Agreed. Completely unrealistic. If you want to opt out of being tracked by advertisers, here are the only steps you need to perform:
This depends on what you mean by "being tracked". If you mean tracked from site to site, then sure. If you mean tracked within a particular site, then no. There's no way to stop this.
I have a basic stat tracker on my blogs that I use for my own amusement; I just like to see who visits my sites. I see plenty of people visit with javascript turned off, and I don't use cookies (it's just a blog, for crying out loud). I can still track them as they browse around the site and I can see them if and when they come back. All I don't see is their OS and screen resolution.
Advertisers honestly don't much care about tracking people from site to site. I handle ad trafficking for my company, and I'm not even sure where I'd find this information in DART, doubleclick's ad trafficking software. That's not to say nobody cares about it, but I've never worked for a company that did. They care a lot more about tracking people navigating through their own sites, and there's no way to prevent this.
I don't really think there should be, either. If you're running a B&M store, you have a right to look at your customers and see what they're doing on your property. You have a right to determine, for example, that 60% of your customers are women, and that 80% of your customers never even look at the shelves on the back wall. This is not an invasion of privacy; these people are on your property. It's your store; you have a right to know these things. It's no different with a web site.
Ok, as a kid I remember playing Cowboys and Indians, "sword fighting" with wooden swords or sometimes just plain old sticks and having full-contact water gun fights..
And did you routinely decapitate your opponent in these play fights?
I see this argument a lot and while I'm usually on the libertarian side of things, I think most of the arguments in favor of games like Manhunt are disingenuous at best. You're not stabbing with an actual knife? That's semantics - the fact is you're taking an object and performing a stabbing motion that is then shown to cause a bloody death on screen. You played cowboys and indians when you were a kid? So did I, but I don't recall any blood spurting out anywhere when I did.
I'm not saying there's a definite link between games and violence, or that even if there was, that anything should necessarily be done about it on a governmental level. (That's true libertarianism - not refusing to acknowledge an issue, but acknowledging that there may be an issue and then saying government should still stay the heck out of it.) But I think it's pretty ridiculous to argue that culture as a whole does not have an effect on individuals and their actions. We live in a violent society. While you may not feel this way, a lot of people do consider violence basically a part of life. Games like this only encourage that attitude - as do violent films, as does violent music. I'm not saying games are the only part of culture that has any effect.
If you look at other countries around the world with lower levels of violence than we have, you can find all sorts of cultural differences that discourage, rather than encourage, violence. If you think that's coincidence, then you've got a screw loose. Ditto for any chicken and egg arguments - you think Americans are somehow genetically predisposed to violence? What scientific basis would you have to make that argument? We're not a different race or species than humans in any other country, many of which have much lower levels of violence than we do. No, we're violent because our culture finds it acceptable to be violent. And games like Manhunt are part of the problem.
They make their money by controlling access to TRANSMITTERS and screwing:
* producers (the people who actually put the shows together,)...who work for NBC, some of whom have gotten rich from NBC.
* consumers...who can choose to watch the content or not.
* advertisers...who make a hell of a lot of money selling products based on the ads they buy.
They first show that gets to solicit money directly from the audience is going to slaughter them; absolutely slaughter them.
Huh?
It's called PBS, dude. Not a new concept. Hasn't really led to the "slaughter" of any ad-supported TV.
You've managed to come off sounding simultaneously like a grumpy, bitter old man and an uneducated, inexperienced, petulant child. Congratulations on that, I guess. But ad-supported TV is not going anywhere, precisely because it makes everyone involved huge amounts of money. (The ratings decline at the major nets recently has been to the benefit of other ad-supported channels on cable; the total amount of TV ad spending and the total amount of ad-supported TV out there has only gone up, and up dramatically.)
You are flying the moral flag over a business decision (sell a lower value item for a lower price in some locale) that Valve made. You make them seem like immoral bastards over this.
Way to sugarcoat the real issue!
Valve is perfectly free to sell whatever version of whatever game in whatever region they like. What they're *not* perfectly free to do is then *disable* those products in other regions. That is in most cases illegal - they now have your money, and you have no working product.
You see no moral problem with this? I see our schools have gotten away from teaching basic right and wrong lately.
Well fine, if you don't like the company, or the product, just don't buy it.
Ok, how about next time you take your laptop with you on a plane to another country, I'm going to have the manufacturer remotely disable it. Hey, if you didn't want that to happen, you shouldn't have bought it.
Come on, don't be a simpleton. You don't see the difference in the reversal of cause and effect?
If "technology breeds crime", then every sufficiently advanced country in the world would be a hotbed of criminal activity. How much crime is there in, say, Japan? In fact, their crime rate is dropping as technology advances - and that includes white collar crime. If the adage that "technology breeds crime" were assumed to be true, then even one exception would prove it false. And there's your exception.
In countries where there is already a large criminal element, technology may enable them to more easily commit crimes, or to commit crimes that were never possible before. But technology is not "breeding" that crime; that crime already existed. Russia has been basically a lawless society in a lot of ways since the fall of the Soviet Union (and probably even before; we just didn't know it) - it didn't take the internet to put it in that state. There are all sorts of forces that create criminality; technology, though, is not one of them.
This entire story is inaccurate. The Oerlikon weapons system they were using is a variant of a towed anti-air gun first made in 1955. This version has a computer-based, laser-guided targeting system. But it was made in 1985.
The United States has been using automated anti-air weapons systems for years as well. The MK15, for example, is the last line of defense for many types of ship in the United States fleet, and it was first introduced in 1978. It is fully automated and computerized and always has been.
There is nothing new about these types of weapons. And yes, they're necessary. The MK15 is designed to shoot down (using a high-speed cannon) high-speed missiles in mid-air a mile or less away from the ship. No human could ever reliably do that.
It may make for a sensational news story about "robots" when a weapon malfunctions, but these weapons have been proven as reliable as any other - and more capable. And hey, guns kill people by mistake plenty of times when they're aimed by humans too.
copyright holders aren't going to provide decades of anything since it's up to google to keep copyrighted content off youtube. no reason why a copyright holder needs to go through this
You mean, other than the DMCA, which says it's the copyright holders' responsibility to do so?
It's the law. It's not up to the copyright holders to dictate anything to Google. If they want their stuff off of YouTube, they need to police their own content.
And this was no accident, either - the law was written this way specifically anticipating cases like this. (Ok, they thought at the time that it was telecom companies who would be most affected, but the result is the same.) The point being that if service providers were forced to police the content on their networks on a continuous basis, it wouldn't be worth it for any of them to be in business. So they lobbied for this provision of the DMCA, and copyright owners acquiesced, knowing that on balance, the DMCA was a huge win for them.
They can't go back now and whine about the fact that they don't like the compromise that they agreed to, and which was the only way they got the DMCA passed in the first place. Unless that was their strategy to begin with - accept the compromise to get the DMCA passed, knowing they'd just pay off congress to amend it later - and I wouldn't put that past them.
They seemed to do pretty well when they were playing nice with Nintendo. I wonder what is it Nintendo was doing for Rare that Microsoft isn't, or what Microsoft is doing that Nintendo didn't.
And yet there was a reason Nintendo was willing to part with them. Remember, Rare was not an independent company - MS bought them from Nintendo.
Rare's output was dropping for years before the sale. In their last three years of development for Nintendo, they released five home console games: Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Starfox Adventures. Of those, only Perfect Dark could be called a legitimate hit. (DK64 sold well as a pack-in game, but it wasn't what you'd call a top quality game.)
A lot of people were pretty shocked at the price MS paid for them. This isn't just a 20/20 hindsight thing - many people said at the time that it was a dumb purchase. There were some hardcore hopefuls who thought otherwise, but this was not a purchase that was universally praised at the time.
And while this doesn't really apply to a studio like Bungie that's buying themselves, whenever one publisher is all too willing to dump a development studio onto another publisher, you have to ask yourself why. It's always a big red flag, and it seems obvious now that Nintendo knew something that MS didn't. Not about how to run Rare, but about how far Rare had really fallen.
This statement is very poorly timed and thus most likely completely inaccurate. 1. Christmas season starts soon. Christmas = high sales period. 2. Wii has 3 extremely popular games being released between now and february.
February != the Christmas season.
The rest of your argument would only apply if the Wii existed in a vacuum. It doesn't. It's being shut out of the software top ten, its hardware sales are only 10,000 per week ahead of the PS3 at this point and that's before the 40GB model hits shelves at a lower price point. It's not as if Nintendo has no competition, and the competition's sales will rise over the Christmas season just as Nintendo's will. The trend lines for the Wii are still down, and devs are paying attention.
I hate to say "I told you so" but there are a lot of us doing just that these days. It's too early to say this is a definitive trend, and it also might really only apply to one territory, but I personally think it's going to continue to play out, and worldwide.
Nintendo's made no secret of trying to attract "casual gamers" - housewives, girls, the elderly. They appeal directly to those groups in their ads. Their most heavily hyped "games" - if you can even call stuff like "Wii Fit" a "game" - are geared towards them.
So they package "Wii Sports" in with the system (or "Wii Play", I can't remember which one Japan got), those casual gamers buy it and I guarantee half of them don't even realize there are other games available for the system. If they do, they don't care - they're casual gamers, they're not out buying a new game every week. They're content with their pack-in game, and when they lose interest in it, the system just gets stuffed into a closet and forgotten.
It's happening. Look at the Japanese software charts, not just the hardware charts. Not a single Wii game in the top ten last week, this on supposedly the most popular console in Japan. That's actually not even unusual these days. Devs have to be taking notice of this by now, and the Nikkei article suggests that they are.
The only question in my mind is whether or not it's too late to turn things around. I think that certainly a few of the big games in the pipeline will help, but then the competition's got big games in the pipeline too (not to mention a price drop). So it's not going to get any easier for Nintendo. And they've already pretty much cemented the system's reputation, through their own doing. Not many hardcore gamers in any territory are going to want to own the system that their grandma and little sister thinks is cool. That probably sounds harsh, but that's the way 18-24 year old males think, and they make up the majority of hardcore gamers.
Whether or not the Wii continues to outsell the PS3 and Xbox 360 (by whatever shrinking margin it can muster), the big problem for them is that games aren't selling, really at all. That will in turn mean less third-party support, which will in turn mean fewer hardware sales in the long run. It's basically the GameCube all over again. These trends have a way of being self-perpetuating vicious cycles once they get started.
Of course, Nintendo will always have handhelds to rely on. The DS continues to be a money machine, though it's running neck and neck with the PSP in Japan right now too (and was beaten handily week before last, with the PSP redesign and Crisis Core launch).
There is no inconsistency. However by moving the goal posts each time they're reached simply reveals the true motives.
I think you're confusing "moving the goal posts" with taking things one step at a time.
If we all demanded everything we wanted right off the bat, we'd be labeled as nutjobs and nobody would pay any attention.
If you ask for one thing at a time, it comes off as more reasonable. It's the same approach you take to any big problem. You're not going to solve world hunger by tomorrow through one big air drop. It takes baby steps.
Yes, the quality of music will be the next complaint. Or pricing. That's nothing new. That's not "moving the goal posts". These are all things people have been saying for a long time, but first things first - DRM is the more important issue at the moment.
First, the "(later $499)" on the 80 gig, is possible but it has neither happened, nor been announced yet.
Second, there was a different 60 gig version available in Europe than shipped to the US/ Japan. Not only did they get it LATE, they were the first to contend with the "hybrid hardware/software BC", so that would be #5.
I know you said adding a different color (White 40 gig) doesn't count, but that would make #6
So in other words, the parent's point still stands.
In the US, there will be two current models: the 40GB and 80GB. At launch, there were two current models: the 20GB and 60GB.
In Japan, there have always been two models: the 20GB and 60GB. Now there will be a third.
I don't even know what the situation is in Europe, honestly, but I know they don't have more than two models on the market.
There have never, to this point, been more than two models available in any region. Sounds like Japan will now have three, which may be excessive. My guess is they're just clearing out inventory there, though, and eventually they'll have the 40GB and 80GB just like here.
But if you want to criticize Sony for having three models on the market, then you've got to criticize MS for the exact same reason. And MS is guilty of something extra: renaming systems without configuration changes. You think it's not confusing to see "Core" and "Arcade" systems sitting next to each other? (And you know that's gonna happen.) At least with the 20/40/60/80GB PS3's, it's pretty clear that you're looking at a different system in each box.
The real reason for the color change is far more sinister. They want people to be fooled into thinking they've bought a real game system- a Wii.
Yeah, because clearly Nintendo invented the color white.
Are Nintendo fanboys going to start aping Apple fanboy reasoning now?
PS2 did white a long time before the Wii existed. See here. In addition, Sony showed white PS3 mockups before the Wii was even announced. Did Nintendo "copy" Sony?
Hell, I may as well argue Nintendo chose white for the Wii to fool people into thinking they were buying a real game system - a Sega Saturn.
I don't find this shocking that someone was able to reverse the blure algorthum of a popular software. It is doubtfull that blur (or any other photoshop filter) was designed to be a one way function. If you know what was used, do it backwards and get the origional.
Blurring destroys image data. There is no way to "do it backwards". Let's say you have a printed photo and then you set it on fire and burn it until it's ashes. Can you "do it backwards" and somehow get your picture back? It's no different.
It should shock you if somebody was able to reverse the blur algorithm, because it's impossible. (No, "sharpen" is not the opposite of "blur". Sharpening doesn't add detail back that was lost to blurring.)
What happened here had nothing to do with reversing blur. It's just a reversed spiral. And the only thing shocking about that is that Interpol is trying to keep secret how they did it. (Oh, I dunno, select the spiraled area and apply the same filter in reverse?)
At least in this case, it's dealing with filters applied by software, so the algorithm can be examined, and it's perhaps reversible, whilst in 24 they often apply it to things like poor quality or low resolution cameras, and magically enhance the details.
And the article summary here definitely confuses the two, talking at the end about blurring license plates as if it's the same thing as what this guy did.
I have yet to see any evidence that a properly blurred image can ever be recovered. People keep talking about it, but they're talking about getting blood from a stone. Blurring is by definition a loss of detail. You cannot restore lost detail; you can only try to approximate what that detail was. (The article posted here a while back, and linked through the summary above, is talking specifically about extracting numbers from a mosaic'd image, not a blurred one. In any case the author says specifically that it only works when you're trying to choose from one possibility out of ten choices, ie. a number.)
Let's say you have an image that you blur to the point where it's nothing but a sheet of grey color. There is nothing in the world that could ever revert that image back.
The only question is how far you have to blur something to get to that point. Some people may not go far enough, and their images can be extracted. But there is a point of no return.
What this guy did, though, was use a filter that preserves nearly all detail but simply distorts it. And any distortion can be un-distorted. That's a different thing entirely than extracting detail where there is none to extract.
Some types of image manipulation destroy data; others don't. "Blur" destroys data. "Twirl" just moves it around. That's the difference.
Further, 360 hardware has actually improved since launch (nowhere to go but up?) while the PS3 keeps receiving downgrades.
In Sony's defense, they basically got it right the first time, whereas MS has just been putting out fires since the beginning (literally and figuratively).
In fact, if anything the PS3 was criticized for being over-engineered, leading to its high price. Its cooling system is pretty insane. So now they're removing some features to get the price down; they're still ahead of where MS was when they launched the 360 on both features and stability. (You may not like Blu-Ray, but it is a feature, and the base PS3 still has more hard drive space than all but the top of the line 360.)
This is a cop-out, either the CELL is not as good as they thought or they are very lazy - either way their sales are going to be reduced.
Uh, the current 80GB system emulates PS2 games just fine in software (for the most part). The problem is it's a completely different architecture, and the emulation needs constant updating. This has nothing to do with the CELL. MS is doing the same thing with the Xbox 360.
Sony just decided it wasn't worth it, especially considering they're chopping $100 off the price.
Still, I'm happy now to have one of the 60GB models that actually has an emotion engine built in.
I was in the same boat. My PS2 is on its last legs, so I picked up a 60GB model when they dropped the price. The writing was on the wall at that point - backwards compatibility was going away, first to software emulation and then completely. That would've left me stuck with a fairly extensive PS2 library and no system on which to play.
Ditto here, basically, although for me it's not that my PS2 was on its last legs (it's a launch system, actually, and is still going strong), but rather just that I saw no point in having two systems hooked up - and two sets of wires in my otherwise nice living room - when I didn't have to. I also appreciate being able to play PS2 games wirelessly without some unreliable third-party controller.
So I also bought the 60GB system when I heard they were being phased out - I wanted hardware back compatibility.
I'm not as convinced as they are that there's no market for backwards compatibility, with as many PS2s as they have sold.
I do understand their point - honestly, since buying my PS3 I've probably played a total of two PS2 games on the system. But still, I bought it because of the backward compatibility, whether or not I actually use it. This is what I don't get about Sony - it really doesn't matter how people actually use the stuff they buy, what should matter to Sony is why they buy the stuff they buy in the first place. So what if they don't use the backward compatibility? It's still a major selling point.
I also think that if manufacturers want us to keep upgrading systems every five years, then backward compatibility basically has to be a standard feature from now on. It can only benefit the manufacturers, because otherwise people feel like they're starting fresh every time out, and there's no reason to stick with the same manufacturer when buying a new console. If there was no backward compatibility in my PS3, I may as well have just bought an Xbox 360. I mean, if I'm gonna have to have two systems hooked up regardless... (or three or four down the line...)
Also, IIRC an unregistered copyright, while still protected, is not as enforceable. That is to say, damages awarded against violation of the copyright are negligible, and often limited to the infringer being barred from continued infringement only, and no monetary damages awarded.
Copyright is copyright. One copyright is not stronger than another copyright.
The only difference between a registered and unregistered copyright is the burden of proof. It is just slightly harder to prove that you own the copyright when it's unregistered. Registration is the process whereby the government implicitly grants acceptance of your proof in advance of any legal action. Without registration, you just have to be able to prove you own the copyrights at the time you take any legal action. But it's not that hard - the old trick of mailing a copy of something to yourself as soon as you've created it still works just like it always did. (Dated postmark.) But there are plenty of other ways of documenting copyright.
This is, of course, assuming what you're copyrighting is copyrightable.
I've often been amazed how bad the aerodynamics of Science Fiction are. The X wing is a pretty good example, with those huge laser weapons on the ends of the wings that guarantee flutter problems in the wings.
Having huge weapons hanging anywhere off the wing doesn't "guarantee" any problem with aerodynamics. (Before you argue that the other missiles and fuel pods somehow dampen the vibration, the F-16 can fly with sidewinders alone. In fact, you can mount a heavier AIM-120 AMRAAM to the wing edge mounts if you want, like this).
The only real problem I can see with the X-Wing's laser weapons from an aerodynamic standpoint is the reflectors on the tip - and it wouldn't really be a big deal to just stow those somehow when flying through an atmosphere (though I don't remember if that was ever modeled in any of the Star Wars movies. I doubt it).
The overall wing design is a bigger problem, though it's more the overall profile than the leading edge that's the issue. An X-Wing's wings themselves seem to be flat, and peppered with all sorts of bumps and indentations; there's nothing to generate lift, and plenty to generate drag. I guess this is compensated a bit by the fact that the thing is supposed to be powered by rocket engines, not jets - I'm not convinced it's even supposed to be able to "fly" in the traditional sense. It might just sort of push itself through the air at high speeds when flying atmospherically, with the "wings" providing some amount of support and stability in flight but not actually generating much (or any) lift.
I'm not really a Star Wars geek so I don't know how the X-Wing is really supposed to fly, but I just wanted to point out that there's nothing necessarily about either of the two issues you raised that would preclude it.
in the meantime, Japan has become one of the US's most important allies and economic partners, and with the rise of China and the re-rise of Russia, I think it's important to consider that Japan may want to modify the nature of their military, and that maybe it's really in our best interests to allow them to do this.
"In our best interests" to "allow" them to do this? Who the hell do you think we are?
Japan is perfectly able to make their own decisions. Not only that, but they act in their own best interests, not ours. They do not exist solely as "our ally", they are a sovereign nation with their own issues to deal with.
I think it's both strange and a little sad to see Americans - and it's not just you - talking about Japan modifying their military as if it's both our decision to make, and a decision to be taken lightly. You don't understand Japan's domestic or international issues. You don't understand their constitution or their history. You've really got no place to be commenting on what they should or shouldn't do in our best interests. Japan will and should continue to act in its own best interests.
The Japanese public has shown little interest in modifying their military. They just voted out en masse the party that was in favor of doing so, and forced their nationalistic prime minister to resign in part because he was more concerned with things like modifying the military's constitutional basis than he was in fixing things like pensions and wage disparities. Why would they want to go down the same road that led them into WWII, go down the same road that's led the US into Vietnam and Iraq, down the same road that's led to the division of Korea? Why would they want to do that given the economic prosperity and success that they've built with both all the money they've saved and all the goodwill they've built up over the past 60 years by not employing an offensive military?
And how is this not intuitive to people outside of Japan?
Japan has had thousands of years of history dominated by war; they're experts in it. They look at us and see us as absolute beginners. They've now had 60 years of history dominated by peace and they've become one of the richest, best-educated and most technologically advanced countries in the world, with among the longest lifespans. They see the correlation between the two, why don't you?
t's not like settling for a jpg of the Mona Lisa. It's like buying just the Mona Lisa jpg instead of a collection of artwork that includes the Mona Lisa. Maybe the rest of that artwork is crap.
No, it's like buying a jpg of a lock of the Mona Lisa's hair. Albums are complete works. Songs are parts of that work. Sure, you can separate them out and enjoy them on their own most of the time, but unless you're dealing with some crap pop single manufacturer like Britney Spears, they're intended to be heard in the context of other songs.
I mean it goes back to the argument that I always make when people talk about buying individual songs... if you can only find one or two songs off an album that you like, then maybe you need to find some artists that make music better suited to your tastes.
YAY! Party at my place everyone! Champange for all!:)
There's nothing to cheer about here. This is SCO's way of weaseling out of their legal liabilities. They conceivably now will not have to pay Novell, or at least not for a long while. It gives them time to continue their court cases without having to settle their debts.
It's a tactic. They're not out of business, at least not yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Completely unrealistic. If you want to opt out of being tracked by advertisers, here are the only steps you need to perform:
This depends on what you mean by "being tracked". If you mean tracked from site to site, then sure. If you mean tracked within a particular site, then no. There's no way to stop this.
I have a basic stat tracker on my blogs that I use for my own amusement; I just like to see who visits my sites. I see plenty of people visit with javascript turned off, and I don't use cookies (it's just a blog, for crying out loud). I can still track them as they browse around the site and I can see them if and when they come back. All I don't see is their OS and screen resolution.
Advertisers honestly don't much care about tracking people from site to site. I handle ad trafficking for my company, and I'm not even sure where I'd find this information in DART, doubleclick's ad trafficking software. That's not to say nobody cares about it, but I've never worked for a company that did. They care a lot more about tracking people navigating through their own sites, and there's no way to prevent this.
I don't really think there should be, either. If you're running a B&M store, you have a right to look at your customers and see what they're doing on your property. You have a right to determine, for example, that 60% of your customers are women, and that 80% of your customers never even look at the shelves on the back wall. This is not an invasion of privacy; these people are on your property. It's your store; you have a right to know these things. It's no different with a web site.
Ok, as a kid I remember playing Cowboys and Indians, "sword fighting" with wooden swords or sometimes just plain old sticks and having full-contact water gun fights..
And did you routinely decapitate your opponent in these play fights?
I see this argument a lot and while I'm usually on the libertarian side of things, I think most of the arguments in favor of games like Manhunt are disingenuous at best. You're not stabbing with an actual knife? That's semantics - the fact is you're taking an object and performing a stabbing motion that is then shown to cause a bloody death on screen. You played cowboys and indians when you were a kid? So did I, but I don't recall any blood spurting out anywhere when I did.
I'm not saying there's a definite link between games and violence, or that even if there was, that anything should necessarily be done about it on a governmental level. (That's true libertarianism - not refusing to acknowledge an issue, but acknowledging that there may be an issue and then saying government should still stay the heck out of it.) But I think it's pretty ridiculous to argue that culture as a whole does not have an effect on individuals and their actions. We live in a violent society. While you may not feel this way, a lot of people do consider violence basically a part of life. Games like this only encourage that attitude - as do violent films, as does violent music. I'm not saying games are the only part of culture that has any effect.
If you look at other countries around the world with lower levels of violence than we have, you can find all sorts of cultural differences that discourage, rather than encourage, violence. If you think that's coincidence, then you've got a screw loose. Ditto for any chicken and egg arguments - you think Americans are somehow genetically predisposed to violence? What scientific basis would you have to make that argument? We're not a different race or species than humans in any other country, many of which have much lower levels of violence than we do. No, we're violent because our culture finds it acceptable to be violent. And games like Manhunt are part of the problem.
They make their money by controlling access to TRANSMITTERS and screwing:
...who work for NBC, some of whom have gotten rich from NBC.
...who can choose to watch the content or not.
...who make a hell of a lot of money selling products based on the ads they buy.
* producers (the people who actually put the shows together,)
* consumers
* advertisers
They first show that gets to solicit money directly from the audience is going to slaughter them; absolutely slaughter them.
Huh?
It's called PBS, dude. Not a new concept. Hasn't really led to the "slaughter" of any ad-supported TV.
You've managed to come off sounding simultaneously like a grumpy, bitter old man and an uneducated, inexperienced, petulant child. Congratulations on that, I guess. But ad-supported TV is not going anywhere, precisely because it makes everyone involved huge amounts of money. (The ratings decline at the major nets recently has been to the benefit of other ad-supported channels on cable; the total amount of TV ad spending and the total amount of ad-supported TV out there has only gone up, and up dramatically.)
You are flying the moral flag over a business decision (sell a lower value item for a lower price in some locale) that Valve made. You make them seem like immoral bastards over this.
Way to sugarcoat the real issue!
Valve is perfectly free to sell whatever version of whatever game in whatever region they like. What they're *not* perfectly free to do is then *disable* those products in other regions. That is in most cases illegal - they now have your money, and you have no working product.
You see no moral problem with this? I see our schools have gotten away from teaching basic right and wrong lately.
Well fine, if you don't like the company, or the product, just don't buy it.
Ok, how about next time you take your laptop with you on a plane to another country, I'm going to have the manufacturer remotely disable it. Hey, if you didn't want that to happen, you shouldn't have bought it.
Yeah, yeah, I see it's tongue in the cheek, but my data is inaccessible for my wife. She has no business in there, and neither have I in her data.
And they say every great relationship is built on trust...
What exactly is the difference?
Come on, don't be a simpleton. You don't see the difference in the reversal of cause and effect?
If "technology breeds crime", then every sufficiently advanced country in the world would be a hotbed of criminal activity. How much crime is there in, say, Japan? In fact, their crime rate is dropping as technology advances - and that includes white collar crime. If the adage that "technology breeds crime" were assumed to be true, then even one exception would prove it false. And there's your exception.
In countries where there is already a large criminal element, technology may enable them to more easily commit crimes, or to commit crimes that were never possible before. But technology is not "breeding" that crime; that crime already existed. Russia has been basically a lawless society in a lot of ways since the fall of the Soviet Union (and probably even before; we just didn't know it) - it didn't take the internet to put it in that state. There are all sorts of forces that create criminality; technology, though, is not one of them.
This entire story is inaccurate. The Oerlikon weapons system they were using is a variant of a towed anti-air gun first made in 1955. This version has a computer-based, laser-guided targeting system. But it was made in 1985.
The United States has been using automated anti-air weapons systems for years as well. The MK15, for example, is the last line of defense for many types of ship in the United States fleet, and it was first introduced in 1978. It is fully automated and computerized and always has been.
There is nothing new about these types of weapons. And yes, they're necessary. The MK15 is designed to shoot down (using a high-speed cannon) high-speed missiles in mid-air a mile or less away from the ship. No human could ever reliably do that.
It may make for a sensational news story about "robots" when a weapon malfunctions, but these weapons have been proven as reliable as any other - and more capable. And hey, guns kill people by mistake plenty of times when they're aimed by humans too.
copyright holders aren't going to provide decades of anything since it's up to google to keep copyrighted content off youtube. no reason why a copyright holder needs to go through this
You mean, other than the DMCA, which says it's the copyright holders' responsibility to do so?
It's the law. It's not up to the copyright holders to dictate anything to Google. If they want their stuff off of YouTube, they need to police their own content.
And this was no accident, either - the law was written this way specifically anticipating cases like this. (Ok, they thought at the time that it was telecom companies who would be most affected, but the result is the same.) The point being that if service providers were forced to police the content on their networks on a continuous basis, it wouldn't be worth it for any of them to be in business. So they lobbied for this provision of the DMCA, and copyright owners acquiesced, knowing that on balance, the DMCA was a huge win for them.
They can't go back now and whine about the fact that they don't like the compromise that they agreed to, and which was the only way they got the DMCA passed in the first place. Unless that was their strategy to begin with - accept the compromise to get the DMCA passed, knowing they'd just pay off congress to amend it later - and I wouldn't put that past them.
Grammar Nazis are to grammar as Chiropraters are to medicine
So what's your opinion on spelling Nazis?
They seemed to do pretty well when they were playing nice with Nintendo. I wonder what is it Nintendo was doing for Rare that Microsoft isn't, or what Microsoft is doing that Nintendo didn't.
And yet there was a reason Nintendo was willing to part with them. Remember, Rare was not an independent company - MS bought them from Nintendo.
Rare's output was dropping for years before the sale. In their last three years of development for Nintendo, they released five home console games: Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Starfox Adventures. Of those, only Perfect Dark could be called a legitimate hit. (DK64 sold well as a pack-in game, but it wasn't what you'd call a top quality game.)
A lot of people were pretty shocked at the price MS paid for them. This isn't just a 20/20 hindsight thing - many people said at the time that it was a dumb purchase. There were some hardcore hopefuls who thought otherwise, but this was not a purchase that was universally praised at the time.
And while this doesn't really apply to a studio like Bungie that's buying themselves, whenever one publisher is all too willing to dump a development studio onto another publisher, you have to ask yourself why. It's always a big red flag, and it seems obvious now that Nintendo knew something that MS didn't. Not about how to run Rare, but about how far Rare had really fallen.
This statement is very poorly timed and thus most likely completely inaccurate. 1. Christmas season starts soon. Christmas = high sales period. 2. Wii has 3 extremely popular games being released between now and february.
February != the Christmas season.
The rest of your argument would only apply if the Wii existed in a vacuum. It doesn't. It's being shut out of the software top ten, its hardware sales are only 10,000 per week ahead of the PS3 at this point and that's before the 40GB model hits shelves at a lower price point. It's not as if Nintendo has no competition, and the competition's sales will rise over the Christmas season just as Nintendo's will. The trend lines for the Wii are still down, and devs are paying attention.
I hate to say "I told you so" but there are a lot of us doing just that these days. It's too early to say this is a definitive trend, and it also might really only apply to one territory, but I personally think it's going to continue to play out, and worldwide.
Nintendo's made no secret of trying to attract "casual gamers" - housewives, girls, the elderly. They appeal directly to those groups in their ads. Their most heavily hyped "games" - if you can even call stuff like "Wii Fit" a "game" - are geared towards them.
So they package "Wii Sports" in with the system (or "Wii Play", I can't remember which one Japan got), those casual gamers buy it and I guarantee half of them don't even realize there are other games available for the system. If they do, they don't care - they're casual gamers, they're not out buying a new game every week. They're content with their pack-in game, and when they lose interest in it, the system just gets stuffed into a closet and forgotten.
It's happening. Look at the Japanese software charts, not just the hardware charts. Not a single Wii game in the top ten last week, this on supposedly the most popular console in Japan. That's actually not even unusual these days. Devs have to be taking notice of this by now, and the Nikkei article suggests that they are.
The only question in my mind is whether or not it's too late to turn things around. I think that certainly a few of the big games in the pipeline will help, but then the competition's got big games in the pipeline too (not to mention a price drop). So it's not going to get any easier for Nintendo. And they've already pretty much cemented the system's reputation, through their own doing. Not many hardcore gamers in any territory are going to want to own the system that their grandma and little sister thinks is cool. That probably sounds harsh, but that's the way 18-24 year old males think, and they make up the majority of hardcore gamers.
Whether or not the Wii continues to outsell the PS3 and Xbox 360 (by whatever shrinking margin it can muster), the big problem for them is that games aren't selling, really at all. That will in turn mean less third-party support, which will in turn mean fewer hardware sales in the long run. It's basically the GameCube all over again. These trends have a way of being self-perpetuating vicious cycles once they get started.
Of course, Nintendo will always have handhelds to rely on. The DS continues to be a money machine, though it's running neck and neck with the PSP in Japan right now too (and was beaten handily week before last, with the PSP redesign and Crisis Core launch).
There is no inconsistency. However by moving the goal posts each time they're reached simply reveals the true motives.
I think you're confusing "moving the goal posts" with taking things one step at a time.
If we all demanded everything we wanted right off the bat, we'd be labeled as nutjobs and nobody would pay any attention.
If you ask for one thing at a time, it comes off as more reasonable. It's the same approach you take to any big problem. You're not going to solve world hunger by tomorrow through one big air drop. It takes baby steps.
Yes, the quality of music will be the next complaint. Or pricing. That's nothing new. That's not "moving the goal posts". These are all things people have been saying for a long time, but first things first - DRM is the more important issue at the moment.
First, the "(later $499)" on the 80 gig, is possible but it has neither happened, nor been announced yet.
Second, there was a different 60 gig version available in Europe than shipped to the US/ Japan. Not only did they get it LATE, they were the first to contend with the "hybrid hardware/software BC", so that would be #5.
I know you said adding a different color (White 40 gig) doesn't count, but that would make #6
So in other words, the parent's point still stands.
In the US, there will be two current models: the 40GB and 80GB. At launch, there were two current models: the 20GB and 60GB.
In Japan, there have always been two models: the 20GB and 60GB. Now there will be a third.
I don't even know what the situation is in Europe, honestly, but I know they don't have more than two models on the market.
There have never, to this point, been more than two models available in any region. Sounds like Japan will now have three, which may be excessive. My guess is they're just clearing out inventory there, though, and eventually they'll have the 40GB and 80GB just like here.
But if you want to criticize Sony for having three models on the market, then you've got to criticize MS for the exact same reason. And MS is guilty of something extra: renaming systems without configuration changes. You think it's not confusing to see "Core" and "Arcade" systems sitting next to each other? (And you know that's gonna happen.) At least with the 20/40/60/80GB PS3's, it's pretty clear that you're looking at a different system in each box.
The real reason for the color change is far more sinister. They want people to be fooled into thinking they've bought a real game system- a Wii.
Yeah, because clearly Nintendo invented the color white.
Are Nintendo fanboys going to start aping Apple fanboy reasoning now?
PS2 did white a long time before the Wii existed. See here. In addition, Sony showed white PS3 mockups before the Wii was even announced. Did Nintendo "copy" Sony?
Hell, I may as well argue Nintendo chose white for the Wii to fool people into thinking they were buying a real game system - a Sega Saturn.
Lots of consoles are white. Get over it.
I don't find this shocking that someone was able to reverse the blure algorthum of a popular software. It is doubtfull that blur (or any other photoshop filter) was designed to be a one way function. If you know what was used, do it backwards and get the origional.
Blurring destroys image data. There is no way to "do it backwards". Let's say you have a printed photo and then you set it on fire and burn it until it's ashes. Can you "do it backwards" and somehow get your picture back? It's no different.
It should shock you if somebody was able to reverse the blur algorithm, because it's impossible. (No, "sharpen" is not the opposite of "blur". Sharpening doesn't add detail back that was lost to blurring.)
What happened here had nothing to do with reversing blur. It's just a reversed spiral. And the only thing shocking about that is that Interpol is trying to keep secret how they did it. (Oh, I dunno, select the spiraled area and apply the same filter in reverse?)
At least in this case, it's dealing with filters applied by software, so the algorithm can be examined, and it's perhaps reversible, whilst in 24 they often apply it to things like poor quality or low resolution cameras, and magically enhance the details.
And the article summary here definitely confuses the two, talking at the end about blurring license plates as if it's the same thing as what this guy did.
I have yet to see any evidence that a properly blurred image can ever be recovered. People keep talking about it, but they're talking about getting blood from a stone. Blurring is by definition a loss of detail. You cannot restore lost detail; you can only try to approximate what that detail was. (The article posted here a while back, and linked through the summary above, is talking specifically about extracting numbers from a mosaic'd image, not a blurred one. In any case the author says specifically that it only works when you're trying to choose from one possibility out of ten choices, ie. a number.)
Let's say you have an image that you blur to the point where it's nothing but a sheet of grey color. There is nothing in the world that could ever revert that image back.
The only question is how far you have to blur something to get to that point. Some people may not go far enough, and their images can be extracted. But there is a point of no return.
What this guy did, though, was use a filter that preserves nearly all detail but simply distorts it. And any distortion can be un-distorted. That's a different thing entirely than extracting detail where there is none to extract.
Some types of image manipulation destroy data; others don't. "Blur" destroys data. "Twirl" just moves it around. That's the difference.
Further, 360 hardware has actually improved since launch (nowhere to go but up?) while the PS3 keeps receiving downgrades.
In Sony's defense, they basically got it right the first time, whereas MS has just been putting out fires since the beginning (literally and figuratively).
In fact, if anything the PS3 was criticized for being over-engineered, leading to its high price. Its cooling system is pretty insane. So now they're removing some features to get the price down; they're still ahead of where MS was when they launched the 360 on both features and stability. (You may not like Blu-Ray, but it is a feature, and the base PS3 still has more hard drive space than all but the top of the line 360.)
This is a cop-out, either the CELL is not as good as they thought or they are very lazy - either way their sales are going to be reduced.
Uh, the current 80GB system emulates PS2 games just fine in software (for the most part). The problem is it's a completely different architecture, and the emulation needs constant updating. This has nothing to do with the CELL. MS is doing the same thing with the Xbox 360.
Sony just decided it wasn't worth it, especially considering they're chopping $100 off the price.
Still, I'm happy now to have one of the 60GB models that actually has an emotion engine built in.
I was in the same boat. My PS2 is on its last legs, so I picked up a 60GB model when they dropped the price. The writing was on the wall at that point - backwards compatibility was going away, first to software emulation and then completely. That would've left me stuck with a fairly extensive PS2 library and no system on which to play.
Ditto here, basically, although for me it's not that my PS2 was on its last legs (it's a launch system, actually, and is still going strong), but rather just that I saw no point in having two systems hooked up - and two sets of wires in my otherwise nice living room - when I didn't have to. I also appreciate being able to play PS2 games wirelessly without some unreliable third-party controller.
So I also bought the 60GB system when I heard they were being phased out - I wanted hardware back compatibility.
I'm not as convinced as they are that there's no market for backwards compatibility, with as many PS2s as they have sold.
I do understand their point - honestly, since buying my PS3 I've probably played a total of two PS2 games on the system. But still, I bought it because of the backward compatibility, whether or not I actually use it. This is what I don't get about Sony - it really doesn't matter how people actually use the stuff they buy, what should matter to Sony is why they buy the stuff they buy in the first place. So what if they don't use the backward compatibility? It's still a major selling point.
I also think that if manufacturers want us to keep upgrading systems every five years, then backward compatibility basically has to be a standard feature from now on. It can only benefit the manufacturers, because otherwise people feel like they're starting fresh every time out, and there's no reason to stick with the same manufacturer when buying a new console. If there was no backward compatibility in my PS3, I may as well have just bought an Xbox 360. I mean, if I'm gonna have to have two systems hooked up regardless... (or three or four down the line...)
Also, IIRC an unregistered copyright, while still protected, is not as enforceable. That is to say, damages awarded against violation of the copyright are negligible, and often limited to the infringer being barred from continued infringement only, and no monetary damages awarded.
Copyright is copyright. One copyright is not stronger than another copyright.
The only difference between a registered and unregistered copyright is the burden of proof. It is just slightly harder to prove that you own the copyright when it's unregistered. Registration is the process whereby the government implicitly grants acceptance of your proof in advance of any legal action. Without registration, you just have to be able to prove you own the copyrights at the time you take any legal action. But it's not that hard - the old trick of mailing a copy of something to yourself as soon as you've created it still works just like it always did. (Dated postmark.) But there are plenty of other ways of documenting copyright.
This is, of course, assuming what you're copyrighting is copyrightable.
I've often been amazed how bad the aerodynamics of Science Fiction are. The X wing is a pretty good example, with those huge laser weapons on the ends of the wings that guarantee flutter problems in the wings.
What, you mean kinda like this?
Having huge weapons hanging anywhere off the wing doesn't "guarantee" any problem with aerodynamics. (Before you argue that the other missiles and fuel pods somehow dampen the vibration, the F-16 can fly with sidewinders alone. In fact, you can mount a heavier AIM-120 AMRAAM to the wing edge mounts if you want, like this).
The only real problem I can see with the X-Wing's laser weapons from an aerodynamic standpoint is the reflectors on the tip - and it wouldn't really be a big deal to just stow those somehow when flying through an atmosphere (though I don't remember if that was ever modeled in any of the Star Wars movies. I doubt it).
The overall wing design is a bigger problem, though it's more the overall profile than the leading edge that's the issue. An X-Wing's wings themselves seem to be flat, and peppered with all sorts of bumps and indentations; there's nothing to generate lift, and plenty to generate drag. I guess this is compensated a bit by the fact that the thing is supposed to be powered by rocket engines, not jets - I'm not convinced it's even supposed to be able to "fly" in the traditional sense. It might just sort of push itself through the air at high speeds when flying atmospherically, with the "wings" providing some amount of support and stability in flight but not actually generating much (or any) lift.
I'm not really a Star Wars geek so I don't know how the X-Wing is really supposed to fly, but I just wanted to point out that there's nothing necessarily about either of the two issues you raised that would preclude it.
in the meantime, Japan has become one of the US's most important allies and economic partners, and with the rise of China and the re-rise of Russia, I think it's important to consider that Japan may want to modify the nature of their military, and that maybe it's really in our best interests to allow them to do this.
"In our best interests" to "allow" them to do this? Who the hell do you think we are?
Japan is perfectly able to make their own decisions. Not only that, but they act in their own best interests, not ours. They do not exist solely as "our ally", they are a sovereign nation with their own issues to deal with.
I think it's both strange and a little sad to see Americans - and it's not just you - talking about Japan modifying their military as if it's both our decision to make, and a decision to be taken lightly. You don't understand Japan's domestic or international issues. You don't understand their constitution or their history. You've really got no place to be commenting on what they should or shouldn't do in our best interests. Japan will and should continue to act in its own best interests.
The Japanese public has shown little interest in modifying their military. They just voted out en masse the party that was in favor of doing so, and forced their nationalistic prime minister to resign in part because he was more concerned with things like modifying the military's constitutional basis than he was in fixing things like pensions and wage disparities. Why would they want to go down the same road that led them into WWII, go down the same road that's led the US into Vietnam and Iraq, down the same road that's led to the division of Korea? Why would they want to do that given the economic prosperity and success that they've built with both all the money they've saved and all the goodwill they've built up over the past 60 years by not employing an offensive military?
And how is this not intuitive to people outside of Japan?
Japan has had thousands of years of history dominated by war; they're experts in it. They look at us and see us as absolute beginners. They've now had 60 years of history dominated by peace and they've become one of the richest, best-educated and most technologically advanced countries in the world, with among the longest lifespans. They see the correlation between the two, why don't you?
t's not like settling for a jpg of the Mona Lisa. It's like buying just the Mona Lisa jpg instead of a collection of artwork that includes the Mona Lisa. Maybe the rest of that artwork is crap.
No, it's like buying a jpg of a lock of the Mona Lisa's hair. Albums are complete works. Songs are parts of that work. Sure, you can separate them out and enjoy them on their own most of the time, but unless you're dealing with some crap pop single manufacturer like Britney Spears, they're intended to be heard in the context of other songs.
I mean it goes back to the argument that I always make when people talk about buying individual songs... if you can only find one or two songs off an album that you like, then maybe you need to find some artists that make music better suited to your tastes.
YAY! Party at my place everyone! Champange for all! :)
There's nothing to cheer about here. This is SCO's way of weaseling out of their legal liabilities. They conceivably now will not have to pay Novell, or at least not for a long while. It gives them time to continue their court cases without having to settle their debts.
It's a tactic. They're not out of business, at least not yet.