I'm glad to see you've discovered the joys of "closed platforms". Game developers also love consoles for a similar reason. Testing and support are much easier for console gaming than PC.
But home console/arcade hardware isn't something new that XBox is doing. Sega actually pioneered the idea decades ago (and if you read my other post, Nintendo is currently doing it with the Gamecube as well.)
You're right... sort of. They shouldn't just port from the arcade to the home machine.
I think Nintendo has the right idea. Look at what they're doing with the new version of F-Zero. Home and arcade versions, both built from gamecube hardware. You can design and build your own racer at home. Save the info on a save card. Take the save card to the arcade and race your own car. Win races in the arcade and get new car parts to take home. Now there's an idea.
Nintendo learned a valuable lesson from Pokemon: Product integration.
Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea. It's fun for the player and it brings in additional revenue for the big N.
I also know they did this in Australia for cell phones, but the reasoning must have been a little different. It's important to know when you're calling a mobile, because who ever makes the call gets to pay for the call. That's to say if you call my cell phone, you pay the airtime. If I call you, I pay. If I call your mobile from mine, I pay both (w00t!).
Of course, they also extended their phone numbers from 7 to 8 digits "recently" too. It was funny when I was living down there a couple years ago, because in the syndey area they added a "9" to the beginning of everyone's phone number. Didn't seem very useful at the time, but that's forward planning for ya.
Your arguments are sound. The folks at Stealth Computers Corporation appear to agree with you. They aren't going after those markets.
The webpage the Little PC's outlines some targeted markets:
Applications:
Digital Signs & New Media Applications Kiosks & Public Access Displays Information Appliance Embedded Systems Process Control & Factory Automation Mobile Applications, trains planes & autos Ideal for any space constrained application
If you're making a digital sign or a wall mounted kiosk in a mall, you could literally screw this little beast to the back of the unit (or inside) and no one would ever know it's there.
The size does make all the difference in the world when you want the computer out of sight/out of mind and space is a luxury you don't have.
It doesn't appear this device was ever meant for home use or a replacement for blade servers.
Your quote got me thinking about something I once read by H.L. Mencken, a well known political journalist, who was active in the first half of the last century. He simply said, "The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe".
This prompted me to do a little more research into the man and found he had quite amazing insight into the mind of the government and the people. For example, I found another marvelous passage that seems to apply well to this very situation as it did many decades ago:
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
(Disclaimer: I don't work for Microsoft, I don't even particularly like Microsoft... but I'm about to "defend" Microsoft.)
Oh, for the love of...
I keep hearing this misinformation over and over again. Look:
You want to play 'untrusted' mp3's? Great. Use the current version of WinAmp. It's not Palladium enabled, and therefore it has no restrictions. Need 'untrusted' mp3s? Get a copy of CDex. It's not Palladium enabled. No restrictions.
Microsoft has clearly stated Palladium will not preclude the use of legacy applications. Microsoft may be trecherous, but they aren't that stupid either. They won't flash cut from one platform to another completely incompatable platform. They also know that not everyone wants to run secured programs in a secured environment.
I'm not saying that Palladium or TCPA are dangerous proposals. They have the potential to be grossly abused. But I think you're drastically overestimating the industry's ability to act in concert to force universal 'trusted' applications to completely strip us of our rights to use a computer as a universal computing machine.
(Ugh. Due to a slashdot error, I lost my previous reply as I tried to preview it. Let me try this again.)
As I mentioned in a post a little further down the thread, I don't have any hard numbers either. The reason is that all readily available statistics are generated by those who are aligned with the crusade, and as such are grossly inflated. I would have to attempt my own, non-biased survey research, which is cost prohibitive.
I agree. Socialized healthcare in the US is a farce. I'd be unphased if the system collapsed tomorrow. I also agree that those who knowingly risk their health should kick in a little early on. That was exactly the original idea behind the recent taxes on cigarettes. If I thought the estimates of the effects were accurate, and if I thought the money would actually end up in the healthcare system, then I wouldn't have a problem with said taxes. Unfortunately, I don't believe either are true.
And yeah, I completely forgot about the losing weight campaign. Perhaps a twinkie-tax is in our future?
And do you believe that number is accurate? I would be willing to wager that that number is grossly inflated to include any sickness that fell upon a person who smokes. The survey went something likes this:
1) Is this person sick? ( ) 2) Does this person smoke? ( )
They could have broken their arm, and it would have ended up going into that figure. Statistics are one of the most persuasive "arguments", and they happen to also be one of the most easily manipulated.
And no... I don't have any numbers, because the only ones being generated are by those who are part of the moral campaign against smoking. I would have to go out and do my own unbiased survey.
Finally, remember that I'm not saying that smoking is good for you. I'm just saying that it's not as horrible, destructive, and important as the world seems to think right now.
You're right. Greed is not the exclusive motivator.
You're wrong. The additional cost to health care systems from smoking related illness is negligable, at best.
What's really going on? People with money and power are legislating morality. For whatever reason, they believe that smoking is a moral crime. In order to get other people to join their cause, they use an arsenal of tactics, including: persuasion, diversion, and out right lies.
They need to demonize cigarettes, so they blame all sorts of very loosely related phenomeons upon smoking, like the rising cost of healthcare. The cost of health care has been skyrocketing in this country as the number of people who smoke go down. That looks like an inverse proportion, not a direct one.
Smoking causes illness. I won't argue that. Smoking is only one of millions of causes of illness, but it's the only one we've dedicated a crusade against recently. Coincidence?
I prefer my computing devices to have full-sized keyboards so that I can touch type on them. I prefer my cameras to take high quality pictures. This product wasn't designed for people like me. I still, however, think the picturebooks are spiffy.
On the other hand, Sony didn't really design the picturebook for people like me. This design originated in Japan with Japanese people in mind. In case you didn't know, the Japanese are absolutely crazy about little electronic devices, especially if they take pictures. The size and style are more important than the sheer power and functionality.
I'd estimate that nearly 20% (conservative estimate)of all new cell phones in Japan have high-res color screens and cameras built into them. I'm most curious to see how the picturebook fares against competition from these phones, which are even smaller and more stylish.
Don't despair. They haven't abandoned the loyal, traditional fans with FFXI. In case you missed the announcements, shortly after Square revealed the details of FFXI, they mentioned they would soon start designing FFXII which would take them back to the original single-player RPG format.
Square actually did issue a full remake of the original Final Fantasy 1 and 2, with 3 coming soon (maybe recently released??). The catch is that they are only available in Japanese, and only available for a handheld game system called the WonderSwan Color, made by Bandai and only sold in Asia. Many importers carry these little beauties, but playing imported RPGs is impossible unless you're proficient in Japanese.
I'm also refering to the Japanese FF numbering system... FF2 and FF3 were only released for the Japanese Famicom system (aka the NES). FF1-3 on the WonderSwan feature new SNES quality graphics and greatly improved battle systems.
I do believe that the previously mentioned PSOne release is a port of those remakes. Now that Square is on speaking terms with Nintendo again, perhaps we'll see them ported to GameBoy Advance as well. Start writing to Square.
(Before someone jumps in and "corrects" me, I should mention that FF4, known as FF2 in the US, has also been ported to the WonderSwan. It came out before the FF3 port. I assume this is because new graphics and whatnot were not required.)
Re:What about a player with a good headphone amp?
on
New MP3 Portables
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· Score: 1
To first answer the question about the amp. The iFP has really good amplification. I usually listen with the volume at about 1/2. I would rarely venture past 3/4 volume. Can't really speak for the other offerings of today.
You know, I have a pair of those Sony, open-air, over-the-ear type head phones. I like them quite a bit. They're not as good as my big, closed, studio style head phones. Since I got a decent pair of earbuds with the player, that's about all I use. Why?? I bought this unit for one big reason: portability. I want to be able to wrap the earbuds around the outside and shove it in my pocket when I'm not using it. I performed a listening test with the earbuds versus my Sony's. The earbuds had better treble, the Sony's had better bass. Pretty even trade off, so the portability factor became the deciding one.
Minutes may be aweful for you, but it's just not that bad for me. Maybe I'm getting patient in my years. I might be more time sensitive if I had ready-made play lists from which to choose. Instead I create a new list every few days based on my mood/tastes that day. Choosing the songs to go with me takes me a few minutes. So it works for me.
Some sort of removable media would be nice for this unit. Such things would have added size and price to it. Both were variables I was trying to keep low.
I like your ideas about a hard drive player. Unfortunately I still wouldn't buy one. I was an accident prone child. While I don't break as many bones or need stitches as often, I still have bouts where my manual dexterity just vanishes. I will inevitably drop anything I carry on a daily basis. I delight in the idea of it having no moving parts, period.
BTW, do you have an mp3 player now? Which one? What's really stopping you?
That's true. It doesn't have expansion, but for the price and size, it's acceptable. It doesn't have USB 2.0 or Firewire, but the USB 1.1 is fast enough for the memory size. It only takes a few minutes to transfer 128MB.
Let's not forget about the iRiver iFP-180T. It's a fixed flash-based player with 128MB of RAM. Although they haven't officially announced it in the US, Best Buy apparently has the exclusive distribution rights and is already shelving them. Rumor has it they will be advertised in their flyers for tomorrow's newspapers. I picked on up a couple days ago for the reasonable price of $140. For those on a budget, they also have a 64MB model for $100 and a 32MB for... $70 (I think).
It's a tiny little thing, slightly larger than a bic lighter. Unfortunately, this means no storage upgrades. But it does have a very nice display, good battery life, ships with decent earbud headphones (Sennheiser mx300) and it supports Japanese fonts (something important to me...)
iRiver does offer upgradeable firmware. Plenty of people have been demanding ogg support and they claim they want to support it. Their engineers are currently evaluating the ability to add it. Interesting side note, the CEO of Xiph, Emmett Plant, posted to the iRiver user boards and offered support from their engineers to get it done.
But I digress. Despite a few minor short comings, I think this is a great little digital music player.
Yes, there are dangers that the entertainment industry might try to run amok with this system, but they do so at their own peril. People may just stop buying from them. Check this bit from the Microsoft "Palladium" FAQ:
Q: So I won't be able to play any MP3s on my PC any more?
A: You will. "Palladium" brings additional capabilities to the PC but does not interfere with the operation of any program that runs on current PCs. "Palladium" never imposes itself on processes that do not request its services; "Palladium" features must be requested by a program. So the MP3 player you have today will still work on a "Palladium"-enabled PC tomorrow.
Don't like the new secure software that people are pushing? Don't use it. Yeah, you might not get some new features, but someone will find a way around it... there's always a way around it.
Two years of college level Japanese aren't quite enough to make sense of the legalese that goes, but it appears this offer is only good for residents of Japan. It says something along the lines of "We are unable to respond to overseas inquiries."
It's very possible to get buffer underruns with a SCSI burner. I'm still using my Plextor 8x SCSI burner, and I've had my share of buffer under runs. Normally this won't happen, but if you get the circumstances right. The bus mastering employed by a decent SCSI card keeps the data flowing in a favorable way most of the time.
However, I would wager this point is completely moot if you buy a new CD burner, as virtually all of them come with some form of underrun protection circuitry.
Personally, I disagree with you. The article points out that sales of the book that was provided for free online rose after the fact. The book was available for free, but people bought it anyway. Even though I don't have facts to back this up, I fail to see why this trend wouldn't carry over with more well established names in either the music or the publishing industry.
You make the same fatal assumption that people like Hilary Rosen make. People who aquire the product for free would have bought the product, if only it hadn't been freely available. If that were true, as was pointed out when the Free Library was started, the publishing industry would have imploded eons ago due to people lending books to their friends. Libraries should have destroyed the industry too! The proliferation of CD burners should have completely eliminated all retail outlets for music by now. Why didn't Napster cause the music industry to incur staggering losses?
Okay. We know the situation. Microsoft is a relative newbie in the consumer electronics ring. The chips are stacked against them.
They launched their product in Japan. They're a foreign company trying to make it in a traditionally isolationist country. The chips are stacked higher.
But they're Microsoft. They'll win in the end. Right? Maybe not.
Curiously, Microsoft spokespeople never seemed to take Japan very seriously. The overwhelming majority of console games come from Japan. They have the expertise and the experience in creating console games that are internationally appealing. If Microsoft fails to win the hearts and minds of Japanese gamers, they're going to lose the support of the Japanese developers. Without that support, Microsoft will have to essentially create a console game industry in America to be able to effectively compete. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it makes their success orders of magnitude more difficult to achieve.
Personally, I'm just sick and tired of the antics of the entertainment industry. They have convinced members of our government that we're all criminals and the obvious solution is to shackle all of our computers and electronic devices as a precautionary measure. We all must pay the price for the sins of a few.
The drivel being shoveled out by these corporations is by-and-large not worth my time. Gems in the rough occationally appear, but my disgust with the situation compels me to make some sacrifices. I've purchased my last CD produced by a major label. I've purchaced my last movie ticket and DVD for a major studio film. I'm not going to fuel the machine with my money.
I cannot, in good faith, support an industry that has such contempt for me.
I will continue to fight for the rebalancing of copyright laws.
Join me if you'd like, but I'm not going to scream "Boycott" at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen. There's plenty of entertainment to be had elsewhere, and I will quietly consume that instead.
I'm pleased to see that you support a company that has brought you so much joy over the years. Unfortunately I see your faith in Blizzard as being misguided.
Let's go over a couple of basic facts first.
(1) While Blizzard's games are of high quality, their battle.net service not. It is plagued by lag, cheaters, and other unsavory bits.
(2) Bnetd can be used to facilitate piracy, that was never its intended purpose. The developers even asked Blizzard if they could include the CD-Key checking into their software, but alas, Blizzard declined.
There is much more to this story than Blizzard wanting to prevent piracy of their product. If that were the case, Blizzard would have worked with the Bnetd people to create some sort of secure interface that would allow the program to validate cd-keys without giving up the precious secret algorithm that creates/validates them.
The questions you posted at the end of your message are very appropriate. Why didn't Blizzard work with Bnetd? The specter of piracy doesn't make sense. The world may never know the real reason...
The DVD drive in PS2 can read all discs that conform to the appropriate CD/DVD standards. The abstraction layer sitting on top of it causes the OS to ignore anything that doesn't contain the proper errors contained inside the table of contents. This code is contained in the native PS1/PS2 operating system, and the tradition is carried on in their port of Linux. The reason is to help dissuade casual copying of playstation games.
The hardware abstraction layer was put in place to preserve and slightly extend the PS2 copy protection scheme. It wouldn't exactly be a trivial matter to remove that protection, but it is possible. Sony knows this.
A few of the SCEA dev support people chat on the forums on playstation2-linux.com. Bret Mogilefsky, also known as mogul, posted to this thread, saying:
We are aiming this kit and this site at smart people... We are trusting them to be curious and capable enough to explore together and support each other in the way the Linux community have proven they can in the past, without demanding that we stop what we're doing to support them. We are trusting them not to take what we're offering and turn around and screw us with it. We're not running a school for game programmers, just trying to provide the means for you to learn on our hardware. If all you want to do is be warez h0zer with it, that sucks and we're unhappy about it; we have no way to stop you but hopefully you'll have the common courtesy not to rip us off using our own site.
Slashdot Mirror
*laugh*
I'm glad to see you've discovered the joys of "closed platforms". Game developers also love consoles for a similar reason. Testing and support are much easier for console gaming than PC.
But home console/arcade hardware isn't something new that XBox is doing. Sega actually pioneered the idea decades ago (and if you read my other post, Nintendo is currently doing it with the Gamecube as well.)
You're right... sort of. They shouldn't just port from the arcade to the home machine.
I think Nintendo has the right idea. Look at what they're doing with the new version of F-Zero. Home and arcade versions, both built from gamecube hardware. You can design and build your own racer at home. Save the info on a save card. Take the save card to the arcade and race your own car. Win races in the arcade and get new car parts to take home. Now there's an idea.
Nintendo learned a valuable lesson from Pokemon: Product integration.
Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea. It's fun for the player and it brings in additional revenue for the big N.
I also know they did this in Australia for cell phones, but the reasoning must have been a little different. It's important to know when you're calling a mobile, because who ever makes the call gets to pay for the call. That's to say if you call my cell phone, you pay the airtime. If I call you, I pay. If I call your mobile from mine, I pay both (w00t!).
Of course, they also extended their phone numbers from 7 to 8 digits "recently" too. It was funny when I was living down there a couple years ago, because in the syndey area they added a "9" to the beginning of everyone's phone number. Didn't seem very useful at the time, but that's forward planning for ya.
The webpage the Little PC's outlines some targeted markets:
If you're making a digital sign or a wall mounted kiosk in a mall, you could literally screw this little beast to the back of the unit (or inside) and no one would ever know it's there.
The size does make all the difference in the world when you want the computer out of sight/out of mind and space is a luxury you don't have.
It doesn't appear this device was ever meant for home use or a replacement for blade servers.
This prompted me to do a little more research into the man and found he had quite amazing insight into the mind of the government and the people. For example, I found another marvelous passage that seems to apply well to this very situation as it did many decades ago:
(Disclaimer: I don't work for Microsoft, I don't even particularly like Microsoft... but I'm about to "defend" Microsoft.)
Oh, for the love of...
I keep hearing this misinformation over and over again. Look:
You want to play 'untrusted' mp3's? Great. Use the current version of WinAmp. It's not Palladium enabled, and therefore it has no restrictions.
Need 'untrusted' mp3s? Get a copy of CDex. It's not Palladium enabled. No restrictions.
Microsoft has clearly stated Palladium will not preclude the use of legacy applications. Microsoft may be trecherous, but they aren't that stupid either. They won't flash cut from one platform to another completely incompatable platform. They also know that not everyone wants to run secured programs in a secured environment.
I'm not saying that Palladium or TCPA are dangerous proposals. They have the potential to be grossly abused. But I think you're drastically overestimating the industry's ability to act in concert to force universal 'trusted' applications to completely strip us of our rights to use a computer as a universal computing machine.
(Ugh. Due to a slashdot error, I lost my previous reply as I tried to preview it. Let me try this again.)
As I mentioned in a post a little further down the thread, I don't have any hard numbers either. The reason is that all readily available statistics are generated by those who are aligned with the crusade, and as such are grossly inflated. I would have to attempt my own, non-biased survey research, which is cost prohibitive.
I agree. Socialized healthcare in the US is a farce. I'd be unphased if the system collapsed tomorrow. I also agree that those who knowingly risk their health should kick in a little early on. That was exactly the original idea behind the recent taxes on cigarettes. If I thought the estimates of the effects were accurate, and if I thought the money would actually end up in the healthcare system, then I wouldn't have a problem with said taxes. Unfortunately, I don't believe either are true.
And yeah, I completely forgot about the losing weight campaign. Perhaps a twinkie-tax is in our future?
And do you believe that number is accurate? I would be willing to wager that that number is grossly inflated to include any sickness that fell upon a person who smokes. The survey went something likes this:
1) Is this person sick? ( )
2) Does this person smoke? ( )
They could have broken their arm, and it would have ended up going into that figure. Statistics are one of the most persuasive "arguments", and they happen to also be one of the most easily manipulated.
And no... I don't have any numbers, because the only ones being generated are by those who are part of the moral campaign against smoking. I would have to go out and do my own unbiased survey.
Finally, remember that I'm not saying that smoking is good for you. I'm just saying that it's not as horrible, destructive, and important as the world seems to think right now.
You're right. Greed is not the exclusive motivator.
You're wrong. The additional cost to health care systems from smoking related illness is negligable, at best.
What's really going on? People with money and power are legislating morality. For whatever reason, they believe that smoking is a moral crime. In order to get other people to join their cause, they use an arsenal of tactics, including: persuasion, diversion, and out right lies.
They need to demonize cigarettes, so they blame all sorts of very loosely related phenomeons upon smoking, like the rising cost of healthcare. The cost of health care has been skyrocketing in this country as the number of people who smoke go down. That looks like an inverse proportion, not a direct one.
Smoking causes illness. I won't argue that. Smoking is only one of millions of causes of illness, but it's the only one we've dedicated a crusade against recently. Coincidence?
I prefer my computing devices to have full-sized keyboards so that I can touch type on them. I prefer my cameras to take high quality pictures. This product wasn't designed for people like me. I still, however, think the picturebooks are spiffy.
On the other hand, Sony didn't really design the picturebook for people like me. This design originated in Japan with Japanese people in mind. In case you didn't know, the Japanese are absolutely crazy about little electronic devices, especially if they take pictures. The size and style are more important than the sheer power and functionality.
I'd estimate that nearly 20% (conservative estimate)of all new cell phones in Japan have high-res color screens and cameras built into them. I'm most curious to see how the picturebook fares against competition from these phones, which are even smaller and more stylish.
Don't despair. They haven't abandoned the loyal, traditional fans with FFXI. In case you missed the announcements, shortly after Square revealed the details of FFXI, they mentioned they would soon start designing FFXII which would take them back to the original single-player RPG format.
Square actually did issue a full remake of the original Final Fantasy 1 and 2, with 3 coming soon (maybe recently released??). The catch is that they are only available in Japanese, and only available for a handheld game system called the WonderSwan Color, made by Bandai and only sold in Asia. Many importers carry these little beauties, but playing imported RPGs is impossible unless you're proficient in Japanese.
I'm also refering to the Japanese FF numbering system... FF2 and FF3 were only released for the Japanese Famicom system (aka the NES). FF1-3 on the WonderSwan feature new SNES quality graphics and greatly improved battle systems.
I do believe that the previously mentioned PSOne release is a port of those remakes. Now that Square is on speaking terms with Nintendo again, perhaps we'll see them ported to GameBoy Advance as well. Start writing to Square.
(Before someone jumps in and "corrects" me, I should mention that FF4, known as FF2 in the US, has also been ported to the WonderSwan. It came out before the FF3 port. I assume this is because new graphics and whatnot were not required.)
To first answer the question about the amp. The iFP has really good amplification. I usually listen with the volume at about 1/2. I would rarely venture past 3/4 volume. Can't really speak for the other offerings of today.
You know, I have a pair of those Sony, open-air, over-the-ear type head phones. I like them quite a bit. They're not as good as my big, closed, studio style head phones. Since I got a decent pair of earbuds with the player, that's about all I use. Why?? I bought this unit for one big reason: portability. I want to be able to wrap the earbuds around the outside and shove it in my pocket when I'm not using it. I performed a listening test with the earbuds versus my Sony's. The earbuds had better treble, the Sony's had better bass. Pretty even trade off, so the portability factor became the deciding one.
Minutes may be aweful for you, but it's just not that bad for me. Maybe I'm getting patient in my years. I might be more time sensitive if I had ready-made play lists from which to choose. Instead I create a new list every few days based on my mood/tastes that day. Choosing the songs to go with me takes me a few minutes. So it works for me.
Some sort of removable media would be nice for this unit. Such things would have added size and price to it. Both were variables I was trying to keep low.
I like your ideas about a hard drive player. Unfortunately I still wouldn't buy one. I was an accident prone child. While I don't break as many bones or need stitches as often, I still have bouts where my manual dexterity just vanishes. I will inevitably drop anything I carry on a daily basis. I delight in the idea of it having no moving parts, period.
BTW, do you have an mp3 player now? Which one? What's really stopping you?
That's true. It doesn't have expansion, but for the price and size, it's acceptable. It doesn't have USB 2.0 or Firewire, but the USB 1.1 is fast enough for the memory size. It only takes a few minutes to transfer 128MB.
Let's not forget about the iRiver iFP-180T. It's a fixed flash-based player with 128MB of RAM. Although they haven't officially announced it in the US, Best Buy apparently has the exclusive distribution rights and is already shelving them. Rumor has it they will be advertised in their flyers for tomorrow's newspapers. I picked on up a couple days ago for the reasonable price of $140. For those on a budget, they also have a 64MB model for $100 and a 32MB for ... $70 (I think).
It's a tiny little thing, slightly larger than a bic lighter. Unfortunately, this means no storage upgrades. But it does have a very nice display, good battery life, ships with decent earbud headphones (Sennheiser mx300) and it supports Japanese fonts (something important to me...)
iRiver does offer upgradeable firmware. Plenty of people have been demanding ogg support and they claim they want to support it. Their engineers are currently evaluating the ability to add it. Interesting side note, the CEO of Xiph, Emmett Plant, posted to the iRiver user boards and offered support from their engineers to get it done.
But I digress. Despite a few minor short comings, I think this is a great little digital music player.
Don't like the new secure software that people are pushing? Don't use it. Yeah, you might not get some new features, but someone will find a way around it... there's always a way around it.
Two years of college level Japanese aren't quite enough to make sense of the legalese that goes, but it appears this offer is only good for residents of Japan. It says something along the lines of "We are unable to respond to overseas inquiries."
Can anyone verify this?
It's very possible to get buffer underruns with a SCSI burner. I'm still using my Plextor 8x SCSI burner, and I've had my share of buffer under runs. Normally this won't happen, but if you get the circumstances right. The bus mastering employed by a decent SCSI card keeps the data flowing in a favorable way most of the time.
However, I would wager this point is completely moot if you buy a new CD burner, as virtually all of them come with some form of underrun protection circuitry.
You make these claims, but where's your proof?
Personally, I disagree with you. The article points out that sales of the book that was provided for free online rose after the fact. The book was available for free, but people bought it anyway. Even though I don't have facts to back this up, I fail to see why this trend wouldn't carry over with more well established names in either the music or the publishing industry.
You make the same fatal assumption that people like Hilary Rosen make. People who aquire the product for free would have bought the product, if only it hadn't been freely available. If that were true, as was pointed out when the Free Library was started, the publishing industry would have imploded eons ago due to people lending books to their friends. Libraries should have destroyed the industry too! The proliferation of CD burners should have completely eliminated all retail outlets for music by now. Why didn't Napster cause the music industry to incur staggering losses?
Okay. We know the situation. Microsoft is a relative newbie in the consumer electronics ring. The chips are stacked against them.
They launched their product in Japan. They're a foreign company trying to make it in a traditionally isolationist country. The chips are stacked higher.
But they're Microsoft. They'll win in the end. Right? Maybe not.
Curiously, Microsoft spokespeople never seemed to take Japan very seriously. The overwhelming majority of console games come from Japan. They have the expertise and the experience in creating console games that are internationally appealing. If Microsoft fails to win the hearts and minds of Japanese gamers, they're going to lose the support of the Japanese developers. Without that support, Microsoft will have to essentially create a console game industry in America to be able to effectively compete. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it makes their success orders of magnitude more difficult to achieve.
Personally, I'm just sick and tired of the antics of the entertainment industry. They have convinced members of our government that we're all criminals and the obvious solution is to shackle all of our computers and electronic devices as a precautionary measure. We all must pay the price for the sins of a few.
The drivel being shoveled out by these corporations is by-and-large not worth my time. Gems in the rough occationally appear, but my disgust with the situation compels me to make some sacrifices. I've purchased my last CD produced by a major label. I've purchaced my last movie ticket and DVD for a major studio film. I'm not going to fuel the machine with my money.
I cannot, in good faith, support an industry that has such contempt for me.
I will continue to fight for the rebalancing of copyright laws.
Join me if you'd like, but I'm not going to scream "Boycott" at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen. There's plenty of entertainment to be had elsewhere, and I will quietly consume that instead.
The PA strip was good. What made me laugh even more is the fact that there is a link to it in the EFF press release. Did anyone else notice this?
Kudos to the EFF. That's the first time I've ever seen humor even referenced in a serious press release.
I'm pleased to see that you support a company that has brought you so much joy over the years. Unfortunately I see your faith in Blizzard as being misguided.
Let's go over a couple of basic facts first.
(1) While Blizzard's games are of high quality, their battle.net service not. It is plagued by lag, cheaters, and other unsavory bits.
(2) Bnetd can be used to facilitate piracy, that was never its intended purpose. The developers even asked Blizzard if they could include the CD-Key checking into their software, but alas, Blizzard declined.
There is much more to this story than Blizzard wanting to prevent piracy of their product. If that were the case, Blizzard would have worked with the Bnetd people to create some sort of secure interface that would allow the program to validate cd-keys without giving up the precious secret algorithm that creates/validates them.
The questions you posted at the end of your message are very appropriate. Why didn't Blizzard work with Bnetd? The specter of piracy doesn't make sense. The world may never know the real reason...
The hardware abstraction layer was put in place to preserve and slightly extend the PS2 copy protection scheme. It wouldn't exactly be a trivial matter to remove that protection, but it is possible. Sony knows this.
A few of the SCEA dev support people chat on the forums on playstation2-linux.com. Bret Mogilefsky, also known as mogul, posted to this thread, saying: