I'm done with Star Wars. At one time I loved the series, but it's been dragged through the mud by the new prequels and screwed around with so many times on DVD that I don't care anymore - the whole damn series is dead to me. I'm not going to by 30 editions of the most adulterated trilogy of all time. Even if he released the original series uncut, unedited, in perfect quality, he's screwed the fans over so many times I'd be shocked if it didn't contain some edit or revision in it.
And FYI, I have the original series THX remastered box of 4,5,6 on VHS... I think it's pre-SFX revamp. I saw this whole stinking debacle coming a mile away, and spent years waiting for the real DVD release, but it's clearly never coming.
I have to wonder... with playgrounds shrinking, becoming safer, more padded, and less featured, with recess periods where kids literally stay indoors in a long, plain room and run back and forth for exercise, where anything potentially dangerous from firecrackers to sparklers to cap guns to water guns get banned... in a world where we don't let kids leave our sight or even try anything potentially dangerous......if we don't let them play video games, then exactly WTF can they do? I mean, most forms of play that were popular when any of us were growing up are considered "too dangerous" now, are we supposed to just put the kids into a safe, quiet, triple-armor-plated sensory deprivation tank until they hit 18, then dump them out and say "ok... go find a job and start working for a living!"
I think we've spent enough time as a society worrying about what we should keep our kids from doing. Guidelines are great for those who need them, but if anything is in danger these days, I'd say it's common-sense parenting.
I spend my childhood playing with PCs, game consoles, and any gadgets I could get my hands on. I watched a fair bit of TV by geek standards, but I wasn't really raised by it like a lot of kids - and TV is no substitute for parenting.
Still, if anything most of these things only fuelled my overactive imagination. If anything prematurely ended my childhood it was going to an elementary school with a prison-like culture. The only out-of-class attention a student gets is for quick troubleshooting, anywhere unsupervised is lawless, and if something bad happens, it doesn't matter who's at fault - just grab someone nearby and give them detention because it's quicker and sets an example.
So... video games taught me to use more abstract and deep problem-solving skills than in my everyday life, and showed me a form of active entertainment more exciting than passively watching TV like a zombie. School taught me to always evaluate someone as a potential threat, never trust someone's motives, and always be armed. I'll let you decide who the more positive influence was.
This article sounds like it was written by Jack Thompson or some other crusader - they're afraid that when they look at kids today, they don't see the world when they were kids - playing with yo-yos and marbles or whatever (which I didn't exactly skip in my tech-heavy childhood either.) It's not like these evil machines are sucking their brains out. Also, this "we're diminishing their childhood!" argument is usually a knee-jerk conclusion made with only a gut feeling. I think if anything, now we're trying too hard to shelter kids and isolate them from the real world, potentially leaving them confused and inept as adults unless someone fills them in on everything they were sheltered from (and wouldn't THAT be traumatic?) As is typical, the media isn't giving kids enough credit on their own - they may be naive, but they're not stupid.
Well, I'm not suggesting that we change the nature of the world through our throughts or anything - just that this is where the definition of the word "reality" ends up coming from.
Still, it was pretty much written to be food for thought rather than anything really profound.:)
I spend a ton of time on the PC, but I keep very few games for it... I mostly game on various consoles. I've kind of given up on PC gaming.
With a console: I pop the disc in, hit power, and the game starts. It will play exactly as the designers saw it when they were making it, and it always will. As time progresses, the games will look better and better as the devs master the hardware - at no cost to me.
With a PC, I try to install the game, if it's not afraid of my OS because it's a.) too new or b.) made for servers....also, if I have the space. Games that take over 5GB on my hard disk (then still need the disc to run! NICE!) don't last long no matter how good they are. I may need to up or downgrade my video or sound drivers, or DirectX version for some older games. Some games also require hours if not days tweaking config files to make them both look AND play decently. For playing much older games, like anything with Glide acceleration, I'll never see them accelerated again. Most Glide wrappers seem either slow, or fatally flawed to the point of psychadelic graphics failure or crashing. Then every so often, you find out you have StarForce, or some other form of copy protection virusware invisibly installed and wreaking havoc. For an FPS or RTS, a mouse is way better than a controller. For anything else, I'd rather have a controller than a 101-key keyboard. In time, games will look better and better, just like on consoles, but they will quickly start to run choppy, even if they're made to look worse than older games optimized for older hardware just to gain a few fps. And finally, a hot 3D card costs as much or more than a console, except it wouldn't work in my current PC - I'd need a new CPU, RAM, mobo, probably case and PSU, AND a new 3D card.
You might be interested in sort of an informal essay I wrote last year - it was in response to a friend claiming that game items have no value, but it ended up going into what makes an MMO world any more real than another game.
I was going to write about how annoying it was buying new Memory Sticks for three Sony gadgets, but when I thought about it, it wasn't that bad...
I have single and double-sided Memory Sticks for my Clie PDA, a Memory Stick Pro for my camera because it can't shoot HQ MPEG video or save over 128MB with a normal stick. Its cards won't work in the PDA because the capacity is too high for it. Now I have a PSP, and several Memory Stick Pro Duos for it. With an adapter, they work in the camera, but not the PDA.
When you look at it, each new format addressed an issue - first addressing capacity and speed, then physical size (the MS Pro Duos can always be had with a free MS Pro adapter they slide into.) So while it's annoying always buying newer formats to catch up, it's not really the evil conspiracy it's cracked up to be. Every new stick type brings a significant technological upgrade, and tech permitting, they make their new stuff as backward-compatible as possible. My camera will use old sticks for photos, but they simply do not have the write rate needed for HQ video.
I'll always be able to get the files off them, since all three devices will instantly turn into USB Memory Stick readers on demand. The camera uses a unique USB/composite video cable, but the PSP and PDA both use a normal Mini-B USB cable. A modern device that takes full-size cards such as my camera can read any of the formats easily.
Everyone's looking for some kind of evil empire here, but all you get is a last cheap but misguided attempt to market a failed format from a branch of a nice high-midrange electronics company. If you want to hate on Sony, try Sony Music again - they're a different company (kind of like Sony Cosmetics or Sony Life Insurance...) and they'll get no sympathy from me, even if I think they're more incompetent than evil.
This just in: Windows Vista will eat your babies! When questioned about this controversial new "feature," the spokesman from Microsoft cackled nefariously while scheming how to bring and END TO COMPUTING AS WE KNOW IT!
Stay tuned for our coverage of how to completely root Vista RC1 using only a TI-82 graphing calculator, and $500 of everyday electronic components.
I'll second that. This "windoze sux! BSOD! BSOD! HAHA!" mentality really only makes the person saying it look more foolish these days - most users probably don't even know what a BSOD looks like anymore.
I run Windows Server 2003 on my desktop, and XP Professional on my laptop, and I can't remember the last time either of them had a crash so bad I'd have to reboot - it's usually a problematic program like Paint Shop Pro that crashes on its own - then I just restart it, or start something else! The days when that kind of thing destabilized the whole system ended when they moved on from WinME and decided to only use the NT memory management model.
I guess complaining about things that were eliminated several years ago is the best they have next to the very real security issues that still crop up. Other than that, it's now stable, fast, easy to use, and universally-supported. At the risk of starting a flamewar... these comments must be cropping up either from jealousy or ignorance of how Windows works now.
I'd say the Dreamcast was the first. The Saturn was already competing with the PSX, and the DC mightily outclassed them both. Then, the PS2 came out and it faded into the background. Then its games were cracked so that you didn't even need a modchip, and shortly after, Sega threw in the towel.
I'll confirm that, but I find XBox has a slight graphical edge. Still, pl1ght, XBox had the best graphics of the current generation, but the worst sales. PS2 looked worse than a lot of Dreamcast games, but won the fight by a long shot....so tell me again why lower power, which apparently won't be that noticable anyway, is going to doom Nintendo?
In Canada, the Liberals are poised to confiscate handguns from the handful of lawful owners who registered them when they promised registration wouldn't lead to confiscation.
They just lost a vote of non-confidence, but they're poised to get re-elected right now, and start stealing guns since there's NO toppling the incumbent, and the entire West half of the country may as well not vote for all the good it does.
I'd say... we're lined up to be a police state in 5 years.
People will never buy this new "DVD" format. They'll get it home, then realize it can't record their favorite shows! It'll never replace VHS!
And just wait until they find out they're not getting the full experience on their home stereo unless they get a new tuner, and 4 more speakers! These things are going to be returned in droves!
I predict a few computer geeks starting a collection of these before the whole thing flops.
For those of you who think the big game consoles dictate the next video format:
C'mon! Didn't you see what Sony did with UMD? It was brilliant. A non-controversial proprietary format of their own, that if it failed, they still had games at least. But if it succeeded... and it seems to be doing way better than I expected, it would set a precedent for Sony setting the video format, making PS3 + Blu-Ray video a natural winner.
After all, Sony got the studios to invest in UMD (Already a totally Sony format) releases, and they're turning a decent profit on it, how hard would it be to tip them from HD-DVD to Blu-Ray? Even if Sony was the ONLY one to adopt it, they could probably make a decent profit selling Blu-Ray discs just for PS3 owners.
They very purposefully made Blu-Ray the obvious choice, even regardless of its technical capabilities.
They realized that their customer service is nil, and the quality of their products is sinking. (That's putting it lightly! I know two people who have lost motherboards/PSUs to their Audigy 1s!!! I didn't think it was possible until I saw it happen... twice in one year!) So now, they think they can make their money from patent squatting. I think they could have actually had a good run, but if Apple decides to fight it, they may just squish what's left of Creative, with legal fees if not actual victory.
I say good riddance. I loved my Sound Blaster Pro/16/Live (My Ensoniq 32 was a farce though...) but my Nomad Jukebox, DXR3 MPEG board, and really, anything I've seen from them in the last few years, is a bug-riddled crapfest. Several times, for lack of tech support, I've troubleshot problems I'd had with their products, and it's turned out to be a conflict between two Creative drivers. I've sent them both the problems AND the solutions I've had with their products, and they wouldn't act on either, not even sharing the solution with other users! Die, Creative, die...
Maybe website owners don't want to get inundated with a flood of spam just because their e-mail address is on record for their domain registration? Or more than that, maybe people with personal sites don't want random unknown people showing up at their doorsteps because their home address has been made publicly available via whois?
I'll always put enough info in to contact me, but I refuse to submit myself to such an invasive disclosure of personal information just because they want it.
It's not official, it's Oxford. Even then, they consider it to be an addition to the American language. Growing more distant from English, American includes words like labor, favor, behavior, and now, if you take Oxford as the ultimate authority, "podcast."
It's commonly accepted, but it's no more a word than Asprin, Kleenex, Band-aid, etc... It's a commercial catchphrase.
Finally, I refuse to recognise its legitimacy becase I'd been downloading non-XML webcasts for at least three years before the first iPod was announced. I fail to see how webcast + XML = podcast, especially when it took a while to be supported by anything Apple.
This is more about flashdrive hack kits, but I was thinking the same thing at first too. I've used my camera several times to snap photos of articles on bulletin boards to read later, and when I saw the headline, I figured people were just snapping photos of office documents. Apparently it's something even sillier than that...
I won't neccesarily refute that, but if you haven't tried VB.NET, you really should. It's amazing how they've cleaned it up and made a true OO programming language out of it. Working in the IDE, you get the distinct feeling that it WANTS you to get your program working instead of hanging up on little details like a missing semicolon. It's also very hard to crash the PC with a faulty program.
If nothing else, it merits a serious evaluation since.NET.
My best stab at it is that art is anything purposely designed to elicit an emotional response.
This can be anything from a painting, to a product wrapper, to a corporate logo, to the shape of an everyday product such as a flashlight, just as long as it's not 100% utilitarian in design.
I'll second that. Sony Music is not Sony Computer Entertainment. Hell, Sony Computer Entertainment of America isn't even Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. Sony is a MASSIVE family of smaller companies that aren't always even consistent amongst themselves.
I'll never buy a Sony CD. A friend tells me all kinds of stories about the stupidity of the drivers for his sister's Sony MD player. My Clie PDA can mount its Memory Stick as a removable USB drive, but the file transfer program for MP3s is awkward, and a lot of songs aren't supported. My PSP just plugs in and mounts the Memory Stick as a USB drive, and plays any MP3 I throw at it. There's no need for any special software with it. It seems they're getting the hang of it bit by bit.
- They're usually more expensive + The quality is usually excellent - They like DRM, as most companies with a record or movie label usually do + They loosen up and support formats like MP3 when demand dictates it + They like to show off with multimedia luxury features such as sharper screens, clearer sound, etc. + Their software/firmware in devices is generally fast & efficient, flashy but simple, easy to use, and stable.
- Offline messaging. If I have something to say to someone, I don't want to wait until they come online, THEN go look up what I was going to send, and send it if it's still relevant. Also, defaulting to e-mail as offline messaging (MSN) isn't good enough. I have friends who check their e-mail accounts MONTHLY. So it goes from "instant" messaging to "eventual, if it gets noticed" messaging.
- File transfer. I don't do massive transfers, but queueing should be possible without spawning a zillion windows. Also, it must work! Don't laugh, it's amazing how many just fail at file transfers!
- Clean interface. I want an IM client. I want to send and receive text messages. Other features like webcam chat are nice, but the basics should always be accessible. I've tried Trillian a few times, and while it seems technically capable, the last time I tried to use it, every last configuration option I tried was buried at the end of a maze of seemingly unrelated crap. I went back to official separate clients.
- IM is not: A web browser, a media explorer, a minigame client, a p2p client, an RSS reader, or anything else that can be shoehorned in to bloat it up and bolt fake hipness on. By "anything else," I mean MSN's "winks" and "nudges." Great, pointless disruptive flash animations that can be remotely triggered... and they even want us to pay for packs of them! WTF! Does anyone fall for this stuff?
- Customization: On the flipside, I love the customization of (the security deathtrap that is) MSN. A large library of default emotes, and the ability to define your own approximately desktop icon-sized animated PNG emotes that trigger when you type strings of your choosing. There have been some really creative uses of this, including synchronized ones that stich together to form one long one. (i.e. a 3-section emote that looks like a "sending virus..." progress bar) It also lets you change a 96x96 avatar icon at any time, and manage a library of them. You can also get a small definable string to say something below your name on people's contact lists. With Windows Media Player (OH GOD, NO!), Winamp, with a 3rd party plugin, or probably others, you can automatically update this string to show what song you're listening to at the moment. It reverts to its last contents when you stop playing. You can also change the color/background image of your main messenger window. You can change the background of a chat window, and offer to share the background pic with your chat counterpart. Messenger still has a way to go before it has a long record of security, and that's to say the least, but it's got some great customization options. Totally unneeded, but they really add to the experience of using it more than you'd think. I'm kind of torn now, because I love the features of MSN messenger, I just wish they were on a (1st party) client I could trust!
E-mail may be almost universally possible, but personally, I only know a handful of people who check their e-mail with any regularity, and most of my incoming/outgoing mail traffic is for business. For personal use, I use IM and games.
Also, due to a firehose flood of spam, I have 5 addresses which, by some standards, is pretty few. I used to get one or two ads on ICQ every few months, but then I just told it not to recieve messages from people not on my contact list. Surprisingly, I've seen no spam in the form of contact list add requests.
You're definitely right about trust and security of clients, something MSN seems abysmal at, but e-mail is becoming less universal outside of business among the younger (than myself, 24) crowd. It's also far from instant; my dad always asks me if I got messages he sent me. Usually I didn't, because despite being on the same ISP, there's usually a 2-hour to 1-day turnaround time to get the message onto the server. I'll admit though, that that is some sad performance. Still far from unheard of. IM clients, especially those that use DCC, are "instant" within a few seconds.
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I'm done with Star Wars. At one time I loved the series, but it's been dragged through the mud by the new prequels and screwed around with so many times on DVD that I don't care anymore - the whole damn series is dead to me. I'm not going to by 30 editions of the most adulterated trilogy of all time. Even if he released the original series uncut, unedited, in perfect quality, he's screwed the fans over so many times I'd be shocked if it didn't contain some edit or revision in it.
And FYI, I have the original series THX remastered box of 4,5,6 on VHS... I think it's pre-SFX revamp. I saw this whole stinking debacle coming a mile away, and spent years waiting for the real DVD release, but it's clearly never coming.
I have to wonder... with playgrounds shrinking, becoming safer, more padded, and less featured, with recess periods where kids literally stay indoors in a long, plain room and run back and forth for exercise, where anything potentially dangerous from firecrackers to sparklers to cap guns to water guns get banned... in a world where we don't let kids leave our sight or even try anything potentially dangerous... ...if we don't let them play video games, then exactly WTF can they do? I mean, most forms of play that were popular when any of us were growing up are considered "too dangerous" now, are we supposed to just put the kids into a safe, quiet, triple-armor-plated sensory deprivation tank until they hit 18, then dump them out and say "ok... go find a job and start working for a living!"
I think we've spent enough time as a society worrying about what we should keep our kids from doing. Guidelines are great for those who need them, but if anything is in danger these days, I'd say it's common-sense parenting.
I spend my childhood playing with PCs, game consoles, and any gadgets I could get my hands on. I watched a fair bit of TV by geek standards, but I wasn't really raised by it like a lot of kids - and TV is no substitute for parenting.
Still, if anything most of these things only fuelled my overactive imagination. If anything prematurely ended my childhood it was going to an elementary school with a prison-like culture. The only out-of-class attention a student gets is for quick troubleshooting, anywhere unsupervised is lawless, and if something bad happens, it doesn't matter who's at fault - just grab someone nearby and give them detention because it's quicker and sets an example.
So... video games taught me to use more abstract and deep problem-solving skills than in my everyday life, and showed me a form of active entertainment more exciting than passively watching TV like a zombie. School taught me to always evaluate someone as a potential threat, never trust someone's motives, and always be armed. I'll let you decide who the more positive influence was.
This article sounds like it was written by Jack Thompson or some other crusader - they're afraid that when they look at kids today, they don't see the world when they were kids - playing with yo-yos and marbles or whatever (which I didn't exactly skip in my tech-heavy childhood either.) It's not like these evil machines are sucking their brains out. Also, this "we're diminishing their childhood!" argument is usually a knee-jerk conclusion made with only a gut feeling. I think if anything, now we're trying too hard to shelter kids and isolate them from the real world, potentially leaving them confused and inept as adults unless someone fills them in on everything they were sheltered from (and wouldn't THAT be traumatic?) As is typical, the media isn't giving kids enough credit on their own - they may be naive, but they're not stupid.
Well, I'm not suggesting that we change the nature of the world through our throughts or anything - just that this is where the definition of the word "reality" ends up coming from.
:)
Still, it was pretty much written to be food for thought rather than anything really profound.
I spend a ton of time on the PC, but I keep very few games for it... I mostly game on various consoles. I've kind of given up on PC gaming.
...also, if I have the space. Games that take over 5GB on my hard disk (then still need the disc to run! NICE!) don't last long no matter how good they are.
With a console:
I pop the disc in, hit power, and the game starts. It will play exactly as the designers saw it when they were making it, and it always will.
As time progresses, the games will look better and better as the devs master the hardware - at no cost to me.
With a PC, I try to install the game, if it's not afraid of my OS because it's a.) too new or b.) made for servers.
I may need to up or downgrade my video or sound drivers, or DirectX version for some older games.
Some games also require hours if not days tweaking config files to make them both look AND play decently.
For playing much older games, like anything with Glide acceleration, I'll never see them accelerated again. Most Glide wrappers seem either slow, or fatally flawed to the point of psychadelic graphics failure or crashing.
Then every so often, you find out you have StarForce, or some other form of copy protection virusware invisibly installed and wreaking havoc.
For an FPS or RTS, a mouse is way better than a controller. For anything else, I'd rather have a controller than a 101-key keyboard.
In time, games will look better and better, just like on consoles, but they will quickly start to run choppy, even if they're made to look worse than older games optimized for older hardware just to gain a few fps.
And finally, a hot 3D card costs as much or more than a console, except it wouldn't work in my current PC - I'd need a new CPU, RAM, mobo, probably case and PSU, AND a new 3D card.
You might be interested in sort of an informal essay I wrote last year - it was in response to a friend claiming that game items have no value, but it ended up going into what makes an MMO world any more real than another game.
y /
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/wzrd/MMO_Realit
Vista still hasn't been officially released. How many programs much less OSes do you know of that are fully optimized while still in Beta?
The story's an interesting observation, but doesn't really say anything about the final OS yet.
I was going to write about how annoying it was buying new Memory Sticks for three Sony gadgets, but when I thought about it, it wasn't that bad...
I have single and double-sided Memory Sticks for my Clie PDA, a Memory Stick Pro for my camera because it can't shoot HQ MPEG video or save over 128MB with a normal stick. Its cards won't work in the PDA because the capacity is too high for it. Now I have a PSP, and several Memory Stick Pro Duos for it. With an adapter, they work in the camera, but not the PDA.
When you look at it, each new format addressed an issue - first addressing capacity and speed, then physical size (the MS Pro Duos can always be had with a free MS Pro adapter they slide into.) So while it's annoying always buying newer formats to catch up, it's not really the evil conspiracy it's cracked up to be. Every new stick type brings a significant technological upgrade, and tech permitting, they make their new stuff as backward-compatible as possible. My camera will use old sticks for photos, but they simply do not have the write rate needed for HQ video.
I'll always be able to get the files off them, since all three devices will instantly turn into USB Memory Stick readers on demand. The camera uses a unique USB/composite video cable, but the PSP and PDA both use a normal Mini-B USB cable. A modern device that takes full-size cards such as my camera can read any of the formats easily.
Everyone's looking for some kind of evil empire here, but all you get is a last cheap but misguided attempt to market a failed format from a branch of a nice high-midrange electronics company. If you want to hate on Sony, try Sony Music again - they're a different company (kind of like Sony Cosmetics or Sony Life Insurance...) and they'll get no sympathy from me, even if I think they're more incompetent than evil.
This just in: Windows Vista will eat your babies! When questioned about this controversial new "feature," the spokesman from Microsoft cackled nefariously while scheming how to bring and END TO COMPUTING AS WE KNOW IT!
Stay tuned for our coverage of how to completely root Vista RC1 using only a TI-82 graphing calculator, and $500 of everyday electronic components.
I'll second that. This "windoze sux! BSOD! BSOD! HAHA!" mentality really only makes the person saying it look more foolish these days - most users probably don't even know what a BSOD looks like anymore.
I run Windows Server 2003 on my desktop, and XP Professional on my laptop, and I can't remember the last time either of them had a crash so bad I'd have to reboot - it's usually a problematic program like Paint Shop Pro that crashes on its own - then I just restart it, or start something else! The days when that kind of thing destabilized the whole system ended when they moved on from WinME and decided to only use the NT memory management model.
I guess complaining about things that were eliminated several years ago is the best they have next to the very real security issues that still crop up. Other than that, it's now stable, fast, easy to use, and universally-supported. At the risk of starting a flamewar... these comments must be cropping up either from jealousy or ignorance of how Windows works now.
I'd say the Dreamcast was the first. The Saturn was already competing with the PSX, and the DC mightily outclassed them both. Then, the PS2 came out and it faded into the background. Then its games were cracked so that you didn't even need a modchip, and shortly after, Sega threw in the towel.
I'll confirm that, but I find XBox has a slight graphical edge. ...so tell me again why lower power, which apparently won't be that noticable anyway, is going to doom Nintendo?
Still, pl1ght, XBox had the best graphics of the current generation, but the worst sales. PS2 looked worse than a lot of Dreamcast games, but won the fight by a long shot.
In Canada, the Liberals are poised to confiscate handguns from the handful of lawful owners who registered them when they promised registration wouldn't lead to confiscation.
They just lost a vote of non-confidence, but they're poised to get re-elected right now, and start stealing guns since there's NO toppling the incumbent, and the entire West half of the country may as well not vote for all the good it does.
I'd say... we're lined up to be a police state in 5 years.
People will never buy this new "DVD" format. They'll get it home, then realize it can't record their favorite shows! It'll never replace VHS!
And just wait until they find out they're not getting the full experience on their home stereo unless they get a new tuner, and 4 more speakers! These things are going to be returned in droves!
I predict a few computer geeks starting a collection of these before the whole thing flops.
Trust me on this. People are stupid.
For those of you who think the big game consoles dictate the next video format:
C'mon! Didn't you see what Sony did with UMD? It was brilliant. A non-controversial proprietary format of their own, that if it failed, they still had games at least. But if it succeeded... and it seems to be doing way better than I expected, it would set a precedent for Sony setting the video format, making PS3 + Blu-Ray video a natural winner.
After all, Sony got the studios to invest in UMD (Already a totally Sony format) releases, and they're turning a decent profit on it, how hard would it be to tip them from HD-DVD to Blu-Ray? Even if Sony was the ONLY one to adopt it, they could probably make a decent profit selling Blu-Ray discs just for PS3 owners.
They very purposefully made Blu-Ray the obvious choice, even regardless of its technical capabilities.
They realized that their customer service is nil, and the quality of their products is sinking. (That's putting it lightly! I know two people who have lost motherboards/PSUs to their Audigy 1s!!! I didn't think it was possible until I saw it happen... twice in one year!) So now, they think they can make their money from patent squatting. I think they could have actually had a good run, but if Apple decides to fight it, they may just squish what's left of Creative, with legal fees if not actual victory.
I say good riddance. I loved my Sound Blaster Pro/16/Live (My Ensoniq 32 was a farce though...) but my Nomad Jukebox, DXR3 MPEG board, and really, anything I've seen from them in the last few years, is a bug-riddled crapfest. Several times, for lack of tech support, I've troubleshot problems I'd had with their products, and it's turned out to be a conflict between two Creative drivers. I've sent them both the problems AND the solutions I've had with their products, and they wouldn't act on either, not even sharing the solution with other users! Die, Creative, die...
Maybe website owners don't want to get inundated with a flood of spam just because their e-mail address is on record for their domain registration? Or more than that, maybe people with personal sites don't want random unknown people showing up at their doorsteps because their home address has been made publicly available via whois?
I'll always put enough info in to contact me, but I refuse to submit myself to such an invasive disclosure of personal information just because they want it.
It's not official, it's Oxford. Even then, they consider it to be an addition to the American language. Growing more distant from English, American includes words like labor, favor, behavior, and now, if you take Oxford as the ultimate authority, "podcast."
It's commonly accepted, but it's no more a word than Asprin, Kleenex, Band-aid, etc... It's a commercial catchphrase.
Finally, I refuse to recognise its legitimacy becase I'd been downloading non-XML webcasts for at least three years before the first iPod was announced. I fail to see how webcast + XML = podcast, especially when it took a while to be supported by anything Apple.
This is more about flashdrive hack kits, but I was thinking the same thing at first too. I've used my camera several times to snap photos of articles on bulletin boards to read later, and when I saw the headline, I figured people were just snapping photos of office documents. Apparently it's something even sillier than that...
I won't neccesarily refute that, but if you haven't tried VB.NET, you really should. It's amazing how they've cleaned it up and made a true OO programming language out of it. Working in the IDE, you get the distinct feeling that it WANTS you to get your program working instead of hanging up on little details like a missing semicolon. It's also very hard to crash the PC with a faulty program.
.NET.
If nothing else, it merits a serious evaluation since
My best stab at it is that art is anything purposely designed to elicit an emotional response.
This can be anything from a painting, to a product wrapper, to a corporate logo, to the shape of an everyday product such as a flashlight, just as long as it's not 100% utilitarian in design.
I'll second that. Sony Music is not Sony Computer Entertainment. Hell, Sony Computer Entertainment of America isn't even Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. Sony is a MASSIVE family of smaller companies that aren't always even consistent amongst themselves.
I'll never buy a Sony CD. A friend tells me all kinds of stories about the stupidity of the drivers for his sister's Sony MD player. My Clie PDA can mount its Memory Stick as a removable USB drive, but the file transfer program for MP3s is awkward, and a lot of songs aren't supported. My PSP just plugs in and mounts the Memory Stick as a USB drive, and plays any MP3 I throw at it. There's no need for any special software with it. It seems they're getting the hang of it bit by bit.
- They're usually more expensive
+ The quality is usually excellent
- They like DRM, as most companies with a record or movie label usually do
+ They loosen up and support formats like MP3 when demand dictates it
+ They like to show off with multimedia luxury features such as sharper screens, clearer sound, etc.
+ Their software/firmware in devices is generally fast & efficient, flashy but simple, easy to use, and stable.
"Hey, what the-- This looks exactly like Central Point Antivirus!"
- Offline messaging. If I have something to say to someone, I don't want to wait until they come online, THEN go look up what I was going to send, and send it if it's still relevant. Also, defaulting to e-mail as offline messaging (MSN) isn't good enough. I have friends who check their e-mail accounts MONTHLY. So it goes from "instant" messaging to "eventual, if it gets noticed" messaging.
- File transfer. I don't do massive transfers, but queueing should be possible without spawning a zillion windows. Also, it must work! Don't laugh, it's amazing how many just fail at file transfers!
- Clean interface. I want an IM client. I want to send and receive text messages. Other features like webcam chat are nice, but the basics should always be accessible. I've tried Trillian a few times, and while it seems technically capable, the last time I tried to use it, every last configuration option I tried was buried at the end of a maze of seemingly unrelated crap. I went back to official separate clients.
- IM is not: A web browser, a media explorer, a minigame client, a p2p client, an RSS reader, or anything else that can be shoehorned in to bloat it up and bolt fake hipness on. By "anything else," I mean MSN's "winks" and "nudges." Great, pointless disruptive flash animations that can be remotely triggered... and they even want us to pay for packs of them! WTF! Does anyone fall for this stuff?
- Customization: On the flipside, I love the customization of (the security deathtrap that is) MSN. A large library of default emotes, and the ability to define your own approximately desktop icon-sized animated PNG emotes that trigger when you type strings of your choosing. There have been some really creative uses of this, including synchronized ones that stich together to form one long one. (i.e. a 3-section emote that looks like a "sending virus..." progress bar)
It also lets you change a 96x96 avatar icon at any time, and manage a library of them. You can also get a small definable string to say something below your name on people's contact lists. With Windows Media Player (OH GOD, NO!), Winamp, with a 3rd party plugin, or probably others, you can automatically update this string to show what song you're listening to at the moment. It reverts to its last contents when you stop playing.
You can also change the color/background image of your main messenger window. You can change the background of a chat window, and offer to share the background pic with your chat counterpart.
Messenger still has a way to go before it has a long record of security, and that's to say the least, but it's got some great customization options. Totally unneeded, but they really add to the experience of using it more than you'd think. I'm kind of torn now, because I love the features of MSN messenger, I just wish they were on a (1st party) client I could trust!
E-mail may be almost universally possible, but personally, I only know a handful of people who check their e-mail with any regularity, and most of my incoming/outgoing mail traffic is for business. For personal use, I use IM and games.
Also, due to a firehose flood of spam, I have 5 addresses which, by some standards, is pretty few. I used to get one or two ads on ICQ every few months, but then I just told it not to recieve messages from people not on my contact list. Surprisingly, I've seen no spam in the form of contact list add requests.
You're definitely right about trust and security of clients, something MSN seems abysmal at, but e-mail is becoming less universal outside of business among the younger (than myself, 24) crowd. It's also far from instant; my dad always asks me if I got messages he sent me. Usually I didn't, because despite being on the same ISP, there's usually a 2-hour to 1-day turnaround time to get the message onto the server. I'll admit though, that that is some sad performance. Still far from unheard of. IM clients, especially those that use DCC, are "instant" within a few seconds.