Why would anybody upgrade to Vista?
For:
Fancy GUI* (* for high end machines who bought the high-end vista and haven't had a false positive for piracy)
Against:
Can't do this
Can't do that
Can't do anything
All we seem to hear about Vista is things you CAN'T do in the new version. They should change the name to Windows DRM.
1) Take your lazy butt down to the store (indie record shop, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.) buy the CD you want, and use your computer to rip the CD into MP3s (although I'd suggest you use AAC, but that's a personal preference.)
And break the law trying to rip a DRMd CD.
1a) If ripping a CD is too techincal for you, you could always just buy an iTMS "gift card" as the big box stores, or even your local gas station.
Wow, more DRM
2) Ask P&M to give you an iTMS (is it just iTS now?) allowance so you can buy your tunes.
3) Ask P&M to take you to the bank to set up a savings acct with a Visa/MC debit card, and use that to buy your tunes.
From where, more DRMd sites? The fact of the matter is, you can't buy the mainstream music in MP3 format (except maybe allofmp3, but then you're not paying the artists). The record labels need to pull their heads out of the sand, realize that their music is available for free un-drm'd (whether they drm it or not) and make it available as MP3s. Sell MP3s off their website and include them on the store-bought CDs etc.
When the 360Dashboard is as good as XBMC, then maybe I'll consider getting a 360. That means, the 360 needs to be able to play madia off network shares, and it has to play more than wmvs, it has to play divx, dvd isos etc.
It doesn't matter if the first speaker is male or female -- the last person to pass on the message is going to state the same message regardless, in their own voice, purple monkey dishwasher.
The author of this article is clearly a 'user' - they had to upgrade their Hard Drive because it was too slow? Was this back in the 386 days?
While we all have computers, we will play games on them. Certain game types play better on certain systems and people will use whatever system they prefer.
PC's have their disadvantages - piracy, cheating etc, but they have their advantages, upgradable, games are scalable, almost unlimited titles to choose from etc - if you can't afford a new high end video card, don't buy it, there are millions of other fps games to choose from which will run on your older card. I bought my mid-to-high-range pc over 2 years ago, and it still plays newer games very well, (HL2, CS:S, DOD:S, RO, WoW)
XBox live is very impressive, but everyone I know with 360 Live pretty much only plays UNO or Poker, both of which would run on any older pc.
This article was obviously an attention grabbing, ad-revenue-generating article, and it probably worked. Maybe with the $5 revenue from the ads, they can now afford a high-end pc.
With the decline of Urban being hip (see the other Slashdot post), and this compilation, it sounds like Geek is the new hip thing.
So here's my idea for a new game.
You play the life of a pro gamer.
The game would just be like a random tournament of old-school games, like Asteroids, Pacman, Pong, Frogger etc. When you get an end game, you start again straight away, but with a score of zero. You get 2-3 minutes for each game, and the person at the end of 2-3 minutes with the highest score wins.
Apple should also be targeted in this campaign, because they still use DRM, albeit for a different reason - they use DRM to tie your media to their products. Their DRM is probably even worse for it, it's so easy to say "If the DRM is so easy to break without even using hacking tools, they even publicize how to break it, why have the DRM in the first place?" Apple got the media companies thinking about online distribution, but they also seemed to 'legitimize DRM'.
I see the Remote has Positional Sensing (ie. detects the position in 3D space), does the Nunchuk attachment have this Position sensing as well? Or is it just Motion Detection? (I haven't seen the videos or used the controller, so I have no idea). It would be great if they both had Positional Sensing - great for boxing games, and in Mario, draw a bow like a real bow, swing 2 swords at once, or in other games, aim a gun and throw/roll a gren at the same time. Maybe if it's not already like that, they can add that functionality later by using 2 remotes per person maybe. Then imagine standing infront of a projected screen playing Zelda/WoW like that. I've never had a Nintendo, but this would make me get one for sure.
I am completely against DRM, but unfortunately I have to put up with Steam to play Counter Strike Source (I bought online, no CD/DVD to insert). It has advantages, like auto-patching, but if every game publisher had their own Steam, we'd have 5 or 6 different Steam-like programs, fighting for resources and bandwidth.
In cases of protection systems installing their own CD/DVD device driver, this will cause conflicts and likely break each other.
These protection systems should stop checking for DVD Burning progs, Virtual CD apps etc, anybody could copy the disk without installing the game. CD access just slows the game and loading times considerably.
Publishers need to realize that these systems have never stopped their game being pirated and stop hurting their customers. We got so caught up in the MusicCD DRM fiasco, that we forgot Game Publishers have been getting away with it for years.
This HD stuff (Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, HDCP) is already for a niche market, and it will get a very bad name with all the built-in downsampling. Consumers have enough troubles plugging in AV cables, let alone setting up HD with so many paths of failure. It may be downsampling it without them even knowing it, and people will see their setup and say "that doesn't look any better than mine", why should I replace my DVD player, TV, Surround sound and DVD collection for this?
What is the point of downsampling if there isn't a totally protected path, I think there's proof now that people will put up with lower quality if they don't want to pay for it anyway, eg. Cam rips - so people aren't going to care if it's been downsampled - THEY WILL STILL PIRATE IT, SO WHY DOWNSAMPLE? Don't punish your customers just because they didn't buy a Dell.
Looks sweet, might get into it when it comes out (was recently thinking about gettings into mindstorm but it looked too clunky) They should add an accelerometer (can they be made cheaply?), and hydraulics (fluid hydraulics, not the air ones that technics had).
With Subscription Services, what happens if they can't agree on licensing with the labels (like is currently happening between Apple and Sony)? Does the Subscription Service then have to prevent access to that labels music? Would you then instantly lose access to a quarter of your music collection?
Just to highlight how shafted record artists are, if our jobs were the same as record artists jobs, in the interview we'd be promised million dollar salaries, but at the start of our job after we'd signed, we would be bought a new computer, desk, chair and stapler and be told we wouldn't be paid any salaries until you made enough money for the company to pay these off.
Our company would spend millions of dollars promoting us, this too would need to be paid off by us before we got paid (we would have no control over how much was spent on marketing). Other departments within the company would also take their cut from your pay for doing their jobs, like HR and Administration and IT.
We would have to work for at least 2 years for the company and could not leave, until we stopped making money for the company and would not have our contract renewed and be unable to find a job anywhere else.
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Why would anybody upgrade to Vista? For: Fancy GUI* (* for high end machines who bought the high-end vista and haven't had a false positive for piracy) Against: Can't do this Can't do that Can't do anything All we seem to hear about Vista is things you CAN'T do in the new version. They should change the name to Windows DRM.
When the 360Dashboard is as good as XBMC, then maybe I'll consider getting a 360. That means, the 360 needs to be able to play madia off network shares, and it has to play more than wmvs, it has to play divx, dvd isos etc.
The author of this article is clearly a 'user' - they had to upgrade their Hard Drive because it was too slow? Was this back in the 386 days? While we all have computers, we will play games on them. Certain game types play better on certain systems and people will use whatever system they prefer. PC's have their disadvantages - piracy, cheating etc, but they have their advantages, upgradable, games are scalable, almost unlimited titles to choose from etc - if you can't afford a new high end video card, don't buy it, there are millions of other fps games to choose from which will run on your older card. I bought my mid-to-high-range pc over 2 years ago, and it still plays newer games very well, (HL2, CS:S, DOD:S, RO, WoW) XBox live is very impressive, but everyone I know with 360 Live pretty much only plays UNO or Poker, both of which would run on any older pc. This article was obviously an attention grabbing, ad-revenue-generating article, and it probably worked. Maybe with the $5 revenue from the ads, they can now afford a high-end pc.
With the decline of Urban being hip (see the other Slashdot post), and this compilation, it sounds like Geek is the new hip thing. So here's my idea for a new game. You play the life of a pro gamer. The game would just be like a random tournament of old-school games, like Asteroids, Pacman, Pong, Frogger etc. When you get an end game, you start again straight away, but with a score of zero. You get 2-3 minutes for each game, and the person at the end of 2-3 minutes with the highest score wins.
Apple should also be targeted in this campaign, because they still use DRM, albeit for a different reason - they use DRM to tie your media to their products. Their DRM is probably even worse for it, it's so easy to say "If the DRM is so easy to break without even using hacking tools, they even publicize how to break it, why have the DRM in the first place?" Apple got the media companies thinking about online distribution, but they also seemed to 'legitimize DRM'.
I see the Remote has Positional Sensing (ie. detects the position in 3D space), does the Nunchuk attachment have this Position sensing as well? Or is it just Motion Detection? (I haven't seen the videos or used the controller, so I have no idea). It would be great if they both had Positional Sensing - great for boxing games, and in Mario, draw a bow like a real bow, swing 2 swords at once, or in other games, aim a gun and throw/roll a gren at the same time. Maybe if it's not already like that, they can add that functionality later by using 2 remotes per person maybe. Then imagine standing infront of a projected screen playing Zelda/WoW like that. I've never had a Nintendo, but this would make me get one for sure.
I am completely against DRM, but unfortunately I have to put up with Steam to play Counter Strike Source (I bought online, no CD/DVD to insert). It has advantages, like auto-patching, but if every game publisher had their own Steam, we'd have 5 or 6 different Steam-like programs, fighting for resources and bandwidth. In cases of protection systems installing their own CD/DVD device driver, this will cause conflicts and likely break each other. These protection systems should stop checking for DVD Burning progs, Virtual CD apps etc, anybody could copy the disk without installing the game. CD access just slows the game and loading times considerably. Publishers need to realize that these systems have never stopped their game being pirated and stop hurting their customers. We got so caught up in the MusicCD DRM fiasco, that we forgot Game Publishers have been getting away with it for years.
This HD stuff (Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, HDCP) is already for a niche market, and it will get a very bad name with all the built-in downsampling. Consumers have enough troubles plugging in AV cables, let alone setting up HD with so many paths of failure. It may be downsampling it without them even knowing it, and people will see their setup and say "that doesn't look any better than mine", why should I replace my DVD player, TV, Surround sound and DVD collection for this? What is the point of downsampling if there isn't a totally protected path, I think there's proof now that people will put up with lower quality if they don't want to pay for it anyway, eg. Cam rips - so people aren't going to care if it's been downsampled - THEY WILL STILL PIRATE IT, SO WHY DOWNSAMPLE? Don't punish your customers just because they didn't buy a Dell.
Looks sweet, might get into it when it comes out (was recently thinking about gettings into mindstorm but it looked too clunky) They should add an accelerometer (can they be made cheaply?), and hydraulics (fluid hydraulics, not the air ones that technics had).
With Subscription Services, what happens if they can't agree on licensing with the labels (like is currently happening between Apple and Sony)? Does the Subscription Service then have to prevent access to that labels music? Would you then instantly lose access to a quarter of your music collection?
Just to highlight how shafted record artists are, if our jobs were the same as record artists jobs, in the interview we'd be promised million dollar salaries, but at the start of our job after we'd signed, we would be bought a new computer, desk, chair and stapler and be told we wouldn't be paid any salaries until you made enough money for the company to pay these off. Our company would spend millions of dollars promoting us, this too would need to be paid off by us before we got paid (we would have no control over how much was spent on marketing). Other departments within the company would also take their cut from your pay for doing their jobs, like HR and Administration and IT. We would have to work for at least 2 years for the company and could not leave, until we stopped making money for the company and would not have our contract renewed and be unable to find a job anywhere else.