replacements won't be available until at least January
That cannot be right. Microsoft have repeatedly stated (and frequently been critised for) that they are spreading the available consoles over several weeks/months, rather than releasing them all at launch, then having a couple of months before any more are available. Unless the failure rate is so incredibly high (over half of the consoles) that any given console may have to be repeatedly replaced before they find one that works, replacements should be fairly easily available.
Having said that, they may simply not have the manpower to deal with the number of returns, but that would be a different matter. I may also end up eating these words come January, but in the meantime I'm not cancelling my (European release date) pre-order...
The only reason that many people live in cities is because of access to more jobs.
No... I'll certainly accept it's the reason most people move into a city, but there are plenty of other reasons. More shops, better range of shops, more to do, easier travel (airports, for example), just to start with. Personally, I'm planning on moving to a city in the near-ish future primarily for the increased number of people around!
I'm guessing we'll see 1080i as that is compatible with almost every HD TV out there.
This may be the first time I'm glad for regional releases - here in the UK (and Europe in general I think) HDTV never really took off (because you can't get any sources for it, upscaling DVD players excluded). HD TVs are beginning to sell, for people to use with XBox 360s and HD TV (available next year), but they're all LCD and plasma, typically with a resolution of 720p. So, I imagine we'll actually see mostly 720p releases here...
Ditto. I put some thought into what I'm wearing if I'm doing anything special, but for work, having pre-determined "this will look at least fairly good together" stuff would be great.
Exactly. Who wins the next generation, if any manufacturer does, will depend on so many factors it's just not funny. Sales at launch, launch price, games available at launch, rate of console production at launch, exact launch time, marketing success, ease of development, availability of developers with significant multi-threading support, demand for online gaming, number of developers signing exclusivity agreements, number of developers that decide to develop on either platform.
$150 cables? Wow, someone's been hanging around AV shops too much. You can get much much cheaper (around $10) DVI/HDMI cables that will do just as good a job as long as it's fairly short (2-3 metres at most) and you don't tape it next to the power cable or anything.
While the video carried over the cables isn't error checked or corrected (HDMI audio is error corrected, if anyone cares), it takes a hell of a lot more interference to put noticable faults in a digital signal, than it does analogue.
I also find it hard to believe there was no quality difference, but am willing to accept it wasn't noticable (to most people).
At the time I (well, okay, the company I work for) bought my Powerbook, it was because it meant I could be using the same system wherever I was working. Given I work from home semi-frequently, not having to remember to put all the documents I'm reading onto the right system, is a real bonus.
To be honest though, given my usage pattern, the next upgrade will probably be to a Mac Mini, because if you're going to plug your laptop into a full size keyboard and screen anyway...
Certainly, not buying a PS3 this side of Sony showing an understanding that backstabbing their customers is a bad idea. I'm specifically not going to say that I won't buy a PS3, because that would leave Sony no motivation to change (after all, if they can't get more money by convincing me they've changed, why would they?). To respond to various other messages I've seen on this subject:
Sure the PS3 is made by a while different branch, but clearly this kit has the backing of the higher ups, or we'd have seen "Oh, sorry, err, rogue guy in music, we'll make sure it doesn't happen again" articles shortly after this was found.
Microsoft may not be any less evil per se, but at least they're open about DRMing you senseless - I don't feel like I'm going to get any sudden nasty shocks from their stuff, y'know? I'd go Nintendo, but am just not terribly interested in the games they tend to have, however I'm certainly willing to reconsider if they do start releasing more games that appeal to me.
This is where I stand on Blu-Ray too, pretty much. I'm not unwilling to forgive Sony, so maybe I'll use their products again at some point, but until they show a grasp on the idea that backstabbing their customers is a bad idea, I'm having as little to do with them as possible.
Third assumption; that the success of the PS3 will be determined at it's launch; certainly the impression I get is that the vast majority of console buyers won't be upgrading until a year or more into the next gen, when the price drops start coming through and there's a good number of games available.
Oh thank goodness I was beginning to think I was the only one. I liked Halo, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to rush out and buy an XBox 360 because of any of its sequels.
This is a point I've been trying to make, actually. Until Sony actually realise that backstabbing the people who actually buy their products (I don't mean reluctantly taking them off the shelves while muttering about it not really being a big deal, I mean actually understanding this is a bad idea) I cannot trust their products. CDs are the first thing we've noticed with DRM in, but I wouldn't touch a DVD they've produced, right at the moment.
And frankly, I'm not willing to trust that the PS3 won't try hacking the rest of the systems on my LAN to discover if they have pirated music, right at this point. Sure, that's almost definitely not happening, but if I told you a month ago that Sony were releasing CDs with rootkits on, you'd look at me like I'm crazy, is this so much of a further leap?
Unfortunately, there are enough of us who don't see anything wrong with swapping coprighted materials that uncontrolled P2P filesharing is not going to wink out of existance any time soon.
How not, exactly? Let me just run through the options I can think of:
1. It's unfair how much of the money the label gets. Well, sure, but that doesn't make it any fairer to not pay the artist. While we're on the subject; how much does the label to produce the music for a CD? How much do they make back from a hit album? How does this relate to albums that don't do so well? At the end of the day, are they actually raking in money hand over fist, or is most of the massive profits on successful albums wiped out by the failures?
2. All the music made today is just rubbish. So, why did you want a copy again?
3. Current copyright laws are too long. Are you copying music is actually all that old? If you're downloading Elvis tracks, I'm willing to give a little here, but I'd tend to suggest you're not.
4. Music is overpriced. So don't buy it. Encourage your friends not to buy it. Encourage random people on/. not to buy it. But don't pirate it, because that just makes the labels more convinced they're missing out on sales they'd get if only they used stronger DRM.
5. I'm not hurting anyone by copying music. Not directly, no, but that doesn't make it right. If you can afford the music, why aren't you buying it, and ensuring the people involved get paid. If you can't, consider that you don't need music to live, and nothing like a drop of sales and piracy would get the message across to the labels better.
If Microsoft had announced XBox 360 availability from April 2006, would that have been better? Okay, so there would have been more time to develop games, that's good, but personally I'd rather be able to get an XBox 360 not too long after launch, because I bothered to pre-order, than have that warm fuzzy feeling that absolutely anyone can go and buy an XBox 360 at launch.
Re:Reminds me of an old joke
on
Space Lichens
·
· Score: 1
Got to admit, wouldn't want to try. Although, for any/.'ers faced with being thrown out an airlock, I believe the correct procedure is to breathe out (you really, REALLY do not want your lungs full of gas when you hit vacuum), curl up to protect your eyes, mouth, etc. as much as possible, and pray to the diety with which you have most influence currently.
Oh, certainly... but I'd rather use a state mechanism for state, rather than the URL:) That's kinda cool though; we use servlets, where session ID can be encoded into URLs, but you need to make sure you catch them all...
http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/FO/formic_acid.html gives a good guide to formic acid safety. Highlights include "Corrosive, causes severe burns. Harmful by inhalation, ingestion and through skin absorption. Readily absorbed through skin. Very destructive of mucous membranes and upper respiratory tract, eyes and skin. Severe eye irritant. Inhalation may be fatal." (emphasis theirs).
> Insert: false sense of. Cookies, even the ones which aren't personally identifiable, are used mathematically. It's all about collision sets. The only privacy you get from cookies is by flat out refusing to deal with them.
Y'know, some web devs (me, err, the guy sitting next to me, at least) do actually use cookies to hold session related data. Things like, who are you, and what page should I take you back to after this one. Don't get me wrong, when we're making a queue to get revenge on the marketing people that use cookies, I'll be there with my blunt spoon, but not all cookies are bad. Just, y'know, most of them.
My advice, run Firefox, go to Preferences, then Privacy, then Cookies, and set "Keep Cookies" to "until I close Firefox", or "Ask me everytime" and focus on that session only button. Keeps the people that use it for session data, happy, and the makes them almost useless for ads...
Re:Will it cost more than a Dell running Windows?
on
Intel PowerBook Rumor Mill
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
> Will it cost more than a Dell running Windows? Probably, but how much time can I save by using a Mac instead, and how much is that time worth?
[...] While the students' performances look good on paper, the report does not show the emotional impact of high-pressured education. South Korea has the fastest-rising suicide rate in the world. Eight out of every 100,000 15- to 19-year-olds killed themselves in 2003. The stakes are high.
Can I just point out, that's 0.008%, 8 times the rate HappyEngineer suggested, and that's only successful suicides, there's no indication of number of attempted suicides...
> If it's illegal to not provide the police with a key to encrypted data There's a real problem with burden of proof here, in that you now prove you don't have the key to any encrypted data the police demand a key for. This is essentially impossible.
This is particularly an issue if, say, Evil Bob accidentally e-mails his plans for world domination to me. Of course, he's not a fool (except for the inability to use an addressbook, but nevermind), so he's encrypted his plans. I get a freaky looking encrypted e-mail, and delete it assuming it's spam.
Except, it sits there, in my inbox. Now, for some reason, the police then seize my computer. They're sifting through my HD, and find Evil Bob's e-mail sitting in my trash folder, but no key. It's essentially impossible for me to prove I don't have the key for the e-mail, and now have a criminal record and spend the next two years of my life in jail.
> I see little reason to pay more than half, considering how much cheaper it is for the studios to put it out on the internet
Thing is, I don't think it's actually that much cheaper. Looking up a very quick quote, I can get 1,000 DVDs in card envelopes for $1250. That's $1.25/DVD for card envelopes. Given the quantities we're talking about, that's probably quite high, but we'd want plastic boxes, so lets call it $1.25.
Not living in the US, I'm not entirely sure how much DVDs go for in the shops, but Amazon.com seems to like the $20 mark. So, half that, and subtract $1.25, and that leaves $8.75 to spend on shipping it to the shop, and the shop's overhead.
At the end of the day, I reckon they can actually save more in the range of $2-4. That's not really a lot, and at $8 they'll definitely be charging less than they'd be getting normally...
*double checks* Yup, T&C definitely say I can share the connection. I remember it was an issue when we first got broadband a few years ago, but seems fairly common to allow sharing these days, at least in the UK. T&C also doesn't say anything about responsibility for using the connection, which is a suprise I have to admit...
Oh, and they're not using my computer, there's a router they're connecting to. Not that it makes any real difference, just felt I should mention.
Slashdot Mirror
That cannot be right. Microsoft have repeatedly stated (and frequently been critised for) that they are spreading the available consoles over several weeks/months, rather than releasing them all at launch, then having a couple of months before any more are available. Unless the failure rate is so incredibly high (over half of the consoles) that any given console may have to be repeatedly replaced before they find one that works, replacements should be fairly easily available.
Having said that, they may simply not have the manpower to deal with the number of returns, but that would be a different matter. I may also end up eating these words come January, but in the meantime I'm not cancelling my (European release date) pre-order...
Wait for the Phantom of course!
No... I'll certainly accept it's the reason most people move into a city, but there are plenty of other reasons. More shops, better range of shops, more to do, easier travel (airports, for example), just to start with. Personally, I'm planning on moving to a city in the near-ish future primarily for the increased number of people around!
Got to admit, saw the /. story, and wondered if maybe I should be cancelling my pre-ordered XBox 360...
This may be the first time I'm glad for regional releases - here in the UK (and Europe in general I think) HDTV never really took off (because you can't get any sources for it, upscaling DVD players excluded). HD TVs are beginning to sell, for people to use with XBox 360s and HD TV (available next year), but they're all LCD and plasma, typically with a resolution of 720p. So, I imagine we'll actually see mostly 720p releases here...
Ditto. I put some thought into what I'm wearing if I'm doing anything special, but for work, having pre-determined "this will look at least fairly good together" stuff would be great.
Exactly. Who wins the next generation, if any manufacturer does, will depend on so many factors it's just not funny. Sales at launch, launch price, games available at launch, rate of console production at launch, exact launch time, marketing success, ease of development, availability of developers with significant multi-threading support, demand for online gaming, number of developers signing exclusivity agreements, number of developers that decide to develop on either platform.
And that's just off the top of my head.
$150 cables? Wow, someone's been hanging around AV shops too much. You can get much much cheaper (around $10) DVI/HDMI cables that will do just as good a job as long as it's fairly short (2-3 metres at most) and you don't tape it next to the power cable or anything.
While the video carried over the cables isn't error checked or corrected (HDMI audio is error corrected, if anyone cares), it takes a hell of a lot more interference to put noticable faults in a digital signal, than it does analogue.
I also find it hard to believe there was no quality difference, but am willing to accept it wasn't noticable (to most people).
At the time I (well, okay, the company I work for) bought my Powerbook, it was because it meant I could be using the same system wherever I was working. Given I work from home semi-frequently, not having to remember to put all the documents I'm reading onto the right system, is a real bonus.
To be honest though, given my usage pattern, the next upgrade will probably be to a Mac Mini, because if you're going to plug your laptop into a full size keyboard and screen anyway...
Certainly, not buying a PS3 this side of Sony showing an understanding that backstabbing their customers is a bad idea. I'm specifically not going to say that I won't buy a PS3, because that would leave Sony no motivation to change (after all, if they can't get more money by convincing me they've changed, why would they?). To respond to various other messages I've seen on this subject:
Sure the PS3 is made by a while different branch, but clearly this kit has the backing of the higher ups, or we'd have seen "Oh, sorry, err, rogue guy in music, we'll make sure it doesn't happen again" articles shortly after this was found.
Microsoft may not be any less evil per se, but at least they're open about DRMing you senseless - I don't feel like I'm going to get any sudden nasty shocks from their stuff, y'know? I'd go Nintendo, but am just not terribly interested in the games they tend to have, however I'm certainly willing to reconsider if they do start releasing more games that appeal to me.
This is where I stand on Blu-Ray too, pretty much. I'm not unwilling to forgive Sony, so maybe I'll use their products again at some point, but until they show a grasp on the idea that backstabbing their customers is a bad idea, I'm having as little to do with them as possible.
Third assumption; that the success of the PS3 will be determined at it's launch; certainly the impression I get is that the vast majority of console buyers won't be upgrading until a year or more into the next gen, when the price drops start coming through and there's a good number of games available.
Oh thank goodness I was beginning to think I was the only one. I liked Halo, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to rush out and buy an XBox 360 because of any of its sequels.
This is a point I've been trying to make, actually. Until Sony actually realise that backstabbing the people who actually buy their products (I don't mean reluctantly taking them off the shelves while muttering about it not really being a big deal, I mean actually understanding this is a bad idea) I cannot trust their products. CDs are the first thing we've noticed with DRM in, but I wouldn't touch a DVD they've produced, right at the moment.
And frankly, I'm not willing to trust that the PS3 won't try hacking the rest of the systems on my LAN to discover if they have pirated music, right at this point. Sure, that's almost definitely not happening, but if I told you a month ago that Sony were releasing CDs with rootkits on, you'd look at me like I'm crazy, is this so much of a further leap?
How not, exactly? Let me just run through the options I can think of:
1. It's unfair how much of the money the label gets.
Well, sure, but that doesn't make it any fairer to not pay the artist. While we're on the subject; how much does the label to produce the music for a CD? How much do they make back from a hit album? How does this relate to albums that don't do so well? At the end of the day, are they actually raking in money hand over fist, or is most of the massive profits on successful albums wiped out by the failures?
2. All the music made today is just rubbish.
So, why did you want a copy again?
3. Current copyright laws are too long.
Are you copying music is actually all that old? If you're downloading Elvis tracks, I'm willing to give a little here, but I'd tend to suggest you're not.
4. Music is overpriced.
So don't buy it. Encourage your friends not to buy it. Encourage random people on
5. I'm not hurting anyone by copying music.
Not directly, no, but that doesn't make it right. If you can afford the music, why aren't you buying it, and ensuring the people involved get paid. If you can't, consider that you don't need music to live, and nothing like a drop of sales and piracy would get the message across to the labels better.
Anything I've missed? Probably a few...
If Microsoft had announced XBox 360 availability from April 2006, would that have been better? Okay, so there would have been more time to develop games, that's good, but personally I'd rather be able to get an XBox 360 not too long after launch, because I bothered to pre-order, than have that warm fuzzy feeling that absolutely anyone can go and buy an XBox 360 at launch.
Got to admit, wouldn't want to try. Although, for any /.'ers faced with being thrown out an airlock, I believe the correct procedure is to breathe out (you really, REALLY do not want your lungs full of gas when you hit vacuum), curl up to protect your eyes, mouth, etc. as much as possible, and pray to the diety with which you have most influence currently.
Oh, certainly... but I'd rather use a state mechanism for state, rather than the URL :) That's kinda cool though; we use servlets, where session ID can be encoded into URLs, but you need to make sure you catch them all...
http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/FO/formic_acid.html gives a good guide to formic acid safety. Highlights include "Corrosive, causes severe burns. Harmful by inhalation, ingestion and through skin absorption. Readily absorbed through skin. Very destructive of mucous membranes and upper respiratory tract, eyes and skin. Severe eye irritant. Inhalation may be fatal." (emphasis theirs).
I'm thinking I'll go with the flammable myself..
> Insert: false sense of. Cookies, even the ones which aren't personally identifiable, are used mathematically. It's all about collision sets. The only privacy you get from cookies is by flat out refusing to deal with them.
Y'know, some web devs (me, err, the guy sitting next to me, at least) do actually use cookies to hold session related data. Things like, who are you, and what page should I take you back to after this one. Don't get me wrong, when we're making a queue to get revenge on the marketing people that use cookies, I'll be there with my blunt spoon, but not all cookies are bad. Just, y'know, most of them.
My advice, run Firefox, go to Preferences, then Privacy, then Cookies, and set "Keep Cookies" to "until I close Firefox", or "Ask me everytime" and focus on that session only button. Keeps the people that use it for session data, happy, and the makes them almost useless for ads...
> Will it cost more than a Dell running Windows?
Probably, but how much time can I save by using a Mac instead, and how much is that time worth?
Can I just point out, that's 0.008%, 8 times the rate HappyEngineer suggested, and that's only successful suicides, there's no indication of number of attempted suicides...
> If it's illegal to not provide the police with a key to encrypted data
There's a real problem with burden of proof here, in that you now prove you don't have the key to any encrypted data the police demand a key for. This is essentially impossible.
This is particularly an issue if, say, Evil Bob accidentally e-mails his plans for world domination to me. Of course, he's not a fool (except for the inability to use an addressbook, but nevermind), so he's encrypted his plans. I get a freaky looking encrypted e-mail, and delete it assuming it's spam.
Except, it sits there, in my inbox. Now, for some reason, the police then seize my computer. They're sifting through my HD, and find Evil Bob's e-mail sitting in my trash folder, but no key. It's essentially impossible for me to prove I don't have the key for the e-mail, and now have a criminal record and spend the next two years of my life in jail.
> I see little reason to pay more than half, considering how much cheaper it is for the studios to put it out on the internet
Thing is, I don't think it's actually that much cheaper. Looking up a very quick quote, I can get 1,000 DVDs in card envelopes for $1250. That's $1.25/DVD for card envelopes. Given the quantities we're talking about, that's probably quite high, but we'd want plastic boxes, so lets call it $1.25.
Not living in the US, I'm not entirely sure how much DVDs go for in the shops, but Amazon.com seems to like the $20 mark. So, half that, and subtract $1.25, and that leaves $8.75 to spend on shipping it to the shop, and the shop's overhead.
At the end of the day, I reckon they can actually save more in the range of $2-4. That's not really a lot, and at $8 they'll definitely be charging less than they'd be getting normally...
*double checks* Yup, T&C definitely say I can share the connection. I remember it was an issue when we first got broadband a few years ago, but seems fairly common to allow sharing these days, at least in the UK. T&C also doesn't say anything about responsibility for using the connection, which is a suprise I have to admit...
Oh, and they're not using my computer, there's a router they're connecting to. Not that it makes any real difference, just felt I should mention.