Author should own up to his mistake and buy a game that will keep his attention during however long it takes to play. Good games are always too short ('cept maybe Deus Ex). From the article, it seems like he's just itching to move on to those "other games beckoning".
The confusion over the pod term has led many people to think that iPods are the only portable MP3 players. I still deal with people shocked to find out there are other (cheaper, better) brands. I myself stayed away from podcasts at first cause I assumed they were only for iPods. Why on Earth would they not want that kind of identification out there? Seems like their legal department needed something to do and they didn't think to consult with marketing. But then given how bright marketing folks tend to be, perhaps they did. Plus, doesn't Walter Wanger Productions Inc. have dibs on the whole POD term anyway?
This is exactly why Adelphia drove me to DishTV. I was without cable for a whole month once and they made people call in EACH DAY if they wanted a refund. But so many people were affected by it, so you ended up on hold from 1 to 3 hours, making calling in for the refund not worth it. Of course, now they're about to shut off the PVR capabilities in my Dish receiver so I'll have to come up with yet another option.
I hear you. Cable seems to have gotten it's act together a little better here too, so I'll likely be heading back. It would give me an excuse to setup MythTV, but I'd still rather have the original MPEG stream and I really don't need yet another Gentoo box to constantly maintain. I'll also miss the Sirius channels. I love em, but they ain't worth paying a separate $15/month ($5 or MAYBE even $10 is worth it).
I'll issue another "fuck tivo." My company is always trying to get me to file patents for the stuff I do but I'm just so disgusted with patent law that I want no part of it. Even when I stand to profit. True capitalism needs no laws to protect it.
So instead of directly recording the original MPEG stream, you buy TWO set top boxes (so that you won't have to throw one out) then you decompress and recompress the stream onto your TiVo??!? With an added monthly fee. For a couple extra software features? That is insane!
There is nothing like pain as a negative reinforcement, and Circuit City took it up the ass (no lube, either) directly due to the overly restrictive controls on their product. They KNOW how much it hurt business, and can point straight to the balance sheet. So I'm not surprised they are looking in the other direction.
Circuit City seems to be more liked these day (decline of Best Buy perhaps), but I've only just started going back. For a while I had forgotten why I had a bad image of them in the first place. This thread reminded me of Divx and now I know. But I guess that makes your point for you. One bad DRM decision and I was (infomally) boycotting the store for longer than I was able to remember the actual reason. That's what happens when corporations place greater value on control, rather than on customer relations.
NewEgg really is a great company. I'm don't recall ever being brand loyal to anything, because most companies suck and seem to always be in wars with their customers. NewEgg has been so reliable (and cheap) for so long, that I don't even bother with PriceWatch or search engines anymore. It seems like we're always slamming companies for doing one stupid thing or another. The thing is, I have such a big boner for capitalism, that all it takes is for one company to step up and do the right thing by me, and now I send thousands of dollars a year to them. Such a simple concept, lost on so many other businesses.
That goes to show you. If you would have simple rented and copied the disc, you'd have been unencumbered by the stupid protection.
Kind of reminds me of the DVD player I just bought that won't upconvert video from CSS protected discs (over component out), because presumably they're worried about people copying discs over component cables??? Do they even realize that shrink is free and dvd-writers now cost less than analog component cables?
Many of these protections do nothing but promote copying. It seems like every solution to any problem these days is to make the problem worse. War going bad? Start more wars. Economy in the dumps? Spend some more money. Sales down? Find new and improved ways to piss off your customers.
I do believe we landed on the moon, but if the government was truly incompetant, statistically speaking, wouldn't they fuck up in our favor now and then?
I have an excellent proof that we don't have a free market. For me to purchase cable broadband access costs $65. For me to purchase cable broadband access bundled with basic cable TV service costs $50. No free market would let this continue, especially for the many years it has.
Amen, brother! But I suppose I should be glad for the scraps. When I was buying my house, I first went down to the local Adelphia office to make sure I'd be able to get high-speed internet at the new address and I made it clear to them that I'd only move to where I could get it. I needed it for my business. Several manager-type employees assured me that it was available their so I closed on the house. I then ended up going a year and a half without anything more than dial-up because Adelphia was wrong and there were no other alternatives. It made it almost impossible to do my work.
It's not just cable, I frequently find myself wanting (simple) things, that no one is willing or able to sell me. The "free market" in this country is horribly broken and I want it back. Large corporations are the enemies of capitalism because they see regulation as a way to keep potential competitors out of the game. Net neutrality seems to be a case of having their cake and eating it too. I'm against it in theory, but I'd be screwed in reality.
Right, but if we didn't have those regulations making them de-facto monopolies in the first place, then nobody would care about net neutrality. The market would be able to regulate itself through fair competition. You're saying that less regulation isn't always a good thing, but it seems to me that every regulation that comes out now is to deal with the failure of a previous set of regulations. If we remove them all, then the world would be a much better place. Mega-corporations wouldn't be able to use them to squash the competition and I'd have more choice/freedom.
I've known a number of stupid people in my day, yet not one of them would be stupid enough to use a chat room to conspire to commit felonies. On the other hand, I know a number of (border-line) geniuses, and I doubt any of them would be able to pull off the bombing on the Holland Tunnel. If they're so stupid that they're using public chat rooms, then they're clearly not a threat to anyone (bar fights aside). However, people who just blindly believe any government propaganda thrown at them ARE a threat to me and mine.
BTW, you're sarcasm is malformed. You have a close tag with no matching start tag.;-)
There is a way. Use your common sense. Terrorists are not making plans on internet chat rooms for crying out loud. Next we'll be hearing about Osama's MySpace page. Geez!
Seriously though, it's paranoia to assume the entire race will be wiped out in 100 years time. The economy will be trashed and the world will be awash in civil conflicts, but wiped out? We have too much in common with cockroaches to worry bout that!
Ahh, but if we teach our kids simplified spelling, then they won't be able to read 1984 anymore. Once that's accomplished the word "newspeak" will disappear from the language and we'll no longer have to debate whether or not it's a good thing. Problem solved!
I think most Americans are under the notion that you can only have freedom by taking it away from others. You know, "freedom ain't free." But of course it is, by definition. Most Americans are openly against freedom, but they still like the sound of the word. If you are forced at gunpoint to hand your money to the government, then you're not free. Freedom is the right to say no. I don't support a single thing my government does and the electoral process is clearly rigged to ensure that only democrats and republicans get elected. Voting these days is like siding with NY or NJ in a mob war. It doesn't make one free if you're just picking who will exploit you. My government steals money from me, uses it to kill inncoent people and then turns around and says I told them to do it. That ain't freedom.
Revolts made sense in the past when the average weaponry a citizen could purchase matched the average weaponry the state can purchase. When this disparity grows, authoritarian states follow. Your shotgun simply does not trump an F-16. Our best hope is that the military starts remembering that "enemies foreign and domestic" clause of their oaths and take the country back for us. That's extremely unlikely, given the level of brainwashing they undergo. So we're left with option B. Wait for it to finish collapsing and do your best to protect yourself. If you wait for the "inevitable revolt" you may find yourself waiting forever. People are always waiting for revolt, thinking that others should do it for them. The others are thinking the same thing about you.
Isn't Vista going to be released early next year? If they shut off someone's copy of XP, and if it's important enough to them, they might go buy a legit copy of XP. If they have to shell out money for XP in September, how likely is it that they'll turn around and buy Vista come January. Seems they should have timed this to perfectly coincide with the Vista release for maximum profitability. If this story is true, then I see this strategy backfiring. Either in less (intially high priced) Vista sales (cause they just bought XP) or in people deciding to try out an alternative while waiting for Vista comes out.
Although I've used Linux on and off since 95', these moves by Microsoft have already led me to do whatever it takes to make Linux usable to me. The irony is that although I use a pirated copy of Windows, I still ended up buying it several times (comes with laptop purchases). But that's not good enough for them. I always replace the legal versions with the pirated ones because they make it so difficult to reinstall the way I want (what with those stupid restore only disks). I always thought that games would get me to install Vista, but now that I've been using Linux as much as I have, I'm content to keep on playing UT2004 just so that I don't have to dirty myself with Vista.
So there you go Microsoft. I was using XP as my primary operating system a year ago and now I hardly ever boot into it anymore. All because of your restrictive business model. You made updates such a pain in the ass to get, that freakin' Gentoo became the easier alternative.
Not only that, but my friends and family all view me as the computer expert. The computer expert who won't touch Windows because it's become such a pain to use. Those people already know it's a pain to use, but when they start hearing it from me, they know it's not just them. I doubt I'd be able to get any of them to convert to Linux, but I do know at least two friends who got Macs because of my Windows bashing (combined with their own experiences). You're not only driving people away, you're creating billboards for Mac and Linux. I would actually like Windows to be successful, but I need to be able to do my work without having to fight with my OS. You may pick your fight with me, but you'll just see me walking away.
Fair enough, I do think guys just want the women around, largely for morale. I've been on interview panels where the other guys all expressed biases toward the female candidate, simply because they were women. That being said, I do think women approach problems from different perspectives and I've found working with them to be quite valuable. I also find many of the women I work with like different kinds of tasks like writing documentation and dealing with customers. I hate dealing with customers, so if they like it then I think it's great. I feel guilty at first, until they tell me they enjoy it. I prefer working in a quiet little corner on a few dedicated tasks. Amazing how things balance out like that. I think women tend to make better managers than men for much the same reasons.
You're misrepresenting the GP in your reply. For example, you say, "there are vastly more women and minorities in the workplace now than there were before affirmative action and forced equal access to education," which is true -- but you're forgetting to include the civil rights movement, which doesn't equate with affirmative action. Equality of opportunity is of paramount importance, and equality of opportunity is what the civil rights movement sought.
I think what you're both missing is that employers like having twice as many candidates for their positions, while having to only pay them half what they would have gotten before women entered the workforce in large numbers. We look at the 70s as a time of economic disaster but even then, you could support a family of five on a single blue collar job. Now, it's very difficult to do without two white collar incomes. Real wages were driven down and now women have little choice in the matter. Philosophical notions aside, it was good for business and that was probably more fo a driving force.
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Author should own up to his mistake and buy a game that will keep his attention during however long it takes to play. Good games are always too short ('cept maybe Deus Ex). From the article, it seems like he's just itching to move on to those "other games beckoning".
The confusion over the pod term has led many people to think that iPods are the only portable MP3 players. I still deal with people shocked to find out there are other (cheaper, better) brands. I myself stayed away from podcasts at first cause I assumed they were only for iPods. Why on Earth would they not want that kind of identification out there? Seems like their legal department needed something to do and they didn't think to consult with marketing. But then given how bright marketing folks tend to be, perhaps they did. Plus, doesn't Walter Wanger Productions Inc. have dibs on the whole POD term anyway?
This is exactly why Adelphia drove me to DishTV. I was without cable for a whole month once and they made people call in EACH DAY if they wanted a refund. But so many people were affected by it, so you ended up on hold from 1 to 3 hours, making calling in for the refund not worth it. Of course, now they're about to shut off the PVR capabilities in my Dish receiver so I'll have to come up with yet another option.
...by choosing to no longer share those files. Perhaps they should bring the judge up on the same charges for wanting a copy.
I hear you. Cable seems to have gotten it's act together a little better here too, so I'll likely be heading back. It would give me an excuse to setup MythTV, but I'd still rather have the original MPEG stream and I really don't need yet another Gentoo box to constantly maintain. I'll also miss the Sirius channels. I love em, but they ain't worth paying a separate $15/month ($5 or MAYBE even $10 is worth it).
I'll issue another "fuck tivo." My company is always trying to get me to file patents for the stuff I do but I'm just so disgusted with patent law that I want no part of it. Even when I stand to profit. True capitalism needs no laws to protect it.
So instead of directly recording the original MPEG stream, you buy TWO set top boxes (so that you won't have to throw one out) then you decompress and recompress the stream onto your TiVo??!? With an added monthly fee. For a couple extra software features? That is insane!
There is nothing like pain as a negative reinforcement, and Circuit City took it up the ass (no lube, either) directly due to the overly restrictive controls on their product. They KNOW how much it hurt business, and can point straight to the balance sheet. So I'm not surprised they are looking in the other direction.
Circuit City seems to be more liked these day (decline of Best Buy perhaps), but I've only just started going back. For a while I had forgotten why I had a bad image of them in the first place. This thread reminded me of Divx and now I know. But I guess that makes your point for you. One bad DRM decision and I was (infomally) boycotting the store for longer than I was able to remember the actual reason. That's what happens when corporations place greater value on control, rather than on customer relations.
You returned a freakin' $40 boombox? I thought I would, but I simply don't know what to say to that. I mean, just the time involved. Jeez!
NewEgg really is a great company. I'm don't recall ever being brand loyal to anything, because most companies suck and seem to always be in wars with their customers. NewEgg has been so reliable (and cheap) for so long, that I don't even bother with PriceWatch or search engines anymore. It seems like we're always slamming companies for doing one stupid thing or another. The thing is, I have such a big boner for capitalism, that all it takes is for one company to step up and do the right thing by me, and now I send thousands of dollars a year to them. Such a simple concept, lost on so many other businesses.
That goes to show you. If you would have simple rented and copied the disc, you'd have been unencumbered by the stupid protection.
Kind of reminds me of the DVD player I just bought that won't upconvert video from CSS protected discs (over component out), because presumably they're worried about people copying discs over component cables??? Do they even realize that shrink is free and dvd-writers now cost less than analog component cables?
Many of these protections do nothing but promote copying. It seems like every solution to any problem these days is to make the problem worse. War going bad? Start more wars. Economy in the dumps? Spend some more money. Sales down? Find new and improved ways to piss off your customers.
I do believe we landed on the moon, but if the government was truly incompetant, statistically speaking, wouldn't they fuck up in our favor now and then?
I have an excellent proof that we don't have a free market. For me to purchase cable broadband access costs $65. For me to purchase cable broadband access bundled with basic cable TV service costs $50. No free market would let this continue, especially for the many years it has.
Amen, brother! But I suppose I should be glad for the scraps. When I was buying my house, I first went down to the local Adelphia office to make sure I'd be able to get high-speed internet at the new address and I made it clear to them that I'd only move to where I could get it. I needed it for my business. Several manager-type employees assured me that it was available their so I closed on the house. I then ended up going a year and a half without anything more than dial-up because Adelphia was wrong and there were no other alternatives. It made it almost impossible to do my work.
It's not just cable, I frequently find myself wanting (simple) things, that no one is willing or able to sell me. The "free market" in this country is horribly broken and I want it back. Large corporations are the enemies of capitalism because they see regulation as a way to keep potential competitors out of the game. Net neutrality seems to be a case of having their cake and eating it too. I'm against it in theory, but I'd be screwed in reality.
Right, but if we didn't have those regulations making them de-facto monopolies in the first place, then nobody would care about net neutrality. The market would be able to regulate itself through fair competition. You're saying that less regulation isn't always a good thing, but it seems to me that every regulation that comes out now is to deal with the failure of a previous set of regulations. If we remove them all, then the world would be a much better place. Mega-corporations wouldn't be able to use them to squash the competition and I'd have more choice/freedom.
I've known a number of stupid people in my day, yet not one of them would be stupid enough to use a chat room to conspire to commit felonies. On the other hand, I know a number of (border-line) geniuses, and I doubt any of them would be able to pull off the bombing on the Holland Tunnel. If they're so stupid that they're using public chat rooms, then they're clearly not a threat to anyone (bar fights aside). However, people who just blindly believe any government propaganda thrown at them ARE a threat to me and mine.
;-)
BTW, you're sarcasm is malformed. You have a close tag with no matching start tag.
There is a way. Use your common sense. Terrorists are not making plans on internet chat rooms for crying out loud. Next we'll be hearing about Osama's MySpace page. Geez!
Terrorists using internet chat rooms??? LMAO! Give me a break. The US government can't even tell a half-way believable lie anymore.
Seriously though, it's paranoia to assume the entire race will be wiped out in 100 years time. The economy will be trashed and the world will be awash in civil conflicts, but wiped out? We have too much in common with cockroaches to worry bout that!
Why would we? Nukuler requires the same number of letters as nuclear. It doesn't seem like he's the one behind it.
Ahh, but if we teach our kids simplified spelling, then they won't be able to read 1984 anymore. Once that's accomplished the word "newspeak" will disappear from the language and we'll no longer have to debate whether or not it's a good thing. Problem solved!
I think most Americans are under the notion that you can only have freedom by taking it away from others. You know, "freedom ain't free." But of course it is, by definition. Most Americans are openly against freedom, but they still like the sound of the word. If you are forced at gunpoint to hand your money to the government, then you're not free. Freedom is the right to say no. I don't support a single thing my government does and the electoral process is clearly rigged to ensure that only democrats and republicans get elected. Voting these days is like siding with NY or NJ in a mob war. It doesn't make one free if you're just picking who will exploit you. My government steals money from me, uses it to kill inncoent people and then turns around and says I told them to do it. That ain't freedom.
Revolts made sense in the past when the average weaponry a citizen could purchase matched the average weaponry the state can purchase. When this disparity grows, authoritarian states follow. Your shotgun simply does not trump an F-16. Our best hope is that the military starts remembering that "enemies foreign and domestic" clause of their oaths and take the country back for us. That's extremely unlikely, given the level of brainwashing they undergo. So we're left with option B. Wait for it to finish collapsing and do your best to protect yourself. If you wait for the "inevitable revolt" you may find yourself waiting forever. People are always waiting for revolt, thinking that others should do it for them. The others are thinking the same thing about you.
Isn't Vista going to be released early next year? If they shut off someone's copy of XP, and if it's important enough to them, they might go buy a legit copy of XP. If they have to shell out money for XP in September, how likely is it that they'll turn around and buy Vista come January. Seems they should have timed this to perfectly coincide with the Vista release for maximum profitability. If this story is true, then I see this strategy backfiring. Either in less (intially high priced) Vista sales (cause they just bought XP) or in people deciding to try out an alternative while waiting for Vista comes out.
Although I've used Linux on and off since 95', these moves by Microsoft have already led me to do whatever it takes to make Linux usable to me. The irony is that although I use a pirated copy of Windows, I still ended up buying it several times (comes with laptop purchases). But that's not good enough for them. I always replace the legal versions with the pirated ones because they make it so difficult to reinstall the way I want (what with those stupid restore only disks). I always thought that games would get me to install Vista, but now that I've been using Linux as much as I have, I'm content to keep on playing UT2004 just so that I don't have to dirty myself with Vista.
So there you go Microsoft. I was using XP as my primary operating system a year ago and now I hardly ever boot into it anymore. All because of your restrictive business model. You made updates such a pain in the ass to get, that freakin' Gentoo became the easier alternative.
Not only that, but my friends and family all view me as the computer expert. The computer expert who won't touch Windows because it's become such a pain to use. Those people already know it's a pain to use, but when they start hearing it from me, they know it's not just them. I doubt I'd be able to get any of them to convert to Linux, but I do know at least two friends who got Macs because of my Windows bashing (combined with their own experiences). You're not only driving people away, you're creating billboards for Mac and Linux. I would actually like Windows to be successful, but I need to be able to do my work without having to fight with my OS. You may pick your fight with me, but you'll just see me walking away.
Fair enough, I do think guys just want the women around, largely for morale. I've been on interview panels where the other guys all expressed biases toward the female candidate, simply because they were women. That being said, I do think women approach problems from different perspectives and I've found working with them to be quite valuable. I also find many of the women I work with like different kinds of tasks like writing documentation and dealing with customers. I hate dealing with customers, so if they like it then I think it's great. I feel guilty at first, until they tell me they enjoy it. I prefer working in a quiet little corner on a few dedicated tasks. Amazing how things balance out like that. I think women tend to make better managers than men for much the same reasons.
You're misrepresenting the GP in your reply. For example, you say, "there are vastly more women and minorities in the workplace now than there were before affirmative action and forced equal access to education," which is true -- but you're forgetting to include the civil rights movement, which doesn't equate with affirmative action. Equality of opportunity is of paramount importance, and equality of opportunity is what the civil rights movement sought.
I think what you're both missing is that employers like having twice as many candidates for their positions, while having to only pay them half what they would have gotten before women entered the workforce in large numbers. We look at the 70s as a time of economic disaster but even then, you could support a family of five on a single blue collar job. Now, it's very difficult to do without two white collar incomes. Real wages were driven down and now women have little choice in the matter. Philosophical notions aside, it was good for business and that was probably more fo a driving force.