Now comparing a Windows Mobile Phone and an iPhone connecting to an Exchange server, which one do you think "wins"? If you guessed "Windows Mobile of course!" you would be horribly mistaken. As far as mobile devices are concerned, iPhone beats the all hands down.
Does it beat "them all" as a mobile device or in Exchange support?
IMO the best mobile device FOR EXCHANGE SUPPORT ONLY is not Windows Mobile or iPhone, but Blackberry. And pretty much the entire business world agrees with me. RIM operates a series of "reflection servers" for Exchange which dynamically "pushes" email to the clients (phones) and maintains better email access for Blackberry users. This is enormously handy for enterprise/business customers. Apple very specifically won't do this for the iPhone (they've been asked). This is why iPhone adoption isn't coming from the business side, but the consumer side. It's worth noting that Palm IS doing something like this for the Pre, so it may see more uptake in the business world.
I'm not saying that the iPhone isn't a good device, or even the best device, for most users. It's just that in this specific area it's weaker than the competition.
It's not a "debt institution". They loan money at extremely competitive rates and have no direct profit incentive...
They are a "debt institution" because they loan money at interest (usury). Their non-profit status is not relevant.
To argue that they have "no profit incentive" is highly misleading. Like most nonprofits and charities most credit unions have EXTREMELY well-compensated executives whose compensation is based on how much money the credit union makes. So the employees (not the members per se) have a profit incentive. I'd also point out that in most nonprofits executive nepotism is rampant (it's not uncommon for ALL of a nonprofit's executives to be related somehow).
That's just not true; in fact, federal agents especially tend to focus on the bigger gangs and organized crime because they think it's more efficient to get rid of the big fish than chase after a lot of small ones.
So you're saying that the majority of people in federal prison are crime "kingpins"? Really? There doesn't seem to be any evidence of this. For example, most people in federal prison for cocaine charges are there for less than 10 grams, or even nothing at all. Just "conspiracy". This is true across the board. The FBI seems to do a good job at catching kidnappers and serial killers, but that's not organized crime.
The reality is that most people charged are charged with relatively petty offenses because the big fish have money and lawyers and political connections. Bernie Madoff operated openly for decades, as has Amway and countless banking and trading scams. The "organized crime" folks at the FBI spend most of their time going after petty drug smugglers and gun dealers because the big fish (like the finance people and the gun MANUFACTURERS) are too well protected.
Actually, the WHOLE POINT of most 9mm SMGs is that they can use standard 9mm pistol ammo, which is cheap and plentiful as opposed to expensive rifle ammunition. Most American police agencies use Heckler & Koch MP5 SMGs chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum, the exact same round used by the common Beretta and Glock pistols used by police officers.
At least 90% of problems with cryptographic systems are based on implementation, not broken algorithms. There are countless examples of this. While a new attack against AES is important, it's really only of interest to the relatively small group of mathematicians doing algorithm design. Vulnerabilities in the SSL signing process (for example) are of much more interest to programmers.
What fails on hard drives? Usually it's the motor or the arms driving the heads. The MECHANICAL bits. Robotic tape arrays have a lot more mechanical bits to break. As you point out, the TAPE itself is very reliable, but the drives and array are significantly less reliable than the hard drives. If you have a broken array, you can't get your data.
In the corporate world, this isn't a big deal because you already spent $10,000 on the array and probably have a warranty and service contract. They really don't make consumer-grade tape drives any more, so as a consumer you usually have to buy OLDER UNSUPPORTED hardware off eBay, the stuff that is most likely to break.
This solution is just too expensive. For cost of the tape array you could easily buy TWO hard drives to back up each of your existing drives, which is probably more reliable anyway.
OK, then, what is our equivalent to Borders? If I want to buy a new game, and possibly browse other new games, and make totally irresponsible impulse purchases in a damn bricks-and-mortar game store (and not Best Buy or Walmart), where, exactly, do I go?
You don't. Game publishers put those stores out of business.
The simple reality is that the margin on most NEW games for GameStop is around $1. At that margin, they simply cannot stay in business. The margin for USED games is MUCH higher. Therefore they heavily push used merchandise and they increasingly demand kickbacks from game publishers.
Don't like it? The ONLY solution is for the publishers to give more money to retailers. Instead they're trying to cut the retailers out completely by switching to online distribution. Do you think the massive consolidation you've seen (GameStop+EBGames+FuncoLand+everyone) is because the retailers are HEALTHY? The same thing has happened to toy stores (now you've got Toys R Us and nobody) for the same reason, toy manufacturers cut deals with Wal-mart and crushed the margins of toy stores. I could add record stores here too.
And as an earlier poster says. Other industries have had to deal with the used market and somehow managed. In fact, I would argue that the games industry industry is driven far more by novelty than say, the book industry, which means the competition from used merchandise is is fairly weak.
He wasn't "playing the game". He was cheating. Other players were pissed at him because he was cheating and taunting other players about his cheating (a detail he left out of his "research"). This has been revealed by numerous posters.
He was deliberately trying to piss people off by using a rules exploit to instakill other players. He was ABSOLUTELY NOT "playing the game as intended". He was cheating, which is why groups of opposing players couldn't beat him. Again, HE WAS CHEATING AND USING AN EXPLOIT to grief other players by killing them over and over again. He didn't get any XP for this by the way, that should be a hint this was not intentional. This is NOT how the game was intended to be played, according to everyone except this asshole, including the devs who closed this exploit precisely because Twixt kept abusing it.
Except that it isn't true. The "Osborne Effect" didn't even apply to the Osborne. If this WERE true the computer video card industry, with it's 6 month refresh cycles, would have collapsed years ago. In case you aren't familiar, in the video card industry you buy a $500 video card knowing, with absolute certainty, that a much cheaper and faster card will be available at the same price or lower in 6 months. Yet people still buy video cards.
And the cellphone market is an even better example of this. Some "early adopters" (including the key teenage girl demographic) buy new cellphones 6 every months, no matter what. The vast majority of those who bought the iPhone 3GS ALREADY HAD an iPhone.
When you're the CEO and public face of a major corporation your health is of great legitimate interest to shareholders, bondholders, and other interested parties as it can have a major affect on share price.
And Steve Jobs isn't just any CEO. He is associated more strongly with Apple than perhaps any CEO is associated with any large company in America. Apple has a history of being adrift without Steve Jobs at the helm.
It doesn't matter that Jobs doesn't run Apple day to day. In the stock market perception is EVERYTHING and if Steve Jobs dies the perception will be that Apple is once again rudderless and the stock price WILL plummet. In this weak economy that could very well mean the Apple.
So your core premise is wrong. If Jobs dies or steps down in the near future that could easily mean the end of Apple as we know it. It might not fold, but dramatic shrinkage (massive layoffs, etc.) is very likely.
You have a right to make a mod based on someone else's game?
Please note that this is a "should" argument.
Yes, I don't believe artists should have the right to restrict noncommercial derivative works in any meaningful sense. IOW, I think "slash" and "fanfic" should be 100% legal. Mods follow the same reasoning. Making a fanfic based on Kirk and Spock having sex isn't a "recreation" of Star Trek. It merely features characters from that work. So you're saying that artists have a right to own their characters and ideas in an abstract sense. I strongly disagree with this notion. People should own "Star Trek" not "James T. Kirk" or "warp drive".
But still, a right to someone else's work? And do they have a right to your paycheck?
It's not actually possible for this to happen. What you're saying is "artists have natural rights to make money off art using a very specific revenue model, copyright". However, in practice, artists are not actually paid via this model very often. They use "work for hire" and have no legal rights to their content or royalties. Copyright is something that really in in the hands of large corporations to use as a club against smaller competitors. Right now, in the year 2009, most artists would be better off with no copyright laws at all because right now they have no hope of being "independent" or actually owning their work in the current system.
A good example is radio airplay. All songs on the radio are bought and paid for via "payola" and independent artists are specifically locked out. Music video channels are worse. Most signed artists are completely screwed by their labels and literally don't make a cent off of album sales. What do these guys care if their music is pirated? Piracy is GOOD for them because it promotes their concerts and swag (where they make all the money). Most artists nowadays would MUCH rather fans buy their t-shirt than buy their album because they get a bigger chunk.
The recent Writer's Guild strike illustrates how far artists have to go to get any compensation at all.
The photo at the top of the article makes it clear that the PROTOTYPE for the Zeebo is a TMobile G1 attached to a miniPCI video in/video out card and apparently another miniPCI 802.11g wireless card. This is definitely not going into production.
Will the Zeebo take off? Definitely not.
The developers seem to forget that there IS a very popular low-cost console sold in emerging markets, the PS2. The PS2 has VASTLY more capabilities than the Zeebo will have, has thousands of games, and it's cheaper. New games are being released for the PS2, at a rate that will almost certainly beat Zeebo. Did I mention the games are vastly superior on the PS2?
so I'm paying someone for a game and simultaneously not giving the content creators any money?
What makes you think you're paying anyone? Artists who work on video games don't get royalties. To a large extent, this is true of film and music as well. So the artist isn't directly affected. He's indirectly affected because the development studio he works for possibly gets less money from the publisher (because the developer is usually compensated based on volume of sales).
I have little sympathy for the game publishers. The margin on brand new $60 games is less than $2 for GameStop and other retailers. That's right, they make $1 for each new game sold. The publisher, etc. get the rest. They simply cannot stay in business with such low margins, this is why ALL the other specialty game retailers have folded. The same logic applies to Wal-mart. It is simply not profitable to stock new games.
They have a DS version of Chrono Trigger that was first released at the end of 2008, and is still fairly "new" around the world. If people download the original ROM in order to hack it, or through CT:Crimson Echoes find out that they can easily play CT for free, the DS version might lose those potential sales.
I have no sympathy. Maybe they should make something new instead of milking 15 year old properties? They're just as bad as the record studios who release "new" compilations of classic artists. They take albums out of print and put out these "collections" with only a few songs not available on the albums specifically to milk those old recordings as much as they can. This is no different.
I don't think anyone is claiming some kind of right to hack together a derivative work
*I* certainly claim that MORAL right. I understand it's "illegal" under US law, but so is tearing the tags off mattresses. A white person marrying a black person used to be illegal in the US. The copyright laws in the United States are immoral.
And this isn't purely a moral issue. Unlimited copyright is causing serious damage to the US economy. Right now Chinese entrepreneurs are making billions off "mash up" products Americans can't legally produce and market.
As I said in other posts, in any sane world there would be limited terms on copyrights. 10 years is reasonable for video games. Chrono Trigger would be in the public domain under this regime.
It's also worth noting this mod is legal under the copyright laws of many other nations.
Not that I really have anything against such modifications, they do encourage people to pirate the game
How does "piracy" hurt a 15 year old game that is no longer sold or marketed? In any sane world the copyright limit on video games would be 10 years or less and Chrono Trigger would already be in the public domain.
Think about this in a minute: The original SNES cartridges aren't going to last forever. And I know for a FACT that Sony doesn't bother to archive anything. So in about 10 years nobody will ever be able to play Chrono Trigger legally again. Ever. Is that okay with you?
You might not care about Chrono Trigger, but what about Casablanca? Many classic films from the 40's are GONE FOREVER because unlimited copyright makes it illegal for anyone to archive them but the studios, who don't bother to archive anything.
Windows has lots of legacy subsystems and most of them are implemented less elegantly.
The biggest support headache that this is going to generate is that XPM is going to solve very few user problems. Most people have compatibility problems with hardware (not relevant to a VM), games (which won't have direct access to the 3D engine), and most system utilities (again, not relevant to the VM). The vast majority of "plain jane" (doesn't use a lot of DirectX) apps written for XP work just fine in Vista. XPM is mainly for businesses running very badly coded in-house apps that only work in XP for some reason and can't be easily updated. If doesn't fix broken drivers or broken games.
Face it, physical media is dead. I don't want that outdated and obsolete shit anymore. Sell me what I want, digital distribution, cloud access and a good sized local cache.
The reason why people are wary of digital distribution w/DRM is that numerous such systems have gone belly up in the past leaving their customers high and dry with useless media. Unless it's DRM-free I don't see this really changing and I don't seen game companies rushing to remove DRM from downloads. DRM on XBOX 360s already causes major headaches for Microsoft tech support.
Physical media has it's own DRM problems as well of course.
Hell, HD-DVD was an entire attempt by MSFT to force a doomed from the start tech down the market's throat. Most egregious I've seen in ages.
Um, no. It was really Toshiba and other hardware manufacturers that pushed the format because, basically, they thought Blu-ray was too expensive. Since Sony was a Microsoft rival it was natural for them to sign on the HD-DVD, but they showed not real commitment to the format. Bill Gates was quoted as saying "This is the last format war." and believed downloaded and streaming video (and audio) to be the future. Microsoft has shown MUCH more commitment to that approach. However, MSFT did provide the language used by HD-DVD, HDi.
After paying for car insurance for over a decade and never once having an accident, guess what happened?
And? My claim was that you were defrauded, not that insurance is useless. And you were. You were almost certainly overcharged on your premiums. You were promised one rate and then given another or your rates were arbitrarily increased.
How can corporate fraud eat up half of anybody's paycheck unless they allow it?
In my opinion, and in the opinion of many economists, the "toxic" assets being bailed out are based on fraudulent loans, bundled in a fraudulent way. That's a big chunk there. Based on my guesstimate, about 60% of defense procurement is fraudulent or borderline fraudulent. That's just the tip of the iceberg for the government.
Then we get to the private sector: Virtually every product or service you buy suffers a price increase due to fraud. In particular, "essentials" like food and energy and communications. Your cable/sattelite bill is fraudulent. It goes on and on and on.
50% of total income is probably an exaggeration. But it's not an exaggeration to say that fraud drives up the cost of virtually everything you buy and every service you use.
I know you'd like to ignore this fact, but all that money that corporations have gotten by "fraud" was given to them by somebody who wanted something. If you want to win that game, don't play.
Yes, they wanted things like food, clothing, medical care, and most terrible of all, housing.
You have no choice but to play the game. You must have food, clothing, and housing or you die. If you get it from the corporations, they screw you. If you get it through the "black market", government agents who are indirectly representing the corporations imprison or kill you.
The classic example would be people crossing the border to Mexico or Canada to get drugs that they cannot afford but LITERALLY cannot live without.
I beg to differ; everyone I know who is a fiscal conservative is disgusted by the situation in that area.
I didn't say "fiscal conservative", I said "free trader" or in international parlance "neo-liberal". "Fiscal conservative" is essentially a meaningless label which means "I want to see cuts in spending". I'd argue that almost all Americans are "fiscal conservatives" because they want to see spending cuts on programs they don't like.
Very few so-called "fiscal conservatives" want to see across the board spending cuts, including cuts in military, police, anti-terrorist, and anti-immigration spending. I've never heard of a single so-called "fiscal conservative" asking for HIGHER income taxes and estate taxes in exchange for reduced Federal fees, "use taxes", and fines which would save money for 95% of Americans and increase Federal revenue. I haven't heard of a single a single so-called "fiscal conservative" asking for a radical simplification of the income tax code to eliminate loopholes and fraud, or eliminating offshore tax shelters by restricting the flow of capital, etc.
I've heard absurd proposals of a so-called "fair tax" or national sales tax of about 20%. Nice idea, except that it cuts tax revenue by about 60%, eliminating discretionary spending out of the budget, which means eliminating the US military, Justice Department, FDA, USDA, and most other federal spending except Medicare and Social Security.
The underlying issue is that government "incentives", pork and incompetent law-making create a perverse encouragement for people to just go for a cash-grab and bend the law without breaking it.
Which is exactly what I said. We need new "incentives" in the form of guns. Guns wielded by federal agents with no other job than prosecuting corporate fraud. The only reason corporate fraud is a problem is because corporations know they can get away with it very, very easily. Throw up a few barriers in the form of prison sentences and, more importantly, asset forfeiture and you'll see fraud greatly reduced.
Hell, you don't even need the prison terms. If a corporation is ACCUSED OF fraud, ALL holdings which the government can remotely tie to that fraud and ALL common stock are frozen for the duration of legal proceedings. This would rapidly destroy most companies making the mere ACCUSATION deadly. That's a pretty powerful incentive against fraud.
If you want to whine about "fairness", this is exactly how we treat drug dealers, organized crime, "terrorists", and other large-scale criminals.
Try to get a sub-prime loan today, it isn't illegal, but it is no longer possible!
Absolutely false. The problem with the sub-prime crisis was that lenders were able to obfuscate the risk of loans using various tricks and loopholes. NONE of that has been banned by new regulation. On top of this, lots of these loans were flat-out fraudulent. The numbers were altered as the information was moved. There have been absolutely no prosecutions for this and it doesn't look like there's going to be. If you know with great certainty that you won't be prosecuted for a crime that makes you lots of money, why not do it? You might argue "morality", but that not a factor to bankers.
Today I can think of several local lenders that will offer sub-prime mortgages to people with no income. They still advertise.
In the process of thrashing it on the track, they blew one brake fuse (of several). It took a matter of minutes to swap out the fuse. At no point during the filming was Top Gear without a fully working Roadster.
During the track test the brakes failed. This would have been considered a complete failure of the track test for ANY OTHER CAR. Remember that the car was a special test model to Top Gear that was specifically tuned for this track test (this is typical testing). Failing under these absolutely IDEAL conditions is not a good sign and does not point to the Tesla Roadster as being very robust.
The only thing that might be bogus is their claim of an estimate range of 55 miles on the track. We don't really know the truth here because the car didn't complete the test.
If Top Gear is so bad please point to INDEPENDENT tests that contradict their claims.
It's a tiny 2 seater that I doubt I could even fit inside (I'm 6' 5"). It can carry virtually no cargo. If that tiny hatch in the back can really carry 15 bags of groceries I want to see it. It has a range of 120 miles. Virtually anything can beat this. There are riding lawnmowers with better range. It has a charge time of "overnight". The design also guarantees instant death in the event of ANY significant accident at speed. It'll crumple like aluminum can in a crash test (which will NEVER happen because they're not required for this "motorcycle"). You won't save one red cent on fuel, even with a massive government subsidy.
And in California: Children under 18 can't operate or ride in it AT ALL under California law. You'll apparently need a class M to drive it, which most Californians don't have.
Why would I buy this over a $18,000 compact which is superior in every way?
All the Aptera has going for it is that it's really quiet.
In order to pure electrics to work a REVOLUTION in battery design must happens that allows at least 4 times the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries. Until that happens there's no point in even CONSIDERING pure electrics. This does have a hybrid version, and that might help the range problem, but it doesn't solve the other problems above.
Personally, I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime. If you want a replacement for gasoline you're going to have to find something that ALREADY HAS the energy density we need, like hydrogen or uranium.
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Now comparing a Windows Mobile Phone and an iPhone connecting to an Exchange server, which one do you think "wins"? If you guessed "Windows Mobile of course!" you would be horribly mistaken. As far as mobile devices are concerned, iPhone beats the all hands down.
Does it beat "them all" as a mobile device or in Exchange support?
IMO the best mobile device FOR EXCHANGE SUPPORT ONLY is not Windows Mobile or iPhone, but Blackberry. And pretty much the entire business world agrees with me. RIM operates a series of "reflection servers" for Exchange which dynamically "pushes" email to the clients (phones) and maintains better email access for Blackberry users. This is enormously handy for enterprise/business customers. Apple very specifically won't do this for the iPhone (they've been asked). This is why iPhone adoption isn't coming from the business side, but the consumer side. It's worth noting that Palm IS doing something like this for the Pre, so it may see more uptake in the business world.
I'm not saying that the iPhone isn't a good device, or even the best device, for most users. It's just that in this specific area it's weaker than the competition.
It's not a "debt institution". They loan money at extremely competitive rates and have no direct profit incentive...
They are a "debt institution" because they loan money at interest (usury). Their non-profit status is not relevant.
To argue that they have "no profit incentive" is highly misleading. Like most nonprofits and charities most credit unions have EXTREMELY well-compensated executives whose compensation is based on how much money the credit union makes. So the employees (not the members per se) have a profit incentive. I'd also point out that in most nonprofits executive nepotism is rampant (it's not uncommon for ALL of a nonprofit's executives to be related somehow).
That's just not true; in fact, federal agents especially tend to focus on the bigger gangs and organized crime because they think it's more efficient to get rid of the big fish than chase after a lot of small ones.
So you're saying that the majority of people in federal prison are crime "kingpins"? Really?
There doesn't seem to be any evidence of this. For example, most people in federal prison for cocaine charges are there for less than 10 grams, or even nothing at all. Just "conspiracy". This is true across the board. The FBI seems to do a good job at catching kidnappers and serial killers, but that's not organized crime.
The reality is that most people charged are charged with relatively petty offenses because the big fish have money and lawyers and political connections. Bernie Madoff operated openly for decades, as has Amway and countless banking and trading scams. The "organized crime" folks at the FBI spend most of their time going after petty drug smugglers and gun dealers because the big fish (like the finance people and the gun MANUFACTURERS) are too well protected.
Actually, the WHOLE POINT of most 9mm SMGs is that they can use standard 9mm pistol ammo, which is cheap and plentiful as opposed to expensive rifle ammunition. Most American police agencies use Heckler & Koch MP5 SMGs chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum, the exact same round used by the common Beretta and Glock pistols used by police officers.
Please mod the OP up.
At least 90% of problems with cryptographic systems are based on implementation, not broken algorithms. There are countless examples of this. While a new attack against AES is important, it's really only of interest to the relatively small group of mathematicians doing algorithm design. Vulnerabilities in the SSL signing process (for example) are of much more interest to programmers.
What fails on hard drives? Usually it's the motor or the arms driving the heads. The MECHANICAL bits. Robotic tape arrays have a lot more mechanical bits to break. As you point out, the TAPE itself is very reliable, but the drives and array are significantly less reliable than the hard drives. If you have a broken array, you can't get your data.
In the corporate world, this isn't a big deal because you already spent $10,000 on the array and probably have a warranty and service contract. They really don't make consumer-grade tape drives any more, so as a consumer you usually have to buy OLDER UNSUPPORTED hardware off eBay, the stuff that is most likely to break.
This solution is just too expensive. For cost of the tape array you could easily buy TWO hard drives to back up each of your existing drives, which is probably more reliable anyway.
OK, then, what is our equivalent to Borders? If I want to buy a new game, and possibly browse other new games, and make totally irresponsible impulse purchases in a damn bricks-and-mortar game store (and not Best Buy or Walmart), where, exactly, do I go?
You don't. Game publishers put those stores out of business.
The simple reality is that the margin on most NEW games for GameStop is around $1. At that margin, they simply cannot stay in business. The margin for USED games is MUCH higher. Therefore they heavily push used merchandise and they increasingly demand kickbacks from game publishers.
Don't like it? The ONLY solution is for the publishers to give more money to retailers. Instead they're trying to cut the retailers out completely by switching to online distribution. Do you think the massive consolidation you've seen (GameStop+EBGames+FuncoLand+everyone) is because the retailers are HEALTHY? The same thing has happened to toy stores (now you've got Toys R Us and nobody) for the same reason, toy manufacturers cut deals with Wal-mart and crushed the margins of toy stores. I could add record stores here too.
And as an earlier poster says. Other industries have had to deal with the used market and somehow managed. In fact, I would argue that the games industry industry is driven far more by novelty than say, the book industry, which means the competition from used merchandise is is fairly weak.
He wasn't "playing the game". He was cheating. Other players were pissed at him because he was cheating and taunting other players about his cheating (a detail he left out of his "research"). This has been revealed by numerous posters.
He was deliberately trying to piss people off by using a rules exploit to instakill other players. He was ABSOLUTELY NOT "playing the game as intended". He was cheating, which is why groups of opposing players couldn't beat him. Again, HE WAS CHEATING AND USING AN EXPLOIT to grief other players by killing them over and over again. He didn't get any XP for this by the way, that should be a hint this was not intentional. This is NOT how the game was intended to be played, according to everyone except this asshole, including the devs who closed this exploit precisely because Twixt kept abusing it.
Except that it isn't true. The "Osborne Effect" didn't even apply to the Osborne. If this WERE true the computer video card industry, with it's 6 month refresh cycles, would have collapsed years ago. In case you aren't familiar, in the video card industry you buy a $500 video card knowing, with absolute certainty, that a much cheaper and faster card will be available at the same price or lower in 6 months. Yet people still buy video cards.
And the cellphone market is an even better example of this. Some "early adopters" (including the key teenage girl demographic) buy new cellphones 6 every months, no matter what. The vast majority of those who bought the iPhone 3GS ALREADY HAD an iPhone.
When you're the CEO and public face of a major corporation your health is of great legitimate interest to shareholders, bondholders, and other interested parties as it can have a major affect on share price.
And Steve Jobs isn't just any CEO. He is associated more strongly with Apple than perhaps any CEO is associated with any large company in America. Apple has a history of being adrift without Steve Jobs at the helm.
It doesn't matter that Jobs doesn't run Apple day to day. In the stock market perception is EVERYTHING and if Steve Jobs dies the perception will be that Apple is once again rudderless and the stock price WILL plummet. In this weak economy that could very well mean the Apple.
So your core premise is wrong. If Jobs dies or steps down in the near future that could easily mean the end of Apple as we know it. It might not fold, but dramatic shrinkage (massive layoffs, etc.) is very likely.
You have a right to make a mod based on someone else's game?
Please note that this is a "should" argument.
Yes, I don't believe artists should have the right to restrict noncommercial derivative works in any meaningful sense. IOW, I think "slash" and "fanfic" should be 100% legal. Mods follow the same reasoning. Making a fanfic based on Kirk and Spock having sex isn't a "recreation" of Star Trek. It merely features characters from that work. So you're saying that artists have a right to own their characters and ideas in an abstract sense. I strongly disagree with this notion. People should own "Star Trek" not "James T. Kirk" or "warp drive".
But still, a right to someone else's work? And do they have a right to your paycheck?
It's not actually possible for this to happen. What you're saying is "artists have natural rights to make money off art using a very specific revenue model, copyright". However, in practice, artists are not actually paid via this model very often. They use "work for hire" and have no legal rights to their content or royalties. Copyright is something that really in in the hands of large corporations to use as a club against smaller competitors. Right now, in the year 2009, most artists would be better off with no copyright laws at all because right now they have no hope of being "independent" or actually owning their work in the current system.
A good example is radio airplay. All songs on the radio are bought and paid for via "payola" and independent artists are specifically locked out. Music video channels are worse. Most signed artists are completely screwed by their labels and literally don't make a cent off of album sales. What do these guys care if their music is pirated? Piracy is GOOD for them because it promotes their concerts and swag (where they make all the money). Most artists nowadays would MUCH rather fans buy their t-shirt than buy their album because they get a bigger chunk.
The recent Writer's Guild strike illustrates how far artists have to go to get any compensation at all.
The photo at the top of the article makes it clear that the PROTOTYPE for the Zeebo is a TMobile G1 attached to a miniPCI video in/video out card and apparently another miniPCI 802.11g wireless card. This is definitely not going into production.
Will the Zeebo take off? Definitely not.
The developers seem to forget that there IS a very popular low-cost console sold in emerging markets, the PS2. The PS2 has VASTLY more capabilities than the Zeebo will have, has thousands of games, and it's cheaper. New games are being released for the PS2, at a rate that will almost certainly beat Zeebo. Did I mention the games are vastly superior on the PS2?
so I'm paying someone for a game and simultaneously not giving the content creators any money?
What makes you think you're paying anyone? Artists who work on video games don't get royalties. To a large extent, this is true of film and music as well. So the artist isn't directly affected. He's indirectly affected because the development studio he works for possibly gets less money from the publisher (because the developer is usually compensated based on volume of sales).
I have little sympathy for the game publishers. The margin on brand new $60 games is less than $2 for GameStop and other retailers. That's right, they make $1 for each new game sold. The publisher, etc. get the rest. They simply cannot stay in business with such low margins, this is why ALL the other specialty game retailers have folded. The same logic applies to Wal-mart. It is simply not profitable to stock new games.
They have a DS version of Chrono Trigger that was first released at the end of 2008, and is still fairly "new" around the world. If people download the original ROM in order to hack it, or through CT:Crimson Echoes find out that they can easily play CT for free, the DS version might lose those potential sales.
I have no sympathy. Maybe they should make something new instead of milking 15 year old properties? They're just as bad as the record studios who release "new" compilations of classic artists. They take albums out of print and put out these "collections" with only a few songs not available on the albums specifically to milk those old recordings as much as they can. This is no different.
I don't think anyone is claiming some kind of right to hack together a derivative work
*I* certainly claim that MORAL right. I understand it's "illegal" under US law, but so is tearing the tags off mattresses. A white person marrying a black person used to be illegal in the US. The copyright laws in the United States are immoral.
And this isn't purely a moral issue. Unlimited copyright is causing serious damage to the US economy. Right now Chinese entrepreneurs are making billions off "mash up" products Americans can't legally produce and market.
As I said in other posts, in any sane world there would be limited terms on copyrights. 10 years is reasonable for video games. Chrono Trigger would be in the public domain under this regime.
It's also worth noting this mod is legal under the copyright laws of many other nations.
Not that I really have anything against such modifications, they do encourage people to pirate the game
How does "piracy" hurt a 15 year old game that is no longer sold or marketed? In any sane world the copyright limit on video games would be 10 years or less and Chrono Trigger would already be in the public domain.
Think about this in a minute: The original SNES cartridges aren't going to last forever. And I know for a FACT that Sony doesn't bother to archive anything. So in about 10 years nobody will ever be able to play Chrono Trigger legally again. Ever. Is that okay with you?
You might not care about Chrono Trigger, but what about Casablanca? Many classic films from the 40's are GONE FOREVER because unlimited copyright makes it illegal for anyone to archive them but the studios, who don't bother to archive anything.
Windows has lots of legacy subsystems and most of them are implemented less elegantly.
The biggest support headache that this is going to generate is that XPM is going to solve very few user problems. Most people have compatibility problems with hardware (not relevant to a VM), games (which won't have direct access to the 3D engine), and most system utilities (again, not relevant to the VM). The vast majority of "plain jane" (doesn't use a lot of DirectX) apps written for XP work just fine in Vista. XPM is mainly for businesses running very badly coded in-house apps that only work in XP for some reason and can't be easily updated. If doesn't fix broken drivers or broken games.
Face it, physical media is dead. I don't want that outdated and obsolete shit anymore. Sell me what I want, digital distribution, cloud access and a good sized local cache.
The reason why people are wary of digital distribution w/DRM is that numerous such systems have gone belly up in the past leaving their customers high and dry with useless media. Unless it's DRM-free I don't see this really changing and I don't seen game companies rushing to remove DRM from downloads. DRM on XBOX 360s already causes major headaches for Microsoft tech support.
Physical media has it's own DRM problems as well of course.
Hell, HD-DVD was an entire attempt by MSFT to force a doomed from the start tech down the market's throat. Most egregious I've seen in ages.
Um, no. It was really Toshiba and other hardware manufacturers that pushed the format because, basically, they thought Blu-ray was too expensive. Since Sony was a Microsoft rival it was natural for them to sign on the HD-DVD, but they showed not real commitment to the format. Bill Gates was quoted as saying "This is the last format war." and believed downloaded and streaming video (and audio) to be the future. Microsoft has shown MUCH more commitment to that approach. However, MSFT did provide the language used by HD-DVD, HDi.
After paying for car insurance for over a decade and never once having an accident, guess what happened?
And? My claim was that you were defrauded, not that insurance is useless. And you were. You were almost certainly overcharged on your premiums. You were promised one rate and then given another or your rates were arbitrarily increased.
How can corporate fraud eat up half of anybody's paycheck unless they allow it?
In my opinion, and in the opinion of many economists, the "toxic" assets being bailed out are based on fraudulent loans, bundled in a fraudulent way. That's a big chunk there. Based on my guesstimate, about 60% of defense procurement is fraudulent or borderline fraudulent. That's just the tip of the iceberg for the government.
Then we get to the private sector: Virtually every product or service you buy suffers a price increase due to fraud. In particular, "essentials" like food and energy and communications. Your cable/sattelite bill is fraudulent. It goes on and on and on.
50% of total income is probably an exaggeration. But it's not an exaggeration to say that fraud drives up the cost of virtually everything you buy and every service you use.
I know you'd like to ignore this fact, but all that money that corporations have gotten by "fraud" was given to them by somebody who wanted something. If you want to win that game, don't play.
Yes, they wanted things like food, clothing, medical care, and most terrible of all, housing.
You have no choice but to play the game. You must have food, clothing, and housing or you die. If you get it from the corporations, they screw you. If you get it through the "black market", government agents who are indirectly representing the corporations imprison or kill you.
The classic example would be people crossing the border to Mexico or Canada to get drugs that they cannot afford but LITERALLY cannot live without.
I beg to differ; everyone I know who is a fiscal conservative is disgusted by the situation in that area.
I didn't say "fiscal conservative", I said "free trader" or in international parlance "neo-liberal". "Fiscal conservative" is essentially a meaningless label which means "I want to see cuts in spending". I'd argue that almost all Americans are "fiscal conservatives" because they want to see spending cuts on programs they don't like.
Very few so-called "fiscal conservatives" want to see across the board spending cuts, including cuts in military, police, anti-terrorist, and anti-immigration spending. I've never heard of a single so-called "fiscal conservative" asking for HIGHER income taxes and estate taxes in exchange for reduced Federal fees, "use taxes", and fines which would save money for 95% of Americans and increase Federal revenue. I haven't heard of a single a single so-called "fiscal conservative" asking for a radical simplification of the income tax code to eliminate loopholes and fraud, or eliminating offshore tax shelters by restricting the flow of capital, etc.
I've heard absurd proposals of a so-called "fair tax" or national sales tax of about 20%. Nice idea, except that it cuts tax revenue by about 60%, eliminating discretionary spending out of the budget, which means eliminating the US military, Justice Department, FDA, USDA, and most other federal spending except Medicare and Social Security.
The underlying issue is that government "incentives", pork and incompetent law-making create a perverse encouragement for people to just go for a cash-grab and bend the law without breaking it.
Which is exactly what I said. We need new "incentives" in the form of guns. Guns wielded by federal agents with no other job than prosecuting corporate fraud. The only reason corporate fraud is a problem is because corporations know they can get away with it very, very easily. Throw up a few barriers in the form of prison sentences and, more importantly, asset forfeiture and you'll see fraud greatly reduced.
Hell, you don't even need the prison terms. If a corporation is ACCUSED OF fraud, ALL holdings which the government can remotely tie to that fraud and ALL common stock are frozen for the duration of legal proceedings. This would rapidly destroy most companies making the mere ACCUSATION deadly. That's a pretty powerful incentive against fraud.
If you want to whine about "fairness", this is exactly how we treat drug dealers, organized crime, "terrorists", and other large-scale criminals.
Try to get a sub-prime loan today, it isn't illegal, but it is no longer possible!
Absolutely false. The problem with the sub-prime crisis was that lenders were able to obfuscate the risk of loans using various tricks and loopholes. NONE of that has been banned by new regulation. On top of this, lots of these loans were flat-out fraudulent. The numbers were altered as the information was moved. There have been absolutely no prosecutions for this and it doesn't look like there's going to be. If you know with great certainty that you won't be prosecuted for a crime that makes you lots of money, why not do it? You might argue "morality", but that not a factor to bankers.
Today I can think of several local lenders that will offer sub-prime mortgages to people with no income. They still advertise.
In the process of thrashing it on the track, they blew one brake fuse (of several). It took a matter of minutes to swap out the fuse. At no point during the filming was Top Gear without a fully working Roadster.
During the track test the brakes failed. This would have been considered a complete failure of the track test for ANY OTHER CAR. Remember that the car was a special test model to Top Gear that was specifically tuned for this track test (this is typical testing). Failing under these absolutely IDEAL conditions is not a good sign and does not point to the Tesla Roadster as being very robust.
The only thing that might be bogus is their claim of an estimate range of 55 miles on the track. We don't really know the truth here because the car didn't complete the test.
If Top Gear is so bad please point to INDEPENDENT tests that contradict their claims.
Aptera is much better.
Total shit.
It's a tiny 2 seater that I doubt I could even fit inside (I'm 6' 5").
It can carry virtually no cargo. If that tiny hatch in the back can really carry 15 bags of groceries I want to see it.
It has a range of 120 miles. Virtually anything can beat this. There are riding lawnmowers with better range.
It has a charge time of "overnight".
The design also guarantees instant death in the event of ANY significant accident at speed. It'll crumple like aluminum can in a crash test (which will NEVER happen because they're not required for this "motorcycle").
You won't save one red cent on fuel, even with a massive government subsidy.
And in California:
Children under 18 can't operate or ride in it AT ALL under California law.
You'll apparently need a class M to drive it, which most Californians don't have.
Why would I buy this over a $18,000 compact which is superior in every way?
All the Aptera has going for it is that it's really quiet.
In order to pure electrics to work a REVOLUTION in battery design must happens that allows at least 4 times the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries. Until that happens there's no point in even CONSIDERING pure electrics. This does have a hybrid version, and that might help the range problem, but it doesn't solve the other problems above.
Personally, I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime. If you want a replacement for gasoline you're going to have to find something that ALREADY HAS the energy density we need, like hydrogen or uranium.