Console makers can not sustain a 3 year release cycle. Many games are in development for that long. Even the Xbox, which had an incredibly short run due to having production cut the instant the 360 was released, was around for five years.
The PS2 will likely have a 10+ year run, the PS1 had 11 years, the SNES had 13 years...
The history of players that won't play DRMed content that doesn't come from the manufacturer doesn't start with Apple. It is a double standard, sure, but it is neither strange nor arbitrary.
Regardless, since you "can't" take songs off of the iPod, you could in theory sell DRMed content that could play on the iPod by being decrypted as it is being loaded onto the device.
The type of fraud that your anecdotes describe aren't the kind that involve big corporations with million+ dollar legal budgets. Your buddies aren't going to sue eBay because they got ripped off (in fact they can't since they gave that right up when they bid), but some third party game company may sue eBay if their virtual items are sold. It's all about risk... There is no risk involved in screwing an individual.
That won't last for long, and it won't matter even at the beginning.
Sales reps will sell signups to Cingular for $x, and the sales reps will be willing to pass $x-y back to their clients in exchange for the contracts. Some portion of the dollar value of a cell phone contract will be extracted from Cingular passed on to the customer, even if that amount isn't in the form of a phone subsidy.
(I think it's a good reason to never buy anything off of iTMS, but I don't think legal action is justified)
I completely agree with that.
I think it's the "artificial vendor lock-in" thing that's being complained about
The thing is that it's an artificial complaint. Apple doesn't prevent anybody from selling music that can play on the iPod, and they don't charge any licensing fees for the ability either. Other companies are simply unhappy with Apple's (more than reasonable) terms.
The only "lock-in" you get with an iPod+ITMS is that you can only play your iTunes music on an iPod or within the iTunes application, but this doesn't address that lock-in. It addresses non-existent lock-in. Specifically it purports to provide relief from Apple's requiring its users to only listen to ITMS music. Clearly the complaint is based entirely in fallacy.
It's just eBay being stupid. IGE and all the other sites that cater specifically to gold/equipment/character farmers are just going to get more business because eBay is "worried about the legal complexities" of selling virtual property.
It's not eBay being stupid, but it's not what they're saying it is either. If eBay thought they could make money providing this service, they would. The real reason is that the associated costs and risks exceed the profit available from these transactions. I'm sure that internally they have statistics that show the rates of disputed transactions, and the administrative costs of dealing with them along with the cost of liability insurance for the potential litigation associated with these transactions. They compared those numbers with the projected revenue and one side won.
This isn't a philosophical issue, or eBay trying to prevent anything. Companies don't work that way (usually). This is almost certainly purely economic.
I don't see why they should have to be defended. There isn't a credible argument against them. They aren't forcing anybody to do anything at all, much less buy their hardware and use their music store, and they aren't the only game in town. So what have they done wrong that needs to be defended? The only argument to be made is why punishing them for their own success is moronic.
The real new business model is now instead of getting cheaper equipment for agreeing to a contract with a provider, now you must be tied into a contract with a provider for the privilege of owning a particular phone
You must think people are really dumb if you think they would be willing to lock themselves in to a contract with no incentive.
Regardless, even if people *were* that dumb, and Cingular really didn't provide any incentives for signing the contracts, the incentives would just move one step donw the chan and be provided by the sales reps. The fact of the matter is that putting your signature on one of those contracts is worth a *lot* of money, and if Cingular isn't willing to compensate you for doing it, somebody will be.
They can only screw you if you are stupid enough to let yourself be screwed. If you're not that dumb then there is nothing to worry about.
Cell phone companies are willing to provide incentives to acquire customers. The value of these incentives are frequently upwards of $300, given in exchange for a two year contract (some of that incentive will go to your sales rep as commission). What difference does it make to Cingular if they give this incentive as a service discount, or as a phone subsidy?
And if you're willing to pay $500 for the phone, chances are you'll be willing to pay full price on the plan.
Big companies don't typically play psychological games like this. They know what their revenue ramp needs to look like, they know what they need their retention stats to look like, and they know how much they have to spend on customer acquisition to meet those goals. Remember, if the phone is sold without subsidy, it is also sold without a contract. Cingular has great incentive to buy your signature on that contract.
Uh, yeah it is. We have speed limits to keep me safe. I have to wear a seatbelt to keep me safe. I can't drink and drive to keep me (and you) safe... How is this any different?
Two of those are wrong, and one of them is a highly divisive issue. We have speed limits to keep others safe from you. The same goes for drunk driving.
You are right that it is the responsibility of our government to do whatever is within its power, and within reason to protect its citizens. The government has other responsibilities as well. It has to choose solutions that respect all of its responsibilities at the same time.
I presume you want it explained to you without using those words because you don't know what they mean.
Making it lawful to treat everybody as a suspect is the only tool required for widespread corruption and exploitation by government authorities. If you aren't free to exist without being in a continual state of active compliance, you aren't really free. In this particular case, the line between slightly less free and completely un-free is very thin.
There are other arguments too, involving the ability to link independent data sources together in violation of an individual's privacy. If you care about your privacy, you should be opposed to having a unified identifying number.
"Hey Apple! You're making too much money! It doesn't matter that you're not abusing your supposed monopoly to force your way into completely unrelated markets, or that we don't apply the same standards to companies that actually do that bad stuff. It is unacceptable, and you have to share that money with all the other shitty little companies that want a piece or we're kicking you out!"
Neither that nor this via system can decode any reasonably compressed video. The capabilities of these small systems hasn't improved much over the last 6 years.
Hell, the only difference between that board you linked to and one I worked on in 2001 is that it's called "Freescale" now instead of Motorola, the bridges are built into the CPU, the board is bigger, and it's RoHS compliant. (It's way cheaper now too, but who's checking?)
If they can't bump the CPU speed, they should at least start putting a beefy programmable DSP on these boards. Then things would get interesting; and for more than just video.
I'm completely on board with all of that stuff. I use a greylisting proxy in front of sendmail on my linux mailservers (actualy I run exim4 on one of them...). It's not complicated software either. It's just a script written in python with no other requirements. I was just giving the guy a hard time for gratuitous and off-topic pimping of OpenBSD, and for being misleading.
You know he's just another sony fanboat eagerly awaiting to get his hands on sony's version of the wiimote...
Good call there genius. But you thought wrong. I have a Wii, and no plans to get a PS3. Incidentally, I wasn't talking about Sony copying the Wii remote... If you look, we were talking about either Sony or Microsoft copying it.
I mean that it's just a pointing device in its difference from other controllers that are available. Motion sensing is already available for other platforms. The pointing (and the shape) are the novel features.
So, why is it that we make such a fuss over the Sony "copycats" of the Wii controller, and their own attempt at network services?
Because it happened so recently that the buzz hasn't died down yet. Don't forget, these systems have only been out for two and a half months, and most people weren't folloing their development like people around here do.
Not only is copycatting something that gamers are willing to accept, but after the initial uproar dies down, the copycat frequently wins. Very few people would care if one system was copying the other. The system with the best games wins every time.
The dualshock was Sony copycatting the N64 analog stick and rumble pak. Look how that turned out....
1. It's way easier to be the second company to do something than it is to be the first. The console market alone has shown this many times.
2. Whatever. The Dualshock was Sony copycatting the analog stick from the N64. Nintendo fanboys would cry about it and everybody else wouldn't care.
3. It's just a pointing device. There is plenty of back-history. It only exists because somebody at Nintendo wanted to know how they could sell a second copy of every successful DS first party title to their set-top customers. (What, you thought they invented it because they were trying to come up with something revolutionary?)
4. Read my comment again... It only succeeds if it comes free with all future console purchases... Like the Dualshock did.
6. I just don't buy this one. The Dualshock was so integrated with the playstation platform by the end that it is shocking to pick up the older controllers, and the platform is practically defined by titles that required it. This argument can be refuted by one title: Gran Turismo. Though the huge array of third-person platformers for the original playstation are also good examples, and there were some of the best sidescrollers ever because of the Dualshock... The Spyro series, the Gex series, the Megaman Legends series, Einhander...
I'm not saying Microsoft or Sony *will* copy it, but they easily *could* copy it, and there is no reason to believe they couldn't be successful.
Only the Dual Shock, [...] were ever successful as after-release add ons.
Doesn't that refute your entire argument right there? One of the most successful devices ever was an add on. The trick with an add-on's success is that the functionality has to be easily incorporated in every game. That happened with analog control, so the dual-shock was wildly successful. There were probably more of them sold than the original d-pad.
Why couldn't a pointing device enjoy similar success?
Also, light guns (for every system since the NES) have been popular addons. Almost everybody with a PS2 has at least one light-gun. A Wii style controller could fill that niche on the 360 or the PS3. If such a controller were released as an 'add-on' (came by default with all new systems like the dual-shock did) I think it would fit the formula for a successful device.
Personally, though, I think the pointing is going to get old since it isn't very accurate.... If that is the case, the accelerometer will be the killer feature, and the sixaxis may be sufficient to fill the gap... Only time will tell.
Even places where thye are out of stock have a demo unit on display. The Target near me has had between 3 and 6 in stock the last three times I've been in there. They've sold four million of the damned things. You can even get them on eBay for less than the cost of an Xbox 360. If you don't have one yet, you are very unlucky or you aren't trying very hard to get one.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh... So obvious that the dreaded N-word isn't uttered in the entire article.
Console makers can not sustain a 3 year release cycle. Many games are in development for that long. Even the Xbox, which had an incredibly short run due to having production cut the instant the 360 was released, was around for five years.
The PS2 will likely have a 10+ year run, the PS1 had 11 years, the SNES had 13 years...
Based on a sample size of one from way back when people actually still purchased enough pre-recorded pornography to be economically signifigant...
The history of players that won't play DRMed content that doesn't come from the manufacturer doesn't start with Apple. It is a double standard, sure, but it is neither strange nor arbitrary.
Regardless, since you "can't" take songs off of the iPod, you could in theory sell DRMed content that could play on the iPod by being decrypted as it is being loaded onto the device.
The type of fraud that your anecdotes describe aren't the kind that involve big corporations with million+ dollar legal budgets. Your buddies aren't going to sue eBay because they got ripped off (in fact they can't since they gave that right up when they bid), but some third party game company may sue eBay if their virtual items are sold. It's all about risk... There is no risk involved in screwing an individual.
That won't last for long, and it won't matter even at the beginning.
Sales reps will sell signups to Cingular for $x, and the sales reps will be willing to pass $x-y back to their clients in exchange for the contracts. Some portion of the dollar value of a cell phone contract will be extracted from Cingular passed on to the customer, even if that amount isn't in the form of a phone subsidy.
(I think it's a good reason to never buy anything off of iTMS, but I don't think legal action is justified)
I completely agree with that.
I think it's the "artificial vendor lock-in" thing that's being complained about
The thing is that it's an artificial complaint. Apple doesn't prevent anybody from selling music that can play on the iPod, and they don't charge any licensing fees for the ability either. Other companies are simply unhappy with Apple's (more than reasonable) terms.
The only "lock-in" you get with an iPod+ITMS is that you can only play your iTunes music on an iPod or within the iTunes application, but this doesn't address that lock-in. It addresses non-existent lock-in. Specifically it purports to provide relief from Apple's requiring its users to only listen to ITMS music. Clearly the complaint is based entirely in fallacy.
It's just eBay being stupid. IGE and all the other sites that cater specifically to gold/equipment/character farmers are just going to get more business because eBay is "worried about the legal complexities" of selling virtual property.
It's not eBay being stupid, but it's not what they're saying it is either. If eBay thought they could make money providing this service, they would. The real reason is that the associated costs and risks exceed the profit available from these transactions. I'm sure that internally they have statistics that show the rates of disputed transactions, and the administrative costs of dealing with them along with the cost of liability insurance for the potential litigation associated with these transactions. They compared those numbers with the projected revenue and one side won.
This isn't a philosophical issue, or eBay trying to prevent anything. Companies don't work that way (usually). This is almost certainly purely economic.
I don't see why they should have to be defended. There isn't a credible argument against them. They aren't forcing anybody to do anything at all, much less buy their hardware and use their music store, and they aren't the only game in town. So what have they done wrong that needs to be defended? The only argument to be made is why punishing them for their own success is moronic.
The real new business model is now instead of getting cheaper equipment for agreeing to a contract with a provider, now you must be tied into a contract with a provider for the privilege of owning a particular phone
You must think people are really dumb if you think they would be willing to lock themselves in to a contract with no incentive.
Regardless, even if people *were* that dumb, and Cingular really didn't provide any incentives for signing the contracts, the incentives would just move one step donw the chan and be provided by the sales reps. The fact of the matter is that putting your signature on one of those contracts is worth a *lot* of money, and if Cingular isn't willing to compensate you for doing it, somebody will be.
They can only screw you if you are stupid enough to let yourself be screwed. If you're not that dumb then there is nothing to worry about.
Cell phone companies are willing to provide incentives to acquire customers. The value of these incentives are frequently upwards of $300, given in exchange for a two year contract (some of that incentive will go to your sales rep as commission). What difference does it make to Cingular if they give this incentive as a service discount, or as a phone subsidy?
And if you're willing to pay $500 for the phone, chances are you'll be willing to pay full price on the plan.
Big companies don't typically play psychological games like this. They know what their revenue ramp needs to look like, they know what they need their retention stats to look like, and they know how much they have to spend on customer acquisition to meet those goals. Remember, if the phone is sold without subsidy, it is also sold without a contract. Cingular has great incentive to buy your signature on that contract.
Uh, yeah it is. We have speed limits to keep me safe. I have to wear a seatbelt to keep me safe. I can't drink and drive to keep me (and you) safe... How is this any different?
Two of those are wrong, and one of them is a highly divisive issue. We have speed limits to keep others safe from you. The same goes for drunk driving.
You are right that it is the responsibility of our government to do whatever is within its power, and within reason to protect its citizens. The government has other responsibilities as well. It has to choose solutions that respect all of its responsibilities at the same time.
I presume you want it explained to you without using those words because you don't know what they mean.
Making it lawful to treat everybody as a suspect is the only tool required for widespread corruption and exploitation by government authorities. If you aren't free to exist without being in a continual state of active compliance, you aren't really free. In this particular case, the line between slightly less free and completely un-free is very thin.
There are other arguments too, involving the ability to link independent data sources together in violation of an individual's privacy. If you care about your privacy, you should be opposed to having a unified identifying number.
The real question is why you need to prove your ability to drive a car in order to ride in an airplane...
Or why you need ID to travel across state lines all of a sudden.
(How else would the airlines crack down on third party ticket re-sales?)
Translation:
"Hey Apple! You're making too much money! It doesn't matter that you're not abusing your supposed monopoly to force your way into completely unrelated markets, or that we don't apply the same standards to companies that actually do that bad stuff. It is unacceptable, and you have to share that money with all the other shitty little companies that want a piece or we're kicking you out!"
Meh.
Neither that nor this via system can decode any reasonably compressed video. The capabilities of these small systems hasn't improved much over the last 6 years.
Hell, the only difference between that board you linked to and one I worked on in 2001 is that it's called "Freescale" now instead of Motorola, the bridges are built into the CPU, the board is bigger, and it's RoHS compliant. (It's way cheaper now too, but who's checking?)
If they can't bump the CPU speed, they should at least start putting a beefy programmable DSP on these boards. Then things would get interesting; and for more than just video.
Stealing power lines is for wimps. These guys stole the third rail!
I'm completely on board with all of that stuff. I use a greylisting proxy in front of sendmail on my linux mailservers (actualy I run exim4 on one of them...). It's not complicated software either. It's just a script written in python with no other requirements. I was just giving the guy a hard time for gratuitous and off-topic pimping of OpenBSD, and for being misleading.
You know he's just another sony fanboat eagerly awaiting to get his hands on sony's version of the wiimote...
Good call there genius. But you thought wrong. I have a Wii, and no plans to get a PS3. Incidentally, I wasn't talking about Sony copying the Wii remote... If you look, we were talking about either Sony or Microsoft copying it.
I mean that it's just a pointing device in its difference from other controllers that are available. Motion sensing is already available for other platforms. The pointing (and the shape) are the novel features.
So, why is it that we make such a fuss over the Sony "copycats" of the Wii controller, and their own attempt at network services?
Because it happened so recently that the buzz hasn't died down yet. Don't forget, these systems have only been out for two and a half months, and most people weren't folloing their development like people around here do.
Not only is copycatting something that gamers are willing to accept, but after the initial uproar dies down, the copycat frequently wins. Very few people would care if one system was copying the other. The system with the best games wins every time.
The dualshock was Sony copycatting the N64 analog stick and rumble pak. Look how that turned out....
1. It's way easier to be the second company to do something than it is to be the first. The console market alone has shown this many times.
2. Whatever. The Dualshock was Sony copycatting the analog stick from the N64. Nintendo fanboys would cry about it and everybody else wouldn't care.
3. It's just a pointing device. There is plenty of back-history. It only exists because somebody at Nintendo wanted to know how they could sell a second copy of every successful DS first party title to their set-top customers. (What, you thought they invented it because they were trying to come up with something revolutionary?)
4. Read my comment again... It only succeeds if it comes free with all future console purchases... Like the Dualshock did.
6. I just don't buy this one. The Dualshock was so integrated with the playstation platform by the end that it is shocking to pick up the older controllers, and the platform is practically defined by titles that required it. This argument can be refuted by one title: Gran Turismo. Though the huge array of third-person platformers for the original playstation are also good examples, and there were some of the best sidescrollers ever because of the Dualshock... The Spyro series, the Gex series, the Megaman Legends series, Einhander...
I'm not saying Microsoft or Sony *will* copy it, but they easily *could* copy it, and there is no reason to believe they couldn't be successful.
Only the Dual Shock, [...] were ever successful as after-release add ons.
Doesn't that refute your entire argument right there? One of the most successful devices ever was an add on. The trick with an add-on's success is that the functionality has to be easily incorporated in every game. That happened with analog control, so the dual-shock was wildly successful. There were probably more of them sold than the original d-pad.
Why couldn't a pointing device enjoy similar success?
Also, light guns (for every system since the NES) have been popular addons. Almost everybody with a PS2 has at least one light-gun. A Wii style controller could fill that niche on the 360 or the PS3. If such a controller were released as an 'add-on' (came by default with all new systems like the dual-shock did) I think it would fit the formula for a successful device.
Personally, though, I think the pointing is going to get old since it isn't very accurate.... If that is the case, the accelerometer will be the killer feature, and the sixaxis may be sufficient to fill the gap... Only time will tell.
Since when are you "most of us"?
Even places where thye are out of stock have a demo unit on display. The Target near me has had between 3 and 6 in stock the last three times I've been in there. They've sold four million of the damned things. You can even get them on eBay for less than the cost of an Xbox 360. If you don't have one yet, you are very unlucky or you aren't trying very hard to get one.