You didn't mention that everyone would have to start over from scratch -- so I wasn't being shortsited. Just an asshole.
As a collector of full albums, I sought out full albums back during the Napster days: pretty frustrating. Not to mention that most people attempt to "assemble" full albums from different sources, meaning that the bitrates can be different, normalization is out the window, and the quality of encoder will be different on all of them.
This just caused me to move to off-line sources for trading for full album mp3's. The quality is tighter, and the chance of the full album coming from one source is almost a guarantee.
Even if full-album trading online became popular on P2P, I would imagine it would mimic the quality of personal FTP sites out there now. lots_of_songs_named_like_this and at least half the albums would be missing a track.
I think your idea would be fun to see in action, but I think it's idealistic. The problem with P2P is that the majority of the people out there are leaches. None of them rip or encode their own music. Many refuse to allow uploads on their machines. And they only want a hit song. They don't want to spend the time downloading a new song.
Having full albums means work on your part, and a nose for quality. You can find this evident at full-album IRC channels, and Newsgroups.
During a 12 month period in '98-'99 I rented and rip/encoded over 1,000 cd's from my public library. It's a shame that they were all Bladenc@128kb
And although downloading is nice and everything, you can only queue up so many albums to download in a night. If you want to trade serious quantity, you have to move offline and trade via postal mail.
people actually listen to the 40 "free" digital music channels?? I thought those were just shite
Re:Down with specialized pieces
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 2
I once bought some Mega Blocks. There was a sale at walmart, and a huge 500-piece tub was like $10 or even less.
Biggest mistake I've ever made. I'm still finding those pieces of shit in my collection, and throwing them in the garbage.
There is absolutely no precision in them. They will make your walls crooked, and your supports flawed. Make something big enough with them, and you won't be able to line up a square.
I'm no lego nazi purist, but there is a big difference. More than I would have guessed.
Re:Down with specialized pieces
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Check out Brick Link and pick whatever you want. It used to be called BrickBay.
Most of the collections on there are pretty large, and prices are usually reasonable. Everyone there tallies their collection by size and color. So if you want to buy 100 black 2 x 4's, you can.
Re:Space, the branded frontier
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 2
Dude, they get the whole aisle!!:)
I'm guessing the hordes of ACTUAL kids buying harry legos vs. the occassional 29 year old loser is driving their sales and decisions.
Re:Down with specialized pieces
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 2
Ah damn, that explains it. I was at Eric Harshbarger's page and saw this mention of the blue tub:
I get most of my bricks from discount department stores like Wal-Mart or K-mart. Toy-R-Us also comes in handy. For pieces not available in the bulk piece sets I resort to LEGO Shop At Home (1.800.453.4652) or private collectors that I have contacted via the Internet. In the spring of 2001, LEGO discontinued the very useful 'blue tub' (#3033).
Re:Down with specialized pieces
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Honestly, if they want to make that crap and sell Harry Potter/Star Wars pieces that come pre-made (is there even more than one piece?) all the power to them.
But please!! Keep making the old stuff. I can't even walk to walmart or target or shopko anymore and buy a tub of decent pieces when I run short of 2 x 4's. They don't sell them anymore. I'm stuck with online sales only now.
you can get a cheap USB gamepad for the computer. It will automatically detect a game, download default/popular button settings to use in a game like GTA3.
What I really want is one of these controllers so that I can play SF2 again and do Zangief's piledriver at will.
So what you're saying is that it's ok what microsoft did, as long as they smile about it. Maybe you can write them a letter explaining your unique situation. That way next time when they announce their situation publically, they can say "We have changed our BIOS so that it is harder for people to play free games on our system. All except for N3wbi3 from Dipshitteville, MO who is simply making a toaster. Our comments do not imply that guy. Let me make that perfectly clear."
Oh, I didn't know that you already bought an XBox, and then afterwards, they went to your house and disabled the ability to modify it. That would suck! I stand corrected.
...but it isnt these users fault that MS sells the Xbox at a loss...
Well sure it is. If XBox sold at a profit, how many of us could afford a $450 box? They wouldn't be able to sell any, we'd all get a PS2 instead.
Not only that, but the people that find the joy in hacking a cheap console probably won't buy a $450 thing to hack either...MS finds that it is easier to stick to the old model...
You fault them for this? They should go the hard route so that they can lose money AND make a hacker happy?...and take away the right/ability to use what you purchased for what ever you want to do...
They didn't take away anything. It's a gaming console, it still plays games. AND if you want, you can STILL open it up and do whatever you want with it, if you can.
If a burglar broke into your company and stole something from your store, are you allowed to buy better locks? Or will you be condemned for changing the locks? Are you calling everyone in the world a thief because you're putting locks on your door? No, you're just being safe. Plus, you might not stay in business if people kept breaking into your store.
ANd last but not least, you DO own what you purchase. Open that fucker up. Tinker. You have the right to buy or not to buy it. They have the right to make the chips faster, slower, or whatever. What you should save all your complaints for is if somehow the new XBox came out with a sticker that said: "If you open this box, you will go to jail for 4 year" --and the law actually enforced it EVERY time. Now THAT would be a true horror.
But the only people they are going to lose are customers are:
1) People who want to use their XBox to play FREE games.
2) People who want to hack their Xbox for other reasons.
Obviously they don't care about #1. What I'm surprised about is that people here think they care about #2. What are there... maybe 500,000 people who MIGHT buy an XBox just to hack it? 0.5% of the market? Microsoft wasn't trying to break into the "hackable computer market", they're trying to reach into the 3rd type of customer:
What attitude? They made the change without telling anyone. THey didn't run to Congress like the RIAA and try to buy legislation, and put out press releases that we're all theives.
All they did was change it so it was harder to play free games on it.
And when interviewed, that's what they said. It's the articles, and the interviewers that are adding their 2 cents to it. Including posters here.
There's even a good chance that software developers went to microsoft with their concerns and said: "Fix this, or we move to a different platform"
Microsoft doesn't care that you made a $199 toaster out of it. All they care about are game sales.
Just because you lock your door at night (or maybe i should say your mommy and daddy) doesn't mean you're calling everyone that walks by on the sidewalk a burglar. You're just protecting your house.
I can see why you think the billion dollar company has a shitty business model.
They should really hire you for your insight before they go bankrupt tomorrow. Just think of the income they could have made by making their XBOX play free games for everyone.
My dad was just complaining the other day that he couldn't hack his XBOX into a cheap DVD player.
I'm sure Microsoft considered you and the other 0.05% of the market of hardware hackers in all their meetings.
No, not really. I'm sure they can live without you being a customer. I'm sure they even have statistics saying that 95% of that 0.05% would just use the hacked XBOX for playing free games, which means they really lose both ways.
Honestly, I doubt they look at it as a loss when they lost you as a customer, they're looking at it as a gain in more real games sold for real $$$$.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean that kiddie porn should be allowed because it allows pedophiles to act out their fantasies in "safe" ways.
uh oh. fudgefactor just made the Sea Org's shit list.
well THAT is certainly unlikely (XP for $30)
But then again, a nickel for each use is where they'd like to go.
You're missing the original question to you. How to you "allow" 20-30% vs. 99%.
You can't.
You didn't mention that everyone would have to start over from scratch -- so I wasn't being shortsited. Just an asshole.
As a collector of full albums, I sought out full albums back during the Napster days: pretty frustrating. Not to mention that most people attempt to "assemble" full albums from different sources, meaning that the bitrates can be different, normalization is out the window, and the quality of encoder will be different on all of them.
This just caused me to move to off-line sources for trading for full album mp3's. The quality is tighter, and the chance of the full album coming from one source is almost a guarantee.
Even if full-album trading online became popular on P2P, I would imagine it would mimic the quality of personal FTP sites out there now. lots_of_songs_named_like_this and at least half the albums would be missing a track.
I think your idea would be fun to see in action, but I think it's idealistic. The problem with P2P is that the majority of the people out there are leaches. None of them rip or encode their own music. Many refuse to allow uploads on their machines. And they only want a hit song. They don't want to spend the time downloading a new song.
Having full albums means work on your part, and a nose for quality. You can find this evident at full-album IRC channels, and Newsgroups.
During a 12 month period in '98-'99 I rented and rip/encoded over 1,000 cd's from my public library. It's a shame that they were all Bladenc@128kb
And although downloading is nice and everything, you can only queue up so many albums to download in a night. If you want to trade serious quantity, you have to move offline and trade via postal mail.
hardly any of the people trading online with P2P have their songs as whole albums. Hardly any.
:)
And without that, unfortunetly, then there's no way to make use of cddb's GUID system.
I'm not much of a programmer, but I think it would be a great idea if someone else wants to take up the challenge...
you're not much on coming up with good ideas either.
people actually listen to the 40 "free" digital music channels?? I thought those were just shite
I once bought some Mega Blocks. There was a sale at walmart, and a huge 500-piece tub was like $10 or even less.
Biggest mistake I've ever made. I'm still finding those pieces of shit in my collection, and throwing them in the garbage.
There is absolutely no precision in them. They will make your walls crooked, and your supports flawed. Make something big enough with them, and you won't be able to line up a square.
I'm no lego nazi purist, but there is a big difference. More than I would have guessed.
Check out Brick Link and pick whatever you want. It used to be called BrickBay.
Most of the collections on there are pretty large, and prices are usually reasonable. Everyone there tallies their collection by size and color. So if you want to buy 100 black 2 x 4's, you can.
Dude, they get the whole aisle!! :)
I'm guessing the hordes of ACTUAL kids buying harry legos vs. the occassional 29 year old loser is driving their sales and decisions.
Ah damn, that explains it. I was at Eric Harshbarger's page and saw this mention of the blue tub:
I get most of my bricks from discount department stores like Wal-Mart or K-mart. Toy-R-Us also comes in handy. For pieces not available in the bulk piece sets I resort to LEGO Shop At Home (1.800.453.4652) or private collectors that I have contacted via the Internet. In the spring of 2001, LEGO discontinued the very useful 'blue tub' (#3033).
Honestly, if they want to make that crap and sell Harry Potter/Star Wars pieces that come pre-made (is there even more than one piece?) all the power to them.
But please!! Keep making the old stuff. I can't even walk to walmart or target or shopko anymore and buy a tub of decent pieces when I run short of 2 x 4's. They don't sell them anymore. I'm stuck with online sales only now.
actually, one of the mindstorm books out there had a project inside it for making a lego sorting kit. I think it was by color only.
you can get a cheap USB gamepad for the computer. It will automatically detect a game, download default/popular button settings to use in a game like GTA3.
What I really want is one of these controllers so that I can play SF2 again and do Zangief's piledriver at will.
Who has had more sex, you or a rapist?
As a whole they have an awesome buisness model,...
Since when is a monopoly an awesome business model?
Listen, I know Grade School can be tough, but hang in there, and someday you'll be a mighty 7th grader.
youre such an illerate
It is hard for me to understand dipshitese.
But then again, I must just be "illerate".
So what you're saying is that it's ok what microsoft did, as long as they smile about it. Maybe you can write them a letter explaining your unique situation. That way next time when they announce their situation publically, they can say "We have changed our BIOS so that it is harder for people to play free games on our system. All except for N3wbi3 from Dipshitteville, MO who is simply making a toaster. Our comments do not imply that guy. Let me make that perfectly clear."
Oh, I didn't know that you already bought an XBox, and then afterwards, they went to your house and disabled the ability to modify it. That would suck! I stand corrected.
...but it isnt these users fault that MS sells the Xbox at a loss...
..MS finds that it is easier to stick to the old model...
...and take away the right/ability to use what you purchased for what ever you want to do...
Well sure it is. If XBox sold at a profit, how many of us could afford a $450 box? They wouldn't be able to sell any, we'd all get a PS2 instead.
Not only that, but the people that find the joy in hacking a cheap console probably won't buy a $450 thing to hack either.
You fault them for this? They should go the hard route so that they can lose money AND make a hacker happy?
They didn't take away anything. It's a gaming console, it still plays games. AND if you want, you can STILL open it up and do whatever you want with it, if you can.
If a burglar broke into your company and stole something from your store, are you allowed to buy better locks? Or will you be condemned for changing the locks? Are you calling everyone in the world a thief because you're putting locks on your door? No, you're just being safe. Plus, you might not stay in business if people kept breaking into your store.
ANd last but not least, you DO own what you purchase. Open that fucker up. Tinker. You have the right to buy or not to buy it. They have the right to make the chips faster, slower, or whatever. What you should save all your complaints for is if somehow the new XBox came out with a sticker that said: "If you open this box, you will go to jail for 4 year" --and the law actually enforced it EVERY time. Now THAT would be a true horror.
But the only people they are going to lose are customers are:
1) People who want to use their XBox to play FREE games.
2) People who want to hack their Xbox for other reasons.
Obviously they don't care about #1.
What I'm surprised about is that people here think they care about #2. What are there... maybe 500,000 people who MIGHT buy an XBox just to hack it? 0.5% of the market? Microsoft wasn't trying to break into the "hackable computer market", they're trying to reach into the 3rd type of customer:
3) People who pay real $$$ for games.
What attitude? They made the change without telling anyone. THey didn't run to Congress like the RIAA and try to buy legislation, and put out press releases that we're all theives.
All they did was change it so it was harder to play free games on it.
And when interviewed, that's what they said. It's the articles, and the interviewers that are adding their 2 cents to it. Including posters here.
There's even a good chance that software developers went to microsoft with their concerns and said: "Fix this, or we move to a different platform"
Microsoft doesn't care that you made a $199 toaster out of it. All they care about are game sales.
Just because you lock your door at night (or maybe i should say your mommy and daddy) doesn't mean you're calling everyone that walks by on the sidewalk a burglar. You're just protecting your house.
I can see why you think the billion dollar company has a shitty business model.
They should really hire you for your insight before they go bankrupt tomorrow. Just think of the income they could have made by making their XBOX play free games for everyone.
My dad was just complaining the other day that he couldn't hack his XBOX into a cheap DVD player.
They've made no attempt at un-modding your old xbox.
actually, I don't think they did piss and moan at all.
Someone else found out about it the hard way...and it wasn't because games quit working on it either.
I'm sure Microsoft considered you and the other 0.05% of the market of hardware hackers in all their meetings.
No, not really. I'm sure they can live without you being a customer. I'm sure they even have statistics saying that 95% of that 0.05% would just use the hacked XBOX for playing free games, which means they really lose both ways.
Honestly, I doubt they look at it as a loss when they lost you as a customer, they're looking at it as a gain in more real games sold for real $$$$.