State run farms in Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela left/leave people starving
I think you need to go back to FUD school. People in Cuba aren't exactly starving, and Chavez was elected president (twice, in fact) in a democratic election. There was an attempted coup d'etat against Chavez - which was prevented by the people of Venezuela! Meanwhile, lots of people in the USA still don't have health care. But at least they aren't working in "state run farms," right? God damned communists (by which I mean people who don't agree with my political view).
I usually try not to hate on Microsoft too much. They're a huge company with both good and bad sides. This, however, is unfortunately typical Microsoft behaviour: Help your smaller enemies so they can go after your larger enemies. It's similar to their patent strategy: Lose a patent dispute so the patent holder can go after other companies who can't just give away money like Microsoft can.
This sets a really bad example. I don't like paying for music I won't listen to. I don't like giving money to the major labels. I won't ever buy a Zune.
I never had any trouble with the split D-Pad. I vastly prefer it to the 360's weird dpad- which is absolutely abysmal
I think the canonical comparison would be to one of Nintendo's D-Pads. Not the one on the Cube controller, that one sucks. But compare the PS2's (or PSP's) D-Pad to the DS or N64's or SNES's D-Pad, and you'll notice the difference.
I also don't think that the analog stick is in what I would call a secondary position.
Except it very much is. For most games, you have the left thumb on the analog stick and the right thumb on the buttons, so you're holding the controller asymetrically. Which is pretty weird.
The analog sticks were an afterthought introduced after designing the controller (as an answer to Nintendo's N64 controller). I have no idea why Sony never fixed that.
DualShock 2 is arguably one of the best game controllers
No, it's not. It is, however, probably the one you're most used to. Maybe it's even the first controller you've ever used. but that doesn't mean that it's a good controller. The shape is extremely awkward and non-ergonomic. You can't really hold the damn thing. The dual analog sticks are useful, but they're positioned all wrong. There are about, hm... well, there's Katamari Damacy which makes use of the dual sticks' position, but for every other game, you have to hold the controller asymetrically in order to use the left analog stick while keeping the right thumb on the buttons.
And don't get me started on the stupid symbols. I still sometimes hit the wrong button if the game tells me to "hit the square button" because I tend to forget the button position during a particularly engaging game.
If people like this controller, it's not because the controller is particularly good (or particularly bad, for that matter - there are way worse controllers). If people like it, it's because they're used to it.
To say that "Sony hates 2D" without applying this to Microsoft and Nintendo is just unfair since all game machines from the PS1 onwards mainly have 3D games because the market preferred those type of games.
You're totally missing the point. Sony discourages 2D games and stops some 2D games from being published outside of Japan by not approving them. Nintendo, on the other hand, creates 2D games for its own 3D consoles (look at GC games like Four Swords, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario (which is kind of a mix of 2D and 3D) or Wario Ware).
You hardly ever see new 2D games because Sony doesn't want them on its consoles, not because developers don't want to make them or gamers don't want to buy them.
but the fact is that the kind of fun it will be capable of producing is going to be limited by it's graphics engine
No, it's going to be limited by the controller. The Wii's controller is the most fun.
Or maybe not.
My statement is only slightly less absurd than yours. "Fun" is most certainly not going to be limited by graphics. Is "Super Mario Bros" less fun than "Charlie's Angels" simply because its graphics are very modest compared to the more recent 3D game?
The ability to create a Wii-like experience on the PS3 is only limited by the imaginations of the game designing community.
Again, this statement is somewhat strange. Add-on controllers have never been successfull. In the case you mention, the guitar controller costs a fortune and works with only very few games. How many games are there for EyeToy? The Donkey Konga Bongos? The PowerGlove?
Add-on controllers can never compete with an innovative main controller.
The only point that is relevant to the discussion is fact that the Wii brings very little to the table that we couldn't have already gotten from Nintendo by just adding a new controller to the Game Cube and writing games for it.
To what discussion is this relevant?
Is the Wii worthwhile from a gamer's perspective? Sure.
Is it worthwhile from a hardware geek's perspective? Probably not.
Does Nintendo sell to hardware geeks or to gamers? You figure that one out:-)
Why buy a separate DVD player when my console can do it already?
My DVD player is code-free, plays DIVX movies and has an HDMI out.
So I couldn't possibly care less about whether the PS2 plays DVDs or not - its DVD features are useless to me. They were nice when DVD players cost a fortune. Nowadays, you can buy a DVD player that does more than the PS2 DVD feature for 30 bucks.
There is no 'mod proof'. If modrs wanted to mod then it would happen.
You are wrong. This comment right here is mod-proof. It can't be modded. Simply can not be done. Try to mod it up, I dare you! In fact, I double-dare you!
The brain is hardware, but the mind is software. Software exists in the same space as natural numbers, which are timeless, eternal, and indestructible.
Oh my god! And all this time I thought software stopped running when the hardware dies! My apartment must be full of Linux ghosts!
They grew up with PS just as the generation before them grew up with Atari and Nintendo and Sega.
So... How has that worked for Atari, Sega and Nintendo lately?;-)
I agree, though. Most people don't care about how Sony treats customers. They will care about paying 600 bucks for a console whose first gen games look barely better than the Xbox 360 games, though.
So good will prevail, eventually, even if it isn't for the totally right reasons:-)
What I said was that the iTunes store was unique in my experience of digital services, in that it didn't allow you to redownload your music, and that this is a shortcoming of the iTunes store. If Mac users had to exclusively using the iTunes store, then that shortcoming would be even more important. Are you taking a devils-advocate position to try and make Apple look bad by making the problems seem worse than they are?
I never claimed that these problems didn't exist. I claimed that
They don't matter in most cases
It's pointless to compare the iTMS with other music stores since Apple users can only use the iTMS anyway (if they want to legally buy actual popular music), so from the POV of a Mac user, the iTMS should be compared to CDs, not to other music stores - because that's basically the choice Mac users have.
Who cares? It's the data on them that matters, not the CDs. That data is stored in multiple places in multiple formats, along with the music I've also ripped from my regular CD collection and keep with the rest of my personal backups... that I've migrated from floppies and quarter inch tape through Exabyte and DLT to stacks of DVDs... all stored in multiple locations. And, yes, I've pulled 20 year old files out of them on more than one occasion.
So your point is that regardless of how you get your music, backing it up so you can still use it in 20 years is a pain in the ass.
Um, those files are encrypted using a key you have to download from the iTunes store. A copy of those files without that key are just random numbers. Unless your backup strategy includes using a tool to ferret that key out and store it with the backup you're not going to be able to use it without access to the same account at the iTunes store that you started with.
Hopefully, your library is part of your backup. Last time I checked, QuickTime does play iTMS songs if the computer is authorized. I don't know whether authorization survives a backup since I've never checked, but I guess it should.
While some (or most) copy-protected CDs work on Macs, some don't.
The ones that don't... don't count. They're not audio CDs. Labelling them as CDs is a violation of Philips trademark.
That's just bullshit argumentation. It doesn't matter whether they're technically Red Book CDs. If you want to rip these CDs on your Mac, you can't, so they only way to get the music is through the iTMS.
Personally, I find the idea of belonging to a union much more distasteful than working for an employee that doesn't recognize my individual merits
That is one of the most bizarre statements I've read in a long time. A union is nothing more than a bunch of workers getting together and asking for something as a group instead of as individuals. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's nothing like extortion.
Clearly, there are unions which do stupid crap, but finding "the idea of belonging to a union distasteful" is just a very weird sentiment.
Yes, they have every right in the world to not sell whatever they want. Here's the thing: Nobody disputes that.
Nobody is claiming that they should be forced to stock the game.
People are simply discussing their intentions. You yourself say that we "can choose not to shop there," but in order to do that, we need to be informed about what's going on. That's why this discussion here occurs: To alert people that they may not want to shop there if they disagree with this chain's politics.
So you're right, they have the right to not sell whatever they want. It's just that for this discussion, it doesn't matter at all.
I'm guessing that you either don't listen to music from major labels
OK, we seem to have a reading comprehension problem here. I wrote "I'm a Mac user who uses multiple online retailers." Not "I'm a Mac user who doesn't use the iTunes store".
So you yourself are telling me that you can't avoid using the iTMS. Which was my point. Mac users' choice is basically CD or iTMS.
If you have a Mac, it doesn't matter if the CD is quote-copy-protected-unquote or not.
That is false. While some (or most) copy-protected CDs work on Macs, some don't. There was even a particular copy protection scheme which basically destroyed the Mac's CD drive a few months (or years) back.
PS: If you have a backup strategy that automatically burns your music to a CD
That's not what I said, and it's not needed.
If you don't, you don't have a working backup strategy, because you're dependant on Apple's goodwill to continue to use the bulky dongle files you downloaded. Will the iTunes store still be around 20 years from now?
It doesn't need to. We only need QuickTime or one of the hacks available on the Internets.
Another interesting question would be: Do the CDs you've burned still work in 20 years? I have a few burned CDs and DVDs which stopped working a few months after being burned.
I would guess that most disk media dies faster than the software used to play iTMS files.
I'm curently going through and ripping my old plastic and tape from the '70s and '80s into digital format. If they'd been in some '80s-era DRM-protected format I'd be out of luck.
If you had burned it on CDs, you'd be even more likely to be out of luck.
If you get one of Apple's lemons, like the reporter who shamed Apple into upping the limit from three to five, you can go through ten system disks about as fast as you can ship laptops back to Apple.
As I said, I think this is a possible scenario, albeit a rather unlikely one.
I'm a Mac user who uses multiple online retailers. So I guess it must be possible.
I'm guessing that you either don't listen to music from major labels, or you use allofmp3, which seems to be going away in its current form. I would guess that most people do want music from mainstream bands, and don't want to use a somewhat illegal russian music store.
Howeverit's actually *easier* to make portable offsite backups of plain-old-CDs than to make portable offsite backups of iTunes purchases, because the nudge-nudge-wink-wink-approved approach to doing the latter involved creating plain-old-CDs as an intermediate step.:)
There are cases where it's easier - if the CD isn't copy-protected, you can rip the CD and store it somewhere else, and you're done.
Backing up iTunes songs isn't exactly hard, though. If you've got a working backup strategy, your iTunes songs are backed up automatically. If you don't, writing them to an Audio disc and storing that offsite is a bit more work than just ripping a CD, but not that much more.
Yes, if you have five computers and destroy two within a year's time, you'll have to contact Apple. I'm not sure how likely this scenario is - I don't know anyone who has five computers with the same iTunes login, but it's definitely possible.
I still don't get scenario 2, though. Yes, Apple won't let you redownload the music you bought without contacting them first. But your example shows that this is still better than buying plain old CDs: Your friend who lost her portfolio in a fire has no way to get it back. A person who loses her iTunes songs in a fire, however, has.
Yeah, it would be great if Apple offered a somewhat less complicated way to redownload music. Yes, Apple's solution is, in this regard, worse than that of other online retailers. But it's still better than any offline solution.
Since Mac users don't really have a choice between different online retailers, it comes down to CDs versus iTMS. If your CDs are destroyed, they're gone (even though you didn't actually "buy" the music, you licensed it, so you could make the argument that you should get a replacement for the price of the plastic disc). If your computer is destroyed, your music is not gone.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not what I said. I said they "aren't exactly starving." But of course, it couldn't possibly be grey, it needs to be black or white, huh?
And of course, everything in America is perfect. I'm sorry I dared to question that.
Yeah. There'd only be Tetris.
I think you need to go back to FUD school. People in Cuba aren't exactly starving, and Chavez was elected president (twice, in fact) in a democratic election. There was an attempted coup d'etat against Chavez - which was prevented by the people of Venezuela! Meanwhile, lots of people in the USA still don't have health care. But at least they aren't working in "state run farms," right? God damned communists (by which I mean people who don't agree with my political view).
I usually try not to hate on Microsoft too much. They're a huge company with both good and bad sides. This, however, is unfortunately typical Microsoft behaviour: Help your smaller enemies so they can go after your larger enemies. It's similar to their patent strategy: Lose a patent dispute so the patent holder can go after other companies who can't just give away money like Microsoft can.
This sets a really bad example. I don't like paying for music I won't listen to. I don't like giving money to the major labels. I won't ever buy a Zune.
Well, other console manufacturers found better workarounds (Neo Geo Pocket) or were magically able to license the D-Pad.
I think the canonical comparison would be to one of Nintendo's D-Pads. Not the one on the Cube controller, that one sucks. But compare the PS2's (or PSP's) D-Pad to the DS or N64's or SNES's D-Pad, and you'll notice the difference.
Except it very much is. For most games, you have the left thumb on the analog stick and the right thumb on the buttons, so you're holding the controller asymetrically. Which is pretty weird.
The analog sticks were an afterthought introduced after designing the controller (as an answer to Nintendo's N64 controller). I have no idea why Sony never fixed that.
No, it's not. It is, however, probably the one you're most used to. Maybe it's even the first controller you've ever used. but that doesn't mean that it's a good controller. The shape is extremely awkward and non-ergonomic. You can't really hold the damn thing. The dual analog sticks are useful, but they're positioned all wrong. There are about, hm... well, there's Katamari Damacy which makes use of the dual sticks' position, but for every other game, you have to hold the controller asymetrically in order to use the left analog stick while keeping the right thumb on the buttons.
And don't get me started on the stupid symbols. I still sometimes hit the wrong button if the game tells me to "hit the square button" because I tend to forget the button position during a particularly engaging game.
If people like this controller, it's not because the controller is particularly good (or particularly bad, for that matter - there are way worse controllers). If people like it, it's because they're used to it.
You're totally missing the point. Sony discourages 2D games and stops some 2D games from being published outside of Japan by not approving them. Nintendo, on the other hand, creates 2D games for its own 3D consoles (look at GC games like Four Swords, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario (which is kind of a mix of 2D and 3D) or Wario Ware).
You hardly ever see new 2D games because Sony doesn't want them on its consoles, not because developers don't want to make them or gamers don't want to buy them.
No, it's going to be limited by the controller. The Wii's controller is the most fun.
Or maybe not.
My statement is only slightly less absurd than yours. "Fun" is most certainly not going to be limited by graphics. Is "Super Mario Bros" less fun than "Charlie's Angels" simply because its graphics are very modest compared to the more recent 3D game?
Again, this statement is somewhat strange. Add-on controllers have never been successfull. In the case you mention, the guitar controller costs a fortune and works with only very few games. How many games are there for EyeToy? The Donkey Konga Bongos? The PowerGlove?
Add-on controllers can never compete with an innovative main controller.
Actually, the GBA has a few "true" 3D games (some with 2D sprites, but 3D environments). There are even Voxel games for the GBA.
Examples of true 3D games for the GBA include Driver and V-Rally.
To what discussion is this relevant?
Is the Wii worthwhile from a gamer's perspective? Sure.
Is it worthwhile from a hardware geek's perspective? Probably not.
Does Nintendo sell to hardware geeks or to gamers? You figure that one out :-)
My DVD player is code-free, plays DIVX movies and has an HDMI out.
So I couldn't possibly care less about whether the PS2 plays DVDs or not - its DVD features are useless to me. They were nice when DVD players cost a fortune. Nowadays, you can buy a DVD player that does more than the PS2 DVD feature for 30 bucks.
You are wrong. This comment right here is mod-proof. It can't be modded. Simply can not be done. Try to mod it up, I dare you! In fact, I double-dare you!
He's comparing a somewhat modern PC to one of the slowest, most underpowered Macs. Seems quite fair to me.
Oh my god! And all this time I thought software stopped running when the hardware dies! My apartment must be full of Linux ghosts!
So... How has that worked for Atari, Sega and Nintendo lately? ;-)
I agree, though. Most people don't care about how Sony treats customers. They will care about paying 600 bucks for a console whose first gen games look barely better than the Xbox 360 games, though.
So good will prevail, eventually, even if it isn't for the totally right reasons :-)
I never claimed that these problems didn't exist. I claimed that
So your point is that regardless of how you get your music, backing it up so you can still use it in 20 years is a pain in the ass.
Hopefully, your library is part of your backup. Last time I checked, QuickTime does play iTMS songs if the computer is authorized. I don't know whether authorization survives a backup since I've never checked, but I guess it should.
That's just bullshit argumentation. It doesn't matter whether they're technically Red Book CDs. If you want to rip these CDs on your Mac, you can't, so they only way to get the music is through the iTMS.
That is one of the most bizarre statements I've read in a long time. A union is nothing more than a bunch of workers getting together and asking for something as a group instead of as individuals. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's nothing like extortion.
Clearly, there are unions which do stupid crap, but finding "the idea of belonging to a union distasteful" is just a very weird sentiment.
Yes, they have every right in the world to not sell whatever they want. Here's the thing: Nobody disputes that.
Nobody is claiming that they should be forced to stock the game.
People are simply discussing their intentions. You yourself say that we "can choose not to shop there," but in order to do that, we need to be informed about what's going on. That's why this discussion here occurs: To alert people that they may not want to shop there if they disagree with this chain's politics.
So you're right, they have the right to not sell whatever they want. It's just that for this discussion, it doesn't matter at all.
So you yourself are telling me that you can't avoid using the iTMS. Which was my point. Mac users' choice is basically CD or iTMS.
That is false. While some (or most) copy-protected CDs work on Macs, some don't. There was even a particular copy protection scheme which basically destroyed the Mac's CD drive a few months (or years) back.
That's not what I said, and it's not needed.
It doesn't need to. We only need QuickTime or one of the hacks available on the Internets.
Another interesting question would be: Do the CDs you've burned still work in 20 years? I have a few burned CDs and DVDs which stopped working a few months after being burned.
I would guess that most disk media dies faster than the software used to play iTMS files.
If you had burned it on CDs, you'd be even more likely to be out of luck.
As I said, I think this is a possible scenario, albeit a rather unlikely one.
I'm guessing that you either don't listen to music from major labels, or you use allofmp3, which seems to be going away in its current form. I would guess that most people do want music from mainstream bands, and don't want to use a somewhat illegal russian music store.
There are cases where it's easier - if the CD isn't copy-protected, you can rip the CD and store it somewhere else, and you're done.
Backing up iTunes songs isn't exactly hard, though. If you've got a working backup strategy, your iTunes songs are backed up automatically. If you don't, writing them to an Audio disc and storing that offsite is a bit more work than just ripping a CD, but not that much more.
Never you mind, we've always got space for somebody else to join :-)
Yeah, I had a feeling that you needed external affirmation. You don't seem very secure.
Except that Macs don't auto-run anything, unlike Windows boxes.
Yes, if you have five computers and destroy two within a year's time, you'll have to contact Apple. I'm not sure how likely this scenario is - I don't know anyone who has five computers with the same iTunes login, but it's definitely possible.
I still don't get scenario 2, though. Yes, Apple won't let you redownload the music you bought without contacting them first. But your example shows that this is still better than buying plain old CDs: Your friend who lost her portfolio in a fire has no way to get it back. A person who loses her iTunes songs in a fire, however, has.
Yeah, it would be great if Apple offered a somewhat less complicated way to redownload music. Yes, Apple's solution is, in this regard, worse than that of other online retailers. But it's still better than any offline solution.
Since Mac users don't really have a choice between different online retailers, it comes down to CDs versus iTMS. If your CDs are destroyed, they're gone (even though you didn't actually "buy" the music, you licensed it, so you could make the argument that you should get a replacement for the price of the plastic disc). If your computer is destroyed, your music is not gone.
this one was really weak. try not repeating yourself so much. it's boring.