I remember someone made a tiny wireless camera for a heck of a lot less.
Cheap electronics won't do. This needs to be a milspec device. It also needs some heft to it. Given it's (para)military application I'd expect that its size/weight matches a grenade. How many homebrew projects can be thrown *through a closed* second floor window and have 99.9% reliability?
... I have studied the lost techniques of Knoppix burning.
Your knoppix-fu is easily defeated by their BIOS-fu, Configuring a public system to *only* boot from the hard drive is necessary to prevent bypassing anti-virus software and installing malware. Your fu is only useful against weaklings who fail to update BIOS settings.
What you don't see is that there are hundreds of line-farmers waiting in every line in the park. Wait times for all rides have quadrupled because they are all bloated by line-farmers. Remember that awesome ride with the eight hour line? You could have gone on that after just an hour wait if not for the line-farmers. They aren't providing a nice service, they are screwing you out of a part of the experience you already paid for, and then charging you money to get that part back.
For those of you having a hard time understanding where the bloat comes from consider opportunity costs. The time you spend in line takes away from doing something else. The ride has to be more valuable to you than these something elses to get you to wait in line. If the line is long many people are going to opt for the something elses. Paying the line-farmer allows you to have the ride and the something elses. Long lines will no longer turn many people away, hence the bloat.
"I'd like to share some information on an exciting new IBM product that was built in Massachusetts but is expected to have implications on both a national and international level."
It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting - YGMMV.
To be honest attitudes like that are part of what holds the adoption of open source back. There is nothing wrong with that attitude, I share it - I am put off too, but OSS needs to get past that "by geeks for geeks" attitude *if* it wants to dominate.
It *is* a cold-call sales pitch. You can't hide that fact. IBM shows the honesty and integrity not to try to camoflauge things, this maintains their credibility. Secondly IBM has quite a bit of experience pitching products to large organizations and government agencies. I think we should defer to IBM's judgement in this case. Finally, I find the Massachusetts reference brilliant and an example of why we should defer to IBM. They are pitching to a politician. They just gave him the choice to either (1) Embrace local industry and help it compete on a global scale, creating local jobs and tax revenue or (2) give his next political opponent a stick to beat him with during an election for failing to do so, politics is local. Insights like this are how products and technologies are "sold", not via MS/OSS cost benefit analysis. The political will often trump the technical. Is this desirable? No, but it is how things work and OSS geeks need to face this reality. The professional sales and marketing people at IBM, Red Hat, etc do understand this.
Why all the fuss about the DNS root zone when the real problem with US control of the Internet is that US educational institutions like MIT and Stanford have more IPv4 address space than all of China? Fair IP allocation is what we need!
IPv6 is what we need. Look at the glass as half full, those US institution are encourage/accelerating the switch to IPv6. The hoarding IPv4 perspective is shortsighted. Reallocation does not solve the problem, it postpones the problem a little bit. Getting over IPv4 and moving to IPv6, the soon the better, those institutions are doing us all a favor. It would be interesting to know if encouraging IPv6 has factored into their internal discussions.
What people here seem to have an objection to is a sense of misdirected hysterical alarmism. Video games have become a scapegoat, especially since they represent a real disconnect between generations.
I agree with you to a degree but I believe there is also a hysterical counterreaction by the gamers who feel their beloved games are being attacked. They reject an offensive idea that may actually, inadvertantly, contain a nugget of truth. In truth I believe there is some desensitization to violence, see the link below. Does it turn a normal person into a maniac? No. Were people who have gone postal defective to begin with? Yes.
"Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a psychologist at Arkansas State University and past specialist as a "killologist"..."
Sorry, but I find it very hard to take anyone seriously who styles themselves a 'killologist'...unless of course I'm competing against them in Unreal Tournament...^_^
"Colonel Grossman dubs this as AVIDS - acquired violence immune deficiency syndrome."
Ah yes...the 'killollogist'....thaanks ever so much, Colonel.
Agreed, but could the crackpot be delivering a non-crackpot message? In ROTC in the early 80s they showed us a Marine Corp training film. It was color footage of the Marine assault on Tarawa in 1943, combat cameramen were with the assault troops. The easiest way to describe what was depicted is probably to refer to the opening Normandy landing scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan, there were some similarities. One vivid recollection that I have of this training film is a bloody shell crater with the upper half of a Marine's corpse in it. Another Marine comes running by, rolls the torso out of the crater and them lays in the bloody crater himself. I guess "cover" was at a premium. The instructor told us that the purpose of this film was to expose us to the brutality of combat, to desensitize us to some degree. We were told that you cannot be completely prepared, but that all the Marine Corp was really hoping for is that we freeze in shock and horror for five seconds instead of ten. So the military does in fact believe that visual exposure to violence does desensitize to some degree. If so, it is not a stretch to believe that violence depicted in video games can provide desensitization as well. Hell, the interactive and participatory nature of video games may make it more effective than passively watching a film.
In any case, desensitization does not mean someone will turn into a maniac. The people that go postal were "defective" to begin with.
I only read the government's own summary of the DMCA but I recall reverse engineering, research, and maintenance were inherently exempt. After reading the summary the EFF website seemed to be overstating or fud'ing things a little. They mean well, but keep in mind that anyone with an agenda is going to color things to support their take.
A while ago I read a government summary of the DMCA and I believe there is an exemption for research. If so they don't even need to make a reverse engineering argument, their work is inherently exempt.
Fun Fact: It's more trivial for me to download a game and copy a crack (or bypass the protection) than it is for me to go to the store and buy it.
I'll bet there is a more important fact: You are more technically inclined than the average gamer. As I said, it doesn't really matter that the technically inclined can bypass copy protection. Copy protection doesn't have to be 100% successful. Generating enough "new" sales to pay for the license and the handful of returns or lost sales isn't that hard. The market is very Darwinian, if it didn't help publishers continue to use it.
Good hackers will have decrypted code available in no time with any copy protection completely stripped off and available on Usenet. What's sad is that the game companies still persist on thinking that copy protection works.
Copy protection works, that's why publishers keep using it. What a small number of the more sophisticated users do is largely inconsequential. Copy protection is largely effective with the mass market. The masses will copy something if it is trivial to do so. If you put up the least little barrier many will buy the product, a readily available crack program on the net doesn't really change this. I witnessed one example of this regarding an unprotected chemistry program bundled with a freshman chemistry textbook. The book had a coupon that let the student by the program for $15. The program was required for homework but only 10% of the students bought it. The next semester the program had weak copy protection, cracks were available (hell, I think there were already generic cracks that removed the protection from any product using it), the users were college students taking chemistry (you would expect this group to be a little more capable than the average gamer), yet the bookstore saw sales dramitically increase, about 90% of textbook sales. Similar things happen with games. I don't know how many times I've read something like: "A friend burned me a copy but it didn't work so I bought my own".
Copy protection isn't 100% but it seems good enough to warrant it's use. Sad but true.
Under that definition just about any PC could be considered "sophisticated". Which tells you nothing - is it fast? Does it have nice graphics? Does the damn thing even work? Even old 33mHz PCs have printed circuit boards - there's no way they can run Halo, though. And even 400mHz PCs might have 3D accelerators - but they're still not "sophisticated" enough to play Halo or DOOM3.
You are starting to understand the point, however "any PC" should be replaced with "any recent PC". Sophisticated refers to the complexity of the electronics and the tolerances that they must run unders, not what those electronics do - gaming does not define sophisticated. How many layers in that motherboard, what's the thermal environment, what's the noise (current on the circuitry), the leakage, etc. Drawing pretty pictures is just one of many things that need sophisticated electronics, and the skills needed to design and manufacture a sophisticated electronics product are independent of whether the product draws pretty pictures or does something else.
"As for Microsoft, well you seem to have a double standard. Apple also often begins with an investigation and denial of a problem. Solutions come some time later. We are too early in the process to see if Microsoft is behaving any differently than Apple."
It seems to me that we already have. My mini hasn't exploded on me. . . but the 360 still seems to have a problem with its power - in the original Xbox it was a problem with the cord overheating and melting and/or catching on fire, now it's a problem with the 360's power supply... Plus, Apple got it right with the iPod their first time around - MS? Well, have you ever seen those frickin' HUGE controllers they shipped with the original Xbox?
I'm sorry but I've been using Apple products for far too long not to laugh at the above. Cherry picking your mini, or mine, as an example proves nothing and does not change the fact that Apple has had and continues to have the occasional turkey. I've seen particular model computers and monitors that were inherently flakey and where Apple was forced to quietly extend the warranty period. Seen iPods with bad audio jacks and batteries. The one iPod nano in the hands of a friend, you guessed, big scratch (it's his 3rd iPod over the years and he's not prone to abusing them). Apple has had recalls of powerbook batteries due to fire hazards. Apple generally has great stuff, but don't try to pass Apple off as some universally perfect company. They occasionally have problems, their initial reaction is sometimes to deny, sometimes they come around on their own, sometimes they power to public pressure, sometimes the lawyers have to get involved.
Soviet Union was undeniably a socialist country. It wasn't a communist country though (and never really claimed to be that - it was always "building communism", but never officially declared the process finished).
Actually the "build" failed. A theory, no that is giving it too much credit - it was too light on the science side, a philosophy met reality.
The first X-Box was a big PC in a box. Literally, if you open it up, it's a bunch of standard computer parts. I'd call that "good marketing in getting people to buy a keyboard-less PC," but not sophisticated hardware design.
Just because parts are common do not mean they are unsophisticated. The most generic PC has some pretty sophisticaed electronics. You are confusing the complexity of the integration with the complexity of the electronics themselves. The XBox has sophisticated electronics and getting them to work in a consumer product is non-trivial.
Are you aware that the Xbox was just a PC with a custom OS (a customized version of Windows)? It was NOT sophisticated. Actually, if I remember correctly, the first-generation Xbox crashed quite a bit, too. ..
You are confusing sophisticated with uncommon. Even a simple PC derivative like the XBox has sophisticated electronics. Using your standard for sophistication a PS/2 or GameCube would not qualify either.
But Apple learned from their mistakes, didn't they? Plus, from what I remember, the iPod with the exploding batteries did that because of misuse (it went through the washing machine - AND was taken apart by a curious teenager). Just recently, MS had a recall for the Xbox power cord because it had burned people's hands and caught things on fire - not because of misuse but because it simply got too hot!
Apple has had battery problems beyond the iPod, a certain generation was PowerBook was referred to as the "FireBook" for a reason. Does Apple learn from its mistakes? Yes, but sometimes it requires a class action lawsuit. As for Microsoft, well you seem to have a double standard. Apple also often begins with an investigation and denial of a problem. Solutions come some time later. We are too early in the process to see if Microsoft is behaving any differently than Apple.
And if "Apple is primarily a hardware company" and "they will not offer Mac OS X for the standard PC architecture". . . then why are they releasing OS X for x86 (which is generally considered the "standard PC architecture")?
An architecture is far more than a CPU, far more than a CPU and a PCI chipset. The development systems that have been currently released are *not* using the final design, Apple has been pretty clear on that. The differences in the final design will be more than a DRM chip.
Be serious, that could have driven up costs by two cents per unit.
Have you forgotten the new MS business model introduced at GDC: incremental sales / micro sales.
Apparently it was not just for in game items, customizing your race car for example. I expect aftermarket kits to be available from MS with new rubber feet. Perhaps as the CPU or case thermometer detects an unsafe temperature level they can pop up a dialog advertising the kit.:-)
This absurd situation is the direct result of buying a sysphisticated piece of electronic hardware from a software company.
Microsoft has produced sophisticated hardware before, for example Z80 coprocessor cards for Apple IIs. This let Apple II users run CP/M back in the day.
OK that was a while ago, more recently we have keyboard, mice, joysticks. Not quite sophisticated, even when you toss in force feeback
The above may not qualify as sophisticated by it does show that they are also a hardware company to some degree.
And, uh, you are aware that the XBox360 is a followup to something called the XBox? I think that little piece of hardware may fall in to the "sophisticated" category.;-)
... a huge software monopoly
Irrelevant. Apple enjoys an equally monopolistic position over *it's* customers and Apple is able to design some very nice hardware.
This kind of thing, and hell, this precise situation, would never happen in a company that is run by engineers.
Like a hardware company named Apple, a company that has been producing sophisticated hardware for nearly 30 years? Oh yeah, they've never shipped with bad power supplies, bad batteries that could catch on fire,... nope never could happen. For the flamers reading: Apple is primarily a hardware company, they are merely most famous for their software (well until iPod) and that software is the hook, the justification, for buying their more expensive hardware (have to cite the Mini as a break in that historical trend - not in a literal sense but in a practical sense). This is why they will not offer Mac OS X for the standard PC architecture.
If use of Apple offends you we could use HP (pre-Compaq), Intel, or a host of other companies to prove the same point.
In that case I'll just say that the scientists and engineers did not have much say in safety conditions, those were dictated by the state. Had they a say I'm sure things would have been quite different. As I said earlier, the scientists and engineers deserved better.
What if your CD is lost, or scratched? You expect to get a shiny new one at the store you bought it from?
CDs still work with a certain amount of scratches? How many bits can go wrong in an AAC and still allow it to play?
CDs are easily backed up. When they are lost it is generally a direct loss, I left it somewhere, not an indirect loss, my house burned down and my CDs were destroyed. The AAC files are subject to an indirect loss via a hard drive going bad. More importantly CDs give you everything that downloads do. Rip the CD and you have your digital media without DRM. You could make CDs from your downloads and rip those without DRM but you are starting from a low quality source. I'm sure it will still sound good on my iPod but I am concerned that someday when I have a quality home stereo capable of accessing my MP3's the low quality source will be noticable. CDs seem more future proof. You have more control over file format, sampling rate, etc.
CDs do not have DRM (yes there are a handful of exceptions) and are not tied to a particular machine or device. Yes Apple has a reasonable policy but CDs have a better policy.
The Apple store is a valid tradeoff of functionality for price but it is not superior to CDs beyond price and I guess immediacy.
"The first man in space was put there by brilliant hardworking scientists and engineers."
Don't forget a blatant disregard for safety and human life, that certainly made things easier.
And which human cosmonauts or astronauts were conscripts rather than volunteers? How many of the scientists or engineers would have volunteered to go themselves? Exploration is risky, space exploration extremely high risk, yet there is no shortage of volunteers. The restrictions imposed by the state that made Soviet spacecraft more dangerous may have reduced the pool of volunteers but someone was always willing to go. People paid for tourist trips to Mir.
I don't understand what being most popular on the charts has to do with it...
If I download an album and like it, I will buy it.
Music has a network effect. The more people who listen to a given artist the greater the demand for that artist.
It seems to me rather, that Blackburn suggests that the only reason the chart toppers top the charts is because consumers are focused on very few artists, as opposed to having their attention drawn to more artists via P2P.
There is too much music to listen to, too many slashdot posts to read. Some sort of ranking system is needed in both areas. The charts, the radio, etc are a convenient form of ranking, performing the same function as the slashdot moderation system. The real complaint is about the quality of this ranking system.
Does this mean that record labels will make less money? No, they are buying the same amount of albums (or more)
That is about as naive and self serving as RIAA saying they are losing money. What you and they state are your respective desires. The truth is that we don't really know since the question is not whether sales are up or down, it is what would sales have been in 2005 had there been no P2P. Realized sales vs. potential sales.
But now record labels will have to have a larger pool of more diverse talent to satisfy the consumer who is more aware.
That is also naive. There has always been a niche music market where individuals combed collections for odd titles, sought out new bands homemade tapes, communities that traded such bootleg tapes, communities that traded the most popular commercial tapes, etc. P2P is *not* exhibiting new listening or sharing behaviors. It is just a more convenient mechanism to do so. The word processor replaced the typewriter, P2P replaced recording an LP to casette and handing it to someone.
Trading music, like sex, is not something the "current" generation has discovered. It's been going on for a while, the current generation is merely not well informed about what the previous generation was up to. Face it, when grandpa and grandma went to woodstock she probably blew a roadie to get him a bootleg Hendrix tape.;-)
How the heck can it be socialist? If anything it's anti-socialist and, since everything is tied back to economic profits, it's moreso communist.
It's anti-communist but not anti-socialist. Socialism allows profits, it merely taxes the profits into insignificance to redistribute wealth from producers to non-producers. It merely looks like communism since the the would be producers say why bother and don't even try.;-)
Note to flamers: anything taken to an extreme is bad, pure capitalism or pure socialism, the argument is merely about what the mix should be.
It was a socialist/communist nation that put the first man into space.
Uh huh. When the Soviet Union is offered as evidence of the failure of communism the commies;-) say that it was really a dictatorship and a poor example of communism. Now you cite it as an good example. Well which is it?
The first man in space was put there by brilliant hardworking scientists and engineers. Too bad circumstances forced them to serve such an abomination of a government. They deserved better.
So it is OK when games are overdramatic, unrealistic, and misrepresent reality in order to tell a story or to contrive a desired situation, but it is not ok for TV to do so? And god forbid that gamers be the target of this artistic license. The majority of posts on slashdot seem to either (1) make the CSI episode earn an "insightful" rating for depicting gamers as a selfabsorbed and antisocial or (2) reveal gamers to be a whiney childish lot that can dish it out but not take it, that others can fairly be portrayed in a negative light in their art but go ballistic when they are portrayed in a negative light in someone else's art. Perhaps some of the gamers around here should reflect on how they reacted when various police orgranization attacked GTA. Wasn't the prevailing attitude "its just a game, no one takes it serious"? Well shouldn't gamers be saying "its just a TV show, no one takes it serious, every family has a gamer or two and people know they are not really like that"?
Yes, I've spent a lot of time playing games. Yes, I realize that the majority of gamers do not share the whiner's attitude and that they don't really have a problem with things like the CSI episode, that they don't take it any more seriously than the games they play.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember someone made a tiny wireless camera for a heck of a lot less.
Cheap electronics won't do. This needs to be a milspec device. It also needs some heft to it. Given it's (para)military application I'd expect that its size/weight matches a grenade. How many homebrew projects can be thrown *through a closed* second floor window and have 99.9% reliability?
... I have studied the lost techniques of Knoppix burning.
Your knoppix-fu is easily defeated by their BIOS-fu, Configuring a public system to *only* boot from the hard drive is necessary to prevent bypassing anti-virus software and installing malware. Your fu is only useful against weaklings who fail to update BIOS settings.
What you don't see is that there are hundreds of line-farmers waiting in every line in the park. Wait times for all rides have quadrupled because they are all bloated by line-farmers. Remember that awesome ride with the eight hour line? You could have gone on that after just an hour wait if not for the line-farmers. They aren't providing a nice service, they are screwing you out of a part of the experience you already paid for, and then charging you money to get that part back.
For those of you having a hard time understanding where the bloat comes from consider opportunity costs. The time you spend in line takes away from doing something else. The ride has to be more valuable to you than these something elses to get you to wait in line. If the line is long many people are going to opt for the something elses. Paying the line-farmer allows you to have the ride and the something elses. Long lines will no longer turn many people away, hence the bloat.
"I'd like to share some information on an exciting new IBM product that was built in Massachusetts but is expected to have implications on both a national and international level."
It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting - YGMMV.
To be honest attitudes like that are part of what holds the adoption of open source back. There is nothing wrong with that attitude, I share it - I am put off too, but OSS needs to get past that "by geeks for geeks" attitude *if* it wants to dominate.
It *is* a cold-call sales pitch. You can't hide that fact. IBM shows the honesty and integrity not to try to camoflauge things, this maintains their credibility. Secondly IBM has quite a bit of experience pitching products to large organizations and government agencies. I think we should defer to IBM's judgement in this case. Finally, I find the Massachusetts reference brilliant and an example of why we should defer to IBM. They are pitching to a politician. They just gave him the choice to either (1) Embrace local industry and help it compete on a global scale, creating local jobs and tax revenue or (2) give his next political opponent a stick to beat him with during an election for failing to do so, politics is local. Insights like this are how products and technologies are "sold", not via MS/OSS cost benefit analysis. The political will often trump the technical. Is this desirable? No, but it is how things work and OSS geeks need to face this reality. The professional sales and marketing people at IBM, Red Hat, etc do understand this.
Why all the fuss about the DNS root zone when the real problem with US control of the Internet is that US educational institutions like MIT and Stanford have more IPv4 address space than all of China? Fair IP allocation is what we need!
IPv6 is what we need. Look at the glass as half full, those US institution are encourage/accelerating the switch to IPv6. The hoarding IPv4 perspective is shortsighted. Reallocation does not solve the problem, it postpones the problem a little bit. Getting over IPv4 and moving to IPv6, the soon the better, those institutions are doing us all a favor. It would be interesting to know if encouraging IPv6 has factored into their internal discussions.
What people here seem to have an objection to is a sense of misdirected hysterical alarmism. Video games have become a scapegoat, especially since they represent a real disconnect between generations.
c id=14171326
I agree with you to a degree but I believe there is also a hysterical counterreaction by the gamers who feel their beloved games are being attacked. They reject an offensive idea that may actually, inadvertantly, contain a nugget of truth. In truth I believe there is some desensitization to violence, see the link below. Does it turn a normal person into a maniac? No. Were people who have gone postal defective to begin with? Yes.
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169991&
"Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a psychologist at Arkansas State University and past specialist as a "killologist"..."
Sorry, but I find it very hard to take anyone seriously who styles themselves a 'killologist'...unless of course I'm competing against them in Unreal Tournament...^_^
"Colonel Grossman dubs this as AVIDS - acquired violence immune deficiency syndrome."
Ah yes...the 'killollogist'....thaanks ever so much, Colonel.
Agreed, but could the crackpot be delivering a non-crackpot message? In ROTC in the early 80s they showed us a Marine Corp training film. It was color footage of the Marine assault on Tarawa in 1943, combat cameramen were with the assault troops. The easiest way to describe what was depicted is probably to refer to the opening Normandy landing scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan, there were some similarities. One vivid recollection that I have of this training film is a bloody shell crater with the upper half of a Marine's corpse in it. Another Marine comes running by, rolls the torso out of the crater and them lays in the bloody crater himself. I guess "cover" was at a premium. The instructor told us that the purpose of this film was to expose us to the brutality of combat, to desensitize us to some degree. We were told that you cannot be completely prepared, but that all the Marine Corp was really hoping for is that we freeze in shock and horror for five seconds instead of ten. So the military does in fact believe that visual exposure to violence does desensitize to some degree. If so, it is not a stretch to believe that violence depicted in video games can provide desensitization as well. Hell, the interactive and participatory nature of video games may make it more effective than passively watching a film.
In any case, desensitization does not mean someone will turn into a maniac. The people that go postal were "defective" to begin with.
I only read the government's own summary of the DMCA but I recall reverse engineering, research, and maintenance were inherently exempt. After reading the summary the EFF website seemed to be overstating or fud'ing things a little. They mean well, but keep in mind that anyone with an agenda is going to color things to support their take.
But, I'm confused. Isn't reverse-engineering broad enough to cover researchers dissecting it?
A while ago I read a government summary of the DMCA and I believe there is an exemption for research. If so they don't even need to make a reverse engineering argument, their work is inherently exempt.
Fun Fact: It's more trivial for me to download a game and copy a crack (or bypass the protection) than it is for me to go to the store and buy it.
I'll bet there is a more important fact: You are more technically inclined than the average gamer. As I said, it doesn't really matter that the technically inclined can bypass copy protection. Copy protection doesn't have to be 100% successful. Generating enough "new" sales to pay for the license and the handful of returns or lost sales isn't that hard. The market is very Darwinian, if it didn't help publishers continue to use it.
Good hackers will have decrypted code available in no time with any copy protection completely stripped off and available on Usenet. What's sad is that the game companies still persist on thinking that copy protection works.
Copy protection works, that's why publishers keep using it. What a small number of the more sophisticated users do is largely inconsequential. Copy protection is largely effective with the mass market. The masses will copy something if it is trivial to do so. If you put up the least little barrier many will buy the product, a readily available crack program on the net doesn't really change this. I witnessed one example of this regarding an unprotected chemistry program bundled with a freshman chemistry textbook. The book had a coupon that let the student by the program for $15. The program was required for homework but only 10% of the students bought it. The next semester the program had weak copy protection, cracks were available (hell, I think there were already generic cracks that removed the protection from any product using it), the users were college students taking chemistry (you would expect this group to be a little more capable than the average gamer), yet the bookstore saw sales dramitically increase, about 90% of textbook sales. Similar things happen with games. I don't know how many times I've read something like: "A friend burned me a copy but it didn't work so I bought my own".
Copy protection isn't 100% but it seems good enough to warrant it's use. Sad but true.
Under that definition just about any PC could be considered "sophisticated". Which tells you nothing - is it fast? Does it have nice graphics? Does the damn thing even work? Even old 33mHz PCs have printed circuit boards - there's no way they can run Halo, though. And even 400mHz PCs might have 3D accelerators - but they're still not "sophisticated" enough to play Halo or DOOM3.
... Plus, Apple got it right with the iPod their first time around - MS? Well, have you ever seen those frickin' HUGE controllers they shipped with the original Xbox?
You are starting to understand the point, however "any PC" should be replaced with "any recent PC". Sophisticated refers to the complexity of the electronics and the tolerances that they must run unders, not what those electronics do - gaming does not define sophisticated. How many layers in that motherboard, what's the thermal environment, what's the noise (current on the circuitry), the leakage, etc. Drawing pretty pictures is just one of many things that need sophisticated electronics, and the skills needed to design and manufacture a sophisticated electronics product are independent of whether the product draws pretty pictures or does something else.
"As for Microsoft, well you seem to have a double standard. Apple also often begins with an investigation and denial of a problem. Solutions come some time later. We are too early in the process to see if Microsoft is behaving any differently than Apple."
It seems to me that we already have. My mini hasn't exploded on me. . . but the 360 still seems to have a problem with its power - in the original Xbox it was a problem with the cord overheating and melting and/or catching on fire, now it's a problem with the 360's power supply
I'm sorry but I've been using Apple products for far too long not to laugh at the above. Cherry picking your mini, or mine, as an example proves nothing and does not change the fact that Apple has had and continues to have the occasional turkey. I've seen particular model computers and monitors that were inherently flakey and where Apple was forced to quietly extend the warranty period. Seen iPods with bad audio jacks and batteries. The one iPod nano in the hands of a friend, you guessed, big scratch (it's his 3rd iPod over the years and he's not prone to abusing them). Apple has had recalls of powerbook batteries due to fire hazards. Apple generally has great stuff, but don't try to pass Apple off as some universally perfect company. They occasionally have problems, their initial reaction is sometimes to deny, sometimes they come around on their own, sometimes they power to public pressure, sometimes the lawyers have to get involved.
Soviet Union was undeniably a socialist country. It wasn't a communist country though (and never really claimed to be that - it was always "building communism", but never officially declared the process finished).
Actually the "build" failed. A theory, no that is giving it too much credit - it was too light on the science side, a philosophy met reality.
The first X-Box was a big PC in a box. Literally, if you open it up, it's a bunch of standard computer parts. I'd call that "good marketing in getting people to buy a keyboard-less PC," but not sophisticated hardware design.
Just because parts are common do not mean they are unsophisticated. The most generic PC has some pretty sophisticaed electronics. You are confusing the complexity of the integration with the complexity of the electronics themselves. The XBox has sophisticated electronics and getting them to work in a consumer product is non-trivial.
Are you aware that the Xbox was just a PC with a custom OS (a customized version of Windows)? It was NOT sophisticated. Actually, if I remember correctly, the first-generation Xbox crashed quite a bit, too. . .
You are confusing sophisticated with uncommon. Even a simple PC derivative like the XBox has sophisticated electronics. Using your standard for sophistication a PS/2 or GameCube would not qualify either.
But Apple learned from their mistakes, didn't they? Plus, from what I remember, the iPod with the exploding batteries did that because of misuse (it went through the washing machine - AND was taken apart by a curious teenager). Just recently, MS had a recall for the Xbox power cord because it had burned people's hands and caught things on fire - not because of misuse but because it simply got too hot!
Apple has had battery problems beyond the iPod, a certain generation was PowerBook was referred to as the "FireBook" for a reason. Does Apple learn from its mistakes? Yes, but sometimes it requires a class action lawsuit. As for Microsoft, well you seem to have a double standard. Apple also often begins with an investigation and denial of a problem. Solutions come some time later. We are too early in the process to see if Microsoft is behaving any differently than Apple.
And if "Apple is primarily a hardware company" and "they will not offer Mac OS X for the standard PC architecture". . . then why are they releasing OS X for x86 (which is generally considered the "standard PC architecture")?
An architecture is far more than a CPU, far more than a CPU and a PCI chipset. The development systems that have been currently released are *not* using the final design, Apple has been pretty clear on that. The differences in the final design will be more than a DRM chip.
Be serious, that could have driven up costs by two cents per unit.
:-)
Have you forgotten the new MS business model introduced at GDC: incremental sales / micro sales.
Apparently it was not just for in game items, customizing your race car for example. I expect aftermarket kits to be available from MS with new rubber feet. Perhaps as the CPU or case thermometer detects an unsafe temperature level they can pop up a dialog advertising the kit.
This absurd situation is the direct result of buying a sysphisticated piece of electronic hardware from a software company.
;-)
... a huge software monopoly
... nope never could happen. For the flamers reading: Apple is primarily a hardware company, they are merely most famous for their software (well until iPod) and that software is the hook, the justification, for buying their more expensive hardware (have to cite the Mini as a break in that historical trend - not in a literal sense but in a practical sense). This is why they will not offer Mac OS X for the standard PC architecture.
Microsoft has produced sophisticated hardware before, for example Z80 coprocessor cards for Apple IIs. This let Apple II users run CP/M back in the day.
OK that was a while ago, more recently we have keyboard, mice, joysticks. Not quite sophisticated, even when you toss in force feeback
The above may not qualify as sophisticated by it does show that they are also a hardware company to some degree.
And, uh, you are aware that the XBox360 is a followup to something called the XBox? I think that little piece of hardware may fall in to the "sophisticated" category.
Irrelevant. Apple enjoys an equally monopolistic position over *it's* customers and Apple is able to design some very nice hardware.
This kind of thing, and hell, this precise situation, would never happen in a company that is run by engineers.
Like a hardware company named Apple, a company that has been producing sophisticated hardware for nearly 30 years? Oh yeah, they've never shipped with bad power supplies, bad batteries that could catch on fire,
If use of Apple offends you we could use HP (pre-Compaq), Intel, or a host of other companies to prove the same point.
In that case I'll just say that the scientists and engineers did not have much say in safety conditions, those were dictated by the state. Had they a say I'm sure things would have been quite different. As I said earlier, the scientists and engineers deserved better.
What if your CD is lost, or scratched? You expect to get a shiny new one at the store you bought it from?
CDs still work with a certain amount of scratches? How many bits can go wrong in an AAC and still allow it to play?
CDs are easily backed up. When they are lost it is generally a direct loss, I left it somewhere, not an indirect loss, my house burned down and my CDs were destroyed. The AAC files are subject to an indirect loss via a hard drive going bad. More importantly CDs give you everything that downloads do. Rip the CD and you have your digital media without DRM. You could make CDs from your downloads and rip those without DRM but you are starting from a low quality source. I'm sure it will still sound good on my iPod but I am concerned that someday when I have a quality home stereo capable of accessing my MP3's the low quality source will be noticable. CDs seem more future proof. You have more control over file format, sampling rate, etc.
CDs do not have DRM (yes there are a handful of exceptions) and are not tied to a particular machine or device. Yes Apple has a reasonable policy but CDs have a better policy.
The Apple store is a valid tradeoff of functionality for price but it is not superior to CDs beyond price and I guess immediacy.
"The first man in space was put there by brilliant hardworking scientists and engineers."
Don't forget a blatant disregard for safety and human life, that certainly made things easier.
And which human cosmonauts or astronauts were conscripts rather than volunteers? How many of the scientists or engineers would have volunteered to go themselves? Exploration is risky, space exploration extremely high risk, yet there is no shortage of volunteers. The restrictions imposed by the state that made Soviet spacecraft more dangerous may have reduced the pool of volunteers but someone was always willing to go. People paid for tourist trips to Mir.
I don't understand what being most popular on the charts has to do with it...
;-)
If I download an album and like it, I will buy it.
Music has a network effect. The more people who listen to a given artist the greater the demand for that artist.
It seems to me rather, that Blackburn suggests that the only reason the chart toppers top the charts is because consumers are focused on very few artists, as opposed to having their attention drawn to more artists via P2P.
There is too much music to listen to, too many slashdot posts to read. Some sort of ranking system is needed in both areas. The charts, the radio, etc are a convenient form of ranking, performing the same function as the slashdot moderation system. The real complaint is about the quality of this ranking system.
Does this mean that record labels will make less money? No, they are buying the same amount of albums (or more)
That is about as naive and self serving as RIAA saying they are losing money. What you and they state are your respective desires. The truth is that we don't really know since the question is not whether sales are up or down, it is what would sales have been in 2005 had there been no P2P. Realized sales vs. potential sales.
But now record labels will have to have a larger pool of more diverse talent to satisfy the consumer who is more aware.
That is also naive. There has always been a niche music market where individuals combed collections for odd titles, sought out new bands homemade tapes, communities that traded such bootleg tapes, communities that traded the most popular commercial tapes, etc. P2P is *not* exhibiting new listening or sharing behaviors. It is just a more convenient mechanism to do so. The word processor replaced the typewriter, P2P replaced recording an LP to casette and handing it to someone.
Trading music, like sex, is not something the "current" generation has discovered. It's been going on for a while, the current generation is merely not well informed about what the previous generation was up to. Face it, when grandpa and grandma went to woodstock she probably blew a roadie to get him a bootleg Hendrix tape.
How the heck can it be socialist? If anything it's anti-socialist and, since everything is tied back to economic profits, it's moreso communist.
;-)
It's anti-communist but not anti-socialist. Socialism allows profits, it merely taxes the profits into insignificance to redistribute wealth from producers to non-producers. It merely looks like communism since the the would be producers say why bother and don't even try.
Note to flamers: anything taken to an extreme is bad, pure capitalism or pure socialism, the argument is merely about what the mix should be.
It was a socialist/communist nation that put the first man into space.
;-) say that it was really a dictatorship and a poor example of communism. Now you cite it as an good example. Well which is it?
Uh huh. When the Soviet Union is offered as evidence of the failure of communism the commies
The first man in space was put there by brilliant hardworking scientists and engineers. Too bad circumstances forced them to serve such an abomination of a government. They deserved better.
So it is OK when games are overdramatic, unrealistic, and misrepresent reality in order to tell a story or to contrive a desired situation, but it is not ok for TV to do so? And god forbid that gamers be the target of this artistic license. The majority of posts on slashdot seem to either (1) make the CSI episode earn an "insightful" rating for depicting gamers as a selfabsorbed and antisocial or (2) reveal gamers to be a whiney childish lot that can dish it out but not take it, that others can fairly be portrayed in a negative light in their art but go ballistic when they are portrayed in a negative light in someone else's art. Perhaps some of the gamers around here should reflect on how they reacted when various police orgranization attacked GTA. Wasn't the prevailing attitude "its just a game, no one takes it serious"? Well shouldn't gamers be saying "its just a TV show, no one takes it serious, every family has a gamer or two and people know they are not really like that"?
Yes, I've spent a lot of time playing games. Yes, I realize that the majority of gamers do not share the whiner's attitude and that they don't really have a problem with things like the CSI episode, that they don't take it any more seriously than the games they play.