It's "jump the shark" as far as I'm concerned. I think like many I was pretty tolerant until now. Who knew, but it turns out my New Year's Resolution for 2006 is to give up on Slashdot. Great job, moder-fucking-ators!
before the gov't demands all those juicy sales taxes?
Could some politician in that "pro-Internet tax" camp please explain to me how online mail order materially differs from the catalog mail order that has been practiced by the likes of Sears for over a hundred years?
We have all heard about iPods scratching, but other Apple products are just as bad.
As bad as what? The only reason people bitch about their Apple pretty getting beat up is because it is pretty. Nobody gives a rat's ass about scratches they get on their crap Dell box or some junk MP3 players. It's not that other products are more durable, it's that nobody cares half as much for those other products as they seem to care about Apple stuff. People who moan about a scratched nano always sound like they'd be shocked by the very concept of keying a car or getting a ding from someone else's door. Certainly a $20,000 product should be more durable than that!
It doesn't seem unreasonable to believe a new Mini could manage a task a 10 year old PC could handle.
You're a terrible liar. You have already stated you own a better PC, so if you were telling the truth about this you never would have been shopping for a Mac in the first place. All that's left is to assume you're just making up the story and trolling Slashdot with it. Congratulations, you got me.
Start up Safari and browse here. Count how many times the word "movie" appears.
That was easy: just 5. And none of them were in relation to even iMovie-level video editing. To be honest, iMovie is mentioned on the linked Software page, but my quick scan of various iMovie pages doesn't point to the cheapest Mac mini as the platform of choice for the software.
That's not what I would call a good retail experience.
Nor would I, but that experience was of your making. You were the one that went in thinking you'd be happy with a low-end system. The clerk tells you otherwise, sacrificing a sale, and you chew them out here for not selling you something that isn't up to the task? You're a piece of work, buddy.
Except that I already have a PC that is faster than the iMac. Even if I didn't, it would be a lot cheaper to upgrade it (new MB, CPU and RAM), than buy an Apple product.
So what? The issue you raised is not one of tricking out an old PC, but buying a new computer from a system builder. It doesn't matter if that builder is Dell or Apple, you were the one who mistakenly thought an entry-level machine would suit the needs of a movie production studio (however amateur your home movies might be:-).
The question has to do with the software - the iMac comes with sw that has good reviews. I'm willing to pay extra for a turn key experience, but not $1000+ for conventional video editing.
Nothing about video editing is very conventional as of yet. I'd say maybe in 5 years, but by then HD will be increasingly common and that means even more resources will be required to manipulate it, so maybe 10 years out is a better target for a budget system that does what you want. Come on, are you seriously bitching about a machine preferring over 512MB RAM when editing video? How fast do you expect the Mac mini's HD to be doing all that swapping? It's like you're blaming Apple because you have absolutely no concept of the amount of data you want to push around.
With the exception of one person, they evidently figured I was a subhuman PC user from the start, so why waste time not getting the expected ritualistic acknowledgement of the self-annointed...
You deserved it. You clearly came in convinced in what you needed and refusing to accept that you could be wrong. Even in your telling of the story you come out looking like a prick, so I wager in the impartial version you were such a huge ass they couldn't wait to get out of the store. Don't blame Apple because you're intent on being a bad customer. They did the right thing and it is up to you to prove them wrong by buying a PC setup elsewhere that can do what you want for less money. Good luck with that.
They were recommending the Powermac G5. I thought if I posted on/. I would get a better answer.
Fishing for an answer you want to hear will not necessarily result in a better answer. You're fucking kidding yourself if you're thinking about buying a budget machine, Mac or PC, to do HD movie editing. The Apple guys were trying to steer you in the right direction for a reasonable experience in doing what you asked to do. But, hey, feel free to listen instead to some Dell guy pushing a sub-$1000 PC clone for the task; I'm sure you'll be quite happy as you constantly justify the purchase price rather than spending your time actually getting stuff done.
When considering compression, Decompression time is extremely relevant. I don't mind witing more to compress the fileset, as long as decompression is fast.
Another important consideration is how the format allows you to access the contained files. Starting in 2005 I finally switched from.tar.gz to.tar.bz2 for some backups to save quite a bit of space, but just last week I had to pull a couple files from a 2.15GB (compressed to 1.03GB) backup and it took ages to decompress and get at what I wanted. In 2006 I'm planning on switching to a compressed disk image (.dmg on my Mac; at 1.13GB just 100MB larger than the.tar.bz2 in question) because saving a lot more time in access has shown to be better than saving a bit more space in storage.
:) I'll go ahead and agree with you. I should have said that I've spent the last few years trying very hard to do OO programming in C++ despite its severe OO problems.
Many have and, sadly, many still do. It's a good sign you figured out the error in your ways!:-)
I've been doing almost pure OO programming for the past 8 years (using mostly C++ and Java)
Honestly, anyone using the phrase "pure OO programming" and referencing C++ should probably be shot in the head. All your "bold counter-claim" amounts to is that you had bad teachers and you believed what they told you.
You may find that this is how biodiversity ends. I doubt that there many animals capable of evolving over the space of 100 years.
I would wager a proponent of punctuated equilibrium would say that evolutions necessarily happens in 100 years. After all, when you're talking about survival of the fittest you're comparing it to death by old age, and I can't think of any animal that is very reproductive after 100 years. Unless the environment is killing every member of a species, some will live to pass on survival traits. And other animals with those same traits will be more likely to survive as well. Diversity definitely shifts, but it isn't at all clear that it is ends, or is even reduced.
She sounds like a teenage girl. "... our building, like our north building" and "... our senior top, top, top executives".
She sounds like the goddamn President of the United States of America!
I know it's a minor nit, but you'd think that when you're actually talking with the press you could say something more intelligent than "I was all like totally surprised".
What nobody pushing 3D seems to really get is that it's not the 2D desktop metaphor they need to re-work, but the very basic elements of Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer. I mean, what is a 3D menu and what value does it bring over a 2D one? Hell, how many 3D games are still using 2D menus? For all the talk of a 3D desktop being just around the corner, I never hear about how even the most basic elements will be implemented or their advantages over the common 2D solutions.
if you've an interest there is no excuse not to participate
I have a Mac, and they don't offer a Mac app. They hint that fixing a broken Mac might result in one, but never say we'd get the deadline extended accordingly. I guess my business with Chronic Logic stops with Gish. Sad, but I guess they think their resources are better spent on that huge Linux desktop market.
Once you start having real value involved (in this case, monthly fees), you suddenly have real-world economics being involved, whether or not the game manufacturer wants that or not.
The funny part is that it is not all that sudden (the world's oldest profession comes to mind:-), so you have to wonder why the companies are against it. It's the basic economics of exchanging goods and services, and it's no more "virtual" than the trade and currency exchange between countries.
Some companies are getting wise to this and actually offering additional in-game resources to be purchased for real-world currency. Some are even gearing their games to encourage this (and make it hard for players who do not pony up additional money).
I'm working on a MMO game myself and this is becoming a (potential) issue. In some ways you can make a case that those who use more game resources should pay for them. For example, if you want to be able to tell someone's alignment on sight (or see a greater distance, display a custom coat of arms, etc.), the server does have to feed you that extra information, so there is some real world crossover in charging extra for features. For other games were gold is a valuable resource, a company should absolutely look at the differences between what it takes to earn gold in the game compared to what it takes to flip a few bits on the server and let someone jump start from there.
You know, both gold and diamonds did occur to me as something to give as an example, but that would be flawed because both have extreme intrinsic value.
And yet your post in no way supports your contention.
Gold is the most malleable and ductile metal known. An ounce can be beaten into 300 square feet. It also doesn't corrode easily and conducts heat and electricity extremely well. It is required in many, many industrial applications.
None of which matter one whit when it come to valuation. If gold were such an important resource in use, it wouldn't be locked up in vaults as an arbitrary measure of value. If anything, the inflated price of gold makes it less attractive an element for industrial purposes.
Diamonds are similarly of tremendous and unique industrial value. Their unsurpassed hardness and and unique thermal and electrical properties.
Which, again, as nothing to do with their valuation. You need look no farther than the cartels and their fear of artificial diamond production. An absolutely pure diamond can be produced in labs for a fraction of what a mined and cut diamond costs.
I wonder how someone with such a _low_/. ID number could be ignorant of that and make such a stupid post as you just did. Wow. I think you should surrender it and start at the end of the line for this. I will notify the Commander of this travesty.
Oh, you do that, Chuckles. I don't wonder at all how someone with such a _high_ ID is such a terrible troll.
Why so? If you actually consider the player's investment in time and money, it starts to make more sense.
I think the OP's point is that it is a waste because it is so easy for someone with "godlike powers" to flip the bits. It would make a hell of a lot more sense for the company running to game to have a public exchange rate for in-game currency and handle the transactions themselves. Of course, there is a handy insulation that having farmers provides.
It would be much more reasonable to pay someone else $100 for a pre-made character, and save myself 300 hours of time when I'm doing nothing but tediously whacking on target dummies and weaving cloth for virtual copper pieces in the market.
Yes, and the only question is who that "someone else" is going to be. Risk the fraud of a third party farmer who is also altering the game by being there, or pay the company directly to support the game as intended. That companies don't validate a secondary market for game items is telling to how they view their game and its players. If they charge you $50 just to buy the game, why wouldn't they simply sell an "Elite" version for $100 that included some extra game cash/items/levels?
You could make an even better argument for the even greater millions spent on artwork each year, particularly certain modern works that go for seven figures or more. Same for historical artifacts - witness Antiques Roadshow.
You don't even have to single out art for a sufficiently abstract "virtual" economy. Old standards such as gold and diamonds have only agreed-to value to most people. Back a truck up to Ft. Knox if you like, but what are you going to do with all that gold other than sell it to someone else who is likely going to let it sit in a vault?
The NW-E507 definitely plays MP3s. At least, the NW-E505 does (it's what I have) and the NW-E507 is the same player with twice the memory.
Well, there's the rub. I agree a product labeled NW-E507 should be better than one labeled NW-E505. It may even be better, but you sure as hell wouldn't know it by looking at Sony's own site. Maybe the copy is outdated or may UK customers are getting screwed with old stock (the page even says "Please be aware that the features/specifications can differ from country to country." Who markets the same product name with different specs just because it's a different country?). Whatever the case, you can hardly fault the public for getting the impression that Sony still doesn't have widespread MP3 support. They should be bending over backwards to correct their ATRAC-only misstep, but they aren't and their lack of market-share follows. Heads would be rolling if I was in charge. As it stands, I (and so many others) can only vote with my wallet (and we have:-).
For each player on that site, click on "Technical Specifications" and then search for "Direct MP3 playback".
And it comes up with nothing for the NW-E507, or any of the others I tried (excepting the few HD models it says are plainly MP3 players). Maybe I'm still confused, but it is all kinds of unclear how many ways a NW-E507 might differ from a NW-E505. That's why I can't fault at all the person who used "MP3" to describe Sony music players.
Where are you looking? I've got three different players from three different product lines that all play MP3s.
My first searches mainly turned up stuff here. Maybe it's just a UK thing, but few of those listed players jump up and say MP3 support. Even in the details it is unclear if they do or they just transcode. Sony marketing just sucks if a NW-E505 does support MP3 but a NW-E507 doesn't (or does or might or whatever!)
All new Sony players support MP3s on the device. Everything from the HD-3 on for the hard drive players, IIRC, as well as a number of the flash players.
Do you happen to have a link? Everything I was bringing up only showed that 20GB player as having actual MP3 hardware. Maybe my searches were just returning old pages, or pages just pushing Sony's ATRAC crap. I'd really, really like to see something that say exactly what formats are supported by the player instead of some shit saying it's supported, only with a footnote leading to "with included software". Of course, that's probably like asking them to list battery times and song capacity for reasonable use, not just some low bitrate ATRAC crap.
I most certainly *did* discriminate between players: I stated flatly which player I use along with the fact that it *does* play MP3.
If you only mention one player, where's the possibility of discrimination? It's not like you said you have Sony's only MP3 player; I had to point that out, and now you're getting all twisted over the fact that your claims of generalization contain generalizations of their own.
My point about future Sony MP3 players is deduced from the fact that, having added support for the format, it would not make much sense to remove it again in the next couple generations.
So it's essentially baseless? You could just as easily say that since they've only bothered with one MP3 player, they're as likely to end-of-life it and go back to ATRAC-only offerings. How about we both wait for Sony's next move instead of talking out of our asses?
You bring in a userbase and play, without altering mind you, files in MP3 format and then turn around and decide to suddenly *not* play them? Sony deserves a lot of heat, sure, but even they are not *that* stupid.
Are you taking wagers and giving me odds? My bet is that Sony is definitely that stupid, and worse!
They've already locked in users of WMA by automatically converting WMA to ATRAC3plus during the transfer but they have kept straight MP3-playing functionality. To remove that functionality now would be suicide.
Would it, from their backwards perspective? I mean, if they really were hot for MP3s, why wouldn't they have done the conversions to MP3 instead of their proprietary format? They're clearly deeper into ATRAC than MP3, so I can easily see a Sony exec saying that direct MP3 support across the board is still not necessary.
You seem to really enjoy telling others what they should and shouldn't do.
No, I'm simply informing others that there are consequences, many of which should be obvious, to their actions. If you can't say why you decided to buy Sony, the consequence is that I'll assume there is irrational justification behind your post. You are welcome to correct me by posting any overwhelming ration reason to buy Sony.
Watered down, all you've said is, "Sony sucks. You use Sony. Therefore, you suck."
Inaccurate. People will think you suck. I'm not those people. Instead, I'm figuring out you suck based on how you're posting over the issue.
The only change that is made to anything is during the transfer to the player, and I don't really care what happens to the music on the player as long as my library remains untouched.
Which would be reasonable, if there were no penalty in transcoding. There is also some advantage to being able to pull songs off the player in their native format, and Sony has always been the king of locking down what is supposed to be your audio. Given all the other choices in the music player market, I don't see any good reason to buy Sony.
And really, why be a dick? Other than the obvious fun, I mean. It really is a drag.
On the contrary, it is always better to be a villain than a hero. A hero's actions are limited by what is common good, where the anti-hero can do both good and bad things. It's like swearing. Some people decide to limit themselves by cutting off a major section of linguistic expressiveness. I say fuck that!
The parent didn't discriminate between Sony products that do and don't play MP3s.
And neither did you! That's why I pointed out you "happened" to name the sole player of theirs that supports non-ATRAC audio.
And as far as I know, all of their newer players will handle MP3, so this is a problem that belongs in the past.
Well, unless you're astroturfing, you don't know any more than the rest of us. Looking at their current selections, they're still selling a crapload of ATRAC-only players. As far as I know, they see their main strength as the ATRAC format, and that's true enough from a proprietary-lock-the-fool-consumer-in standpoint.
I am not trying to justify buying or owning anything made by Sony.
You should. Everyone with half a brain has a justification for a purchase.
I bought the Walkman because after all of the research I did on MP3 HDD players, it came out on top *for me*.
Then you should have mentioned why! That's the only way anyone out here can know if your justifications are rational or irrational.
So it's hard to understand why you'd attack me personally.
I didn't attack you. I attacked Sony, which is the general subject for this article. You do support them in buying things other than their rootkit CDs. That's not good, but mentioning that is hardly an attack on my part.
Unless you're just a dick. But I'll withhold judgment on that.
Oh, I most certainly am a dick. That doesn't make me wrong, though. As much of a prick as I may be, I've never tried to root your system or otherwise lock up your music.
Slashdot Mirror
It's "jump the shark" as far as I'm concerned. I think like many I was pretty tolerant until now. Who knew, but it turns out my New Year's Resolution for 2006 is to give up on Slashdot. Great job, moder-fucking-ators!
before the gov't demands all those juicy sales taxes?
Could some politician in that "pro-Internet tax" camp please explain to me how online mail order materially differs from the catalog mail order that has been practiced by the likes of Sears for over a hundred years?
We have all heard about iPods scratching, but other Apple products are just as bad.
As bad as what? The only reason people bitch about their Apple pretty getting beat up is because it is pretty. Nobody gives a rat's ass about scratches they get on their crap Dell box or some junk MP3 players. It's not that other products are more durable, it's that nobody cares half as much for those other products as they seem to care about Apple stuff. People who moan about a scratched nano always sound like they'd be shocked by the very concept of keying a car or getting a ding from someone else's door. Certainly a $20,000 product should be more durable than that!
It doesn't seem unreasonable to believe a new Mini could manage a task a 10 year old PC could handle.
You're a terrible liar. You have already stated you own a better PC, so if you were telling the truth about this you never would have been shopping for a Mac in the first place. All that's left is to assume you're just making up the story and trolling Slashdot with it. Congratulations, you got me.
Start up Safari and browse here. Count how many times the word "movie" appears.
That was easy: just 5. And none of them were in relation to even iMovie-level video editing. To be honest, iMovie is mentioned on the linked Software page, but my quick scan of various iMovie pages doesn't point to the cheapest Mac mini as the platform of choice for the software.
That's not what I would call a good retail experience.
Nor would I, but that experience was of your making. You were the one that went in thinking you'd be happy with a low-end system. The clerk tells you otherwise, sacrificing a sale, and you chew them out here for not selling you something that isn't up to the task? You're a piece of work, buddy.
Except that I already have a PC that is faster than the iMac. Even if I didn't, it would be a lot cheaper to upgrade it (new MB, CPU and RAM), than buy an Apple product.
So what? The issue you raised is not one of tricking out an old PC, but buying a new computer from a system builder. It doesn't matter if that builder is Dell or Apple, you were the one who mistakenly thought an entry-level machine would suit the needs of a movie production studio (however amateur your home movies might be :-).
The question has to do with the software - the iMac comes with sw that has good reviews. I'm willing to pay extra for a turn key experience, but not $1000+ for conventional video editing.
Nothing about video editing is very conventional as of yet. I'd say maybe in 5 years, but by then HD will be increasingly common and that means even more resources will be required to manipulate it, so maybe 10 years out is a better target for a budget system that does what you want. Come on, are you seriously bitching about a machine preferring over 512MB RAM when editing video? How fast do you expect the Mac mini's HD to be doing all that swapping? It's like you're blaming Apple because you have absolutely no concept of the amount of data you want to push around.
With the exception of one person, they evidently figured I was a subhuman PC user from the start, so why waste time not getting the expected ritualistic acknowledgement of the self-annointed...
You deserved it. You clearly came in convinced in what you needed and refusing to accept that you could be wrong. Even in your telling of the story you come out looking like a prick, so I wager in the impartial version you were such a huge ass they couldn't wait to get out of the store. Don't blame Apple because you're intent on being a bad customer. They did the right thing and it is up to you to prove them wrong by buying a PC setup elsewhere that can do what you want for less money. Good luck with that.
They were recommending the Powermac G5. I thought if I posted on /. I would get a better answer.
Fishing for an answer you want to hear will not necessarily result in a better answer. You're fucking kidding yourself if you're thinking about buying a budget machine, Mac or PC, to do HD movie editing. The Apple guys were trying to steer you in the right direction for a reasonable experience in doing what you asked to do. But, hey, feel free to listen instead to some Dell guy pushing a sub-$1000 PC clone for the task; I'm sure you'll be quite happy as you constantly justify the purchase price rather than spending your time actually getting stuff done.
When considering compression, Decompression time is extremely relevant. I don't mind witing more to compress the fileset, as long as decompression is fast.
Another important consideration is how the format allows you to access the contained files. Starting in 2005 I finally switched from .tar.gz to .tar.bz2 for some backups to save quite a bit of space, but just last week I had to pull a couple files from a 2.15GB (compressed to 1.03GB) backup and it took ages to decompress and get at what I wanted. In 2006 I'm planning on switching to a compressed disk image (.dmg on my Mac; at 1.13GB just 100MB larger than the .tar.bz2 in question) because saving a lot more time in access has shown to be better than saving a bit more space in storage.
Many have and, sadly, many still do. It's a good sign you figured out the error in your ways! :-)
I've been doing almost pure OO programming for the past 8 years (using mostly C++ and Java)
Honestly, anyone using the phrase "pure OO programming" and referencing C++ should probably be shot in the head. All your "bold counter-claim" amounts to is that you had bad teachers and you believed what they told you.
Then you and your fake sig spam must be from the US! I can't believe people are modding your shit up . . .
You may find that this is how biodiversity ends. I doubt that there many animals capable of evolving over the space of 100 years.
I would wager a proponent of punctuated equilibrium would say that evolutions necessarily happens in 100 years. After all, when you're talking about survival of the fittest you're comparing it to death by old age, and I can't think of any animal that is very reproductive after 100 years. Unless the environment is killing every member of a species, some will live to pass on survival traits. And other animals with those same traits will be more likely to survive as well. Diversity definitely shifts, but it isn't at all clear that it is ends, or is even reduced.
She sounds like a teenage girl. "... our building, like our north building" and "... our senior top, top, top executives".
She sounds like the goddamn President of the United States of America!
I know it's a minor nit, but you'd think that when you're actually talking with the press you could say something more intelligent than "I was all like totally surprised".
"Put it in my pocket, got the ear things on."
What nobody pushing 3D seems to really get is that it's not the 2D desktop metaphor they need to re-work, but the very basic elements of Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer. I mean, what is a 3D menu and what value does it bring over a 2D one? Hell, how many 3D games are still using 2D menus? For all the talk of a 3D desktop being just around the corner, I never hear about how even the most basic elements will be implemented or their advantages over the common 2D solutions.
All long walks starts with a modest first step.
Boot to the head!
if you've an interest there is no excuse not to participate
I have a Mac, and they don't offer a Mac app. They hint that fixing a broken Mac might result in one, but never say we'd get the deadline extended accordingly. I guess my business with Chronic Logic stops with Gish. Sad, but I guess they think their resources are better spent on that huge Linux desktop market.
Once you start having real value involved (in this case, monthly fees), you suddenly have real-world economics being involved, whether or not the game manufacturer wants that or not.
The funny part is that it is not all that sudden (the world's oldest profession comes to mind :-), so you have to wonder why the companies are against it. It's the basic economics of exchanging goods and services, and it's no more "virtual" than the trade and currency exchange between countries.
Some companies are getting wise to this and actually offering additional in-game resources to be purchased for real-world currency. Some are even gearing their games to encourage this (and make it hard for players who do not pony up additional money).
I'm working on a MMO game myself and this is becoming a (potential) issue. In some ways you can make a case that those who use more game resources should pay for them. For example, if you want to be able to tell someone's alignment on sight (or see a greater distance, display a custom coat of arms, etc.), the server does have to feed you that extra information, so there is some real world crossover in charging extra for features. For other games were gold is a valuable resource, a company should absolutely look at the differences between what it takes to earn gold in the game compared to what it takes to flip a few bits on the server and let someone jump start from there.
You know, both gold and diamonds did occur to me as something to give as an example, but that would be flawed because both have extreme intrinsic value.
And yet your post in no way supports your contention.
Gold is the most malleable and ductile metal known. An ounce can be beaten into 300 square feet. It also doesn't corrode easily and conducts heat and electricity extremely well. It is required in many, many industrial applications.
None of which matter one whit when it come to valuation. If gold were such an important resource in use, it wouldn't be locked up in vaults as an arbitrary measure of value. If anything, the inflated price of gold makes it less attractive an element for industrial purposes.
Diamonds are similarly of tremendous and unique industrial value. Their unsurpassed hardness and and unique thermal and electrical properties.
Which, again, as nothing to do with their valuation. You need look no farther than the cartels and their fear of artificial diamond production. An absolutely pure diamond can be produced in labs for a fraction of what a mined and cut diamond costs.
I wonder how someone with such a _low_ /. ID number could be ignorant of that and make such a stupid post as you just did. Wow. I think you should surrender it and start at the end of the line for this. I will notify the Commander of this travesty.
Oh, you do that, Chuckles. I don't wonder at all how someone with such a _high_ ID is such a terrible troll.
Why so? If you actually consider the player's investment in time and money, it starts to make more sense.
I think the OP's point is that it is a waste because it is so easy for someone with "godlike powers" to flip the bits. It would make a hell of a lot more sense for the company running to game to have a public exchange rate for in-game currency and handle the transactions themselves. Of course, there is a handy insulation that having farmers provides.
It would be much more reasonable to pay someone else $100 for a pre-made character, and save myself 300 hours of time when I'm doing nothing but tediously whacking on target dummies and weaving cloth for virtual copper pieces in the market.
Yes, and the only question is who that "someone else" is going to be. Risk the fraud of a third party farmer who is also altering the game by being there, or pay the company directly to support the game as intended. That companies don't validate a secondary market for game items is telling to how they view their game and its players. If they charge you $50 just to buy the game, why wouldn't they simply sell an "Elite" version for $100 that included some extra game cash/items/levels?
You could make an even better argument for the even greater millions spent on artwork each year, particularly certain modern works that go for seven figures or more. Same for historical artifacts - witness Antiques Roadshow.
You don't even have to single out art for a sufficiently abstract "virtual" economy. Old standards such as gold and diamonds have only agreed-to value to most people. Back a truck up to Ft. Knox if you like, but what are you going to do with all that gold other than sell it to someone else who is likely going to let it sit in a vault?
The NW-E507 definitely plays MP3s. At least, the NW-E505 does (it's what I have) and the NW-E507 is the same player with twice the memory.
Well, there's the rub. I agree a product labeled NW-E507 should be better than one labeled NW-E505. It may even be better, but you sure as hell wouldn't know it by looking at Sony's own site. Maybe the copy is outdated or may UK customers are getting screwed with old stock (the page even says "Please be aware that the features/specifications can differ from country to country." Who markets the same product name with different specs just because it's a different country?). Whatever the case, you can hardly fault the public for getting the impression that Sony still doesn't have widespread MP3 support. They should be bending over backwards to correct their ATRAC-only misstep, but they aren't and their lack of market-share follows. Heads would be rolling if I was in charge. As it stands, I (and so many others) can only vote with my wallet (and we have :-).
For each player on that site, click on "Technical Specifications" and then search for "Direct MP3 playback".
And it comes up with nothing for the NW-E507, or any of the others I tried (excepting the few HD models it says are plainly MP3 players). Maybe I'm still confused, but it is all kinds of unclear how many ways a NW-E507 might differ from a NW-E505. That's why I can't fault at all the person who used "MP3" to describe Sony music players.
Where are you looking? I've got three different players from three different product lines that all play MP3s.
My first searches mainly turned up stuff here. Maybe it's just a UK thing, but few of those listed players jump up and say MP3 support. Even in the details it is unclear if they do or they just transcode. Sony marketing just sucks if a NW-E505 does support MP3 but a NW-E507 doesn't (or does or might or whatever!)
All new Sony players support MP3s on the device. Everything from the HD-3 on for the hard drive players, IIRC, as well as a number of the flash players.
Do you happen to have a link? Everything I was bringing up only showed that 20GB player as having actual MP3 hardware. Maybe my searches were just returning old pages, or pages just pushing Sony's ATRAC crap. I'd really, really like to see something that say exactly what formats are supported by the player instead of some shit saying it's supported, only with a footnote leading to "with included software". Of course, that's probably like asking them to list battery times and song capacity for reasonable use, not just some low bitrate ATRAC crap.
Dude, the first thing you need to do is calm down.
Rest assured, I'm quite calm. Perhaps you're experiencing transference?
I most certainly *did* discriminate between players: I stated flatly which player I use along with the fact that it *does* play MP3.
If you only mention one player, where's the possibility of discrimination? It's not like you said you have Sony's only MP3 player; I had to point that out, and now you're getting all twisted over the fact that your claims of generalization contain generalizations of their own.
My point about future Sony MP3 players is deduced from the fact that, having added support for the format, it would not make much sense to remove it again in the next couple generations.
So it's essentially baseless? You could just as easily say that since they've only bothered with one MP3 player, they're as likely to end-of-life it and go back to ATRAC-only offerings. How about we both wait for Sony's next move instead of talking out of our asses?
You bring in a userbase and play, without altering mind you, files in MP3 format and then turn around and decide to suddenly *not* play them? Sony deserves a lot of heat, sure, but even they are not *that* stupid.
Are you taking wagers and giving me odds? My bet is that Sony is definitely that stupid, and worse!
They've already locked in users of WMA by automatically converting WMA to ATRAC3plus during the transfer but they have kept straight MP3-playing functionality. To remove that functionality now would be suicide.
Would it, from their backwards perspective? I mean, if they really were hot for MP3s, why wouldn't they have done the conversions to MP3 instead of their proprietary format? They're clearly deeper into ATRAC than MP3, so I can easily see a Sony exec saying that direct MP3 support across the board is still not necessary.
You seem to really enjoy telling others what they should and shouldn't do.
No, I'm simply informing others that there are consequences, many of which should be obvious, to their actions. If you can't say why you decided to buy Sony, the consequence is that I'll assume there is irrational justification behind your post. You are welcome to correct me by posting any overwhelming ration reason to buy Sony.
Watered down, all you've said is, "Sony sucks. You use Sony. Therefore, you suck."
Inaccurate. People will think you suck. I'm not those people. Instead, I'm figuring out you suck based on how you're posting over the issue.
The only change that is made to anything is during the transfer to the player, and I don't really care what happens to the music on the player as long as my library remains untouched.
Which would be reasonable, if there were no penalty in transcoding. There is also some advantage to being able to pull songs off the player in their native format, and Sony has always been the king of locking down what is supposed to be your audio. Given all the other choices in the music player market, I don't see any good reason to buy Sony.
And really, why be a dick? Other than the obvious fun, I mean. It really is a drag.
On the contrary, it is always better to be a villain than a hero. A hero's actions are limited by what is common good, where the anti-hero can do both good and bad things. It's like swearing. Some people decide to limit themselves by cutting off a major section of linguistic expressiveness. I say fuck that!
The parent didn't discriminate between Sony products that do and don't play MP3s.
And neither did you! That's why I pointed out you "happened" to name the sole player of theirs that supports non-ATRAC audio.
And as far as I know, all of their newer players will handle MP3, so this is a problem that belongs in the past.
Well, unless you're astroturfing, you don't know any more than the rest of us. Looking at their current selections, they're still selling a crapload of ATRAC-only players. As far as I know, they see their main strength as the ATRAC format, and that's true enough from a proprietary-lock-the-fool-consumer-in standpoint.
I am not trying to justify buying or owning anything made by Sony.
You should. Everyone with half a brain has a justification for a purchase.
I bought the Walkman because after all of the research I did on MP3 HDD players, it came out on top *for me*.
Then you should have mentioned why! That's the only way anyone out here can know if your justifications are rational or irrational.
So it's hard to understand why you'd attack me personally.
I didn't attack you. I attacked Sony, which is the general subject for this article. You do support them in buying things other than their rootkit CDs. That's not good, but mentioning that is hardly an attack on my part.
Unless you're just a dick. But I'll withhold judgment on that.
Oh, I most certainly am a dick. That doesn't make me wrong, though. As much of a prick as I may be, I've never tried to root your system or otherwise lock up your music.