I'll be the first to admit that I wish my iPod had better features, such as shuffling songs within a playlist (maybe I just haven't played with it enough?)
Been a feature since day one, as far as I know. Just turn on the shuffle feature in the menu. You'll then be shuffling whatever you're playing, be it a playlist, album, or whatever. (Apple also added a "shuffle songs" main menu item a while back - don't confuse these two.)
I do admit that I wish you didn't have to constantly back out to a menu to turn shuffle on and off, but that's the tradeoff to keeping things simple in the hardware interface. I wouldn't mind having a shuffle button, but then some others might not mind having an on/off switch, some others might not mind having a dedicated backlight button, etc. and eventually you've got a whole bunch of clutter if you try to satisfy everybody.
or directly managing my songs on it including 2-way transfers (EphPod supposedly allows this, haven't played with it yet - maybe iTunes will get the hint).
"2 way transfers" meaning transferring to your iPod, then transferring from the iPod to a second computer? (There'd be no reason to transfer a song to the same computer from which you got it in the first place.)
Obviously, this is a copy protection, and iTunes will never support that. Neither will the Zune. You'll always have to rely on third party software for this, unless you choose a player that doesn't sync at all but just does drag and drop (some people prefer this; I think those people must have pretty small libraries).
The nice thing is Apple has basically looked the other way on all the third party software out there for the iPod. They certainly could at the very least threaten developers for DMCA violations or whatever, but they have not. It almost seems like they realize that these applications probably do make money for them in increased hardware sales as they allow a certain segment of people to do things with their hardware that Apple can't officially sanction.
So there are quite a few third party apps to use if you don't like iTunes or if it doesn't do what you want it to do, including several (like Anapod Explorer) that integrate into Windows Explorer and give you real drag and drop functionality, if that's what you're into.
I believe that the gaming industry started in the US with Atari. In fact the US was the 'world center' of the gaming industry for many years until the crash of 83-84 when it shifted to Japan.
It's debateable where the gaming industry "started". Nintendo was making handheld and light gun games for longer than Atari even existed, for example. The Magnavox Odyssey is no doubt the first programmable home console, but in the modern era where the DS and GBA are the top-selling systems, I don't think you can say that marks the beginning of the video gaming market.
It is definitely *not* the case that the US was the "world center" of the gaming industry until the crash, though. Japan's video game industry development pretty much paralleled our own - it's just that neither country's consumers really knew what was going on in the other. When the crash came, the Japanese companies that had been immune to it (because there was no crash in Japan) simply moved in to fill the void here. But it's not as if they didn't exist before 1983-1984 - they did, they were successfully making and selling games; you just never heard about it.
I would say the two countries' video game industries pretty much developed simultaneously, but in isolation from each other.
It's not all that different from our own English speaking culture. Look at some of the ridiculous things we do with French or Italian words in order to make something sound stylish or sophisticated. Sure there are plenty of English speakers who also understand these other languages, but it is nonetheless true that people will buy a product with a cool sounding name (or slogan) without having any clue what it really means.
And I don't think it really matters - all this debate over the slogan is pretty pointless. Because the fact of the matter is, when we're using those French or Italian words in English, we are still speaking English. We are not trying to convince ourselves that we are speaking French or Italian, so it really doesn't matter what they think of it.
The same is true here. This slogan, while it's using English words, is Japanese. It is true there is a lot of actual "Engrish" in Japan, but when you just take random words out of English and use them in slogans or as part of another expression, it's just an incorporation of those words into Japanese.
1. Some kind of hybrid approach might be interesting; start with the actors and a character profile for each, then throw the plot events at them sequentially, and record what they say. 2. Editing follows, tweaking the dialogue to be more "in character". You could just record a good RPG session, and then make a script. 3. Can I get a business model patent on this?
Pretty sure Mike Leigh would have prior art on you, as this is the way he's been working for 20 years.
The "problem" is all of these approaches have unintended consequences. In Mike Leigh's case, some consider his films beautiful pieces of humanistic character studies, while others have noted that the characters resulting from this method of writing and directing all seem to be comprised of a series of tourettes-like tics rather than real character traits. Even though he works with some of the best actors in the world, it's apparently difficult for them to resist trying to define their characters through idiosyncracies. It makes them harder to relate to.
Still, though, Mike Leigh's way of working still relies on singular artistic vision - his for the film as a whole, his actors' for the characters and dialogue. The truly collaborative approach being talked about here is nothing new - in fact it's the standard Hollywood method, and it's why we end up having so many generic action movies in the summer. Not every Hollywood film is the same, but the big-budget ones all end up with about 50 people getting their hands on the script before it's done, and while they may have one director, he answers to about 10 different people himself, all of whom have the power to make creative decisions. I don't know the last time the article submitter here checked the credits list on a Hollywood film, but they are all "collaborative" projects and they all involve an endless series of compromises between all the parties involved.
So I wouldn't say this is Hollywood's "worst nightmare". I'm sure Hollywood couldn't care less, but if they did, they'd probably be saying "welcome to our world". That budget is going to balloon, there's going to be endless bickering, and in the end I doubt this film is going to get made. If it does, it will be as generic as any Hollywood summer schlock. Because this isn't the anti-Hollywood method, this *is* the Hollywood method.
Look at it this way. Out of any 100 people, 5 may be truly creative. 1 out of those 5 may be both creative and have leadership qualities. The film made by that one person would be amazing; the film made by the other 4 out of the 5 creatives would be uneven but still interesting, the films made by the remaining 95 would be dreck. That's an ideal world. When you put all 100 people together to work on one film as true equals, the 95 uncreative people are going to drown out the 5 creatives, and you're going to end up with crap. Or nothing. But there's no possibility of getting any quality out of this. It's always better to rely on a singular vision in art, even if you have to hunt for the true gems.
"All right, the buzzwords do get old fast. And you will get different answers from different people about what "Web 2.0" is."
Whenever I hear someone talk about "Web 2.0" (and I *work* in web production, so this is becoming a real problem), I just substitute the term "Bubble 2.0" instead.
Everything that people talk about when they refer to Web 2.0 is something that's going to "change the paradigm" of how we live. YouTube is going to put traditional TV out of business, for example, because everything is now on demand. Google Maps makes Rand McNally redundant. MySpace will bring an end to the neighborhood book club. (And heck, Second Life will bring an end to MySpace while we're at it.)
This is all the same talk I heard back in 1998, and most of it was just PR hype designed to get VC money flowing in. When I see what's happening with something like Second Life right now, it is *exactly* the same thing. Whole lot of hype, huge backlash. Eventually, much of this stuff is going to come crashing down just as it did in 2000.
Because the fact is while a lot of these things are useful, they're at best increments to the way we already live, not wholesale changes. They're not replacing anything or "changing paradigms", they're augmenting existing paradigms. Worse, a lot of these companies still haven't figured out how to make money and are just relying on the hype and VC to keep them going (again, a lot like 1998-99). And the dirty little secret is, like the original Napster, nobody is really going to miss any of these things when they're gone. If Second Life or MySpace shut down tomorrow, it's not going to keep any of those people from socializing some other way, be it in real life or online or both.
So really, I don't think branding something as "Web 2.0" is at all positive. It's thinking about the web in the wrong terms - it's saying "ok, Web 1.0 didn't work, so let's come up with another set of features that promise much the same things and hope it works this time." That's not the way successful companies think about the web. The web is a continuous thing, there is no "1.0" or "2.0" or "2.1" or whatever. There is a timeline, and the technology is continuously advancing and so are user expectations. When you start trying to pre-package and force a bunch of features down peoples' throats rather than letting things develop organically, you are first going to end up with a lot of features nobody wants, and you are second going to face a backlash even against the features people do want. (This is the argument we're having at my company on a continuous basis - management's thing is always "what new features can we have that nobody's tried before and that'll look good in a press release?" And the old guard's reaction is always "let's try to actually give people what they want and do it reliably first".) The first internet bubble set the web world back probably 5 years, and this one's going to do the same thing.
"Web 2.0" as a concept has to be the product of marketing MBA's, which is a whole class of people that the world would probably be a better place without.
I seriously think Sony is going out of it's way to fuck this up, its too comical at this point for them not to be trying at screwing up the launch.
(rolls eyes)
What you're basing this on is the rants of fanboys - whether they be random people posting in forums and comments, or those posing as "journalists" and writing actual articles. There's really no distinction apart from some possibly better grammar.
The proof is in the pudding. The PS3 is out there. It's playable - it was playable at TGS, and it's sitting right now in Sony's building in Ginza in Tokyo. Anyone can walk in and play Minna no Golf and Gran Turismo in full HD on one of Sony's new 1080p Bravia displays. No need to listen to the inane ramblings of those who have never experienced the system anymore.
When you play the system, all your doubts melt away. I remember thinking "wait a minute, what are the supposed problems with this system again?"
The price is an absolute thing, true - even after giving the system a try, that doesn't change. But what does change is your perception of it. The PS3 is, at the moment, a luxury item, and it feels it - when you see it hooked up to a 60" Bravia LCD playing both games and Blu-Ray movies at 1080p, you start to get it. It is not even intended to be a mass market system yet.
And I think that's fine for now, given that there will only even be 400,000 units at launch. Remember the iPod in 2001? A lot of people said it was ridiculous to charge $400 for such a device. But it worked, and the price has gradually come down and the iPod itself made more of a commodity. That will happen with the PS3 too.
But to play a PS3 is to lust after a PS3. You will want one. Whether you can afford it yet or not is another matter, but I don't think that's really relevant to Sony's strategy, and I don't see anything about this launch that they've "fucked up".
f so, it kind of makes the case that Alexa data is less than useful.
It's not "less than useful".
In fact, this is both a completely obvious and a completely stupid article submission. The "duh" tag is appropriate, both because none of the current ranking/statistics systems are accurate, and because despite that, they are still useful.
When you're looking at numbers like total reach, or you're comparing one web site with another, nobody needs statistics that are 100% accurate. I don't need to know if CNN has 4 million unique visitors per day or 4,409,765 unique visitors per day. You're using these services to get a general idea. If I'm running a web site, for example, I know what my own stats are - I don't need Alexa to tell me. But I can still use Alexa to tell me the basic gist of a competitor, and if they're not as accurate as internal stats would be, what does that matter?
Moreover, Alexa's stats are no more or less accurate (or easy to manipulate) than those of major organizations like Nielsen. The fact of the matter is any system that's not using actual server logs is going to have some inaccuracies (and if you think otherwise, then you've just bought into marketing spin). You live with it and accept it. The main difference is that Alexa is free, whereas other stat compilers charge thousands of dollars per year.
Also, in the games business, "first-party" refers to games published by the platform holder, not necessarily developed by it.
Well, as someone who worked in the game business (at a third-party publisher) for many years, I can tell you that this is in fact not at all true.
First-party means games developed in-house. Nintendo's EAD being the only "pure" example left, although you could probably rightly argue that any developer purchased and then brought under the fold of one of the console manufacturers also qualifies. But the point is it's the manufacturer that does the hires, that does the approvals, that comes up with the ideas, all with a cohesive strategy in mind for where those games fit in to the library of the console.
Lots of manufacturers have published titles from third parties before. Nobody has ever called those first-party games. Of course, it's in MS's best interests to try to change the definition now because otherwise, they have almost no first-party development to speak of at all. They're basically padding the stats, trying to refer to titles they publish as "first-party".
But the whole point of first-party games is that the design and execution comes completely from within the manufacturer of the console they're on. That's what makes them distinct from third-party games, which are a mish-mash of random ideas and styles that have no real relation to each other. A first-party dev like EAD can say "our console needs a Zelda game" and then they go out and make a Zelda game for it. Third party developers are under no such obligation to the console; they're only under an obligation to make money for themselves. You'd never see the number of cookie-cutter FPS or GTA clones coming out lately from third-party devs as first-party games, for example - that's the difference.
The point being, MS's first-party offerings are much worse than even they say they are, and they have no real vision or means of executing one for the overall direction of the 360's game library. Neither does Sony with the PS3, for that matter (though they're in slightly better first-party shape than MS). They've managed to be successful so far regardless, to whatever extent, but this article is basically tantamount to an admission that without a healthy first-party development unit, they're at the mercy of third party devs to build the system's game library and if they drop the ball, there's not a hell of a lot MS can do.
Sure, it seems to satisfy his techno-fetish, but is it actually any fun?
It's fun if the games themselves are fun. That's not really entirely up to Sony.
What is up to Sony are things like the touch-sensitive power and eject buttons.
I will say that I played some Minna no Golf and some Gran Turismo on the PS3's Sony has set up in Ginza last week, and I was pretty blown away by the system. No, those two games aren't anything we haven't seen before (though they've never looked that good). But the system looked and felt extremely polished, and if these are first-gen games, then I can't wait to see what's coming down the road.
I left with the distinct impression that a lot of people bashing the PS3 simply don't know what the hell they're talking about. Maybe there aren't any games you like yet, but the PS3 itself is an extremely well-designed system that exists now, you can play it now, and that seems like it's got room to spare in the power department. That's pretty much all Sony can do.
As for the controller, it's very light. Otherwise, it feels just like the Dual Shock, a controller that even just a few years ago a lot of people were saying was the best game controller ever designed. I never really felt that way myself, but I never disliked the controller either... still, I don't get how you go from loving the Dual Shock to hating the Sixaxis. It's the same controller, just minus a few ounces. And that weight savings comes completely from the motors being removed; it's not like the plastic itself is even any different.
Let me just reiterate - the PS3 exists and is sitting there waiting to be played in Tokyo. So there's really no reason for any of these myths to be flying around at this point. If you can't play the system for yourself (I'm looking at you, Zonk), just listen to the people that have.
The reason most portable players have bad sound quality is that they desperately need a headphone amp.
The iPod's headphone amp has a nearly flat frequency response - which is what audiophiles want. It doesn't get much better than what the iPod offers.
The iPod also has a 100db s/n ratio, higher than its competitors, and it supports lossless. What more do you want?
Yeah, I own an iPod so you could call me something of a fanboy. But a lot of people seem to be looking for alternatives when what they want is right there in front of them. It's like watching a Hitchcock film and saying "man, I wish I'd rented something more suspenseful."
I'm just trying to dispell the myth that Zune's launch won't really affect Apple. It will. Profoundly.
That's an opinion, and as such, there's nothing "mythical" about the opposing point of view. You have your opinion, others disagree.
I think the Zune will have basically zero effect on Apple or the iPod. I also think it will have a minimal effect on the market as a whole. This is not a "myth" because none of these events that would prove whether I'm right or wrong have happened yet. It is, simply, my opinion, just as yours is yours.
There is nothing much different about the Zune than every other portable MP3 player to come along and challenge the iPod. It's not even the first big name trying an integrated experience. You apparently have forgotten the Sony "Network Walkman", which despite a long brand pedigree, a huge company behind it and a fully integrated end-to-end experience, fell flat on its face.
The long and the short of it is nobody has proven they can beat Apple at their own game, and many have tried. What makes MS any different? The path to success in dethroning the iPod is not to try to do the same thing Apple does, only better, because that's not possible. It's like starting up a new car company and saying your goal is to outsell the Toyota Camry. You'll never do it.
All anyone can do is try a completely different path. Cell phones, UMPC's, portable game machines, or whatever. None of these have so far been successful enough to put a dent in iPod sales either, but that's the only way the iPod's ever going down. Nobody's ever going to dethrone the iPod by making an iPod knockoff.
I'm saying Apple can't dismiss the Zune (and the coming Microsoft consumer media assault) as easily as the iPod fans out there who mock Microsoft's entry into the media player market.
You want to know another word for "iPod fans"?
Consumers.
They're the ones mocking Microsoft - the very people that buy portable mp3 players. You might want to take note of that fact.
Apple would then gain access to titles from every major studio.
This is a huge jump in logic. It's assuming that the reason why Apple doesn't have access to these titles now is strictly because Wal-Mart is competing with iTunes. The fact remains Apple will still have to hack out distribution deals often on a per-title basis, and many of the studios don't want to offer most of their movies for download at all. It's got nothing to do with Wal-Mart.
All this deal would do is remove one of the smaller obstacles Apple faces in getting more films on iTunes (and my bet is Wal-Mart is probably the least of Apple's headaches). The big obstacles - copyright, DRM, distribution rights, contracts between various parties, etc. - would still remain.
I'm just amazed that on Slashdot, with so many people working in the tech field, people cry poor all the time. What do these people do, write free code for non-profits?
I'm with you, and honestly you seem to be in pretty much the exact same boat as me (similar combined income, but with a house, car, etc. to take care of).
My theories on the Slashdot crowd:
1. A lot of them are still college students (or younger). I remember those days well - I sometimes went weeks eating nothing but Ramen because it was 25 cents per pack. *That's* poor.
2. Those in the work force do seem to by and large have low-level jobs. (Not a hard and fast rule; I'm just playing a numbers game here.)
3. As it is a site "for nerds", and it skews probably in the mid-20's range or lower, I would honestly bet that those of us who are married are outnumbered by those that aren't. Those people only have one income to rely on.
4. Prices and income levels vary a *lot* region to region. Those of us on the coasts making a combined $130,000 per year probably sound rich to those in middle America. But we're not - the cost of living is much higher. Still, it does make $600 sound a lot cheaper than it would to a married couple in Kansas making a middle-class (for that area) $65,000 per year combined.
I don't fault people who say $600 is too much for an entertainment device. I mean people in the world are legitimately starving and $600 could probably feed those people for a year. In relative terms, $600 really is a lot of money for something that is totally unnecessary to live.
But the fact is this is America; we've got poor people here too, but we also have more than enough middle class and higher to support a $600 system for a while, at least. If you are married and have a decent combined income - "responsibilities" or not - $600 is not ridiculous at all for something that plays movies and games and that you expect to last for 5 years.
I don't think Sony's got much to worry about as far as pricing is concerned. There will still be shortages. Once the demand at $600 starts to wane, they'll just drop the price.
btw, I probably *will* buy the cheaper model (at $500) now that HDMI is included. I can always upgrade the drive later if I have to (according to Sony, it'll take a standard PC drive).
I was amazed at how many 360 games were on the list. Looks like now we'll see if the "racist purchasing" accusation has any weight or not.
Uh, no... because this list is compiled by westerners, for westerners.
I would bet that any "top 20" list generated by a Japanese publication would look a lot different. And it would surprise me if the 360 had more than 2 or at most 3 titles on such a list.
Regardless, it has always been a myth that any single game or any single genre sells consoles in Japan. The truth is we only ever see a fraction of the games released there here - the consoles that sell the best in Japan are almost invariably the consoles with the *most* games. Quality is important too, but quantity can almost serve as a brute force approach to quality and genre representation - get 2,000 games for a system and you're almost guaranteed there will be a few gems among the crap and also that pretty much every genre is going to be heavily populated. That's the case with the PS2, Game Boy (and increasingly the DS), it was the case with the PS1, Super Famicom, Famicom, etc. It is not the case with the Xbox 360.
Long story short, I would doubt the 360 will sell any better after TGS (and with the PS3's approach, it will likely sell worse). But it's still got nothing to do with "racism" and everything to do with a misunderstanding of the Japanese market on the part of MS and western developers.
he realist in me says the FCC is chasing them because commercial radio pushes them to.
No, the FCC is chasing them because radio is and has always been the primary means of conveying emergency information. Television is a lot less reliable on both ends (though that's one of the main reasons the FCC regulates the television spectrum too).
Commercial radio stations have legal requirements for broadcasting emergency signals. Pirate radio stations obviously do not. It is literally a matter of public safety.
And if you don't believe it, ask any New Yorker that lived through 9/11 and the blackout 2 years ago. Most local TV stations were initially knocked off the air on 9/11, and during the blackout there was no TV at all. Everybody got their info by radio. (It's not just information, either - the Emergency Alert System is an automated system triggered by the signals sent over radio and TV.)
There are good reasons why these frequencies are regulated, and they have nothing to do with money. I hope the FCC continues to diligently go after pirate radio - in this case, regulation is a necessary thing.
If people want to set up their own radio station, it's easy enough to do it on the internet without running afoul of any laws. Heck, they'd probably get a lot more listeners that way, and reach a global audience. That they continue to try to flout the law in the face of a legal and better alternative suggests to me that they are intentionally breaking the law for the sake of breaking the law. As such, when they're caught I would hope they have that law thrown back in their faces to the fullest extent possible.
Back in the 60's and 70s, before we all got computers in our homes, it was quite common to hear bureaucrats proclaiming "computers never make mistakes!"
Computers don't make mistakes. The human beings programming and designing them do.
Since a standard phone line needs to be upgraded for ADSL anyway, clearly the throughput with VoIP should be better than POTS.
It's not all about throughput. Go ask any alarm system manufacturer. Most alarm companies won't touch VoIP with a ten foot pole, and with good reason.
I just went through this myself; I have Optimum Voice (which drops calls about every five minutes, btw; I'm this close to calling Cablevision about this) and I just last week finally managed to figure out how to get an alarm system that'll work over VoIP. You basically either need to find a broadband panel (and they are not common) or you need to get an ABN adapter and use NextAlarm. But no alarm will work as it's designed to over a standard VoIP connection, for a variety of reasons.
Ok, I read the post wrong. The *presentation* was in Tokyo. But TGS isn't.
That actually makes it all the more puzzling, though - that MS would have a media briefing in a completely different city than the game show itself. All of the media are right now camped out in Makuhari, filling up the hotel city that exists to serve the convention center. MS just made them all truck back into Tokyo for their media briefing? That just seems dumb.
Honestly, with how poorly they have performed I don't see Microsoft as having any chance of becoming a majory player in the Japaneese gaming market. With that said, with how poorly Sony is approaching this generation I think Microsoft has a real opportunity to make some inroads into Japan.
Keep dreamin'.
If consumers aren't buying the Xbox 360 when the PS3 isn't even on the market, what makes you think they will suddenly *start* buying the 360 once the PS3 is available? (Not even mentioning the Wii... which is still a wildcard IMO.) It doesn't really matter that there are going to be shortages and the prices will be high. Japan isn't exactly a third-world country living in poverty, for one thing - those who want a PS3 will find ways to afford one. They're also going to be inundated with PS3 marketing telling them how cool the system is (and unlike MS's marketing, it'll actually seem that way coming from a company that understands Japanese culture).
Once the PS3 launches, I would expect 360 sales to drop to near zero. They're already basically there, but the 1,500 or so people who are buying 360's each week are going to have even less incentive once the PS3 ships. Some of those potential customers will no doubt also buy a Wii instead; we just don't know how many. But the PS3 is the 800 lb. gorilla in Japan. (My bet is it eventually will be here too, fanboy arguments notwithstanding.)
The 360 is dead in Japan. Thinking otherwise is just denial. It's pretty much *been* dead for a while now, but this is about the point an ER doctor would give up CPR and resuscitation efforts and finally call it. The Japanese public just has no interest. It's not that they hate the Xbox 360, it's just that they don't know or care. It's not even in their consciousness, nor do they want it to be.
One minor correction to the original post here - the Tokyo Game Show is not in Tokyo, despite its name. It's in Makuhari, a city of 800,000 people located about 15 miles outside of Tokyo. It's a small point, but it's kinda like saying Giants Stadium is in New York. It's not; it's not even in the same *state* as New York. The Tokyo Game Show takes place in the Makuhari Messe, which is, as its name does imply, in Makuhari in Chiba prefecture.
Is this yet another sign of the 'greying gamer' phenomenon, or simply evidence indicating the marketers have had it wrong all along?
Probably the latter.
I'd say it's more likely a little bit of both.
I am one of these "greying gamers" you're always reading about. I grew up with the Atari 2600 (my cousins had it) and my first console was the Mattel Intellivision. I went for a period in the 1980's and 1990's where I was totally hardcore, and owned all the current systems and just had to buy all the latest games as soon as they came out. (Well, not *all* of them, but all the big ones.) I was at that age where you basically just give in to peer pressure, and I wanted to be able to talk about all these games with my friends in high school and even the first part of college. Then, when I got a job, I suddenly found myself flush with all this cash I never had before.
I even eventually got nostalgic and built up a pretty sizable game collection (link from my link at the top here). This is still sort of a hobby.
But then, reality started to sink in. Once you get married and buy a house, everything changes. If and when I have kids (and we're already at the age where we seriously need to decide one way or another pretty quick), I can't imagine ever having time to play games. Even just managing my household, doing various gardening chores and repairs on weekends, I haven't had time to even hook up a system since we moved 6 months ago. I do play with my DS on the commute in to work, but I haven't actually bought a game in 3-4 months for any system.
I think my life is pretty typical of middle class people. I was a hardcore gamer, but then I got older. Life catches up with you.
So I think there are hardcore gamers, but most of them probably do eventually grow up. I don't think gaming is something you "grow out of" as much as it's just something you lose time for. And once you're sort of outside that hardcore community, you start to look a lot more critically at the games and genres that everybody else is going so nuts over, and I, for one, have realized that I just don't have a lot of interest in many of the popular titles right now. From what I've seen, this isn't really unusual.
As for the age cutoff, I think 17 is a little too young. When I was in college, I probably had more friends than ever into video games. We even had semi-organized NHL Hockey tournaments in my dorm. So I do think there definitely are 18-34 year old hardcore gamers, but there are probably a lot more closer to 18 than 34. (I'm 34 right now.) But it wouldn't surprise me if there have always been *more* 6-17 year olds that are hardcore gamers, just because a lot of people probably start to drop off in their gaming as they get up closer to the top range of the 18-34 demographic.
So what does it mean for those of us that have used Napster's legitimate service if it evaporates? Do we lose access to our songs once we get a new MP3 player or computer?
Maybe when a company like Microsoft tells it's users that they have to break the law in order to view media they purchased, Congress should consider repealing the law.
I'm not sure he's advocating breaking any law, including the DMCA. He just maybe has a little different interpretation of the law than some. But neither his interpretation, nor the interpretation of those on the other side of the fence has actually been tested in court to my knowledge.
The DMCA makes a specific exception to itself for fair use provisions. In essence, it says that if you previously had a right to do something under existing copyright law, you still have a right to do that thing. What the DMCA does is ensure that DRM is protected against those trying to break existing copyright law. It says "if you break DRM for the purposes of infringing copyright, then you are breaking the law." (The fair use exception comes after the actual restrictions, but you have to read everything together to know what the law itself actually is. I'm convinced some people just stop reading once they've read the restrictions.) But since fair use is codified into copyright law, you're not breaking the law by breaking DRM. At least, that would have to be J. Allard's interpretation of the DMCA.
The ZDNet article says the DMCA makes certain exceptions, "none of which apply here." That's not necessarily true. The author is apparently assuming that breaking DRM to move your DVD's from disc to Zune or your PlaysForSure files from one device to another would not be covered under fair use provisions of copyright law. He may or may not be right, but the Supreme Court has in the past used format-shifting as an example of fair use, going all the way back to the Betamax decision. (The examples listed as fair use in the law itself are just that, examples. They do not encompass all potential fair uses.)
The DMCA is no doubt a draconian law. But a) it has not really been fully tested in court yet, mainly because the individual users it most directly affects don't have the money to pursue a lengthy court case, and b) it is open to as much interpretation as the fair use provision in existing copyright law.
The long and the short of it is I think this whole Zune thing is a big fiasco for Microsoft, but I don't necessarily agree that J. Allard is telling people to break the law.
Okay, wise guy. Just relax and take it easy. Paramount is not "raping your childhood", or even improving the effects. (Much.) All they're doing is resampling the film for HD broadcasts.
They're doing a bit more than that.
But unlike with Star Wars, I'm all for this. There's one crucial difference: the original version is still available, and always will be. Nobody's suddenly denying the existence of the original model-based Star Trek, or telling anyone they "lost" the original negatives, or calling the new version "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
There's another big difference: the dramatic content was not changed. Only the FX shots have been changed/cleaned up. I wouldn't have had such a problem with the Star Wars Lucas treatment if he hadn't also gone and made it so Greedo shot first, or Hayden Christensen appeared at the end of Jedi (a face Luke wouldn't even recognize!), or whatever.
I don't mind updating films and TV shows provided the original is preserved for archival purposes and made available in some form to the public. And I don't mind the updates themselves provided it only applies to the technical aspects of the film rather than the content.
It sounds to me like this is a worthwhile update to the original Trek, and I'll be watching. (I'll also be buying once it's inevitably released on an HD video format.)
What VALUE? WHERE ARE MUSIC VIDEOS BOUGHT AND SOLD?
Well, for one, they're bought and sold on DVD all the time. Most people I know have at least a few of these. I myself have video compilations from Depeche Mode, the Police, and Puffy (as in AmiYumi, but it's a Japanese DVD so it's just Puffy).
So while I don't dismiss the RIAA's argument out of hand, I don't think they quite get the reasons why people use YouTube. YouTube's quality is really bad and you can't (easily) download clips from it, meaning it's no substitute for buying anything. I sample videos there all the time, and yes, I've downloaded some, but only videos that I literally can't get any other way. It's a last resort for videos I want to keep, while at the same time serving the same purpose that MTV did in the beginning - it's promoting all these bands I otherwise wouldn't be thinking about. Seriously, if I see a video on YouTube that I like, the first thing I do is see if I can buy it anywhere. This is not like the original Napster, where there's really no difference between the song you could download and the song you could buy. On YouTube, in most cases you can't buy what's on there, and if you can, there's a vast difference in quality and features.
The record labels should be using YouTube as a promotional vehicle. They've got everything all backwards these days. They're even saying MTV was evil in the beginning for, god forbid, promoting their music. They don't seem to realize that the lack of music on MTV at present is a big reason why their sales are down. I used to watch MTV, find new bands I liked, buy that music and buy those videos. I have no way to do that anymore. Except YouTube.
I've been pretty happy with Gmail because its very convenient but if Yahoo are going to trump it then go on, someone tell us what its got.
I've been using both Yahoo Mail and Gmail since their respective launches and I just switched over to the Yahoo beta and immediately switched back.
I'm not sure where the idea is coming from that people who use web mail want a desktop style interface. Outlook isn't exactly known for its speed or intuitiveness, and that's what the new Yahoo Mail is emulating. I couldn't tell you if it has more features than Gmail or not, because the only features I need are compose, send, reply and forward. The ability to attach files is nice, but that's pretty basic (though a lot more useful if you have a lot of storage space, i.e. Gmail).
The new Yahoo Mail may appeal to a certain type of user, but it is outright bloatware for those of us who use email in traditional ways, which I would argue is probably the majority of users out there. It's pretty ironic, but Gmail actually works more like a traditional, old-school email application - no folders, no clutter, not a lot of options. What options do you really need?
I have a relatively fast computer - a Turion 64 with 1GB of RAM. Both Gmail and the old Yahoo Mail load in less than 1 second for me. The New Yahoo Mail took 5 seconds to load. That may not seem like a lot, but everything I did also took 5 seconds. That adds up when you consider that in any given email session, I might make 30 clicks. It gets frustrating fast when your email doesn't respond immediately, or takes noticeable amounts of time to redraw pages. I also didn't like the obtrusive ads in the new interface.
So I switched back. I don't use Yahoo Mail as my primary account anymore anyway, but if they switch to the new interface exclusively, I may just give it up altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be the first to admit that I wish my iPod had better features, such as shuffling songs within a playlist (maybe I just haven't played with it enough?)
Been a feature since day one, as far as I know. Just turn on the shuffle feature in the menu. You'll then be shuffling whatever you're playing, be it a playlist, album, or whatever. (Apple also added a "shuffle songs" main menu item a while back - don't confuse these two.)
I do admit that I wish you didn't have to constantly back out to a menu to turn shuffle on and off, but that's the tradeoff to keeping things simple in the hardware interface. I wouldn't mind having a shuffle button, but then some others might not mind having an on/off switch, some others might not mind having a dedicated backlight button, etc. and eventually you've got a whole bunch of clutter if you try to satisfy everybody.
or directly managing my songs on it including 2-way transfers (EphPod supposedly allows this, haven't played with it yet - maybe iTunes will get the hint).
"2 way transfers" meaning transferring to your iPod, then transferring from the iPod to a second computer? (There'd be no reason to transfer a song to the same computer from which you got it in the first place.)
Obviously, this is a copy protection, and iTunes will never support that. Neither will the Zune. You'll always have to rely on third party software for this, unless you choose a player that doesn't sync at all but just does drag and drop (some people prefer this; I think those people must have pretty small libraries).
The nice thing is Apple has basically looked the other way on all the third party software out there for the iPod. They certainly could at the very least threaten developers for DMCA violations or whatever, but they have not. It almost seems like they realize that these applications probably do make money for them in increased hardware sales as they allow a certain segment of people to do things with their hardware that Apple can't officially sanction.
So there are quite a few third party apps to use if you don't like iTunes or if it doesn't do what you want it to do, including several (like Anapod Explorer) that integrate into Windows Explorer and give you real drag and drop functionality, if that's what you're into.
I believe that the gaming industry started in the US with Atari. In fact the US was the 'world center' of the gaming industry for many years until the crash of 83-84 when it shifted to Japan.
It's debateable where the gaming industry "started". Nintendo was making handheld and light gun games for longer than Atari even existed, for example. The Magnavox Odyssey is no doubt the first programmable home console, but in the modern era where the DS and GBA are the top-selling systems, I don't think you can say that marks the beginning of the video gaming market.
It is definitely *not* the case that the US was the "world center" of the gaming industry until the crash, though. Japan's video game industry development pretty much paralleled our own - it's just that neither country's consumers really knew what was going on in the other. When the crash came, the Japanese companies that had been immune to it (because there was no crash in Japan) simply moved in to fill the void here. But it's not as if they didn't exist before 1983-1984 - they did, they were successfully making and selling games; you just never heard about it.
I would say the two countries' video game industries pretty much developed simultaneously, but in isolation from each other.
It's not all that different from our own English speaking culture. Look at some of the ridiculous things we do with French or Italian words in order to make something sound stylish or sophisticated. Sure there are plenty of English speakers who also understand these other languages, but it is nonetheless true that people will buy a product with a cool sounding name (or slogan) without having any clue what it really means.
And I don't think it really matters - all this debate over the slogan is pretty pointless. Because the fact of the matter is, when we're using those French or Italian words in English, we are still speaking English. We are not trying to convince ourselves that we are speaking French or Italian, so it really doesn't matter what they think of it.
The same is true here. This slogan, while it's using English words, is Japanese. It is true there is a lot of actual "Engrish" in Japan, but when you just take random words out of English and use them in slogans or as part of another expression, it's just an incorporation of those words into Japanese.
1. Some kind of hybrid approach might be interesting; start with the actors and a character profile for each, then throw the plot events at them sequentially, and record what they say.
2. Editing follows, tweaking the dialogue to be more "in character". You could just record a good RPG session, and then make a script.
3. Can I get a business model patent on this?
Pretty sure Mike Leigh would have prior art on you, as this is the way he's been working for 20 years.
The "problem" is all of these approaches have unintended consequences. In Mike Leigh's case, some consider his films beautiful pieces of humanistic character studies, while others have noted that the characters resulting from this method of writing and directing all seem to be comprised of a series of tourettes-like tics rather than real character traits. Even though he works with some of the best actors in the world, it's apparently difficult for them to resist trying to define their characters through idiosyncracies. It makes them harder to relate to.
Still, though, Mike Leigh's way of working still relies on singular artistic vision - his for the film as a whole, his actors' for the characters and dialogue. The truly collaborative approach being talked about here is nothing new - in fact it's the standard Hollywood method, and it's why we end up having so many generic action movies in the summer. Not every Hollywood film is the same, but the big-budget ones all end up with about 50 people getting their hands on the script before it's done, and while they may have one director, he answers to about 10 different people himself, all of whom have the power to make creative decisions. I don't know the last time the article submitter here checked the credits list on a Hollywood film, but they are all "collaborative" projects and they all involve an endless series of compromises between all the parties involved.
So I wouldn't say this is Hollywood's "worst nightmare". I'm sure Hollywood couldn't care less, but if they did, they'd probably be saying "welcome to our world". That budget is going to balloon, there's going to be endless bickering, and in the end I doubt this film is going to get made. If it does, it will be as generic as any Hollywood summer schlock. Because this isn't the anti-Hollywood method, this *is* the Hollywood method.
Look at it this way. Out of any 100 people, 5 may be truly creative. 1 out of those 5 may be both creative and have leadership qualities. The film made by that one person would be amazing; the film made by the other 4 out of the 5 creatives would be uneven but still interesting, the films made by the remaining 95 would be dreck. That's an ideal world. When you put all 100 people together to work on one film as true equals, the 95 uncreative people are going to drown out the 5 creatives, and you're going to end up with crap. Or nothing. But there's no possibility of getting any quality out of this. It's always better to rely on a singular vision in art, even if you have to hunt for the true gems.
"All right, the buzzwords do get old fast. And you will get different answers from different people about what "Web 2.0" is."
Whenever I hear someone talk about "Web 2.0" (and I *work* in web production, so this is becoming a real problem), I just substitute the term "Bubble 2.0" instead.
Everything that people talk about when they refer to Web 2.0 is something that's going to "change the paradigm" of how we live. YouTube is going to put traditional TV out of business, for example, because everything is now on demand. Google Maps makes Rand McNally redundant. MySpace will bring an end to the neighborhood book club. (And heck, Second Life will bring an end to MySpace while we're at it.)
This is all the same talk I heard back in 1998, and most of it was just PR hype designed to get VC money flowing in. When I see what's happening with something like Second Life right now, it is *exactly* the same thing. Whole lot of hype, huge backlash. Eventually, much of this stuff is going to come crashing down just as it did in 2000.
Because the fact is while a lot of these things are useful, they're at best increments to the way we already live, not wholesale changes. They're not replacing anything or "changing paradigms", they're augmenting existing paradigms. Worse, a lot of these companies still haven't figured out how to make money and are just relying on the hype and VC to keep them going (again, a lot like 1998-99). And the dirty little secret is, like the original Napster, nobody is really going to miss any of these things when they're gone. If Second Life or MySpace shut down tomorrow, it's not going to keep any of those people from socializing some other way, be it in real life or online or both.
So really, I don't think branding something as "Web 2.0" is at all positive. It's thinking about the web in the wrong terms - it's saying "ok, Web 1.0 didn't work, so let's come up with another set of features that promise much the same things and hope it works this time." That's not the way successful companies think about the web. The web is a continuous thing, there is no "1.0" or "2.0" or "2.1" or whatever. There is a timeline, and the technology is continuously advancing and so are user expectations. When you start trying to pre-package and force a bunch of features down peoples' throats rather than letting things develop organically, you are first going to end up with a lot of features nobody wants, and you are second going to face a backlash even against the features people do want. (This is the argument we're having at my company on a continuous basis - management's thing is always "what new features can we have that nobody's tried before and that'll look good in a press release?" And the old guard's reaction is always "let's try to actually give people what they want and do it reliably first".) The first internet bubble set the web world back probably 5 years, and this one's going to do the same thing.
"Web 2.0" as a concept has to be the product of marketing MBA's, which is a whole class of people that the world would probably be a better place without.
I seriously think Sony is going out of it's way to fuck this up, its too comical at this point for them not to be trying at screwing up the launch.
(rolls eyes)
What you're basing this on is the rants of fanboys - whether they be random people posting in forums and comments, or those posing as "journalists" and writing actual articles. There's really no distinction apart from some possibly better grammar.
The proof is in the pudding. The PS3 is out there. It's playable - it was playable at TGS, and it's sitting right now in Sony's building in Ginza in Tokyo. Anyone can walk in and play Minna no Golf and Gran Turismo in full HD on one of Sony's new 1080p Bravia displays. No need to listen to the inane ramblings of those who have never experienced the system anymore.
When you play the system, all your doubts melt away. I remember thinking "wait a minute, what are the supposed problems with this system again?"
The price is an absolute thing, true - even after giving the system a try, that doesn't change. But what does change is your perception of it. The PS3 is, at the moment, a luxury item, and it feels it - when you see it hooked up to a 60" Bravia LCD playing both games and Blu-Ray movies at 1080p, you start to get it. It is not even intended to be a mass market system yet.
And I think that's fine for now, given that there will only even be 400,000 units at launch. Remember the iPod in 2001? A lot of people said it was ridiculous to charge $400 for such a device. But it worked, and the price has gradually come down and the iPod itself made more of a commodity. That will happen with the PS3 too.
But to play a PS3 is to lust after a PS3. You will want one. Whether you can afford it yet or not is another matter, but I don't think that's really relevant to Sony's strategy, and I don't see anything about this launch that they've "fucked up".
f so, it kind of makes the case that Alexa data is less than useful.
It's not "less than useful".
In fact, this is both a completely obvious and a completely stupid article submission. The "duh" tag is appropriate, both because none of the current ranking/statistics systems are accurate, and because despite that, they are still useful.
When you're looking at numbers like total reach, or you're comparing one web site with another, nobody needs statistics that are 100% accurate. I don't need to know if CNN has 4 million unique visitors per day or 4,409,765 unique visitors per day. You're using these services to get a general idea. If I'm running a web site, for example, I know what my own stats are - I don't need Alexa to tell me. But I can still use Alexa to tell me the basic gist of a competitor, and if they're not as accurate as internal stats would be, what does that matter?
Moreover, Alexa's stats are no more or less accurate (or easy to manipulate) than those of major organizations like Nielsen. The fact of the matter is any system that's not using actual server logs is going to have some inaccuracies (and if you think otherwise, then you've just bought into marketing spin). You live with it and accept it. The main difference is that Alexa is free, whereas other stat compilers charge thousands of dollars per year.
Also, in the games business, "first-party" refers to games published by the platform holder, not necessarily developed by it.
Well, as someone who worked in the game business (at a third-party publisher) for many years, I can tell you that this is in fact not at all true.
First-party means games developed in-house. Nintendo's EAD being the only "pure" example left, although you could probably rightly argue that any developer purchased and then brought under the fold of one of the console manufacturers also qualifies. But the point is it's the manufacturer that does the hires, that does the approvals, that comes up with the ideas, all with a cohesive strategy in mind for where those games fit in to the library of the console.
Lots of manufacturers have published titles from third parties before. Nobody has ever called those first-party games. Of course, it's in MS's best interests to try to change the definition now because otherwise, they have almost no first-party development to speak of at all. They're basically padding the stats, trying to refer to titles they publish as "first-party".
But the whole point of first-party games is that the design and execution comes completely from within the manufacturer of the console they're on. That's what makes them distinct from third-party games, which are a mish-mash of random ideas and styles that have no real relation to each other. A first-party dev like EAD can say "our console needs a Zelda game" and then they go out and make a Zelda game for it. Third party developers are under no such obligation to the console; they're only under an obligation to make money for themselves. You'd never see the number of cookie-cutter FPS or GTA clones coming out lately from third-party devs as first-party games, for example - that's the difference.
The point being, MS's first-party offerings are much worse than even they say they are, and they have no real vision or means of executing one for the overall direction of the 360's game library. Neither does Sony with the PS3, for that matter (though they're in slightly better first-party shape than MS). They've managed to be successful so far regardless, to whatever extent, but this article is basically tantamount to an admission that without a healthy first-party development unit, they're at the mercy of third party devs to build the system's game library and if they drop the ball, there's not a hell of a lot MS can do.
Sure, it seems to satisfy his techno-fetish, but is it actually any fun?
It's fun if the games themselves are fun. That's not really entirely up to Sony.
What is up to Sony are things like the touch-sensitive power and eject buttons.
I will say that I played some Minna no Golf and some Gran Turismo on the PS3's Sony has set up in Ginza last week, and I was pretty blown away by the system. No, those two games aren't anything we haven't seen before (though they've never looked that good). But the system looked and felt extremely polished, and if these are first-gen games, then I can't wait to see what's coming down the road.
I left with the distinct impression that a lot of people bashing the PS3 simply don't know what the hell they're talking about. Maybe there aren't any games you like yet, but the PS3 itself is an extremely well-designed system that exists now, you can play it now, and that seems like it's got room to spare in the power department. That's pretty much all Sony can do.
As for the controller, it's very light. Otherwise, it feels just like the Dual Shock, a controller that even just a few years ago a lot of people were saying was the best game controller ever designed. I never really felt that way myself, but I never disliked the controller either... still, I don't get how you go from loving the Dual Shock to hating the Sixaxis. It's the same controller, just minus a few ounces. And that weight savings comes completely from the motors being removed; it's not like the plastic itself is even any different.
Let me just reiterate - the PS3 exists and is sitting there waiting to be played in Tokyo. So there's really no reason for any of these myths to be flying around at this point. If you can't play the system for yourself (I'm looking at you, Zonk), just listen to the people that have.
The reason most portable players have bad sound quality is that they desperately need a headphone amp.
The iPod's headphone amp has a nearly flat frequency response - which is what audiophiles want. It doesn't get much better than what the iPod offers.
The iPod also has a 100db s/n ratio, higher than its competitors, and it supports lossless. What more do you want?
Yeah, I own an iPod so you could call me something of a fanboy. But a lot of people seem to be looking for alternatives when what they want is right there in front of them. It's like watching a Hitchcock film and saying "man, I wish I'd rented something more suspenseful."
I'm just trying to dispell the myth that Zune's launch won't really affect Apple. It will. Profoundly.
That's an opinion, and as such, there's nothing "mythical" about the opposing point of view. You have your opinion, others disagree.
I think the Zune will have basically zero effect on Apple or the iPod. I also think it will have a minimal effect on the market as a whole. This is not a "myth" because none of these events that would prove whether I'm right or wrong have happened yet. It is, simply, my opinion, just as yours is yours.
There is nothing much different about the Zune than every other portable MP3 player to come along and challenge the iPod. It's not even the first big name trying an integrated experience. You apparently have forgotten the Sony "Network Walkman", which despite a long brand pedigree, a huge company behind it and a fully integrated end-to-end experience, fell flat on its face.
The long and the short of it is nobody has proven they can beat Apple at their own game, and many have tried. What makes MS any different? The path to success in dethroning the iPod is not to try to do the same thing Apple does, only better, because that's not possible. It's like starting up a new car company and saying your goal is to outsell the Toyota Camry. You'll never do it.
All anyone can do is try a completely different path. Cell phones, UMPC's, portable game machines, or whatever. None of these have so far been successful enough to put a dent in iPod sales either, but that's the only way the iPod's ever going down. Nobody's ever going to dethrone the iPod by making an iPod knockoff.
I'm saying Apple can't dismiss the Zune (and the coming Microsoft consumer media assault) as easily as the iPod fans out there who mock Microsoft's entry into the media player market.
You want to know another word for "iPod fans"?
Consumers.
They're the ones mocking Microsoft - the very people that buy portable mp3 players. You might want to take note of that fact.
Apple would then gain access to titles from every major studio.
This is a huge jump in logic. It's assuming that the reason why Apple doesn't have access to these titles now is strictly because Wal-Mart is competing with iTunes. The fact remains Apple will still have to hack out distribution deals often on a per-title basis, and many of the studios don't want to offer most of their movies for download at all. It's got nothing to do with Wal-Mart.
All this deal would do is remove one of the smaller obstacles Apple faces in getting more films on iTunes (and my bet is Wal-Mart is probably the least of Apple's headaches). The big obstacles - copyright, DRM, distribution rights, contracts between various parties, etc. - would still remain.
I'm just amazed that on Slashdot, with so many people working in the tech field, people cry poor all the time. What do these people do, write free code for non-profits?
I'm with you, and honestly you seem to be in pretty much the exact same boat as me (similar combined income, but with a house, car, etc. to take care of).
My theories on the Slashdot crowd:
1. A lot of them are still college students (or younger). I remember those days well - I sometimes went weeks eating nothing but Ramen because it was 25 cents per pack. *That's* poor.
2. Those in the work force do seem to by and large have low-level jobs. (Not a hard and fast rule; I'm just playing a numbers game here.)
3. As it is a site "for nerds", and it skews probably in the mid-20's range or lower, I would honestly bet that those of us who are married are outnumbered by those that aren't. Those people only have one income to rely on.
4. Prices and income levels vary a *lot* region to region. Those of us on the coasts making a combined $130,000 per year probably sound rich to those in middle America. But we're not - the cost of living is much higher. Still, it does make $600 sound a lot cheaper than it would to a married couple in Kansas making a middle-class (for that area) $65,000 per year combined.
I don't fault people who say $600 is too much for an entertainment device. I mean people in the world are legitimately starving and $600 could probably feed those people for a year. In relative terms, $600 really is a lot of money for something that is totally unnecessary to live.
But the fact is this is America; we've got poor people here too, but we also have more than enough middle class and higher to support a $600 system for a while, at least. If you are married and have a decent combined income - "responsibilities" or not - $600 is not ridiculous at all for something that plays movies and games and that you expect to last for 5 years.
I don't think Sony's got much to worry about as far as pricing is concerned. There will still be shortages. Once the demand at $600 starts to wane, they'll just drop the price.
btw, I probably *will* buy the cheaper model (at $500) now that HDMI is included. I can always upgrade the drive later if I have to (according to Sony, it'll take a standard PC drive).
I was amazed at how many 360 games were on the list. Looks like now we'll see if the "racist purchasing" accusation has any weight or not.
Uh, no... because this list is compiled by westerners, for westerners.
I would bet that any "top 20" list generated by a Japanese publication would look a lot different. And it would surprise me if the 360 had more than 2 or at most 3 titles on such a list.
Regardless, it has always been a myth that any single game or any single genre sells consoles in Japan. The truth is we only ever see a fraction of the games released there here - the consoles that sell the best in Japan are almost invariably the consoles with the *most* games. Quality is important too, but quantity can almost serve as a brute force approach to quality and genre representation - get 2,000 games for a system and you're almost guaranteed there will be a few gems among the crap and also that pretty much every genre is going to be heavily populated. That's the case with the PS2, Game Boy (and increasingly the DS), it was the case with the PS1, Super Famicom, Famicom, etc. It is not the case with the Xbox 360.
Long story short, I would doubt the 360 will sell any better after TGS (and with the PS3's approach, it will likely sell worse). But it's still got nothing to do with "racism" and everything to do with a misunderstanding of the Japanese market on the part of MS and western developers.
he realist in me says the FCC is chasing them because commercial radio pushes them to.
No, the FCC is chasing them because radio is and has always been the primary means of conveying emergency information. Television is a lot less reliable on both ends (though that's one of the main reasons the FCC regulates the television spectrum too).
Commercial radio stations have legal requirements for broadcasting emergency signals. Pirate radio stations obviously do not. It is literally a matter of public safety.
And if you don't believe it, ask any New Yorker that lived through 9/11 and the blackout 2 years ago. Most local TV stations were initially knocked off the air on 9/11, and during the blackout there was no TV at all. Everybody got their info by radio. (It's not just information, either - the Emergency Alert System is an automated system triggered by the signals sent over radio and TV.)
There are good reasons why these frequencies are regulated, and they have nothing to do with money. I hope the FCC continues to diligently go after pirate radio - in this case, regulation is a necessary thing.
If people want to set up their own radio station, it's easy enough to do it on the internet without running afoul of any laws. Heck, they'd probably get a lot more listeners that way, and reach a global audience. That they continue to try to flout the law in the face of a legal and better alternative suggests to me that they are intentionally breaking the law for the sake of breaking the law. As such, when they're caught I would hope they have that law thrown back in their faces to the fullest extent possible.
Back in the 60's and 70s, before we all got computers in our homes, it was quite common to hear bureaucrats proclaiming "computers never make mistakes!"
Computers don't make mistakes. The human beings programming and designing them do.
Since a standard phone line needs to be upgraded for ADSL anyway, clearly the throughput with VoIP should be better than POTS.
It's not all about throughput. Go ask any alarm system manufacturer. Most alarm companies won't touch VoIP with a ten foot pole, and with good reason.
I just went through this myself; I have Optimum Voice (which drops calls about every five minutes, btw; I'm this close to calling Cablevision about this) and I just last week finally managed to figure out how to get an alarm system that'll work over VoIP. You basically either need to find a broadband panel (and they are not common) or you need to get an ABN adapter and use NextAlarm. But no alarm will work as it's designed to over a standard VoIP connection, for a variety of reasons.
Ok, I read the post wrong. The *presentation* was in Tokyo. But TGS isn't.
That actually makes it all the more puzzling, though - that MS would have a media briefing in a completely different city than the game show itself. All of the media are right now camped out in Makuhari, filling up the hotel city that exists to serve the convention center. MS just made them all truck back into Tokyo for their media briefing? That just seems dumb.
Honestly, with how poorly they have performed I don't see Microsoft as having any chance of becoming a majory player in the Japaneese gaming market. With that said, with how poorly Sony is approaching this generation I think Microsoft has a real opportunity to make some inroads into Japan.
Keep dreamin'.
If consumers aren't buying the Xbox 360 when the PS3 isn't even on the market, what makes you think they will suddenly *start* buying the 360 once the PS3 is available? (Not even mentioning the Wii... which is still a wildcard IMO.) It doesn't really matter that there are going to be shortages and the prices will be high. Japan isn't exactly a third-world country living in poverty, for one thing - those who want a PS3 will find ways to afford one. They're also going to be inundated with PS3 marketing telling them how cool the system is (and unlike MS's marketing, it'll actually seem that way coming from a company that understands Japanese culture).
Once the PS3 launches, I would expect 360 sales to drop to near zero. They're already basically there, but the 1,500 or so people who are buying 360's each week are going to have even less incentive once the PS3 ships. Some of those potential customers will no doubt also buy a Wii instead; we just don't know how many. But the PS3 is the 800 lb. gorilla in Japan. (My bet is it eventually will be here too, fanboy arguments notwithstanding.)
The 360 is dead in Japan. Thinking otherwise is just denial. It's pretty much *been* dead for a while now, but this is about the point an ER doctor would give up CPR and resuscitation efforts and finally call it. The Japanese public just has no interest. It's not that they hate the Xbox 360, it's just that they don't know or care. It's not even in their consciousness, nor do they want it to be.
One minor correction to the original post here - the Tokyo Game Show is not in Tokyo, despite its name. It's in Makuhari, a city of 800,000 people located about 15 miles outside of Tokyo. It's a small point, but it's kinda like saying Giants Stadium is in New York. It's not; it's not even in the same *state* as New York. The Tokyo Game Show takes place in the Makuhari Messe, which is, as its name does imply, in Makuhari in Chiba prefecture.
Is this yet another sign of the 'greying gamer' phenomenon, or simply evidence indicating the marketers have had it wrong all along?
Probably the latter.
I'd say it's more likely a little bit of both.
I am one of these "greying gamers" you're always reading about. I grew up with the Atari 2600 (my cousins had it) and my first console was the Mattel Intellivision. I went for a period in the 1980's and 1990's where I was totally hardcore, and owned all the current systems and just had to buy all the latest games as soon as they came out. (Well, not *all* of them, but all the big ones.) I was at that age where you basically just give in to peer pressure, and I wanted to be able to talk about all these games with my friends in high school and even the first part of college. Then, when I got a job, I suddenly found myself flush with all this cash I never had before.
I even eventually got nostalgic and built up a pretty sizable game collection (link from my link at the top here). This is still sort of a hobby.
But then, reality started to sink in. Once you get married and buy a house, everything changes. If and when I have kids (and we're already at the age where we seriously need to decide one way or another pretty quick), I can't imagine ever having time to play games. Even just managing my household, doing various gardening chores and repairs on weekends, I haven't had time to even hook up a system since we moved 6 months ago. I do play with my DS on the commute in to work, but I haven't actually bought a game in 3-4 months for any system.
I think my life is pretty typical of middle class people. I was a hardcore gamer, but then I got older. Life catches up with you.
So I think there are hardcore gamers, but most of them probably do eventually grow up. I don't think gaming is something you "grow out of" as much as it's just something you lose time for. And once you're sort of outside that hardcore community, you start to look a lot more critically at the games and genres that everybody else is going so nuts over, and I, for one, have realized that I just don't have a lot of interest in many of the popular titles right now. From what I've seen, this isn't really unusual.
As for the age cutoff, I think 17 is a little too young. When I was in college, I probably had more friends than ever into video games. We even had semi-organized NHL Hockey tournaments in my dorm. So I do think there definitely are 18-34 year old hardcore gamers, but there are probably a lot more closer to 18 than 34. (I'm 34 right now.) But it wouldn't surprise me if there have always been *more* 6-17 year olds that are hardcore gamers, just because a lot of people probably start to drop off in their gaming as they get up closer to the top range of the 18-34 demographic.
So what does it mean for those of us that have used Napster's legitimate service if it evaporates? Do we lose access to our songs once we get a new MP3 player or computer?
Unless you use FairUse4WM...
Pretty much the situation it was designed for.
Maybe when a company like Microsoft tells it's users that they have to break the law in order to view media they purchased, Congress should consider repealing the law.
I'm not sure he's advocating breaking any law, including the DMCA. He just maybe has a little different interpretation of the law than some. But neither his interpretation, nor the interpretation of those on the other side of the fence has actually been tested in court to my knowledge.
The DMCA makes a specific exception to itself for fair use provisions. In essence, it says that if you previously had a right to do something under existing copyright law, you still have a right to do that thing. What the DMCA does is ensure that DRM is protected against those trying to break existing copyright law. It says "if you break DRM for the purposes of infringing copyright, then you are breaking the law." (The fair use exception comes after the actual restrictions, but you have to read everything together to know what the law itself actually is. I'm convinced some people just stop reading once they've read the restrictions.) But since fair use is codified into copyright law, you're not breaking the law by breaking DRM. At least, that would have to be J. Allard's interpretation of the DMCA.
The ZDNet article says the DMCA makes certain exceptions, "none of which apply here." That's not necessarily true. The author is apparently assuming that breaking DRM to move your DVD's from disc to Zune or your PlaysForSure files from one device to another would not be covered under fair use provisions of copyright law. He may or may not be right, but the Supreme Court has in the past used format-shifting as an example of fair use, going all the way back to the Betamax decision. (The examples listed as fair use in the law itself are just that, examples. They do not encompass all potential fair uses.)
The DMCA is no doubt a draconian law. But a) it has not really been fully tested in court yet, mainly because the individual users it most directly affects don't have the money to pursue a lengthy court case, and b) it is open to as much interpretation as the fair use provision in existing copyright law.
The long and the short of it is I think this whole Zune thing is a big fiasco for Microsoft, but I don't necessarily agree that J. Allard is telling people to break the law.
Okay, wise guy. Just relax and take it easy. Paramount is not "raping your childhood", or even improving the effects. (Much.) All they're doing is resampling the film for HD broadcasts.
They're doing a bit more than that.
But unlike with Star Wars, I'm all for this. There's one crucial difference: the original version is still available, and always will be. Nobody's suddenly denying the existence of the original model-based Star Trek, or telling anyone they "lost" the original negatives, or calling the new version "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
There's another big difference: the dramatic content was not changed. Only the FX shots have been changed/cleaned up. I wouldn't have had such a problem with the Star Wars Lucas treatment if he hadn't also gone and made it so Greedo shot first, or Hayden Christensen appeared at the end of Jedi (a face Luke wouldn't even recognize!), or whatever.
I don't mind updating films and TV shows provided the original is preserved for archival purposes and made available in some form to the public. And I don't mind the updates themselves provided it only applies to the technical aspects of the film rather than the content.
It sounds to me like this is a worthwhile update to the original Trek, and I'll be watching. (I'll also be buying once it's inevitably released on an HD video format.)
What VALUE? WHERE ARE MUSIC VIDEOS BOUGHT AND SOLD?
Well, for one, they're bought and sold on DVD all the time. Most people I know have at least a few of these. I myself have video compilations from Depeche Mode, the Police, and Puffy (as in AmiYumi, but it's a Japanese DVD so it's just Puffy).
So while I don't dismiss the RIAA's argument out of hand, I don't think they quite get the reasons why people use YouTube. YouTube's quality is really bad and you can't (easily) download clips from it, meaning it's no substitute for buying anything. I sample videos there all the time, and yes, I've downloaded some, but only videos that I literally can't get any other way. It's a last resort for videos I want to keep, while at the same time serving the same purpose that MTV did in the beginning - it's promoting all these bands I otherwise wouldn't be thinking about. Seriously, if I see a video on YouTube that I like, the first thing I do is see if I can buy it anywhere. This is not like the original Napster, where there's really no difference between the song you could download and the song you could buy. On YouTube, in most cases you can't buy what's on there, and if you can, there's a vast difference in quality and features.
The record labels should be using YouTube as a promotional vehicle. They've got everything all backwards these days. They're even saying MTV was evil in the beginning for, god forbid, promoting their music. They don't seem to realize that the lack of music on MTV at present is a big reason why their sales are down. I used to watch MTV, find new bands I liked, buy that music and buy those videos. I have no way to do that anymore. Except YouTube.
I've been pretty happy with Gmail because its very convenient but if Yahoo are going to trump it then go on, someone tell us what its got.
I've been using both Yahoo Mail and Gmail since their respective launches and I just switched over to the Yahoo beta and immediately switched back.
I'm not sure where the idea is coming from that people who use web mail want a desktop style interface. Outlook isn't exactly known for its speed or intuitiveness, and that's what the new Yahoo Mail is emulating. I couldn't tell you if it has more features than Gmail or not, because the only features I need are compose, send, reply and forward. The ability to attach files is nice, but that's pretty basic (though a lot more useful if you have a lot of storage space, i.e. Gmail).
The new Yahoo Mail may appeal to a certain type of user, but it is outright bloatware for those of us who use email in traditional ways, which I would argue is probably the majority of users out there. It's pretty ironic, but Gmail actually works more like a traditional, old-school email application - no folders, no clutter, not a lot of options. What options do you really need?
I have a relatively fast computer - a Turion 64 with 1GB of RAM. Both Gmail and the old Yahoo Mail load in less than 1 second for me. The New Yahoo Mail took 5 seconds to load. That may not seem like a lot, but everything I did also took 5 seconds. That adds up when you consider that in any given email session, I might make 30 clicks. It gets frustrating fast when your email doesn't respond immediately, or takes noticeable amounts of time to redraw pages. I also didn't like the obtrusive ads in the new interface.
So I switched back. I don't use Yahoo Mail as my primary account anymore anyway, but if they switch to the new interface exclusively, I may just give it up altogether.