Yes there is, GmailUI. I'm NOT suggesting GMail. The name of this Thunderbird extension is GMailUI because it adds several GMail features to Thunderbird, including making the y key move the current email to an archive folder.
Pretending that it's even possible to make it 100% secure, there are still major problems. What if you want to play from another computer (say you play for half an hour at lunch at work)? You have to somehow get a copy of your character on to all the computers you might want to play from. What about game rooms? Where do you store your character if you never play on the same machine twice in a row? Save it to a floppy or a CD-RW, and hope it doesn't get demagnetized or lost?
What if your hard drive crashes? Or you have to reinstall Windows and it formats your drive? (I know, don't be silly, Windows is perfect!)
It will never work. The first time any of those things happen to make someone lose their character, they will quit the game. Of course, they will first cost you at least as much money as they've paid you in support calls trying to get their character back. Why, you'd have to keep server side backups of every character to make sure they always existed somewhere. But that's crazy talk!
I'm not sure if you looked at the route map or just read the list of routes. The list doesn't really describe it as well as the map. Bakersfield and Fresno are both on the route from LA to SF. It looks like it's about the same route as highway 99 from LA to Merced, then branches off to SF and Sacramento. It could be slightly more direct between LA and SF by following I5's route, but then it would miss both Bakersfield and Fresno. This way the "big six" are all covered, and it is, after all, high speed rail, so it should still be pretty fast:-)
Seems like the ideal solution, if you have an actual physical switch for the mod chip, would be to mount it such that it physically blocks the ethernet port when it's turned on.
First off, it seems like the last US manufacture stopped production about 3 years ago and there was a story here on/. about it. (I'll let someone else dig up the link).
That's WMS, who made games under both the Williams and Bally labels, you're thinking of. But they weren't the last manufacturer in the U.S., Stern is still putting 10,000 new machines out each year, 2/3 of which are sold overseas.
I learned all of that by actually reading the linked article.
I played the Star Trek: TNG machine once. I got cheated by it, it sent multiple balls into play (no manual plunger, it's automatic), then told me my game was over while there were still about 3 balls going. So I can certainly believe that that machine needs a lot of maintenance.
My TiVo came with an emitter that attaches right to the top of the cable box with some sticky stuff and sits less than an inch away from the box's IR receiver. I've never had a problem getting it to work, and have used it on two different cable systems.
Mine is a Sony, but I've seen a Philips model with the exact same kind of emitter. Did you get another brand, or get one used? I think you got ripped off, or else they changed it in the year and a half since I bought mine (or after you got yours, depending).
The image doesn't appear in an MP3 file of the song; the compression algorithm destroys the image.
Not having a CD or an MP3 of the song, I don't know whether that's true or not, but it's hardly slashdot's fault if it's wrong.
Re:I learned network programming from Netrek
on
Netrek
·
· Score: 2
Netrek had a wrapper around all the X11 calls already, all the OS specific calls (other than networking) were in x11window.c, you added amigawindow.c with the same functions. I made a lot of changes to it in the paradise port, but it was still largely yours. The best thing I did was put scaled windows in. The game was designed for 1024x768, but the best resolution I could squeeze out of my Amiga was some odd number like 752x536@50Hz. I set it up so I could make the galactic window small enough to fit half the galaxy and still have a full main sized window, then rotated the galaxy to show the two races in play. Plus I made all the window borders 1 pixel instead of the Amiga default. All that was much better than scrolling the virtual screen around all the time. I also put some 16 color bitmaps in, including little rotating planets. It was fun working on that stuff!
I remember I sent my code to you once, and you were aghast that I'd reformatted it all to match Paradise's indentation style. I think that was about the extent of our communications.:-) I actually got the code by way of Eric Mehlhaff, who'd done the DNet networking version, which is what I first used.
I loved the speech synth. When I finally stopped using Amigas regularly, I tried hacking an rsynth version of it into a Linux client, but I never got it to work very well. I didn't put a lot of effort into either.
The metaserver has moved a couple of times since the last version of the Amiga client, that's for sure. But there's still one running, it's metaserver.netrek.org now, oddly enough.
Sorry I misspelled your name, and thanks for the reply!
I learned network programming from Netrek
on
Netrek
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Netrek taught me all of the basics, and some not-so-basics, of network game programming:
Sockets TCP UDP Client-server network models Dealing with packet loss
and more.
I can honestly say, and have said before, that I owe my career to Netrek more than anything else. I work professionally as a game programmer, primarily writing network code. Without Netrek, I don't know what I would have wound up doing, but probably not that.
I wrote a large chunk of code for the Amiga client eons ago. I wasn't the original author of that port (that would be Randall Jesup, who worked for Commodore) but I did spend far too much time in which I probably should have been studying (though in retrospect, it was probably the right thing to have been doing with my time after all!), poking and prodding at that thing until I knew basically all there was to know about it. I eventually wound up porting the Paradise version of the client to the Amiga, and contributing code back to the main Paradise branch (Please note however: Paradise was for twinks. I just ported it because I wanted to see it for myself.:-) as well as a little bit back to the Vanilla server (if you look for CLOAKER_MAXWARP, that's my invention. It's why you don't ever see incorrectly cloaked or uncloaked ships on modern netrek clients/servers. The FEATURE_PACKETS system that let us do that without breaking older clients was also my idea, but to give proper credit, Tedd Hadley helped write it too.)
Maybe twice a year I'll still get on a netrek kick for a couple of days. It's still just about the best internet team game out there, however graphically primitive it might look compared to modern games. It is not primitive at all under the surface, and was way ahead of its time in many ways.
The linked story is actually about a group having purchased 4 of them, presumably Flightship's first sale, but a sale nonetheless. Possibly still vapor since they haven't been delivered, but it sounds like they've already made the sale and received the money to build them.
The whole paragraph that contains the phrase "Forward-looking statements" is a boilerplate disclaimer. It is there to warn idiots that not everything in the release is a verified fact, so that if said idiots invest their money in the company by purchasing shares, they can't then sue when they lose their money because they thought something in the press release was a guarantee of future profits. You will find the phrase "Forward-looking statements" and a very similar paragrah at the bottom of practically any press release from a publically traded company such as Activision. Do a google search and you'll see what I mean:
"Results 1 - 10 of about 756,000"
See what I mean?
If they wrote "projections" instead of "Forward-looking statements", some sleazy lawyer would presumably be able to twist around to his advantage when the price of the stock dropped later.
The Replay TV 4000 series of PVRs does this too. There have been stories about it on Slashdot before, they shouldn't be hard to locate.
I was under the impression, though this could be incorrect, that they aren't looking a special signal exactly, but rather just a silent, all black, frame at the start and end of the commercial breaks. If there really was a special signal, the networks would just stop broadcasting it and these things would all break. I have a friend who has one of those VCRs (not sure if it's a Hitachi or not) and says it works quite well, so obviously it hasn't been broken by the networks yet. Although even with the black frame thing, it still seems like they could break it pretty easily. There really isn't any reason I can think of that they have to broadcast anything that would give commercials away this way, I'm thinking they do for mostly historical reasons, like the hardware all their local affiliates and cable companies use isn't capable of completely removing the black frame or the special signal or whatever it is before sending it out over the air. Maybe it's even just an aesthetic thing, but either way it will probably change eventually if this kind of recorder becomes popular.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was thinking about those glasses that project virtual video screens in front of you, and wondering how long it will be before someone comes up with a system that includes a pair of those, a video camera, image recognition software, and an algorithm for blocking out ads in the real world. A GPS receiver and a user accumulated database of ad locations could simplify the image recognition to the point where you could build one today. Not without making you look like a total dork wearing them, I suppose, but it could probably be done.
You probably wouldn't want to wear the early versions while driving either; Just imagine having yours set to recognize some supermarket's ads, and then a delivery truck going by. Ouch.
I have no doubt that billboard companies will sue the makers of such a system, because by looking in the direction of a billboard you have entered a contract to view the ad.
Pfft, it doesn't matter what phrases happen to stick in managers' heads. Let's say my manager happened to overhear me saying "As with OOP itself, Generic Programming is a Really Good Idea."
Then later on, when he asks me what I'm doing and I don't really feel like explaining it, I can just say, "I'm doing some Generic Programming, it should be even better than the OOP version!" and he will leave me alone, because I've already taught him that Generic Programming is a Really Good Idea.
Then later you can mention that, for example, revectoring structural pathways is important for optimal performance, because you never know when you'll need the next excuse to work on important stuff in peace and quiet.
Strategy guides are the biggest ripoff in gaming! The basic premise of a strategy guide is that "Without this guide, you won't be able to fully enjoy this game." If you believe that, doesn't that mean the game can be described by one or more of:
Incomplete
Confusing
Badly designed
Overly difficult
I have said before that well designed games don't need manuals, and yet here's a whole subindustry devoted to selling you an additional manual! I suggest to all of you that if you play a game and have so much trouble figuring it out to the point where you think a "strategy guide" would be useful, you write to the company that made the game and tell them what's wrong with it. Because if you need a strategy guide, there is something wrong with the game. Most game developers love to hear suggestions on what they could have done better, and if enough people tell them, their next game will be better.
Furthermore, if you get stuck anywhere in any game, it's almost certain that someone will have posted a walkthrough, or even just a usenet post (which Deja/Google will do a wonderful job of finding for you) with the solution. Meaning you spent $10 up front for a guide you might or might not need (if you're buying it in case you get stuck) when you could have found the information for free from your fellow gamers.
Oftentimes strategy guides aren't even that good. I've worked on and seen enough games in development to know that some of the authors don't even spend much time at all with the game, and essentially just push rewritten versions of the manual or design document out the door as quickly as possible. To be fair, that isn't true for all of them, some guide book authors really do try to provide a valuable service. The main point of this rant is that it's only even a potentially valuable service as long as game companies are writing bad games. And if the games are bad, you shouldn't buy them.
I would love to hear a counter example from someone who buys strategy guides and finds they improve the experience (of an otherwise good game) somehow. Anyone out there?
Here it is past midnight on the west coast, and I haven't watched it yet, because I have it on Tivo. So you managed to spoil what might be the last episode of the X-files I ever watch for me too.
You're right it wasn't a time zone thing, you should never post plot spoilers on the front page, no matter how long ago the show aired. In the body is fine, with a spoiler warning on the front page. Everyone knows that, or so we all thought.
I know the point's been made already, but I don't think enough people can repeat it.
Samsung never paid for advertising space in the movie, therefore they have no business worrying about it.
And, in fact, Samsung isn't worrying about it. The billboard company is the one bringing the suit.
I hope I know what would happen if Samsung tried to sue Sony over not putting Samsung ads in a movie. But who knows, the world's getting crazier all the time.
If the suit goes forward, a judge will likely decide whether makers of a movie about a fictional character have the right to place him in fictional surroundings as well.
I sure hope so. I'm not sure Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King: Sauron takes Manhattan. would have the same impact.
I think the opposite lawsuit would stand just as good a chance of winning. If they didn't change the billboards, and Samsung or NBC decided they didn't want to be associated with a guy in spider suit (or, let's say this wasn't something innocuous like Spiderman, but E.G. a porn movie) then they could just as easily sue over having their ads in the movie. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Of course, if they hadn't changed the ads but simply removed the billboards, this might never have come up. But who could imagine a movie without advertising? It's ludicrous!
So how can Best Buy be the middleman here? Simple: by providing the servers and network endpoints for the storage of that music (and the credit card verification). It's not like the label's website is going to have the upstream capacity it'll need to deal with millions of users each downloading relatively large (multi-megabyte) files, right?
Yes, of course someone can make money providing rackspace and bandwidth. But as you've already pointed out, Best Buy isn't in that business. Anyone with the capital and the will to do so can try to take advantage of new opportunities, but Best Buy has a business model that has worked for them for many years, and are more likely to fight changes to that model than change the business they're in entirely.
The "problem" of artists bypassing the labels entirely and putting their music up on their own websites is entirely different, and is nothing that CD copy protection addresses in any way.
That's also true. I agree that it has nothing to do with the subject of copy prevention. But it does have something to do with protecting business models.
Don't you mean "loose"? This is Slashdot, after all.:-)
Here's the thing. We'd all like to be able to buy music on-line. The RIAA probably even wants to sell us music on-line (There are at least hypothetical situations in which the RIAA would embrace online sales of music. Their current hypotheticals may be technologically, legally, and/or economically unsound, but they exist). But how is that ever going to help Best-Buy? Their entire business, as far as music sales go, is based on getting physical copies of CDs from a manufacturer to you.
Online downloads, legal and pirated alike, ruin that business model, so Best Buy naturally feels that it's in their best interests to oppose anything that lets you acquire music on a non-physical medium.
It seems unlikely that there's room for a middleman like Best Buy in online distribution of music. If you were able to purchase and download music direcly from an artist's or label's website, why would you want to pay Best Buy extra money on top of that? Best Buy probably feels they have a lot more to lose than the record companies do.
Slashdot Mirror
It is by far my biggest regret in life. I've been so depressed about it I've only managed to post one other time since 2003.
Yes there is, GmailUI. I'm NOT suggesting GMail. The name of this Thunderbird extension is GMailUI because it adds several GMail features to Thunderbird, including making the y key move the current email to an archive folder.
Pretending that it's even possible to make it 100% secure, there are still major problems. What if you want to play from another computer (say you play for half an hour at lunch at work)? You have to somehow get a copy of your character on to all the computers you might want to play from. What about game rooms? Where do you store your character if you never play on the same machine twice in a row? Save it to a floppy or a CD-RW, and hope it doesn't get demagnetized or lost?
What if your hard drive crashes? Or you have to reinstall Windows and it formats your drive? (I know, don't be silly, Windows is perfect!)
It will never work. The first time any of those things happen to make someone lose their character, they will quit the game. Of course, they will first cost you at least as much money as they've paid you in support calls trying to get their character back. Why, you'd have to keep server side backups of every character to make sure they always existed somewhere. But that's crazy talk!
I remember seeing them then too... via Slashdot! You haven't beaten the Slashdot curve, it's merely curved into a complete circle.
I hate when nouns are turned into verbs.
Don't you mean you hate when nouns are verbed?
Don't you mean the "big four"?
:-)
Los Angeles
Bay Area
Sacramento
San Diego
I'm not sure if you looked at the route map or just read the list of routes. The list doesn't really describe it as well as the map. Bakersfield and Fresno are both on the route from LA to SF. It looks like it's about the same route as highway 99 from LA to Merced, then branches off to SF and Sacramento. It could be slightly more direct between LA and SF by following I5's route, but then it would miss both Bakersfield and Fresno. This way the "big six" are all covered, and it is, after all, high speed rail, so it should still be pretty fast
Seems like the ideal solution, if you have an actual physical switch for the mod chip, would be to mount it such that it physically blocks the ethernet port when it's turned on.
First off, it seems like the last US manufacture stopped production about 3 years ago and there was a story here on /. about it. (I'll let someone else dig up the link).
That's WMS, who made games under both the Williams and Bally labels, you're thinking of. But they weren't the last manufacturer in the U.S., Stern is still putting 10,000 new machines out each year, 2/3 of which are sold overseas.
I learned all of that by actually reading the linked article.
I played the Star Trek: TNG machine once. I got cheated by it, it sent multiple balls into play (no manual plunger, it's automatic), then told me my game was over while there were still about 3 balls going. So I can certainly believe that that machine needs a lot of maintenance.
My TiVo came with an emitter that attaches right to the top of the cable box with some sticky stuff and sits less than an inch away from the box's IR receiver. I've never had a problem getting it to work, and have used it on two different cable systems.
Mine is a Sony, but I've seen a Philips model with the exact same kind of emitter. Did you get another brand, or get one used? I think you got ripped off, or else they changed it in the year and a half since I bought mine (or after you got yours, depending).
According to the Wired story:
The image doesn't appear in an MP3 file of the song; the compression algorithm destroys the image.
Not having a CD or an MP3 of the song, I don't know whether that's true or not, but it's hardly slashdot's fault if it's wrong.
Netrek had a wrapper around all the X11 calls already, all the OS specific calls (other than networking) were in x11window.c, you added amigawindow.c with the same functions. I made a lot of changes to it in the paradise port, but it was still largely yours. The best thing I did was put scaled windows in. The game was designed for 1024x768, but the best resolution I could squeeze out of my Amiga was some odd number like 752x536@50Hz. I set it up so I could make the galactic window small enough to fit half the galaxy and still have a full main sized window, then rotated the galaxy to show the two races in play. Plus I made all the window borders 1 pixel instead of the Amiga default. All that was much better than scrolling the virtual screen around all the time. I also put some 16 color bitmaps in, including little rotating planets. It was fun working on that stuff!
:-) I actually got the code by way of Eric Mehlhaff, who'd done the DNet networking version, which is what I first used.
I remember I sent my code to you once, and you were aghast that I'd reformatted it all to match Paradise's indentation style. I think that was about the extent of our communications.
I loved the speech synth. When I finally stopped using Amigas regularly, I tried hacking an rsynth version of it into a Linux client, but I never got it to work very well. I didn't put a lot of effort into either.
The metaserver has moved a couple of times since the last version of the Amiga client, that's for sure. But there's still one running, it's metaserver.netrek.org now, oddly enough.
Sorry I misspelled your name, and thanks for the reply!
Netrek taught me all of the basics, and some not-so-basics, of network game programming:
:-) as well as a little bit back to the Vanilla server (if you look for CLOAKER_MAXWARP, that's my invention. It's why you don't ever see incorrectly cloaked or uncloaked ships on modern netrek clients/servers. The FEATURE_PACKETS system that let us do that without breaking older clients was also my idea, but to give proper credit, Tedd Hadley helped write it too.)
Sockets
TCP
UDP
Client-server network models
Dealing with packet loss
and more.
I can honestly say, and have said before, that I owe my career to Netrek more than anything else. I work professionally as a game programmer, primarily writing network code. Without Netrek, I don't know what I would have wound up doing, but probably not that.
I wrote a large chunk of code for the Amiga client eons ago. I wasn't the original author of that port (that would be Randall Jesup, who worked for Commodore) but I did spend far too much time in which I probably should have been studying (though in retrospect, it was probably the right thing to have been doing with my time after all!), poking and prodding at that thing until I knew basically all there was to know about it. I eventually wound up porting the Paradise version of the client to the Amiga, and contributing code back to the main Paradise branch (Please note however: Paradise was for twinks. I just ported it because I wanted to see it for myself.
Maybe twice a year I'll still get on a netrek kick for a couple of days. It's still just about the best internet team game out there, however graphically primitive it might look compared to modern games. It is not primitive at all under the surface, and was way ahead of its time in many ways.
-Ogre
The linked story is actually about a group having purchased 4 of them, presumably Flightship's first sale, but a sale nonetheless. Possibly still vapor since they haven't been delivered, but it sounds like they've already made the sale and received the money to build them.
The whole paragraph that contains the phrase "Forward-looking statements" is a boilerplate disclaimer. It is there to warn idiots that not everything in the release is a verified fact, so that if said idiots invest their money in the company by purchasing shares, they can't then sue when they lose their money because they thought something in the press release was a guarantee of future profits. You will find the phrase "Forward-looking statements" and a very similar paragrah at the bottom of practically any press release from a publically traded company such as Activision. Do a google search and you'll see what I mean:
"Results 1 - 10 of about 756,000"
See what I mean?
If they wrote "projections" instead of "Forward-looking statements", some sleazy lawyer would presumably be able to twist around to his advantage when the price of the stock dropped later.
The Replay TV 4000 series of PVRs does this too. There have been stories about it on Slashdot before, they shouldn't be hard to locate.
I was under the impression, though this could be incorrect, that they aren't looking a special signal exactly, but rather just a silent, all black, frame at the start and end of the commercial breaks. If there really was a special signal, the networks would just stop broadcasting it and these things would all break. I have a friend who has one of those VCRs (not sure if it's a Hitachi or not) and says it works quite well, so obviously it hasn't been broken by the networks yet. Although even with the black frame thing, it still seems like they could break it pretty easily. There really isn't any reason I can think of that they have to broadcast anything that would give commercials away this way, I'm thinking they do for mostly historical reasons, like the hardware all their local affiliates and cable companies use isn't capable of completely removing the black frame or the special signal or whatever it is before sending it out over the air. Maybe it's even just an aesthetic thing, but either way it will probably change eventually if this kind of recorder becomes popular.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was thinking about those glasses that project virtual video screens in front of you, and wondering how long it will be before someone comes up with a system that includes a pair of those, a video camera, image recognition software, and an algorithm for blocking out ads in the real world. A GPS receiver and a user accumulated database of ad locations could simplify the image recognition to the point where you could build one today. Not without making you look like a total dork wearing them, I suppose, but it could probably be done.
You probably wouldn't want to wear the early versions while driving either; Just imagine having yours set to recognize some supermarket's ads, and then a delivery truck going by. Ouch.
I have no doubt that billboard companies will sue the makers of such a system, because by looking in the direction of a billboard you have entered a contract to view the ad.
Pfft, it doesn't matter what phrases happen to stick in managers' heads. Let's say my manager happened to overhear me saying "As with OOP itself, Generic Programming is a Really Good Idea."
Then later on, when he asks me what I'm doing and I don't really feel like explaining it, I can just say, "I'm doing some Generic Programming, it should be even better than the OOP version!" and he will leave me alone, because I've already taught him that Generic Programming is a Really Good Idea.
Then later you can mention that, for example, revectoring structural pathways is important for optimal performance, because you never know when you'll need the next excuse to work on important stuff in peace and quiet.
Here's my machine specs: 80GB hard drive, 768MB RAM, Pentium 2@2Ghz, Asus board, SBLive, Geforce 3 - nice high end machine, isn't it?
I guess, but you must have some serious cooling hardware to be running a Pentium 2 at that speed! I thought my Athlon ran hot, but wow!
Incomplete
Confusing
Badly designed
Overly difficult
I have said before that well designed games don't need manuals, and yet here's a whole subindustry devoted to selling you an additional manual! I suggest to all of you that if you play a game and have so much trouble figuring it out to the point where you think a "strategy guide" would be useful, you write to the company that made the game and tell them what's wrong with it. Because if you need a strategy guide, there is something wrong with the game. Most game developers love to hear suggestions on what they could have done better, and if enough people tell them, their next game will be better.
Furthermore, if you get stuck anywhere in any game, it's almost certain that someone will have posted a walkthrough, or even just a usenet post (which Deja/Google will do a wonderful job of finding for you) with the solution. Meaning you spent $10 up front for a guide you might or might not need (if you're buying it in case you get stuck) when you could have found the information for free from your fellow gamers.
Oftentimes strategy guides aren't even that good. I've worked on and seen enough games in development to know that some of the authors don't even spend much time at all with the game, and essentially just push rewritten versions of the manual or design document out the door as quickly as possible. To be fair, that isn't true for all of them, some guide book authors really do try to provide a valuable service. The main point of this rant is that it's only even a potentially valuable service as long as game companies are writing bad games. And if the games are bad, you shouldn't buy them.
I would love to hear a counter example from someone who buys strategy guides and finds they improve the experience (of an otherwise good game) somehow. Anyone out there?
No real point?
Here it is past midnight on the west coast, and I haven't watched it yet, because I have it on Tivo. So you managed to spoil what might be the last episode of the X-files I ever watch for me too.
You're right it wasn't a time zone thing, you should never post plot spoilers on the front page, no matter how long ago the show aired. In the body is fine, with a spoiler warning on the front page. Everyone knows that, or so we all thought.
I know the point's been made already, but I don't think enough people can repeat it.
Samsung never paid for advertising space in the movie, therefore they have no business worrying about it.
And, in fact, Samsung isn't worrying about it. The billboard company is the one bringing the suit.
I hope I know what would happen if Samsung tried to sue Sony over not putting Samsung ads in a movie. But who knows, the world's getting crazier all the time.
If the suit goes forward, a judge will likely decide whether makers of a movie about a fictional character have the right to place him in fictional surroundings as well.
I sure hope so. I'm not sure Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King: Sauron takes Manhattan. would have the same impact.
I think the opposite lawsuit would stand just as good a chance of winning. If they didn't change the billboards, and Samsung or NBC decided they didn't want to be associated with a guy in spider suit (or, let's say this wasn't something innocuous like Spiderman, but E.G. a porn movie) then they could just as easily sue over having their ads in the movie. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Of course, if they hadn't changed the ads but simply removed the billboards, this might never have come up. But who could imagine a movie without advertising? It's ludicrous!
Yes, of course someone can make money providing rackspace and bandwidth. But as you've already pointed out, Best Buy isn't in that business. Anyone with the capital and the will to do so can try to take advantage of new opportunities, but Best Buy has a business model that has worked for them for many years, and are more likely to fight changes to that model than change the business they're in entirely.
That's also true. I agree that it has nothing to do with the subject of copy prevention. But it does have something to do with protecting business models.
This made me laugh out loud, thanks!
Here's the thing. We'd all like to be able to buy music on-line. The RIAA probably even wants to sell us music on-line (There are at least hypothetical situations in which the RIAA would embrace online sales of music. Their current hypotheticals may be technologically, legally, and/or economically unsound, but they exist). But how is that ever going to help Best-Buy? Their entire business, as far as music sales go, is based on getting physical copies of CDs from a manufacturer to you.
Online downloads, legal and pirated alike, ruin that business model, so Best Buy naturally feels that it's in their best interests to oppose anything that lets you acquire music on a non-physical medium.
It seems unlikely that there's room for a middleman like Best Buy in online distribution of music. If you were able to purchase and download music direcly from an artist's or label's website, why would you want to pay Best Buy extra money on top of that? Best Buy probably feels they have a lot more to lose than the record companies do.
Sega isn't out of business. They transformed themselves into a software company, and are one of the top publishers for PS2, GameCube, and Xbox.
Killing the Dreamcast early might have been the smartest thing Sega ever did. Now they win no matter which platform succeeds.