardware. Every Sony product I have owned has died on me (long enough to last through warranties, but not by a lot...)
I also used to work in retail management for a video game store chain that dealt quite a bit with used games and systems during the last generation of consoles. I'd estimate that of the number of systems that people who brought in their used systems to trade in, I'd have to estimate that about 90% to 95% of PS2s that were brought in to trade were victims of the infamous disc read error on 1 or more of the supported disc types (black, blue, or silver). In contrast, I'd say only 10% of the used XBoxes traded in had obvious problems , and 1 single GameCube was bad (but was used in a car, had mud in the vents and a broken dome).
In regards to the previously mentioned "No Disc Error", Sony denied there was any defect, and blamed it on the users up until they settled the Class Action Lawsuit. I should also mention that I never saw a single refurbished PS2 from Sony that was not later returned as defective. I always advised customers to buy our used systems (because we checked them out first) or a new system, but never a refurbished. Additionally, PS2 also had defective Sony memory cards, and a recall on their power adapters. I read an article once that claimed that the designer of Resident Evil once attributed part of the PS2's strong sales with people who had to buy replacements. Honestly, I'd believe that claim considering my personal experience of talking to dozens of people who had to buy a 2nd or 3rd PS2 because their previous ones died. I even had 3 people claim they were on their 5th or 6th PS2 system.
That's just the PS2, to counter the PS1 reliability claim. That's not even going into the defect complaints regarding the PSP launch, or some rumored defect rates in the PS3 line...
However, I didn't see many bad original Playstation (1) systems that were bad...
Google can skirt around their "Don't Be Evil" motto, by taking on an evil partner like Sony that can do the dirty work while letting Google keep their hands clean! ;-)